HealthyGamerGG - Entitled Parents, Therapy, and Meditation | Community Stream

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

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leaked, leaked, oh my god, my god, chat. Sorry for being a couple minutes late chat. It's been a long, long day already woke up early this morning. You know how I've been somewhat of a degenerate last couple weeks? You know, not really last couple weeks, but last couple days. I don't know how you all have been feeling chat How you all doing today? So I started playing Genshin impact like a week or two ago. That game is actually, you know, I, I swear to God, this is not like a paid sponsorship by Miho, but that game is really fun. Like, I'm not doing any of the pay-to-win stuff, but like, I'm surprised by how, um, how complete of a game so far it feels without spending any money. Like, am I missing something? So I'm like adventure level 19. And so far it's like,

I run around. It's not, doesn't seem to be. be gate kept. I'm really, you can just play, right? What am I missing here? How about Genshin Impact? It's like fun. You run around and you do stuff.

It feels like Breath of the Wild, but like the exploration feels a little bit more rewarding in some ways, and the combat feels better. Spyware? I'm playing on PlayStation. Yeah, you don't have to pay, I mean, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm confused. Like, I guess like I'm waiting for it. So like part of this is I try to learn about these things, right?

So like I'm waiting for the desire to spend money. Like I'm curious about the psychological predatoryness of it. Um, and just, just waiting for it. It hasn't happened. So far, it's like you run around and you do stuff and it's not like, like, the last game that I played that I felt super was pay to win was magic legends. I don't know what this means. How bad is Dr. K down? So, like, Magic Legends clearly just felt like a microtransaction morass with, like, with a game layered on top. Like, very cool idea, but they were just like, yeah, you want to play this. There are four classes available. If you want to play the fifth class, you've got to spend a bunch of money.

Anyway, so I hope y'all are doing well. in a few minutes late. Been working a lot this week to make up for last week. So just a reminder, so welcome to the stream, for those of y'all that are new, just a reminder that everything we discuss on stream is intended to be for educational purposes, and nothing is intended to be taken as medical advice. So if you all have a medical concern, medical question, please go see a licensed professional. If you're just catching a live stream today, welcome.

F.Z. Plucks. I'm ayah, yeah, yeah, down. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so we'll see. Stay tuned to Dr. Kay coming back and saying, hey, please donate to the stream. I need to buy more things in Gotcha Games chat. Just to wait for it.

We'll see. So, but I'm supposed to play, like, I need to stay, I need to stay, like, abreast of what is going on, right? Like, I need to know what's going on. in the gaming world. And I feel like I'm like a boomer because I'm like a couple months behind. Like I don't see anyone talking about Genshin Impact anymore. So, okay, so are we talking about narcissistic parents?

Great question. So we are talking about entitled parents. And so this is the first thing. So let's talk about entitled parents. So what I want to do is explain a little bit about my experience with working with people who have entitled parents and sort of how to understand them and what seems to work. And so the first thing that we're going to talk about is that a narcissistic parent, an entitled and an entitled parent is not necessarily the same. So oftentimes entitlement and narcissism

tend to overlap. But I think about narcissism as essentially a fragile sense of internal self that requires a lot of very careful outward appearance and treatment to sort of maintain your internal sense of self. So narcissists sort of take the, like, take things in the world around them as like personal insults. So if, for example, you're supposed to pick me up from the airport and you get a flat tire on the way, I will take that as a personal insult if I am a narcissist. well, I mean, not necessarily, but oftentimes will take, you know, things that have nothing to do with my life and take them as personal insults. So it's like, oh my God, you don't care about me enough to be on time. I waited so long.

I've been waiting here for a long time and there was this creepy person. And oh my God, like, I can't believe that you would do this to me. I would never do this to you. So everything sort of becomes about the relationship between me and you, even though it's like you got a flat tire and you had to change your. tire in the rain, like that sucks, but all I can kind of think about is myself. The other aspect of narcissism is also that you have to maintain an outwardly elevated sense of self because you feel insecure on the inside. So, you know, I can't be insulted. I can't, I have to dress a particular way. People need to treat me a particular way because that's how I

know that I'm worth something because on the inside, I'm afraid of, you know, what my true value is. So that's a little bit different from entitled parents. So in entitled parents, what we're really thinking about is entitlement. So oftentimes they overlap. But entitlement is sort of about rights, right? So it's like, I deserve X, Y, and Z. And so oftentimes narcissism and entitlement can go hand in hand. But what I really think about in terms of entitled parents is parents who don't respect boundaries,

parents who don't respect autonomy, parents who don't sort of give. their kids' choices and respect their choices, that's what I think of as entitled parents. So I'm going to give you guys just like one example. So I was working with a kid who was South Asian. So growing up, you know, his parents were very controlling and also kind of very entitled. And so they would sort of regulate a lot of what he could or couldn't do. They started him like playing tennis at the age of like seven, started having him play like chess and a musical instrument. at the age of like eight or nine, maybe even younger. So he was sort of like this Indian kid.

And then in high school, you know, they told him like, okay, here are your career options. You're going to, you know, we want you to play chess. We want you to play a musical instrument. And you're going to be a tennis athlete. Those are going to be your options. He sort of like was interested in basketball and baseball. And they're like, yeah, we, you know, literally the, what his parents told him is,

our people don't do that. Okay. And so he decided, like, they were like, yeah, like, if you, you know, we'd really like it if you wanted to be a doctor, but he wasn't interested in being a doctor. So he ended up becoming a studying CS, which was somewhat of an uphill battle. His parents didn't allow him to go to prom. So he wanted to go to prom and was arguably dating a girl, but they were like, no, you're, you're not allowed to do that. So they were just really, really controlling and felt like they had the right to make decisions for him. So they were also, he was also.

also a gamer, but they were very, very strict on what kind of, you know, gaming he could do. And his mom would set like really, really firm limits. So he goes off to college, has a little bit of a rough year or two in terms of like learning how to deal with his newfound freedom. Parents were also quite controlling in terms of like mandating all kinds of random crap that he really didn't adhere to because they didn't have any power over him. But they're like, you need to be, you know, no leaving your dorm past nine o'clock. You need to be back at your dorm by 9 p.m. every single day. And they would call him and things like that. And if he didn't answer, they'd get pissed off, all this kind of stuff. So like super controlling felt like his choices were not his own, like his parents made his

choices for him. So he tried to sort of argue with them about this stuff. So like at many points throughout his life, he would like have arguments with his parents and he'd say things like, this is not what I want to do. And they'd say like, okay, well, we don't care. Right. Like, you have to do what we tell you to do because we're your parents and you have to listen to us. And so something funny happened. So dad actually, so mom was a stay-at-home mom. Dad was lost his job during the pandemic. And so after he had been out of school for one year, landed a pretty good job. And still parents were like pretty entitled, pretty, you know, would want him to call every day and things like that. So he goes home and because his parents need help.

sort of supporting the family and things like that because his dad has lost his job. So he's essentially like paying the parents' bills. And, you know, he goes home and then he's like gaming at night. And his mom comes in at like 10 p.m. And she's like, it's too late. And you should stop gaming. And he's like, I have a job like, what are you complaining about? They get into a brief argument and then mom unplugs his PC.

So what do you think he does at that point? Absolutely, right? So he doesn't rage. He moves out. And so he's like, and because mom, you know, mom and dad are kind of like, there's like a brief argument and there's this sort of like, my house, my rules, you have to respect the rules of the house. And he's like, okay. So if I have to adhere to your rules living here, I'm going to move out. And so the next morning, like overnight, like he doesn't say that. So the next like overnight, he kind of packs his stuff and moves out. And then parents are like, wait what you're moving out and then he's like yeah i mean you said your rules your house so i'm moving out so i can live my life the way that i want to parents start to panic there are financial considerations they're like oh no no like like wait no don't do that don't do that like we need your help like things like that and he's like so if you need like financial support you know you guys raised me and stuff so that's fine i'll like i'll pay your bills for some amount of time not a big deal but I'm not going to live here.

And so it was a really kind of interesting, you know, dynamic because then, like, the parents were kind of really shocked. And so as the conversation kind of went on, so I was working with him at the time. And so we started to have like a couple of conversations with his parents and were actually able to bring his parents around to a couple of things. Because I don't think his parents sort of realized what they were doing. I don't think they really understood the power dynamics of the situation. I don't think they had accomplished what they thought they had accomplished. They were shooting for obedience instead of like understanding or any kind of relationship. They wanted a robot for a son as opposed to like a thinking adult. Part of that is I think heavily cultural, but I sort of see

it outside of the South Asian culture for sure, where people, parents sort of expect obedience. They expect, you know, that they are entitled to, you know, private communications that their kid has, they are entitled to violate their kids' boundaries and space and determine what they do and what they don't do. So what I'd like to do is just share with you guys like a couple of ways to think about entitled parents. If you guys have entitled parents how to have conversations with them and more importantly how not to have conversations with them. And then ultimately hopefully try to do your best to build a relationship that is like somewhat healthy. Okay. So the first thing to understand is, you know, that entitled parents tend to be entitled, not because of like,

moral deficiencies of character that are genetic or intrinsic, but honestly because of the way that they were raised. So oftentimes, if you think about a particular parenting style, we learn what appropriate parenting is by how we were parented. So in this kid's case, I mean, this is like a long, it's like a whole culture, right? So where like in the South Asian culture, like, this is what you do. You do this and then you do this and then you do this. Your parents even, not even in extreme cases, I was about to say in extreme cases, but even in quite common cases will determine who you will marry.

Like I met someone in my neighborhood a couple months ago. And, you know, they were telling me, so they're my age and even a few years younger. And they were actually telling me that they met their spouse like on the day of their engagement and hung out with them for a total of about three hours before their wedding. So they met once for like an hour and a half and they like saw each other twice for like an hour and then like half an hour. So this is kind of a culture that you come from. So in the case of South Asian stuff, it's like very cultural. But we also find that you know, you don't have to be South Asian.

