HealthyGamerGG - Getting a Girlfriend is NOT an Achievable Goal

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about whether getting a girlfriend is actually possible, why it is not an achievable goal, and discusses the "work on yourself" mentality. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even if you believe that you deserve a relationship, do you believe that there are factors outside of your control that are preventing you from having that relationship? Has anyone actually found a girlfriend? There are many people in this community who are unable to find a girlfriend, and Dr. Kay addressed this subject quite often and gave his advices. But I wonder, it's a good question, right? If anyone here actually made it out of this situation. So let's understand this for a moment, okay? Is anyone here actually found a girlfriend? So this is what happens.

I'm looking for love. And I show up on this place called the internet. And I'm like, yo, people, how does one find love? And a lot of people give me answers. There's no shortage of answers. Right? I can go to YouTube. I can go to Reddit.

I can go to advice forums. I can probably not LinkedIn, but there are a lot of other places where people talk about how to find relationships. I watch videos about alpha males. I watch videos about beta males. I watch videos about Sigma males. I watch videos from people who are in touch with themselves emotionally. I watch videos about growth and I watch Dr. K. And then like everyone gives me answers.

Like look at all the answers there are. There's so many different answers. And then I go to places like, I don't know, let's take a look at the dating advice subreddit. Right? are my, like, 1.1 upboats, are my standards too higher? Does the dating pool just suck? Where sex I've ever had, but I like him? No text back after a second date. Right? So let's sort by top. A perfect girl canceled our date only 20 minutes prior. I was already the Uber. This just happened to be five minutes ago. No text back after a second date. You know, how to attract people you're attracted to? Like, what do you think? You think this stuff works? So here's what's hard about this situation.

If you're looking for a relationship, you're like a motivated person, right? You're like, okay, like this is important to me. I'm going to focus on it. So you go and you collect information, you do research, what do people tell you? They tell you work on yourself. Don't try too hard. Just be yourself. Be the best version of yourself.

They give you this kind of advice. You're like, all right, let's go. So you work on yourself. Because everyone's telling you don't try to like find a relationship. you're going to appear desperate and just work on yourself in the relationship. The relationship will come. All you have to do is open yourself up to the universe and the relationship will come. You focus on yourself.

You cannot control the actions of others. You can only control yourself, so you must work on yourself. And you do that for six months or a year. No relationship. You lose heart a little bit and you're like, all right. So you're like, you take a break for a little while because like you can't, you know, how long can you do the Sigma grind set? And then, like, you know, a couple months go by, you're feeling lonely again.

You're like, turn back to the internet. You're like, all right, what do I do about this? And everyone's like saying the same thing. Work on yourself. Work on yourself. So you're like, all right, here we go again. Work on yourself. So you work on yourself for a while.

And then like six months go by, eight months go by, one year goes by. You're working, like you're making progress, right? You're like more in shape. You got a promotion. You like went to therapy. You're doing everything right. Second year goes by and you're like still scratching your head and you're like went on a couple dates. But as we saw this person canceled 20 minutes before I showed up, this person never texted me back.

Like this kind of crap happens. And then you're like kind of shrugging your shoulders and you're like, wait a minute. Does this crap actually work? So you dig deep. Six months or a couple months alone just go by and you're like, ugh. Like, the only thing I can control is myself. I cannot control the actions of others. Let me control myself.

I'll work on myself more. Work, work, work, work, work. So you work on yourself again. Like, here's the thing. At some point, there's got to be a payoff. And each time you go through the cycle and you feel like, okay, I got to work on myself. Because that's what people say is going to work, right, is working on myself. You work on yourself and it doesn't work.

And then people like, just work on yourself more, bro. I'm like, all right, okay, fine. So you dig deep again. You use a lot of willpower, overcome it. You're like, there's a little bit of despair, right? Because you've been doing this now for a couple of years. You've been working on yourself. But no one seems to care how much progress you've made.