I've worked with a lot of people who are Caucasian, a lot of people who are black, a lot of people who are African American or even Nigerian, whose parents are very, very controlling and very entitled to their kids' life. And so what we tend to find is that the reason, oftentimes the reason that they are that way, or one big reason, is because that's the way their parents were with them. And so it's not to say that we shouldn't hold people responsible for their actions, but at the same time, we should try to understand where their actions are coming from. Because if our goal is to build a healthy relationship, understanding is just as important as change. So then the next question becomes, okay, so if they were raised to like kind of think this way, What do we do about that? And this is where we get into the first problem that many people who are dealing with entitled

parents make, so many kids, is that they try to convince. So in my experience, trying to convince entitled parents of something is generally speaking, a waste of time. So don't try to justify, don't argue, don't explain, don't try to bring them to your way of thought. Because generally speaking, like, it's going to frustrate you and like they're just not to do it. So instead, the goal is to get them to think, okay? Not to convince them that you're right, but to get them to sort of like question and examine their own beliefs, right? So you're not trying

to bring them to where you are. We're just both going to look at their viewpoint. So for example, like, you know, this was a conversation, this was part of the conversation, you know, my patient had with his parents was so he kind of talked to them and he was like, so as he moved out and he's like, if you guys need financial support, that's fine. I'm just not going to live with you. And they felt like really hurt and betrayed. And then he was kind of asking them like, you know, what is our, what is our relationship right now? So like, and this is where we use a technique called going meta. So you ask them to think about or explain to you what their understanding of your relationship is. So you can start with a question of like, what is this relationship? Like, what are the rules of this

relationship to you? How does this relationship work? This is where a lot of things like PowerDi dynamics come in, but it's essentially like, you know, just asking them like, you know, how does this work? And it's kind of weird because most entitled parents never really think about the rules of the game that they are teaching you. And it's my experience that once you show them and once they realize the rules of the game that they're playing, they no longer want to play it anymore. I know it sounds kind of weird, but you don't have to convince them of anything. You just have to point out the rules to them. So it's kind of interesting because, you know, it's sort of this idea that like the parents were like, well, like, you're our son, so you have to listen to us. And then and then so he was kind of saying, well, like, I listened to you because I didn't have a choice. Like, what do you guys think about that? You know, as soon as I have like, and so this is where a conversation, oftentimes a conversation about power dynamics comes in. So this is a question number one is like, what are the rules of this relationship? Like how does our relationship work? Second, second question is, you know, what is the value? of my opinion in this relationship. So you have a particular opinion. I have a particular opinion.

How do we decide what to do? So if we have a disagreement on opinion, this is not even talking about anything specific. It's not about whether I can go to prom or not go to prom. It's just asking them, you know, so in this relationship, when I believe one thing and you believe something else, how do we decide which person to go with? And essentially what entitled parents will come down to is that it's a game of power dynamics, right? I'm the person. parent, I'm the boss, I pay the bills, therefore I get the decision. And this is where you really have a good opportunity because if that's the situation, you can't really argue with them, right? So as you are not financially independent,

as you are dependent on your parents, you have to play by their rules. Like it's going to be really hard to change that. So you can acknowledge that power dynamic, but you also want to make it clear to the parents that if this is the way that the game is being played, that's fine. What do you think is going to happen when I am no longer financially dependent. Right? So if this is the rules of the game is that like if it's your house and your rules and, and, you know, like we're just trusting you because I don't have an opinion or because you're the adult and I'm a child in the relationship, like, that's fine. But what happens

when we're both adults? Like, I'm not, you know, so you kind of like point out the rules to them. And eventually kind of what we got to is, you know, the parents sort of understood this when like their son was like, yeah, so what do you guys expect? So, this is another thing is ask the parents. So when dealing with entitled parents, I think a big, a big solution is to get them to think about the evolution of your relationship over time. So this is kind of how this patient did. And he's like, what are you all expecting about, you know, when I get married? What do you guys think is going to happen when I get married? And they were like, well, you know, we'll have a big Indian wedding. And he's like,

why do you, why would I, why would I do that? What makes you think that I'm going to do that? if we've determined that the reason that I'm listening to you is because you guys hold power over me, you no longer have that. So why would I listen to you anymore? And so then they were like, what does this mean? Does this mean that you're not going to get married? And he's like, no, I may get married, but what are you guys, you know, I'm going to do what I feel like? But what are you all envisioning about the future of our relationship? Are you guys envisioning that you will come to my wedding? And this is the kind of thing where it's like, you know, this can feel like an attack. and it's kind of interesting because the parents will perceive it as attack,

but that's really not an attack. So you don't want to get upset. You don't want to convince. You don't want to punish your entitled parent. You just want to get them to think. What does this mean? You're not going to invite us to our wedding? I didn't say that.

So this is where you guys can use another meta technique, which is like asking the parent in the conversation, what did you hear me say or what did you hear me ask? And so really what you want to do is don't try to convince them of anything. genuinely try to understand their expectations. And what we find is that as a lot of these unthought and unconsidered ideas come to the surface, this is when we start to see entitled behavior change.

So as the kid genuinely sort of as asking his parents, like, what are you guys expecting? And what do you base that on? And so this is where like, remember step one is like, what is the nature of our relationship? When we have a disagreement, how does the disqualification? how does the decision get made? And what are you guys expecting our relationship to look like in the future?

Right? So these are kind of like the three steps that you've got to take. And this is where like I've had this conversation. So another person I worked with, you know, had a very controlling mother, was a woman. And so she was sort of asking the question of like, you know, what's your understanding of like how happy I've been as a kid growing up? What's your understanding of like what I think about, you know, how decisions make? And like, do you understand that I find you to be quite controlling?

You know, and they're like, oh, yeah, but it's, it's for your, you know, it's for your benefit. Like, we're doing this because, like, I know better. And so then, you know, this is another client of mine who is like, so, mom, like, what's, what's your expectation about your, like, how much you're going to see your grandchildren? And then, like, she's like, well, of course, like, I'm going to, like, I'm going to be very involved. And then this is where her daughter is like, well, what makes you think that? you know, it's kind of interesting because like, but I'm your mother. You're like, yeah, I understand you're my mother, but, you know, it seems that most of our

relationship seems to be like quite one-sided. Like, you seem to determine the nature and style of interaction. And you don't seem to respect my opinions or really listen to what I'm saying. And so I don't, I don't want that kind of person in my, in my kid's life. And so then the mom is like, But I, but I, I deserve, like, are you telling me that I'm never going to be able to see my grandkid? It's like, well, no, I mean, you'll be able to see them, but I don't want you to be a big part of their life if you're going to be like this. And so then like the, then like the, then this is where the parents is like, well, but then like, like, what do you want me to do? Like, and so oftentimes what the parents will do, so when you kind of get through to them, okay? So you're not really saying that you're going to, you're not like trying to convince them of anything, right?

It's just about sort of laying a boundary. And then oftentimes what the parent will do is we'll be like, well, like, you know, how can I fix this? Like, I'm sorry, just tell me what I need to do to make it better. And so this is where things get really, really tricky. So I'll give you guys kind of a third example. So I had a client who parents wanted them to come home for the holidays. Client really didn't want to come home for the holidays. It was like, yeah, I'm not comfortable coming home.

I'm just, I don't want to do that. and then the parent was like, well, why don't you want to do that? You should come. And it gets into this argument about the parent trying to convince them. Like, come home for the holidays. Come home for the holidays. Like, if you don't do this, oh, your dad will be so disappointed. And everyone will wonder where you are.

Like, you know your aunts. They'll start asking questions. Why isn't this person home for the holidays? Is everything okay? Like, why don't you just come home? Like, everyone will like that. And they're like, yeah, I'm not interested in that. And so then it kind of gets into this situation where you're like,

okay, so then like, how do you deal with that? So you can lay a boundary and you can say, you know, mom, if we're talking about coming home from the holidays, like, what is this conversation about? Why are you calling? Are you trying to convince me to come home from the holidays? Go meta. Just ask your parent, like, what is this? What are we doing? What's the purpose of this conversation? And then lay your boundary. Okay. So then they're like, yeah, well, we are talking about the holidays. And you're like, I'm not interested in talking about that. I'm going to hang up the phone now. If you want to talk about other stuff, I'm totally fine with that. And then you hang up. so lay a boundary right so this also involves a certain amount of power dynamics and independence on your part and then you know mom will call back a little bit later and so once again kind of go meadow what are we talking about mom yeah i'm not comfortable with that i'm going to hang up the phone and so then eventually the parent will like ask why are you doing this why are you doing this to me why are you being like this you can say yeah the reason i don't want to come home for the holidays is because you don't respect my boundaries.

And then the parent is like, okay, fine, I'll respect your boundaries. Fine. Fine. Just tell me, like, how to respect your boundaries. And so then you can say, this is my favorite one of my favorite interactions. So what have I told you is my boundary about coming home in conversations about coming home? And then they're like, you said that you don't want to talk about coming home and you don't want to come home. Good.

How can you respect my boundary around that? not talk to you about coming home and not pressure you to come home. Excellent. But then what about coming home? Exactly, Mom. Now do you get it? This is the problem. When I share something with you about the boundary they have I have, you are willing to say that you're going to do anything. You'll respect my boundaries. You'll do, you'll respect any boundary that I set, except for the one that you don't respect. Right. And like, this is the key thing is like, it's about understanding, right? So like when you get to that point and like you just share with your parents, you're like, yeah.

So and they're like, how do I get you to come? What do I have to do to do to get you to come? And this is where like that you can say you can't. Part of respecting my boundaries is respecting my decision that I'm not going to come. And if you can do that, I think we can have a relationship. If not, I think it's not going to be. It's not going to be much of a relationship. Right. So this is really challenging. But when dealing with entitled parents, once again, don't try to convince them. Don't try to tell them, hey, it's like a bad idea for me to come. I don't want to come. Here's why I don't want to come. Here's why coming is a bad idea for me. I want you to just like, like don't try to convince them of anything. Okay? Just get them to think. And the way that you get them to think is by asking them questions like what is the nature of our relationship.

What is the, what, what is going on, chat? What? Clip City, what do you guys talk? Okay. Oh, coming home for the holidays, chat. Come on. Jesus. Okay.

I'm going to keep going, all right? I'm going to just keep plowing forward. Okay. Just keep plowing forward. Okay, let's keep going. Okay, so number one, ask about the nature of the relationship. Number two, talk a little bit about, like, what is the nature of how agreements and disagreements are resolved. Who gets to decide? And this is the really tricky thing is as you guys

have conversations about this, you know, it's like completely fine to have a conversation about it. Like, we'll get to a couple of other points about why these conversations are hard. But you just want to bring it to the surface about how the decision gets made. So is it because their parents? Is it because you live under their house? Like that's fine, right? Like if you can't, if that's the power dynamic that exists and you don't have power in the relationship, there's really not much you can do about it, which is feels bad man. Okay, so like Saj. But that's the truth of it. At least acknowledge it. And then the third thing that's really, really helpful in terms of getting entitled parents to really like think is to ask them like, what do you imagine our relationship is going

to be like two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now? And then if you want to, you can ask them, is it okay if I share my perspective? And so then they say, of course you can share your perspective. And then you can say, well, so like, I think that, are in this relationship, I don't feel respected. So I think that you have power and I don't. But the reason that we maintain this relationship is because I don't have a choice. I feel like I'm a hostage, which is fine. It's just, you know, as I start to gain independence, I'm not sure how much of a relationship I want to have. And you have to be really careful about saying something like that, especially if there's a power dynamic or something like that.