No one gives a shit. And then like you dig deep and then you do it again. Ride this get back on the buck and bronco. And then you ride it for a while and tosses you off. And then you're like, man, I'm so tired of working on myself. Like when, like when? When? Everyone talks about how.

No one talks about when. Is there even a win? And then you start to doubt yourself, and then it's sort of like, you don't know. So what's going on here? Like, how do you deal with this? How do you understand, first of all,

why does everyone keep on saying work on yourself? And like, why doesn't that seem to work? Or does it work? Or why do they think it's work? Why does it work for them, but it doesn't work for you? Like, what are you missing? So we've got to start this by understanding

a little bit about how belief structures form and a little bit about how information is poorly disseminated on the internet. So the first thing to understand is that we have these things that Aaron Beck sort of coined as core beliefs. Thousands of years ago, the yogis called these sum scars. So let's like understand, first of all, like how we get into the situation and what to do about it. So the first thing to understand is that as we navigate the world, our brains try to make sense of stuff. our brain tries to come up with formulas that make it easy to navigate things because you can't

and you have to like simplify crap. So our brains look at lots of different experiences and then they form conclusions that make it easy. Like I'm a good person or I'm not a good person, right? So if I get yelled at a lot when I'm a kid, my brain sort of figures out, okay, I'm not a good person. And then actually that's adaptive. Because if I sort of start to realize, like, so let's say that a tragic story, let's say I'm a talented kid. And I do really, really well. And my parents are actually jealous of me.

This actually happens, by the way. So as they become jealous of me, what do they do? They beat me down, right? They call me not a good kid. And then what happens is I start to internalize that belief. I come to conclusions. Oh, I did a good job. Mom and dad yelled.

I did a good job. They yelled. I did a good job. They yelled. Ergo, I'm a bad person. Now what happens if I'm a bad person, I stopped doing a good job. Now I conform to my parents' expectations. As I conform to my parents' expectations, oddly enough, it hurts less. So now I figured out the rules of the game and how to play that game. This then becomes a core belief. Then what happens is core beliefs spew these things. So this is what Aaron Beck sort of laid out. So core beliefs are like beliefs about myself. Like I am unlovable or I will be alone forever. Then what happens is these core beliefs form adaptations. So we adapt to them. We start to make assumptions. We start to make rules for how to live my life based on this core belief. And then those rules then will spawn something called automatic thoughts.

So this is where like if someone doesn't text me back right away, oh, she doesn't care or he doesn't care. Like that thought is immediate. It's severe and it's automatic. So what the yogis basically said the same thing. What they said is that when you have an emotional experience that is undigested, the emotion sinks down and goes dormant. And then that emotion can get triggered and all of the thoughts that come with that emotion will now be applied to your current situation. So if the last time that my partner was being shady and not returning my texts, they were having a affair. That's a lot of emotions to manage, right? I break up with them. That becomes baggage,

relationship baggage, right? We even understand that now. Like, yogis were smart. Aaron Beck was smart, but, like, we don't have to be smart. Everyone understands that people have relationship baggage. What does that mean? It's the emotions that you carry over, the patterns that you carry over, the assumptions that you carry over from the last relationship. So as we carry over these assumptions of, oh, like, people are untrustworthy. Then if your partner is, like, not available for a few hours, you have thoughts. Boom. This person is cheating.

Where are those thoughts coming from? This person is giving you no reason to distrust them. The distrust is actually coming from you. Right? So that's what they sort of said in, that's what a somskar. This is very similar to a core belief. So if you're entering the dating pool, the first thing you've got to understand is, like, what are your beliefs about this?

Do you believe that you can find someone? Do you believe that you are lovable? Do you believe that you are worthy of having like a good relationship? Do you believe you deserve a relationship? There may be other kinds of core beliefs. Even if you believe that you deserve a relationship, do you believe that there are factors outside of your control that are preventing you from having that relationship?