You have to be able to sort of determine your parents' ability to tolerate that kind of statement. But I think it is a really useful question to sort of ask your parents, like, what do you imagine our relationship is going to look like five years from now, 10 years from now? And, you know, how is that relationship going to be different from this one? And it's been my experience that when you stop trying to convince them and invite them to like really understand, and you also try to understand. You genuinely try to understand their perspective. Like, it actually really helps move things in the right direction. So a couple of caveats, okay?

The first is that this is very, very hard. So like a big part of these conversations involves grieving and letting go and accepting that your parent is not going to say what you want them to say. Right? So that's really tough. Like it's hard to sit down in a conversation and recognize that your parent has power over you, whether it be financial or like other kinds of power and that like you're the weak person in the relationship. The interesting thing is that, like, as you start to, like, accept that and admit that and actually come to that conclusion with your parent, the relationship can feel a lot less burdensome. Because oftentimes what I find is that people are like, they're so upset by the injustice of it, which absolutely, like, you should be upset by the injustice of it.

But you being upset by the injustice doesn't actually by itself change the injustice, right? I know it sounds kind of. kind of weird, like this is something that I know is confusing for the internet, but outrage does not make the world a better place. It is the actions that follow outrage that either make the world a better place or a worse place, right? Because there are a lot of actions that come out of a feeling of outrage or injustice that actually can make the world a worse place. And it's really, really dangerous territory. And so this is why, like, you know, what I advocate for you all is not necessarily to take a drastic action because of the injustice, but just acknowledge, if your parents have the power in the relationship, just acknowledge that they have it. And what power do you have in the

relationship now? You have the power of memory. Right. So you are going to remember how they treat you. And how they treat you today is going to a certain degree. So the karma exceeds for how you treat them tomorrow. And this is the main, this is really only, like the only leverage that you have if you're in a large, like power dynamic relationship. And so this is kind of the sort of thing that like you just need to share with them like, okay, if this is what the relationship is like, what do you imagine it going? Because basically, you know, I feel like our connection is a lot, is very circumstantial. Like I'm here because I have to be here. But I don't feel like you all respect me as people. Like you don't respect me as a person, you don't respect my opinions, you don't care to listen to them or

understand them, which is my observation. I don't need to convince you that you should be listening to me. So don't go down that route, which is like very dangerous, right? Because it's easy to go down that route. You can say, this has been my observation. Because when you tell me to do something and I disagree, like, I don't want to be a doctor, but you tell me that I have to major in this. So that's an example of me not respecting, you all not respecting my opinion. And then this is where they go down the tangent of, but no, but it's good. But, but it's good. And you're good for you. Like, we know better. We're your parents. You can say like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not debating that you guys have been alive longer than I have and that you may know better than I do,

but I'm still not hearing you guys like ask or care about what I want, right? So you guys are operating from, you know better, but I'm not hearing anything about what I want. And so you can point that out, right? That's the nature of the relationship. Decisions get made by their subjective sense of what is better, as opposed to what you want. And so then, like, later on, you can kind of let them know, okay, so, like, you guys believe this, but you don't, do you all see how it doesn't appear to me, like, you guys care about what I want?

You guys are valuing better over want, right? What I care about is not as important is what you guys think is good for me, which is fine, let's just call it what it is. And so over time, um, yeah, so someone's saying like, my parents don't believe that their view is subjective, which is fair, right? So, like, that's a fair

point of view. You don't need to argue with them about that. They say, we've been alive, we are higher level than you are. We have more XP. Therefore, we know better. If I am, you know, diamond league in law and your bronze league in law, I may know more about the game than you do. So you don't want to go down that road of whether they're objectively correct or subjectively correct or whatever. The argument that you want to go down or like the point that you want to make is like, you guys are operating on a belief of what's better and I'm operating on a belief of like what I want to do, right? If I want to play techies, I'm going to play techies. Forget that it ruins everyone else's game. Right. So, so this is kind of like, this is my kind of guidebook to dealing with

entitled parents, right? Which is like, so notice the nature. of the relationship, like ask them, okay, what's going on here? Acknowledge the power dynamics. So that's sort of like when we have a disagreement, how does the decision get made? And then invite your parents to think a little bit about how this relationship is going to evolve over time. So this is also where you don't want to punish them, right? So you've got to be really careful here because it can turn into a, if you don't let me do

this, I'm going to cut you out of my life. That's not what you want to do. You don't want to be like emotional about it. You don't want to threaten them. you just want to say like, okay, so, you know, what do you imagine this is going to look like? And I'm not so sure that like I'm going to be comfortable with that kind of relationship as I become more independent. What do you think about that? Right.

And so the conversation should be calm. It should be collected. You have to let go of your own emotions, right? Acknowledge that your parents may not care about your opinion. Acknowledge that you're the weak party in the relationship. And recognize that time is on your side. Right. So as you get older, you will gradually gain more independence.

You have more independence in college than you did in high school. You have more independence after college than you did, you know, during college. As you become financially independent, then you will have even more, you know, control over your own life. And the main message that you want to get across to them is not that you're going to cut them out because you don't want to threaten them. Because if you threaten them, that's going to evoke their defensiveness and whatever narcissism is there will come out swinging if you, kind of threaten them. So you don't want to do that. You just want to invite them to think. That's the goal. Not to convince to invite them to think. So what do you guys think is going to happen? Questions? No, I didn't break the mic. I hit something. So this is where like, so some,

Scartracks asks, here's a big conundrum. What if their entitlement is rooted or justified by religion? That's why we're not talking about right or wrong. Right? So we're not saying like, you're wrong and I'm right. We're not trying to convince them of anything. You can say that's fine. You guys may be objectively right according to religion, which we're not going to go down that, right? I understand that you guys believe this is the right way due to religion.

And what's your understanding of like how that will change over time? Like what's your understanding of like, you know, once I leave the house, like how I'm going to behave? And do you guys care about what I think? And if they say, no, we don't. You have to adhere to the tenets of the religion. You can say, okay, I understand what you're saying. saying. You know, and then I think the conversation is sort of, or then the next question you can ask is like, that's what you believe. Like, I understand that. Are you interested in what I

believe? And then they may say, yes, of course, please tell us what you believe. And then you can share your perspective. And then they will proceed to tell you how it's wrong. And that's when you go matter with them. Okay. That's when you say, so sometimes you'll say that you care about what I believe, when I share a belief, your response is usually telling me why I'm wrong. And so I don't really think you care about my opinion. I think you have, or I don't think you have a very open mind. You've already decided what the right course of action is. And you actually don't seem to care what I think. And you can just point that out to them. And that's when you also step out of those conversations. So you can say, this feels to me like another conversation where you have figured

out the right answer due to religion, so I don't see a point in talking about it. Right? So is the religion already given you the answers? Well, what's the point of talking? If you already know what's right, then like, you don't care what I think. You already have your right answer. Fine. We don't have to talk about it. And then over time, you can set limits on them, right? You can set boundaries on them. They'll say, oh, it's like, it's Christmas. We want you to come home for Christmas. I'm not interested in doing that. Why? Well, because I, feel like you guys don't really care about what I think, and I'm not interested in coming home for the holidays if I'm going to be around people that don't care what I think, that don't respect me as a person. It's fine. Like, you guys can believe what you want to from a religious standpoint. Like, I have no problem with that, but like, I'm just not interested in it. But you need to the, and then you can say, okay, so is this a conversation where you're trying to convince me to come home? You need to, okay, I'm going to hang up now. Goodbye. If you want to talk about something else, I'm totally fine. So I'll give you guys one last story, okay?

So sometimes, you know, not nowadays, but, you know, a couple of years ago, like back in 2019, I used to do a lot of work in emergency rooms. And sometimes, you know, we'd get someone in the emergency room who was like very, very pissed off, sometimes like a high on something like K2 or cocaine or something, very belligerent, very argumentative. So I'd walk in, so I'm supposed to do an evaluation. They're brought in by the police. They're in a bay.

they're handcuffed to the, like, you know, the stretcher, and they've been, like, attacked. Or they're attacking people, like, on the street or something like that. So I'll go into the room. They're like, who are you? And I'm the psychiatrist. I'm here to talk to you and try to figure out what's going on and see if there's something we can do to help.

Fuck you. I'm like, bro, I'm here to help you. I'm like, I don't want your help. And you're like, I'm like, okay, I'll leave then. And I turn around and I walk out the door. They're like, what? What? And then we wait for a while.

Like, I'll check back with them in a little bit. I'll be like half an hour later. I'm like, hey, I'm the psychiatrist again. You said you didn't want to talk to me. Totally get it. You don't need to talk to me. I was just wondering if you've changed your mind. If you have, I'm here to listen.

Otherwise, I can check back in an hour. Fuck you. Okay, cool. Bye. And then, like, you know, sometimes they just need to, like, sober up. Like, they're just so high that they, like, can't hold a conversation. In which case, it's a waste of my. time to try to convince them to talk, right? And in this situation, like, I'm in charge in terms of

the power dynamics, which is, you know, can be very problematic. But it's sort of like, if you don't want to talk to someone, like, if they don't want to talk to you, like, you don't have to talk to them. You can just step out. You don't have to be mad at them for it. You can say, hey, man, totally get it. You tell me to go fuck myself, like, I'm going to leave the room, but you're going to have to talk to me at some point, or like, you can wait eight hours until my shift is over and maybe talk to someone else. But generally speaking, when police bring you here and you're like, you know, hallucinating, you need to talk to a psychiatrist before they'll let you go. Because you were attacking randos on the street, or at least that's what I heard.

So like, you know, we need to just make sure that you're doing okay. Like I see you got a cut there. You know, we need to get that kind of like looked at and make sure it doesn't get infected. But if you want to, if you want me to leave, I'll leave. And so you just walk out the door. So I think that a lot of times when dealing with entitled parents, you can set what boundaries you can. right? So you can't control necessarily if you're like 15 years old and your parents are mean to you and they're very controlling. Like you can't set a whole lot of boundaries, which is okay. Right. So that's where like over time you will grow up and you will be able to set boundaries. I know it's kind of bizarre, but sometimes as a 15 year old, your parents actually do know better than you do. And sometimes they set boundaries for a reason. Right. So we also in our parent program encourage parents to do that to their kids. So what we'll do is like, so parents come to us and they're like, my kid is addicted to video games. They play for like 12 hours a day or failing out of school. They're 14 years old.

What should we do? And then this is what we tell them. We tell them. Okay. So like if you're, you know, when you sit down to your kid is like, I can handle it. I can control my gaming, mom. Like stop taking my games away. Like stop doing that.

And you're like, okay. So are you going to get like a B plus average? And they're like, yes, mom, I will. I promise I'll get like a B plus average. And you can play as much as you want to. They're like, yeah, it's not going to be a problem. them. Then as a parent what we tell them is, okay, at the end of the semester, like, you set some limits to them. You'd say, okay, so what happens if you don't get a B, uh, a B plus? They're like, mom, it's not going to,

it's not an issue. It won't happen. So if you get less than a B plus, I'll take your game away. Cool? And they're like, no, no, but you said, hold on a second. You said that you're going to get a B plus. So it's like no big deal, right? I'm going to take it away. You'll get it back the next semester. Sound good? They're like, no, that doesn't sound good. I'm confused. I thought you said that you were going to get a B plus and everything is under control. Like, okay, fine, whatever, whatever, whatever. And then this is the mistake that parents make. As the kid starts to fail, they start to nag him.

Right? They're like, but you said you, don't you have a test on Tuesday? Like, you should be studying. You got to study. You got to stop playing your game. So I tell the parents just take a step back. Let them fail. Just don't nag them. If they want the responsibility, they want the power, the power comes with the responsibility. And this is really hard for parents. it's hard to watch your kid fail. But it's also a real wake-up call for the kid.

That, like, if you're going to be in charge, like, you're going to be responsible. Right. So it's kind of tricky chat. But, like, setting boundaries, like, it can go both ways. Right. So, like, what we want to teach you guys over time is how to set healthy boundaries. And our program is good. Like, most parents and kids are better off after this.

I think the problem that we run into is. is that kids want to be in charge, but they don't want to accept responsibility. And then parents will, like, clean up after them, right? They're like, you need to clean up after yourself. And mom is behind you with, like, a dust bin, like a dust pan and a broom, like, cleaning it. And then she's, like, constantly nagging. You've got to clean up after yourself.

You've got to clean up after yourself. And your parents are cleaning up after you, so the kid never learns. It's like set a boundary with the kid, man. So someone's asking, okay, it seems like people are asking about kids. Yeah, so all good stuff. So it seems like, okay, so it seems like you guys are more interested in sort of the gaming addiction stuff. Okay, so let's check a couple of these questions. These are all great questions.

Man, I wonder if we can get some of our parents from our program onto our stream. And then you guys can ask them questions. Oh, that'd be so dope. I wonder if any of them are willing to come on. Okay. These are good questions. So what about when you can coast by school without trying and still have a sense? serious addiction to gaming. So great question. So this is why, so what we advocate for our parents

is like understand your kid first. Right. So in the same way that, like, if we think about what I just talked about in terms of entitled parents, like what's the goal, not to convince them to understand, to help people notice what the situation is. So that's what we start with with our parents too. So like what if you, if your parent was in one of our programs and your concern is that I coast by in school and I'm still addicted to games, it would be like a conversation with you where I would start by asking questions like, what do you think about your gaming? You know, it seems like you're coasting in school, like, or tell me what you think about school. And then hopefully at some point you'll share like, I'm addicted to games, but like I'm coasting.

Game, school isn't hard for me. And so then the parent would like work with you about that. Like, is that okay with you or is that a problem for you? Like, are you concerned? And they may ask you questions like, are you concerned that you are building bad habits for later in life? And then, like, even if we look at the question, right, I think you are concerned. Because the question is, what about when you can co-spy school without trying and still have a serious addiction to gaming? That implies to me that it is a problem for you. And so, like, when the parent aligns with you around that, they're like, okay, so if, like,

I get that school is easy and you can do well. If you're afraid of building bad habits, what can we do about that? How can I help you build the habits that you want to if school is too easy? It's crazy because when we have these kinds of conversations, it's amazing what the parents and kids do together, right? Because then the parent is like, you know, these are the kinds of suggestions we've had where it's like, the parent is like, can I help you find like an internship at a marketing company? Something that's more challenging. Do you want to like, I have a, you know, I have a, one of my good colleagues, like, does research. Are you, like, interested in learning about that kind of stuff? Like, literally, like, we had, like, one of our parent-kid combo, like, what they did. So we, like, problem solved around that. And so there's actually, like, a, I'm just going to name a specific example. So there's, like, there's a, there's a drug company that does a lot of, like, AI-driven analysis of different, like, chemical,

compounds. And so like the solution that they came up with, the kid was actually exactly in your situation. School was too easy and too boring, so they filled up all their time in video games. Started an internship there, worked there for the summer, absolutely loved it, made a presentation towards the end. His final deliverable was a presentation about like recommendations for the future where he did like his own research on like what's happening in the pharma space with like data management and AI stuff. And it was cool. Like, he loved it. It's great. Uh-oh. I see parents here.

Yeah. So it's good. So rural areas, very few prospects. Yeah, this, but a lot of stuff is online. No, dude, it's like there are parents here, dude. I saw someone say, like, parent here in the action. Yeah. So parent here in action plan now. So a moose C, we're actually, you know, gonna, we did it.

We just finished our pilot and we're, going to have like a, hopefully like have something more robust coming out soon. Yeah, but that's, that's interesting. I wonder if we can get parents on. And then like, you guys can ask the parents questions. That'd be dope. Happy Father's Day to all the daddies out there. Okay.

Absolutely parents are welcome. So like, look, here at Healthy Gamer, we're about, like, building healthy relationships between parents and kids. That's what we're about. So in the case of entitled parents, we're teaching kids, y'all, how to set a healthy boundary, right? Like how to invite your parent. Remember, we're not trying to convince them.

We're not demonizing them. We're not yelling at them. We're not threatening them. We're not punishing them. All that crap is not useful for building a healthy relationship. I'm also not telling you guys to cut all ties with your parents because they stepped on, and they're entitled and invalidated your privacy. Never speak to them again.

That's not what I'm saying. Although sometimes drastic steps are necessary. in terms of cutting off all contact. Generally speaking, I use that as a last resort, not a first resort. And so what we want to do is help people build healthy relationships by helping your parent understand what they are doing to you and your relationship. I don't think they realize, right, because they're thinking this is better for you, I know better.

You will see eventually. And then what you want to share with them is like, I'm not so sure that that's the case. Neither of us can see the future. Here is what it feels like to be in this relationship. I don't feel respected. I don't feel heard. It's not a relationship that I want to participate in. And right now I participate in it because I have to participate in it.

And it seems to me like you are just assuming that magically one day I'm going to realize something that will make me want to continue a relationship with you. But the truth is every year that goes by, it sounds like you're hoping that I'm going to I will mature and understand one day. But every year that I grow up, I start to loathe this relationship more and more and more. So unless something drastic changes, like, I don't think it's something that I want to be a very active participant in. Share that with them, right? But you have to share with them, like, in a way that they're listening. So that's not the first thing that you say. That's the last thing that you say. This conversation is too philosophical to be

had in real life, I completely disagree. It's just about the nature and manner in which you approach the conversation. That's why you start with questions like, I mean, your mileage may vary, but generally speaking, the formula works pretty well. What is this relationship? What are the power dynamics in this relationship? How do you imagine this relationship will happen going forward? And when you say it's philosophical, it's that way for on purpose. Because the more abstract you get, the more removed you get from any kind of like personal emotion, which is where you want to start. You want to start in an emotionless place and gradually move towards emotion. Yeah. So when you say, man, my parents just go straight to emotion, that's the challenge, right?

So that's why you have to be centered. You have to be calm. So we get this from parents too. Okay? So I get this a lot. Or they're like, Dr. Kay, fix my kid. Can I enroll him in your coaching program? How do I enroll him in my coaching program. And we're like, does he want to be in the coaching program? Not really, but he'll do it. We're like, okay, we don't want him. They're like, but what do we do? My kid is like, he's playing too many video games.

He doesn't listen. He stays up till 4 a.m. every day. We're like, you need to enroll in our coaching program. And then the parent is like, what? No, I'm not the one with the problem. My kid is the one with the problem. He's the one who, like, how can I get him in? And we're like, no, you need to enroll.

And then the parent is like really confused. do that back and forth for a little while. And then the ones that wind up showing up, like, 12 weeks later, they're like, man, I'm so glad I enrolled. I did not realize that my parents, my kids' problems have a lot to do with me. It's like shocking for parents to realize that, oh, crap, like, this has a lot to do with me. And it's good. Like, it's fantastic. Like, and everyone gets better, right? Because then, like, once the parent can own their part, think about this for a second. How would your relationship with your parent changed if they accepted responsibility for what they've done wrong? It makes you much more likely to accept responsibility for what you're doing wrong.

So like, seriously, like it's where we start, right? So like if whoever shows up, we don't, we can't do anything with a kid that doesn't want to be there. And similarly, when it comes to y'all, you guys can't sign your parents up either. Your parents have to want to come. If you're having trouble with your parents, what do we do in our coaching program? we work with you, right? Like, well, who am I talking to? Forget about the coaching program for a second. We're not, I'm not working with your parents. I'm working with y'all to help you understand how to deal with the problematic person and the relationship.

Because that's our focus at Healthy Gamer is like on the individual. It's a bias that I have. I'm not saying it's the right focus. It's just the only one that I'm qualified for, right? So seven years of monk, eight years of ten, eight to ten years of medical neuroscience and psychiatry training. Like what I know about is the individuals. So that's what we focus on.

So it's like it doesn't matter who, you know, who the problem person is. Like you can always learn and grow. And the better you get, the better you're going to behave in a relationship. Okay. I've tried these as a last resort for both my parents after getting kicked out when my dad was in an uncontrollable state. went from having an aggressive toxic relationship between my parents and I to at least talking and checking up on each other once in a while, but it took a couple years to just get to this

point. Absolutely, man. I hate to break it to you, but like that's what it's like. It's tough, dude. It's slow. And like, it's a lot of conversations. Like, don't get me wrong. It's going to take, it's going to take months, years. Right? So, like, if you have these conversations, it's not like if you're 16 years old and you have one of these conversations, over the course of three weeks, your parents aren't going to change overnight. It's just, like, it's not going to happen. So you have to let go that expectation of convincing them. Don't try to change them. Just understand what the rules of the game are and tell them, hey, if these are the rules of the game, like, that's the way they're going to be played, which is fine.