Right. So this is some of the intermediate beliefs that Aaron Beck sort of talked about is sort of like, we'll see this where we can say, like, oh, because of things like concepts like sexual marketplace value or whatever, like, you know, oh, these are like adaptive beliefs that essentially compensate for the idea that like I'm terrified of being alone. So we come up with all these like rules and ideas. Now, the key thing to understand about all these core beliefs and some scars is that we tend to think about them as coming from the inside and affecting the outward world, right? So if I get triggered in a particular way. I'll feel emotionally bad. It'll generate thoughts in my head. It'll generate behaviors. So the directionality of core beliefs, as most people think about it, is outward. Right. So there's a belief that I hold. It shapes my thoughts, which in turn shapes my emotions and shapes my behavior. What people lose sight of is that core beliefs don't just shape your thoughts. They also shape your perceptions. Huge. Undervalued.

piece of information. So if you believe you are unlovable, what that means is you will amplify particular signals and you will reduce other signals. So what happens is every time something happens, let's say that you have a 50-50. And one person says, oh yeah, I'm really interested in seeing you again. And another person doesn't answer your texts. Your mind will actually hang on to one more than the other. So it shapes your perceptions.

And that's how you get to this. Has anyone, does it actually happen? Because what happens is all of the positive information tends to get filtered out, and the negative information tends to get amplified. Now, the problem with this is like, this has been going on for thousands of years. So what's changed now? Now, what's changed is this. So not only does my mind amplify negative information and reduce positive information.

and reduce positive information, but the internet itself amplifies negative information and reduces positive information. So I want you all to think about this. If you look up information on relationships, on the internet, it doesn't matter whether it's Discord or Reddit or YouTube or whatever. Are people who are in healthy relationships chain posting?

Are there communities about, I have an awesome relationship? There's no community like that. What happens? If you just, if you post on dating advice, hey, I have an amazing relationship, what do you think is going to happen? You're going to get downvoted. Bragging, arrogant, all the people on there resentful get downvoted into oblivion. Right? So the internet doesn't, like, are there a thousand videos about how to find relationships? Yes. Or there are a thousand videos about, hey, my relationship is awesome. I'm grateful. Who the hell would watch that?

What is the point of watching that? So not only do we have this cognitive bias, but the other thing that happens is that the internet amplifies that. So we amplify the negative. We reduce the positive. And the internet just turns both of those dials like way up. And so then what we get is a perception.

We get this question. And what I love about this community is like this person was like critical enough to think about this and be like, Like, actually, hold on a second. Because I want you all to appreciate this for a second. This person recognized that they had a thought, I'm not going to find a girlfriend, and this crap doesn't work for people.

And then they were critical of it. By the way, you guys want to see what the answers are? So what do you think? Do you think people actually find girlfriends? What do you all think, chat? Huh? Do people find girlfriends? Yeah or nay.

So Rhino Gator saying no, impossible. No, no, no, no. Let's see. First answer. Yeah. I met my girlfriend through mutual friends. When we first met, I wasn't even looking to date her. Just thought, hey, she's cool. We kept hanging out. I really enjoyed her company. Then one night we got drunk and hooked up, and that was that. Right? Let's go down. Yes. But I think that finding your girlfriend and boyfriend is a unique quest for every player. There's much more to that in the simple yes or no answer. My consistent problem for roughly 10 years ago is my tendency to withdraw. Frankly, in the last six or seven years, passing fan, she's focusing on myself. Basically, I'm a lot more. social now, I perform betterly. I'm kind of a late bloomer. So it seems like this person is improving,

but hasn't found it yet. Gaming wife here. So this person's married. Yes, dude, of course. It's not this impossible quest that some people on this Reddit think it is. Then the question becomes, why do people think? I don't know. This is great. I don't know. I'm 29 and I've never been anywhere near close to having a girlfriend, right? So this is where your automatic thought says, but I'm not like other people. I am hopeless. I'm convinced. It's At this point, I'm convinced, here's the core belief. I'm no good and no one will ever want me. Hey, man, I used to feel the same way and I'm engaged now.