But don't expect the rules to change when the power dynamic changes. It's tough. Okay. Let's do subreddit reviews. Tatar's. Okay. Dr. K react to this too. I'm done counseling and in-cell. Cross-posted from off my chest. I've been a counselor therapist for a couple years now. I specialize in youth in the range of 10 to 18, sometimes longer, if really necessary. Right now I'm doing private home counseling for a 17-year-old boy, and I'm about to email his mother that I can no longer help him. Not because he can't be helped. He just doesn't want to. This will be the first time I give up on a patient, but I cannot help him. He needs more than my help. The problem is his mother is convinced her son is perfect, just sensitive. She refuses any test to determine a diagnosis. He just isn't open to help. He has a deep hate for himself based almost entirely on his hatred for women and women rejecting him in turn. He messages girls anywhere from age seven to 25. His penis? Oh my God. That's terrible. They never respond like he would like them to, and that's because they are S-T-S, W-H-E-S, and not impressed because they probably...

Okay. Yes, he believes that about little girls. He's gotten in trouble many times, but he has yet to face any consequence for his action, which convince him even more that he isn't doing anything wrong. He believes women are the lesser sex, build only to pleasure and care for men. Oh, my God. Okay, so we don't need to go into the details of the... Okay.

But build only to pleasure and care for men. He also tells his classmates these things to which they respond by excluding him, which to him just means that they are underdeveloped. They cannot see his genius views of the world. Yet here's the thing. He's a great-looking guy. If he would lose some weight, shower, cut his hair, just take care of himself, he would get attention. But if he refuses to take care of himself, he believes women are supposed to bathe their men,

and it would be awkward if his mom did it, so he just does the bearer. minimum until he finds a wife. Good luck with that, bro. He has had multiple infections, skin rations, is already losing teeth. His mom can't recall the last time he brushed his teeth. He's also convinced that looks have nothing to do with relationships. He thinks women only fall for the beautiful guys because beauty and low IQ go hand in hand and that's what women like, a low IQ. Because modern women want to dominate men so they look for these beautiful, dumb guys, but then it bites them in the ass because these beautiful dumb guys have anger issues, really? And commitment issues because of their big dicks.

The blood flows from their brains to their dicks 24-7, making them dumb and aggressive. I mean, I have made arrangements for this kid to get the proper help he needs. His mom will hear all about it, not just from an email. I'm inviting her to sit down with me and a team of help for her son, but I am done. Everyone can be helped, but this guy is 100% convinced he is right. he is perfect, he is everything. He acknowledges that he's depressed, but that's not his fault. No, it's women's fault that he's lonely.

If women knew their place, he'd be a king. So there you go, off my chest. Thank God for anonymity. Okay. So a lot of questions. The seed was planted there. Him sending picks to a seven-year-old is how he found himself in therapy. Court mandated.

I have nothing to report to the cops. Okay, makes sense. Thankful for the support. Oh, God. Okay, so for those wondering what happens now, his mother is invited to a sit down with a team from a psychiatric hospital who have agreed to help him if she accepts. He will be stripped of all of his internet privileges. He will be in a closed environment and have extensive therapy for at least six months. The whole idea is to help him, but if he can't be helped at least, we'll have a big file on him to show a judge.

That way, we can ask the judge when he turns 18 to keep him in the hospital. Holy crap. Will he do harm in the future? Yes, probably if he doesn't get help. Do I have any control over that? No more than I did. It's in his mother's hands now. The conversation will be heavy and she will be persuaded as much as we can.

If she doesn't want help, well, then I worry where he might end up. All right. So react to this, huh? Chat, you guys want to talk about this? Okay. Let's talk about this. So number one. So when I teach, right, so I teach psychiatrists,

oftentimes they'll ask me, you know, like, is it unethical to terminate? with a patient. And this is the answer. If you are a psychiatrist or mental health professional, physical health professional, you have to transfer their care. You can't abandon them. You can't just leave them hanging. But it is not unethical to terminate with a patient for any reason, except the wrong one. So you can actually terminate with a patient if they're an in-cell and like you feel like you can't have a good therapeutic interaction there. Like, and this, I think, is completely reasonable. Like, I hope this person, you know, I understand we feel guilty and stuff.

But, like, at the end of the day, you are, every therapist is there to help. And if I feel like I can't actually help someone, I don't need to continue seeing them. Right? This is the kind of thing where I think that this therapist has gotten caught up in a lot of stuff and is, like, approaching this not the way that I would approach it. Maybe they tried. They probably tried. But I've found a way to work with these people.

which I think like we can kind of see in the post, like where this person went wrong. But the first thing to understand is that like it's okay for therapists to like terminate with clients, like if they don't feel like they can help them. In fact, it's like your ethical responsibility to if you're not getting through to someone, like send them to someone else, right? And I think that this person actually did an excellent job, it sounds like, from a system standpoint, went above and beyond to set up some kind of like plan at a hospital that involve six months of therapy with a full team that's willing to like take it on makes perfect i mean i think

it's great like it is a good outcome from therapy in my opinion because if you can't help someone as a therapist like it is your job to try to give them enough notice so they can find someone themselves or hopefully help them find someone themselves um and so that's fine like i don't like i know it sounds weird but like you don't have to save every person right like you don't have to work with everyone you're not allowed to discriminate based on particular characteristics, but if you feel like you don't have a good therapeutic relationship with someone, I think it is actually a good idea for you to transfer them to someone else. Because if you feel like you can't help them, then you feel like you can't help them.

Like, that's okay. That being said, I think there are a couple of other really, really important issues here. So the first is that I think a lot of the kids' behavior is because his mom doesn't think that he's done anything wrong. Right? So if like if you're in a situation where like you have this viewpoint which people are telling you is wrong and you're like not listening to anyone, why is that? It starts with the parents. Okay. It starts with the parents.

So like this kid has been told despite numerous amounts of bad behavior, it sounds like his mom has never told him that what he's doing is wrong. So he's going to be conditioned to think that everything that he's doing is okay. So that's a huge problem. So it starts with mom. It's not like, I mean, forget about the kid for a second. It's like, you've got to start with mom. The second thing is, you know, a lot of, I think the mistake that a lot of people make when is therapists when working with in cells is they get into the incel stuff. So it's sort of like, you know, if I'm working, I mean, this is going to be a little bit of a stretch.

It's an analogy, so please don't read too much into this. But if I'm working with someone who has a delusional system, right? So let's say that, like, they believe that the FBI is watching them. It is not useful at all to get into the system and try to debate aspects of the system with them. So generally speaking, if there's some kind of system that a patient strongly holds, I wouldn't get into it, right? So, like, if someone, it doesn't have to be a delusional system. Like, another example would be like, if someone has strongly held religious beliefs, like, as a therapist talks, about the nature of their religious beliefs is not a useful aspect.

Right? So when I work with incels, I don't ask, like, you know, I'll ask, I'll try to understand, but I won't try to debate with them anything about their worldview as much as I disagree with it. Like if he says, oh, women are there to, you know, bathe men. Like, and like, I'll start getting clean when I get married because my wife will start bathing me. Like, I'm not going to get into that. Like, if you hold that opinion, I want you guys to think about this.

Like, the more extreme the opinion seems to you, the harder it is to, like, dislodge someone from it. So it's kind of weird. But generally speaking, the more firmly you hold an opinion, the more extreme it is, like, the harder it is to convince people otherwise. So don't even bother. I think the real issue here in terms of, like, you know, what are the important questions that need to be asked? And if, like, you, if anyone out there is, like, can identify with this person, I think, like, you know, this is where the money is. So if the therapist says he has a deep hate for himself based almost entirely on his hatred for women and women rejecting him in turn, I think this is where the money is.

So you've got to ask them, like, you know, how does it feel to be rejected by a woman? When was the first time you got rejected by a woman? It's all about understanding, right? Like, you know, where did you learn this stuff about, you know, how women respond? to your dick picks. Like, what's your understanding of sending a dick pick to someone who's underage? Like, why do you do that? What are you hoping for? What is it, you know, like asking lots and lots of questions. Once again, the goal is understanding, right? What's your understanding of like, you know, why you're losing your teeth? What's your understanding of why people brush teeth? You know, like, just,

just ask questions about, you know, how this person perceives. the world. And this is kind of what I find. And I mean, we've done several interviews with in cells. So like, you know, you guys will, and I think the in cell that we get on stream is a little bit different because I think by definition they're more open-minded, which is why they're willing to come on stream. So there's definitely a selection bias there. Right. So your mileage is probably not going to be as good as my mileage, not because I'm Dr. Kay, but because there is a selection bias for the in cells who come on stream. But this is where I think it's just really about understanding the in-cell system. I mean, we've done a lot of work with in-cells. And like,

the more that we, like, ask questions and try to understand the system, the more it starts to fall apart. Because it's not, like, it's really based on insecurity. So people will come up with all of these justifications and evidences of how the world works. But, like, all of that is rooted in a sense of hurt and rejection. So if you want to work with, if you're a therapist and, like, you want to work with incels, like, that would be kind of my advice. It's what seems to work with me, because arguing with them that they are wrong doesn't do any good. It's really more about trying to understand how they came to those beliefs and where the emotional fuel for holding onto those beliefs comes from. Because once you unpack that emotional fuel underneath the beliefs, then the beliefs will actually

start kind of crumbling apart. It's fascinating. Next question. So how do you know if the psychologist is good? Good question. I'm visiting psychologist since I was 20 and now I'm 28, so it's been eight years. I started going there after I felt really depressed. I visited a daily psychiatrist clinic where I had group sessions and other activities. According to the documents, I have a personality disorder and I finished going there for 12 months in 2016. I started doing various social activities lasted more or less two years than I dropped completely and closed myself in my room again. I'm skipping some details because it's not. the merit of the post. I basically dropped the activities because I got better, which means more or less I stopped feeling depressed and I felt indifferent. So I stopped having the rush to do anything. So back to my question in the title, I have doubts of my psychologist helps me because I sit there all 50 minutes saying nothing most of the time because after I told her my life story in the first month of therapy, I had nothing else to say. All she asks me if I want to talk about something every therapy and I say, I don't know because I really don't know because

except now that I had this rush of feelings, I had nothing else to say about monotone life where I sit in my room playing games all day. This is pretty much the same for normal relationships. I can't really maintain relationship because I run out of topics very fast. She also asks me if I'm thinking about finding a job or moving out on my own.

I don't know if therapy should look like this, but I feel like life is slipping through my fingers. I'm scared I'm wasting my time for nothing, and I'll wake up in the next eight years being an old man in the same situation or homeless or dead. I had a panic attack realizing how much time has passed since I started the therapy and I'm in the same spot. Right now I gain new motivation because of the depression

to find a job and move out and try to pass my exam, but I wonder how long it will last before I close myself again. Okay. Posted by USA Sucks Balls. All right. So this is a good question. Okay. All right. So how do you know if your psychologist is good? So this is what I'd say. When you go to therapy, you're, you generally have some goals in therapy, right? So like, you know, if it's working on depression, that's fine. If it's, you know, trying to get more motivation or getting a job or whatever. Like you should have goals in therapy. And part of what I find frustrating about my profession is that a lot of people in my profession are scared of goals. And this kind of comes from the psychoanalytic tradition where they will like analyze someone who wants goals. Like if someone comes in and says, I have a goal

to do this, this, this and this, can you help me? They will start analyzing what is it like for someone to come in and like want to accomplish goals. There's some utility to that. But I think at some point, part of the reason that therapy is sort of like why coaching is growing. and therapy is like also growing, but like coaching is sort of like gaining ground compared to therapy. I see these posts a lot in the psychotherapy subreddit where people are like, my client just said that they had this great breakthrough in coaching,

and we've been working on that for months. Like I'm confused. I don't know how to respond. And so I think there's a reason why coaching is growing, and it's because as therapists, we don't really focus on goals very much as a profession, or at least coaching focuses a lot, more on external goals. And so I think like if you if you have a good psychologist, like ideally they

will be helping you move towards your goals. So this is what I would say. Like if you're in therapy for eight years, are they a bad therapist? Not necessarily. Because remember that like therapy is there for two reasons. One is to keep you afloat and the second is to help you climb. Right. So which one are you in therapy for? If you have a lot of bad stuff in your life, if you have something like a personality disorder, sometimes people will need to be in therapy for like years and years to help them deal with the day-to-day, like, challenges that life offers. And so sometimes, like, therapy is sort of like your, you know, your like side companion that helps you keep the boat afloat. Other times, therapy is really about making progress. That's

generally speaking the kind of therapy that I like to do. So, you know, I don't work with people that are, or at least a lot of people that are chronically mentally ill, I certainly have. And for them, it's sort of like, you know, if someone has a very serious chronic debilitating mental illness, like, goal setting needs to be adjusted to like, let's try to stabilize for one year and not lose any ground. Okay, like, let's get stable. And then, like, still, I focus on goals. But the ball, you know, the ball game's a little bit different. So therapy has two goals. One is to keep you stable. And the second is to help you grow. And what I'd recommend to all of you is that, you know, if you do see a therapist, you do see a psychologist, tell them what your goals are or tell them, hey, I'm trying to figure out what my goals in therapy are. The next thing is that I would definitely tell this therapist exactly what you wrote in this post, which is a great place to start, which like if we look at this, like, I would go to them and say, you know, I don't know if therapy should look like this, but I feel like my life is slipping through my fingers.

So I would go to your therapist and I would say, you know, I've been coming to therapy for eight years and I feel like my life is still slipping through my fingers. I'm scared. I'm wasting my time for nothing and I'll wake up in the next eight years being an old man in the same situation or homeless or dead. This is what I would share with your therapist. Because it sounds like your therapist is kind of asking you if you want to talk about something and then you say, I don't know. right? So like this is where I know it sounds kind of weird, but like, your psychologist, you guys have to understand that a psychologist is not like a chef, right? Like you, it's not like a restaurant where you go in and you say like, I want this. And then they do something in the kitchen and then like 15 minutes later, a plate comes out with exactly what you asked for. So I want you guys to understand that

the quality of a therapy relationship, you control 50, percent of it, and your therapist controls 50 percent of it. And so if you're not getting enough out of a therapy relationship, instead of asking yourself, I mean, it's good to ask, is my psychologist good? That's a good question to ask. You should also ask yourself, what can I do to make the therapy, like, more helpful? So I think that what I'm hearing from your case is that your therapist is asking you what you want to talk about, but you're not actually sharing the stuff that involves the work of therapy. So start to share that stuff. The other thing if you're trying to figure out if a therapist is good or not is I'd see more than one. So if you've been with

for eight years, I'd try out like two more people. Like over an eight year period, if you're in therapy for eight years, I'd recommend that you see three therapists over the course of eight years. Work with each one for like two years. And so then you'll kind of get a sense, right? How do you know if a sandwich is delicious. Well, like, you can sort of get a sense of whether you like it or not, but then go out and try other sandwiches and then see which ones you like. Because a lot of therapists, therapy is not objectively good or bad. It's about fit.

It's like, how do you know if a video game is good? Well, like, you try a couple and then you see which ones you like. That's the approach. That sounds expensive. Yeah. So, like, if you're going to see one person for eight years, generally speaking, I'm assuming at the cost of seeing different therapists is about the same. If you're in treatment for eight years, like you might as well.

see two or three different people, like over the course of that eight years, right? Two therapists talking is 100% therapy. My friend, hissing mango, one patient talking and one therapist talking is 100% therapy, right? No, by all means. I mean, I recently had a patient tell me, hey, like, I'm thinking about seeing someone else. I was like, go for it. We've been working for a couple years, like, you know, try them out, take a break for a little while. Like, I think it's good. I encourage my patients to take breaks from therapy. It's like, go and start. And, you know, do on it for a while, like work on it for, you know, take a break from therapy, see how it feels. And let's check in in a month. Let's check in in two months. Do you miss your patients? Yes.

But also, like, that's okay. Right. It's okay to say goodbye and still miss the people. I still think about my patients a lot from like years ago. You know, like, I wonder how they're doing and stuff like that. I hope they're doing okay. A lot of them, you know, I don't forget. And I hope they're doing well, but it's also a little bit inappropriate for me to kind of reach out and ask them how they're doing. So, relationship ended with Dr. K. Nanyu Therapist is my best friend. One of the greatest memes of all time, man. Yeah, so Swamini's got it right. The best cases don't come back.

That's true. I got a letter from one of my patients, like, a couple months ago. That was really awesome. I loved getting it. They were like, thank you for everything you've done. I'm doing better now. Still struggling some, but managing on mine, I was like, great. Yeah, sometimes people will reach out.

I mean, they still have my email address and stuff, so they can always email me. Okay. Okay, we have time for maybe one more. Okay? Chat. Empty nest syndrome. Chat, why do you think we started? streaming on Twitch.

Because of y'all, my nest will never be empty. One person's asking, what about coaching and therapy at the same time? Absolutely, man. So part of what we do in our coaching program is get people into therapy. Like, I want to say that 10 to 20% of our coaches help people get into therapy. And the two are very complimentary, right? Because coaching is really not about clinical illness, whereas therapy is. yeah so what the heck is the difference between coaching and therapy very so it's relatively simple okay

so a couple of differences one is that coaching so therapy is therapists are trained primarily to deal with clinical illnesses right so I'm a psychiatrist which means that I deal with people who have like clinically diagnosable illnesses now that doesn't mean that therapy is exclusively used for illnesses but if you look at the training in the focus, it is predominantly about illness. So for example, like if you look at a curriculum for like a, you know, a therapist, it's going to have like training on depression, anxiety. It's going to have minimal training on like how to find happiness or how to achieve your dreams or how to find a girlfriend.

Like it's not going to have those kinds of things. So in coaching, what we really do, at least our coaching, is heavily, heavily inspired by, like, Eastern principles of, like, how to live life. So these are, like, principles of yoga and stuff like that. So it's sort of like, what is the nature of happiness? How can you understand yourself better? How can you learn how to be, like, an optimal instrument in your life? So it's not necessarily focused on a particular illness and is not clinical in nature, but is more about self-understanding. and hopefully soon will now be more a little bit more about achieving external goals.

Can you buy the guide with crypto? I don't think so, but we accept pre-orders with PayPal now. Isn't coaching unregulated? Absolutely. It is unregulated. That may change in the years to come. So our coaching program has sort of been, I've been talking with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health about our coaching program for a couple of years now.

So we sort of built our coaching program based on evidence-based recovery coach interventions. So there is scientific data to support kind of the theory behind what we do. And then we also collect outcomes, which we'll be publishing hopefully soon in terms of, you know, how effective or ineffective our coaching program is. All right. One more. We're going to do one more thing and then let's meditate. Okay. trying to be honest with my therapist, but not so honest that I get involuntarily hospitalized.

Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about involuntary hospitalization. Okay. So this is just going to be kind of educational, all right? So first question, chat, is what is the goal of hospitalization? You all know? So like the goal of hospitalization is really for like safety and stabilization. So I know this sounds kind of weird, but like 99% of patients who have come into my office and said, I have suicidal thoughts, I have not hospitalized. Okay? So involuntary hospitalization is really only, should be used and only like drastic cases where there's like an acutely elevated risk of safety. So I've worked with people who have been suicidal for like a year

and they'll come to my office and they're like, I'm thinking about killing myself. And I still may not hospitalize them. In fact, I usually don't. So the main issue is whether there is an acute elevation, a temporary elevation of your risk that is very problematic in that moment. And if the answer to that question is yes,

then we will consider involuntary hospitalization, or at least me personally. So that's also where I would think about voluntary hospitalization. So most of the people that I've worked with, like, will do a voluntary hospitalization, which is, I'll talk to them, right? And like our goal, so when I work with my patients, we have a shared goal. The shared goal is not to, you know, keep them living life that is miserable. The shared goal is to try to help people build a life that is worth living.

So if I feel like they are so mentally ill to where they're, like, acutely at danger to themselves, then I may involuntary hospitalize them. but generally speaking, you know, psychiatrists and therapists are not there to hospitalize you against their will. That's not what we're there for. We're there to try to help you. And just because you're suicidal doesn't actually mean that you belong in a hospital. Like at least, I mean, it depends on what kind of suicidality. So we'll go over that in a second. But, you know, really the question is, can you, is the risk to yourself so great that you need to be in a controlled environment for a temporary period of time? And so this is where, you know, when I work with people like, I think about the following factors. One is, is there a temporary elevation to the risk? Do you have means or access to kill yourself? Do you have a plan to kill yourself? So like, some people are like, I just want to die.

But they don't really have any plan to do something. Whereas other people are, and if I ask them, like, you know, do you have a plan of what you would do? they'd be like, yeah, I'd jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. And I'm like, the Golden Gate Bridge is in San Francisco and you're in Boston. So would you buy a ticket and fly? And they're like, yeah, I haven't really thought it through. I'm like, great. So you probably don't need to be hospitalized in that situation. So the more well-developed the plan is, so like I one time had a patient.