A good friend of mine was 30 when he finally had a girlfriend and lost his virginity. A friend, his acquaintance of mine was 31. There's nothing magical about these ages. Wow. Right? Like, you know, like, I know it's kind of weird, but the problem is that... So most of the people are saying, yes. This stuff works.

here's the big piece of information that's missing. No one tells you the timeline. Everyone tells you what to do. No one tells you how long it'll take. And that's what screws people. Because then what happens, if you spend a year working on yourself and you don't find a girlfriend, you're like, screw it. I did what they said, and it's not working. It's like when we plant a seed, we don't expect a fruit within a year.

right? We have a good expectation of like, all right, I got to plant this seed. It's got to shoot. It's got to become a shoot. Then it's become a tree. Then it's going to have flowers. And a couple years from now, it'll have fruit. We know what to expect. It's like, imagine if you went to college and you were like, oh, like, how do I find a job? Go to college. And no one told you how long college takes. Like, imagine how idiotic college would seem. You're like, I've been here for a friggin' year, where's the job? And so then you'll like, quit for a little while. And then you go back to college. You do your second year. You're like, where's the job? You go back. And people like, yeah, just go to college, go to college, go to college. That's how you get a job. You go for a third year.

You're like, where's the job? No one tells us in terms of this dating advice crap how long it takes. And so we have, we have no idea what to expect. And that's like a critical, like you'll get this. It's a critical piece of information. How long do I need to work? on myself for this crap to work. No one talks about durations. And why is that? Because it's individualized. Sort of.

Right? But that's where we can actually like go into data and we can understand, okay, how long does it take? And let's like kind of luck. And then it becomes super confusing because it's like, okay, what amount of this do I need to improve and what amount of this is time? Because if someone says it takes five years and then I kind of like do stuff but I don't try hard enough, like in five years, what if it doesn't work? It gets super confusing.

So what do you, if you're wondering, if you're out there and wondering, okay, all this crap about finding a romantic partner, does it actually work? So here's the answer. Yes, it works. It just takes a really long time. We're talking three years, four years, five years, seven years. So it's sort of like, honestly, it's like opening a loot box. That's what dating is. Finding a romantic partner is opening a loop box.

I don't know exactly what the odds are. there are certain things you can do to improve the odds. But at the end of the day, the only guaranteed way to get the item is to keep opening loot boxes. I don't know what the odds are. I wish I could tell you. But in my experience, if you have like no social skills whatsoever and you're like going nowhere in life, give it at least five years.

And for those of you were saying, I can't do this for five years. That sounds depressing. Like, I don't know what else to tell you. Five years is not that long of a time. Give yourself five years to grow into a human being that someone else would want to date. Work on your social skills. Get professionally independent. Get financially independent.

Become professionally successful. Get into shape physically. Take care of your mental. Like, this stuff takes time. The other thing is, I don't actually think it's going to take five years, but here's the magical thing. When you set a target, I'm sort of like jabating y'all and also like de-jibating y'all in a moment. But if you give yourself five years, you won't expect anything in two years. And when you're expecting it is when you're not expecting it is when it's the most likely to happen.

Right? The top post was like, I wasn't even trying to date. I just thought this person was cool and we were hanging out. And that was a lot of fun. That is the most successful. Even with the person that I married, like I didn't even realize we were going on dates. She was telling me, yeah, you took me out of date. I'm like, no, I didn't.

What are you talking about? I was just showing you around town. You were like new to town and I was like, I'll just show you around. Oh, you like Thai food? Like, I know a great place. Let's go. So like absolutely focus on yourself. Absolutely like give it time though.