So I had a patient who was a pharmacist. And so they're like, yeah, if I wanted to kill myself, I'd overdose on pills. And I'd be like, okay. and they're like, I take this kind of medication, and I'd also take anti-nausea medication because I know if I take this much medication, then if I take anti-nauseum medication, I have a greater chance of dying.

That scares me a lot. Right? So this was someone that I actually did hospitalize and sort of, that was also voluntary, but they're like, yeah, like, they called me and they were like, I just ordered this stuff from a foreign country. I'm like, okay, so like, I'm concerned because you're moving closer and you could change your mind,

and you could actually do it. So like, I think we should go to the hospital because I'm really worried about you. Either that or you kind of check in with me tomorrow and we can make a decision then. Like, are you going to be okay tonight? And so then we kind of talked it through. They checked in with me tomorrow.

And based on that assessment, I was like, yeah, let's take you to the hospital. They're like, okay, fine. So the first thing to remember is that, you know, our goal is not to hospitalize you against your will. And just because you're suicidal doesn't mean that we're going to hospitalize you. It, of course, is a case-by-case basis.

different clinicians have different thresholds. I tend to be like a big believer in patient autonomy and sort of like, you know, so I think that it's my job to really, I mean, sometimes I'll involuntarily hospitalize people because I don't think that their mind is working properly. And so we'll do something called a capacity eval to see if their mind is actually functioning in a way that's processing information or they're too depressed to be able to process information. But just because you're suicidal doesn't mean that we're going to hospitalize you. In fact, like, our goal is to help you not be hospitalized, right? So when I think about my job as a psychiatrist, my job is to keep you out of the hospital, if possible. Right? So if you think about it, that's the job of all doctors.

Like, if you go to a primary care physician and you've got, like, an infection, the goal of the doctor is to keep you from needing to go to the hospital. Like, we don't want to get this to a point where you're septic, the infection is, like, flowing through your bloodstream. and like, you know, it's affecting your entire body. The goal is to keep you out of the hospital. It's not about cost savings for the insurance company and things like that. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is generally speaking, we want to keep people to a minimal level of illness.

Right? So our goal, and so this is where I'd strongly encourage you to talk to your provider if you're having suicidal thoughts. Because it's their job to help you be safe. it's their job to help you like deal with those thoughts hopefully you know so you no longer have them or they're like much more controlled

or way easier to deal with because that's our job but if you don't tell us because you're afraid of being hospitalized like yeah you could be hospitalized it's possible but if you don't tell us then like we can't help you with them and the hospital is not really what we want to do like that's not our go-to it's like a last resort that being said you know there are some providers

who for medical legal reasons or, you know, personal thresholds may have a lower threshold to hospitalize people. I, you know, I can't speak for everyone. But generally speaking, I think that, you know, if you have suicidal thoughts, like you should tell your provider and then your provider will sort of ask you certain questions. And this is the other thing. I know it sounds shocking. But also, if your provider wants to hospitalize you, you got to really think about why they want to. right? Because as trained professionals, we sort of know what the risks are. And so if you're like really high risk for suicidal, like an actual suicide attempt, and your provider is telling you to do that, maybe you should go. Right? Because like they kind of know what they're talking about. And our goal really is to help you stay alive and stay healthy. So, you know, don't hesitate to share your suicidal thoughts with your provider. This is also where you're, like we said, we think about acute elevations. So has something really drastic happened to you?

Did you just get dumped? Do you have access to suicidal means? And that also is because if you look at it, 80% of suicide attempts were, like actually the decision was made within two to five minutes. I think maybe 60% is made within 60 to 120 seconds of the attempt. So if you ask survivors of suicide attempts and you ask, them, when did you actually decide that you were going to kill yourself? 60% of them, I think, say, within one or two minutes, and 80% of them will say within five minutes

of the attempt. So it's a very common myth that most people will plan out their suicide attempt over a long period of time. That's why we ask so much about access to stuff. So if you have a gun in the home, the problem is that if you have this idea, and within 60 seconds, you've got the gun, you may actually pull the trigger. So we try to control. means if you have to book a ticket to San Francisco, like for next Tuesday, the likelihood that that attempt will happen is statistically way lower, according to the research as I understand it anyway, based on my last reading of it. And so that's why when the provider tells you, hey, I really want you to go to the hospital, they're not necessarily worried in that moment.

What they're actually thinking, hopefully, is like what is the likelihood that that little voice in your head actually takes control of you for like up to five minutes? minutes. And if the little voice that you fight against on a daily basis can take control of you in five minutes, what is the worst damage it can actually do to you? That is our threshold to hospitalize. Because when that risk gets too high, that's when we really think about hospitalizing. And even then, like what I'll do, I mean, I've had cases where people have had very high risk situations and it sort of becomes like an issue of trust where I'll explain this to them and say, I trust you now, I get that you're telling me that you're not.

actually going to do anything. I'm concerned that you could change your mind in the middle of the night. So let's get rid of the gun. So I'll talk to the person, they'll talk to their spouse or mom or whatever. And I tell them what I need to be reassured is like, I need your mom to be with you and y'all need to get rid of the gun together. And the three of us are going to talk about it. And so if we can be assured that you don't have access anymore to make an impulsive decision, because most suicide attempts are actually impulsive decisions. Then we can sort of like, you know, keep you safe. And if we can keep you safe on the outside, then, you know, we don't need to hospitalize you. The last thing that I know it's shocking, but hospitalization is not a magical cure for suicidality.

So this is the other reason that I tend to be really careful about when to hospitalize people is because I really have to ask myself, what's going to change within one week? Now, if you just got dumped by your partner and you're like acutely suicidal, then like absolutely in a week you could process a lot and you could be in a different headspace. So by all means, like move towards hospitalization. So this is where the other thing that we talk a lot about in psychiatry is a chronically elevated risk of suicidality, which does not necessarily warrant hospitalization. Some people have a chronically elevated risk of suicidality, which means that they're sort of constantly like high risk to be suicidal. And even if it's scary, it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be hospitalized because it's unclear like what will happen over the course of the 10 days that you're in the hospital.

If it's not going to actually make an impact, we just, personally, we just kind of ride out the risk, right? We talk about it. We oftentimes try to talk to a patient's family member, spouse, or parents, or something like that. And we say, hey, here's the situation. What do you guys want to do? We can try hospitalization. We can not try hospitalization. Based on my assessment, this is a chronically elevated risk. Is it scary? Absolutely. But I don't know that hospitalizing you for five days is going to change something. So, yeah, so Ria is saying, my first time calling the suicide hotline was last Thursday, good that you called and don't hesitate to call again and like go to the emergency room if you're feeling like you're in a bad spot. So this is the thing is like, remember, hospitalization is sort of like, it's like, it's basically the alt for the psychiatry profession. Right? Like we don't spam your alt. You can't spam your alt. Doesn't do any, I mean, I guess theoretically. would be good to spam your alt. But like, that's not, it's a bad analogy, I suppose. So it's,

you know, it's like this thing that's on a cool down for in order for it to be effective, you know, but I guess it's, in games, if you could spam your alt, you would. But that's not how we work in psychiatry. So I need a different analogy. It's like, it's like a cool down that like, you know, it's like blood magic, let's say, like where you like lose a portion of your HP to like cast a powerful spell, but you can't spam that shit. So generally speaking, I try not to spam hospitalization and use it only when necessary. Yeah, it's lay on hands. Yeah, so shrapnel sacrifice that's what constitutes a suicide attempt. Providers ask me about my past attempts. I've been told that having the means and almost doing it doesn't count as an attempt. I don't know.

So this is where like providers are going to be different. You know, some people will say it counts as an attempt. Some people will say it won't count as an attempt. I think about, so what I do is I do a risk formulation. So it's not so much about, you know, what is or isn't. It's not binary. It's like a risk assessment that's on a scale. So is this person low risk, medium risk, high risk, chronically elevated risk, acutely elevated risk? Like, there's a lot of dimensions to assessing risk, right? And this is where we talk about means, history, current mindset, circumstances, current stressors, all those kinds of things kind of factor in. Dazil Alt, actually, Dazil Alt is a great example of what a hospitalization is.

That's beautiful, Dean, 7-7-944. That's actually the best gaming analogy I can think of. So if you guys play Dota, you know this, but if you don't, there's a hero named Dazzle who has an ability called, it's not as Alt, but it's shallow grave is what I was thinking. Where shallow grave, like, it doesn't heal you, but it prevents you. you from dying for a temporary period of time. And so when you like shallow grave someone, like, you can keep them alive for like, you know,

a certain period of time, but like they're not actually going to be healed. So as soon as shallow grave ends, if they take, you know, any damage, they could still die. So what I think about a hospitalization is sort of like a shallow grave. So it's like a temporary measure that keeps you alive. But in my experience, hospitalization can sometimes fix things. But it's really about like healing you back to full. That's the important part. Axe chalk,

Mechlel. I knew, I knew Axe I knew Colling Blaine was going to come up. I knew it. I don't know what the, I don't know.

The analogy falls apart. Axe blink. Axe is on your team chat. All right. Any other questions before we wrap up for the day? We have a couple more Reddit posts,

but I don't think we have time. Yeah, so Oracle Alt. There's also jokes there, okay? So if you talk about Oracle, which is false promise, that just sounds bad when it comes to hospitalization. False promise. Here's mental health treatment. We're going to call it the false promise.

So I don't know if you guys know this, but hospitals are required to have debt forgiveness in the U.S. anyway are required to have debt forgiveness for, I think, up to 300% of the poverty line. So if you're a single individual. So I think if you make like less than maybe $40,000 or $45,000 a year, I think the hospital, I think you don't have to pay anything to the hospital. You have to go through the process of getting that debt forgiveness. But then like up to $100 grand, it actually is like a sliding scale. So hospitals try not to publicize this information because, you know, it hurts their bottom line.

but there are actually programs no, I think it's federal. Like, I think there are programs so you should ask your hospital what kind of, you know, what are the financial guidelines around debt forgiveness if I have low income? Just talk to them about it.

I forget the exact numbers because they change from year to year. But, you know, so I know it sounds weird, but like you guys should, I've worked with a lot of people and also worked at hospitals that will charge lots of money despite being non-profit institutions. And generally speaking, medical debt can be absolutely crushing.