We're talking about two years, three years, four years. Sometimes what it requires is obliviousness on your part. Why does the obliviousness matter? I know it sounds kind of weird. But once you get out of your own head, like it's so much easier. And that's that's the thing. is like, because when we think about it, why is it so hard when we're in our own head to date people? It's like literally we are in our head, so we're not attending to the other person.

We're not empathically connecting with them. We're empathically connecting with our anxious self. And so then I become anxious. I start to worry about particular things. I'm not really paying attention to her. I'm kind of zoned out or I'm kind of staring and distracted. What? And then like, the person I'm on a.

date with is kind of like, that's weird. Makes them feel a little bit uncomfortable. I see them becoming a little bit uncomfortable. The anxiety in my head goes, oh no, now they're not having fun. I'm not fun anymore. Oh, crap. Now what do I do? How do I get them to have fun? Have fun. Have fun. Figure out. Figure out. You can make it out fun. You can make it out fun. And then they see the desperation in your face. And then they're like, what the fuck is going on? So get out of your head. Focus on yourself. put yourself out there. Right? Like that advice is all true.

Like there's a reason why we hear it over and over and over again. But give it time. Recognize that for the first year, second year, like when you're putting yourself out there, you're not going to get much. What you're really doing is like leveling up. We're not zoning into the raid yet. We're just getting ready to zone in. Right?

That's really the solution. And chances are it takes years. I mean, it takes a lot of people. I don't know what the average age is for people to get married, but I get the sense it's getting older. So I'd say like 26, 27 is probably average, I would say, 28 maybe. And for people saying, but I'm 31, yeah, 27 is average. That means that there are a lot of people getting married at 21,

and there are a lot of people getting married at 33. 35? Like, there's a range. So how long does it take? Years. Does it work? Absolutely. just keep at it. And all along the way, the last piece that I'll,

advice or guidance I'll give you, any amount of resentment that you have about this whole process is 100% justified and 100% needs to be dealt with. If you're hopeless and resentful, completely get you, bro, or girl, or whatever you are in between, totally fine. Because things from non-binary people are not easier. Let me tell you why. totally fine to be resentful. And you need to manage that outside of the dating sphere, right? Because we see this. Like, when that resentment enters, when people don't text you back, you're sabotaging yourself.

You're shooting yourself in the foot. You're making it even harder. Then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Enhances the core belief that people don't care about me. When really what they're detecting from me is resentment. And like, what are they, what are you expecting? If you project resentment, what do you think? Someone's going to fall in love with you because you're a resentful person?

like that's going to be tricky. So manage those emotions externally. Go see a therapist. Work with someone. Like, work with a coach if you want to. Talk to friends. Vent about it on Discord. You know, like you've got to manage that stuff.

And by the way, this is like, this is why. So I know this sounds kind of weird. I'm going to tell you all a story. So when I was training to become a psychiatrist, they asked us a question. Said if a patient walks into your office and says, Can you help me find a girlfriend? What should your answer be?

And there were a lot of right answers, but there was just one wrong answer. The wrong answer, according to my teachers, was yes. I can help you do that. The right answers were, I don't know, what do you think makes it hard for you to find a girlfriend? Why is that important to you? That sounds like it's very important to you. Do you feel lonely? Those were all correct answers.

The one wrong answer, right? and that's what we trained to do as therapists. The one wrong answer is yes. Because we are taught as therapists that an outcome for a patient is not our responsibility. Something, I lost a little bit of faith in therapy that day. I think therapy is wonderful. I love being a therapist. But I lost a little bit of faith in how hands-off the profession is.

Now, there may be therapists out there that disagree with that. There may be therapists out there that, you know, consider that to be an unfair attack on the profession. it's just my experience. I think it's not uncommon, by the way. So I think oftentimes when people go to therapy looking for guidance, what they get is questions. That's why I started a coaching program. Because, like, at the end of the day,

like, there are people out there in our community who are, like, looking to find a girlfriend. There are people out there who are looking to find a relationship, boyfriend. There are people out there who are, like, have a particular goal that they want to achieve. And if we look at outcome measures, for therapy. You know, being in a stable relationship

is not something that we measure. It's not an outcome that we're trained towards. Do we do stuff around couples therapy? 100%. But it's couples therapy. Right? It presumes, like, the starting point,

so if you think about, you know, there's this degree called a LMFT, licensed marriage and family therapist. The presumption is that the marriage is already there. Y'all get that? Couples counseling.