Like, I'm not going to dispute that. And at the same time, like a lot of times hospitals do have programs, sometimes federally mandated, sometimes state mandated programs that will, you know, be helpful. So I wouldn't choose between, I mean, how can I ask you to choose between your wallet in your livelihood, your life. So I would say pick life because a lot of times there's actually a lot you can do afterward that people just aren't aware of. So you can actually, it's not really a choice that you're making because people are just

unfamiliar with the laws, which they do on purpose, I think, to obfuscate things. But that's where we got to, you know, we got to improve ourselves. We've got to understand better. How much do you think sleep schedule impacts mental health? Huge. So if you look at sleep, sleep is the one symptom that I think. is impacted by every single mental health diagnosis, for the most part, if I'm remembering that correctly. So I remember looking at, you know, sort of like each mental, it's the most common

element, if not every single one, it is the most common sleep disturbance is the symptom that is the most common across all mental illnesses. So the way that I understand that is like sleep is the time that your mind and brain used to like repair itself or heal. so when your sleep is impaired, your healing function is impaired, and so it propagates mental illness. Do you tell your patients to sleep? Generally speaking, that is not something I say to them. I don't say to them sleep. What I will do is ask them how their sleep is, and I will try to help them sleep healthier. Because exactly, like people are saying, just sleep doesn't work. Okay, so here's a couple tips on sleep. Three quick tips. First of all, if you want to control your

sleep schedule, it's not about bedtime. It's about waking up. time. It is far easier, well, they're not saying it's easier, it's far easier to wake up when you're tired than it is to go to sleep when you're not. So if you're trying to control your sleep schedule, you're in for 48 to 72 hours of rough wake up. Okay? So I'd say that what you all should do is set an alarm, set it loud, and set it outside of hand reach. Ideally, like, outside your door, with the door open. So when it rings, you have to get up and physically get out of bed. Okay? Bonus points, if you can splash your face with a little bit of water, it'll help you wake up. By all means, if you guys drink caffeine, do that. Control your waking up in order to control your sleep.

But I just go back. So that's where like, yeah, so you have to learn how to not do that. So notice that you just want to go back. And then as you're going back to bed, ask yourself, do I want to fix my sleep schedule. If the answer to that question is yes, you can't, not do I want to. What matters to me more? Fixing my sleep schedule or going back to bed now? Try to ask yourself that question. Second thought is screen time and blue light inhibit melatonin production. So ideally two hours before you try to fall asleep, you want no access to screens. So physiologically, it's going to be easier to sleep because your melatonin will start pumping. And then it'll like physiologically literally be easier to sleep.

Third thing is a bedtime routine is very, very helpful for sleep. So you can train your body and your mind to fall asleep at a particular time, like in a very Pavlovian way. Two hours, but I'm addicted. Yeah, it's hard, dude. I'm not going to lie. So that's why there's a reason I started with number one first. because if you're tired enough despite, so what we want to do,

so getting a good sleep schedule is all about harnessing the power of fatigue. So that's what I recommend, especially to gamers. So we're not going to like, we're going to use fatigue as our gravity to fall asleep. So the more you can increase your fatigue, the easier it will be to get on a good sleep schedule.

You can read a book, absolutely. You just don't want blue wave length of light. So audio book is good, book is good You know exercise if you guys feel like it Stretch do yoga all that stuff is fantastic I think E-ink is actually okay Yon So it's funny that you guys mention this because like literally today

I'm starting the process of resetting my sleep schedule So I woke up this morning about three hours earlier than I usually do So I'm resetting my sleep schedule as we speak. So now I'm already tired. I'm going to be ready for bed in like four hours. I have, I've recently enrolled in school. Yes, that is correct. Yeah. Okay. Shall we meditate? What do you guys want to do? You have a PhD already? I have an MD. Slightly different. I actually do not have a PhD. Ooh, ADHD meditation part two. Let me think about that. Okay. You guys want to do another, we can do another, we can do another

ADHD meditation. This is going to be an advanced one, though, okay? So you guys need to have been doing meditation already. So I'm going to teach you guys a swara meditation, which I think can work pretty well for ADHD, but is also quite challenging. Okay? So this is going to sound kind of weird, but the first thing to understand is that when we do alternate nostril breathing, you know, so I want you guys to start with that, hold on, give me a second, I got a yawn, Swarovsky, Crystal meditation. Sponsored by Swarovsky. Oh man, chat. This is going to be tough because I'm so tired. Other thing is if meditation puts you to sleep, just use it to go to sleep on time.

Okay. So this is what we're going to do. The first thing that I want you all to do is sit up straight. We're going to start by observing the flow of air in each of our nostrils. So you can start by blocking your right nostril and breathing in through your left. Let's do three breaths. now go ahead and switch and breathe in through your right. So you should notice that one nostril is more closed than the other, which is completely normal. So you should notice that one nostril is more closed than the other, which is totally fine. So now what we're going to do, if you guys have been doing Nadi Shuo, then are our other meditation practices. You should be able to do this next part, maybe with a little bit of difficulty.

But if you haven't been doing these kinds of things, it'll be tough, okay? So now what I want you guys to do is in the nose, if we diagram the nose, okay, this is what the diagram of the nose looks like. So let's say this is your left nostril. This is your right nostril. Okay? So this is the tip of your nose. And this is like the base. Okay? So like this is your face. So I know it sounds kind of weird. But in the nostril that's open, there are different zones where you can feel the breath. Okay? So you can feel the breath here, here, here, here, or here. There tend to be five different zones where you can usually feel the breath. So what I want you guys to do is pay attention to in your open nostril where the zone you feel the breath is. And try to focus on each of them in terms. Okay, does that make sense, chat?

Did I say here? Feel. I meant feel. So feel where the breath is. Okay, so close your eyes and focus on your open nostril. And now focus on your closed nostril and see where you can feel it. And now just focus on that. Focus, you can alternate between the two nostrils.

I'd recommend focusing more on the open nostril. if you get distracted, you can move over to the opposite nostril and then return to the open nostril. And just notice where it is. We'll practice for about 30 more seconds. Okay. So a couple of questions. Okay. So now let's go ahead and come on back.

Let's explain a couple things. One is you shouldn't be closing either nostril. You just put your attention on one nostril. Second thing is, what does this have to do with ADHD? So generally speaking with ADHD, we're looking for two things with this practice. One is that it requires a certain amount of subtlety or focused attention in order to notice it. So it's kind of weird, but it's sort of like, in order to do this successfully, you need to temporarily rein in your ADHD because you have to focus very tightly.

The other thing is the difficulty of the practice for short periods of time, I find actually is really good for people with ADHD. The problem with ADHD is not a lack of attention. It is a wavering attention that can get too, it can be, it's actually an intense attention for a brief period of time, which is sort of what this practice is about. Next thing is that this practice is a good one to be done throughout the day. So this is not something where you need to meditate for 15 minutes at a time. What I would say is you can do this practice for 60 seconds at a time 15 times a day. You can even keep a journal and then you will learn.

something very interesting. So I would say every hour, you can check which nostril is open, where the airflow is in the particular nostril, and also jot down a couple of, like, qualities of your mood and mental state, and see if any patterns emerge. And if you guys do this, so this is why I like this with ADHD, where it's like, you don't have to do it for a long time. It can be easy to forget at the beginning. But as you do this, this practice, it will start to like strengthen your ability to like attend to things and keep track of things over time. But you don't want to stress it out too much. We're not asking you to like meditate for 20 minutes at a stretch. So it's a very, very different from the last ADHD practice that we taught.

Okay. How long would you recommend? So you can do the practice for like 15, 20 minutes. It's no harm if you do it for a long period of time. But the reason that we're structuring it this way is because it requires a lot of attention for a brief period of time. So people with ADHD have, I kind of think about it as they, you know, they can actually have a pretty big manifold, but they spend it very quickly and it has like a slow regeneration rate. So they have like kind of a long refractory period, but they can get intensely focused for brief periods of time. So someone's asking me, what's the longest I can meditate? That's a great question. And let's think about why is that important, right? Think about it for a second.

what would be gained by answering that question. So be careful about the questions that you ask about comparisons and meditation and what other people are capable of. What other people are capable of is completely irrelevant to your personal meditation practice. I understand it's a very natural, curious question. It's a very good question, right? Because it points out some of these things in our mind, which is that our mind loves to, what matters to that? If I said I could meditate for five minutes, it was my maximum meditation. how would that make you feel?

What would you think about that? Would you think of me as a little less qualified meditation teacher? What if I said I could meditate for 10 hours straight? Would that make me, would you be more impressed? And then like, just think about what the answer to that question does. Right? So like, pay attention to why we ask these questions about what other people are capable of. It's like, how much do you bench press?

Like, what does it matter? Right. If you're hiring me for something that I need to bench press something, then that makes sense. But be careful. I've not done a Vipashana retreat. I've done something similar, but not Vipashana. Meditation Olympics. Yeah, so it's funny that you mention that.

So a good friend of mine won an international yoga competition two years in a row. And I asked him about that. I was like, congratulations. And he was like, for what? I was like, for winning. And he's like, that's dumb. Yoga is not a competition. It's stupid that they even hold it.

it. And I was like, why do you go? And he's like, my teacher wants me to go so that I can advertise for his school and like, he gets more people. I do it because my guru asks me to do it, but I think it's idiotic. I was like, oh, interesting. It's all about ego and trophies. It's like, that's not what yoga's about. Would you recommend be passionate as someone who doesn't actively practice? No. I would not recommend their 10-day retreat to meditation novices. It can be quite grueling intensive. False guru. Absolutely. Yep. Does meditation stretch focus ability for ADHD? Yes, that is exactly what it does. So it trains you to be focused for longer periods of time. Who's the real guru you are? Seriously, that's a real good question. Yeah, right? That's what people say. Everyone kind of talks about how each and every one of us is divine, man. Everyone is divine. It's true.

there's a certain aspect of us that is transcendent. And so the real guru is within. Okay. So I hope you guys enjoyed today's stream. Let's figure out who to raid. Any suggestions? I know we said we were going to raid someone. We raided Gorp last time, right?

Who did we? Who did we banked someone? Amaranth? Suari. She's banned. Okay. So not rate her then. Uh, okay, we can raid Sue Ari.

Need clout for boba sponsors. Okay. It seems like Sue R is, do you know yourself personality test in real talk? So, cool. So she does mental health and mindfulness kind of stuff. Sounds good. Oh, no, they're letting her know. No, why are you guys spoiling it, chat?

Okay, do some personality test and enjoy. we'll see okay take care we'll see you guys on Wednesday we're gonna have a viewer interview okay so one of the plebs just me and the plebs let's go plebs plebs unite