It presumes that you're already a couple. You can get trained. in that as a therapist. But what about getting into a relationship in the first place? Where's the certification for that in therapy? And this is the difference. Couples counseling is about taking a marriage or a relationship that is having challenges is busted in some way and bringing it back to help. That's the medical model. The coaching model is let's help you achieve your goals. Let's help you understand what are your somers. That's why we teach coaches about Vedic psychology in this Eastern perspective, what are your somers? What are the emotions from the past that make you resentful

so that it's hard for you to date today? Let's understand how you work and what your goals are. And once we understand those two things, we can figure out a path to help you achieve them. That's what coaching is about. That's why I fell in love with it. I went to my first coaching conference and I was like, this is actually amazing. What I realized, and this is where I got, you know, one of my supervisors once told me, yeah, I see what you're doing is, is really valuable to people, but it's not therapy. And I got super confused by that. And what I realized is what I do was heavily informed by like my training as a monk,

which is helping people find happiness, not curing depression. Those are two separate things. And so if it comes to goal achievement and if it comes to understanding your resentment, if it comes to a place where you need to offload those emotions and have a coach sort of be like, yeah, that really sucks that this person doesn't text you back. I imagine you must feel really resentful. what are you going to do about it tomorrow? Let's manage those emotions here and send you back in

with a little bit of hope, like dismantle that somascar a little bit. Let's process it here. And then let's figure out a plan for you to start dating again. That's why we started this coaching program. Because the truth of the matter is that it's not, I mean, for those of y'all that are interested in treatment, right? So if you've got, I mean, if you're in a relationship

and you need marriage counseling, like don't come to a coach. Like go to a LMFT. If you've got major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder, go see a psychiatrist or a therapist. You know, if you've got, you know, really bad social anxiety or generalized anxiety disorder or panic attacks, like go see a therapist. But if you're someone who's trying to figure out how to navigate this world and no one taught you the rules and you need some amount of guidance and facilitation, and it's not that the coaches have all the answers. So it's not what they're really, what they have is a method. methodology to help you understand what are your values, what are your motivations, what are your

roadblocks, what are your goals, and like dismantling those roadblocks and starting to make forward progress. That's what coaching is about. And there's a reason why for the first time in 18 months, we actually have coaching spots. And like we're working with coaches as fast as we can. We're trying to like get them ready to help you all as fast as we can. Program has been full for 18 months. We finally have about a lot. hundred spots. That's because we're just like, we in in 2022, in the last year, we've taught as many coaches as we have in the 18 months before that or more. And like that's, and the reason is because this is what people need. And this is what we presented at the American

Psychiatric Association. Is peer support services actually help people, that you can actually improve depression and anxiety without treating depression and anxiety without treating depression and anxiety. But wait, does that make it a medical treatment? I don't know. If you're obese and that's a medical diagnosis or you have type two diabetes and that's a medical diagnosis and you go to a personal trainer and you start exercising and you lose weight and your insulin resistance improves, does that mean that a personal trainer is practicing medicine? You can get clinical improvements without clinical interventions. And the way that our coaching program helps people with their depression and anxiety is not by treating depression and anxiety. It's by helping them find a romantic

partner. It's by helping them get a job. It's by helping them set boundaries on other people. How do I set and enforce boundaries? Those are the kinds of skills that we teach. In our parent coaching program, that's what we do. How do you set effective boundaries on a kid who's addicted to video games? Kids are terrified. They're like, oh my God, Dr. Kay is going to quit my parents with the ability to control me. No, it's not really what we do. It's sort of what we do. But what we explain to the parents is like, if you want to set limits on video game addiction, you can't have your kid working against you. They've got to be on your team.

You all are fighting against an addiction. There's no way you can win against an addiction if the person who's addicted is not trying to win. Impossible. So our parent coaching program is about helping parents understand their kids. How can you get them on your team and how can both you all work towards something together? in terms of like personal coaching, it's like, you know, for most of y'all. It's about the same thing. It's like understanding yourself.

And even in that way, it's like all the self-sabotage that you do. Why the hell do you do that? Where does that come from? Instead of just assuming that your incompetence or lazy, why don't you try to understand it for once? Why don't you try to like understand like why you do this to yourself and what needs you meet by sabotaging yourself? And it works. Right. Like, that's the end of the day.

Like, it works. So hopefully we'll have a published study soon. Right. So we're in the process of submitting for publication. So we've done our data analysis and things like that. Our outcomes are good. Like, that's why we do it. It's not like, oh, Dr. Kay just had a great idea.

It must be successful. That's not how it works. By the way, we've revised our coach curriculum six times in two years. That's why we succeed. And there's another thing that I'm really, really happy about, which is something that I noticed is missing from our profession. So for those of y'all that are therapists, hopefully this will make sense. So if a patient doesn't show up, let's say you have an initial appointment with a patient and they don't show up or they show up for the first appointment and never come back.

Why didn't they come back? So as a profession, if someone doesn't show up, they don't show up and there's no follow up. Right. So someone saying, so Iconic whale is saying ADD, Aaron B2 is saying social anxiety, why did they not show up? Because it wasn't a one and I'm fixed. They just forgot. They don't care. That's my point. There's all kinds of reasons. So here's the thing. If I'm a therapist and someone doesn't show up, how do I fix that? How do I improve it? Right? And I see this post a lot on the psychotherapy subreddit where people are like, oh, I'm so frustrated because we've been working on this thing for six months and this person came in and told me that their coach really helped them with this.

And what do you think happens on the psychotherapy subreddit? People are like, oh, no, you should give yourself a pat on the back. Like, you've really been doing the work and like the client just doesn't understand it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. So here's the biggest problem with the field of therapy right now. Not the biggest problem. One of the things that's really missing in the field of therapy is we don't have good feedback. And so we don't actually learn from our mistakes.

What happens is we get ghosted by patients, and we don't understand what happens. So part of the reason that our coaching program is successful, part of the reason we've had six curriculum changes over the course of two years, is because we collect feedback. And y'all tell us, there was a post the other day on our subreddit where someone was like, my coach doesn't know my name, is this normal? And we're like, no, it's not. Please tell us what on earth is going on. right? There are avenues for feedback. There's like post-session feedback. We measure outcomes. We know which coaches are good, which coaches are doing poorly. We check in with them. We also like, we'll do positive deviant studies on our coaching program, which is like really cool.

No, it's not fired. Right? It's like understanding what's going on. How did this client get this impression? Do you actually know their name? Because it could be the client, right? Because sometimes people post stuff on the internet and they're complaining about things. I don't know if you all have seen like, you know, nasty Yelp reviews where it's like, these people never, their service is terrible. They wouldn't give me, you know, I was waiting for an hour and then I didn't even, I walked out after an hour. And it's like, yeah, you showed up at 945. The kitchen closes at 9.30. And we told you that we have no food. Like, you're not going to eat here and then you got upset and then you left. Right. So it's like, that's where like this process needs to be investigated. And that's what I'm really happy about is that when we actually collect feedback.

back and we iterate on it, our coaching program improves. So anyway, if you all are interested in this kind of stuff, in terms of goal setting, motivation, trying to understand what holds you back, then by all means sign up. Because we've worked really, we've been trying really hard to keep up with demand. And finally, we've got spots available. So I know a lot of y'all have been waiting for a while. So definitely sign up.