HealthyGamerGG - How the Black Pill Community Exploits Your Suffering

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Sometimes, it's really easy and often quite appealing to give up on progressing our lives or trying to improve; given the evidence of our lived experiences, this may even be a logical conclusion to come to, but it's not going to solve the problem. In today's video, Dr. K addresses this problem, analyses the impact and formation of cognitive bias, and discusses what we can do about it all. Check out more mental health resources here! https://bit.ly/3xsk6fE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So when we have this hopelessness, what do we do with it? We try to avoid it at all costs. We try to change it at all costs. We try to run away from it at all costs. So I'm going to go ask this person out. I'm going to ask this person out. I'm going to ask this person out. I'm going to do this for my career. I run away from it, run away from it, run away from it. And generally speaking, when you avoid your emotions, when you suppress your emotions, this correlates with an increase in both depression and obsessional thinking. So if you all aren't familiar with the concept of Blackpill, my understanding of it is that it is a general sense of hopelessness or lack of agency to change your circumstances. It's this sort of learned belief that mating possibilities aren't really there.

There's no hope for you that certain aspects of life, like potentially developing a career, finding happiness, finding a healthy romantic relationship, just aren't an option for you. And a lot of people will look at black pillars and kind of say, like, you know, if you tried harder or if you tried this kind of thing, maybe your life would be different. they'll get a lot of advice like put yourself out there, or they'll even get advice like work on yourself, fix yourself first, learn to be happy alone before you try to be happy in relationship. And so a lot of well-meaning people will give black pillars this kind of advice. And a lot of black pillars in our community, many of the people that I've talked to that I've worked with,

don't actually want to feel this way. They recognize that there are people in life who have hope. And they actually want to be one of those people. And many of the black pillars that I've worked with are people who have worked really, really, really hard to try to put together their lives. The problem is that the harder they work, the more rejection and failure they experience, and therefore the more hopeless they become. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we discuss to your life to actually create change, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. The guide synthesize my years

of training as a monk, along with years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist to cover common topics like meditation, ADHD, and trauma. The guides include over 100 additional videos that can be navigated based on your needs or interests or in a more open choose-your-own-adventure format. The guides are now available in the YouTube store below, and if they're a little bit outside of your price point, you can check out a piece of them with our free resource packs, which are also linked below. So definitely check them out. So if we want to understand how to tackle that, I'd love to start by sharing a story about myself, because I'm a type of. narcissistic. So when I was 15 years old, I was off track, as my mom put it, or dad put it.

Probably I was struggling with early stages of video game addiction and or had other kinds of psychological crap going on. And so they thought I was off track. So what did they do? They sent me to a military academy. Ooh, some new Dr. K. Lour. So when I was 15 years old, I got sent to a military academy to whip me into shape. And while I was at the military academy, there was an obstacle course because physical punishment and physical exertion is a big part of how we sort of help people build self-esteem, right, if we're at a military academy. And there was one particular part of the obstacle course that I absolutely hated. And it was this thing where I don't know if you guys have seen this, but it's like there are these logs of increasing height. There are three of them.

So the first one is maybe a little bit above your hips. So what you have to do is jump over the log. So you kind of boost yourself over this horizontal log and you land on the other side. And then after you boost yourself over the first one, there's a higher one. This one is kind of at about chest height. So now you have to really jump up high, swing your legs over so you can get on the other side. And then the last one was maybe about throat height. So now you really have to like reach up, jump up, and then swing your legs over the top and sort of land on the other side. Now the problem with this exercise is that it is part of an obstacle course, right? So it's not like you just do these three and then you're done. There are tons of exercises or obstacles that you have to go through. You have

to climb to the top of a rope. So by the time I get to this part, I am exhausted. And there's a drill sergeant who's yelling at me. So even if I'm exhausted, like no one really cares, right? There's a line of people behind me. They start moving around me because you start one at a time. They start passing me up and I start to feel weak and worse about myself and all that good stuff. But that's not really the big problem.

The big problem is that when I try to overcome an obstacle, what I end up doing is having to dig deep, right? Because I'm huffing, I'm puffing, I rest for a second. I give it my all. And I go over the first bar. And then I hit the second. bar where I jump up and I try to go over it. And I still remember this moment. I swung my leg up hard because when you're really tired, you have to have a burst of energy and toss your leg up over it. And my kneecap slammed into the wood. And it hurt like a, and so then I was exhausted. And the biggest problem that I ran into, I managed to finally get over the second one after like six or seven attempts. I'm huffing, I'm puffing, I'm exhausted. My legs are tired. And then I try to get out over the third one. And I try once and I try again. And my legs just won't go. over. I can lift myself up, but then that gets a little bit weaker. And every attempt that I make makes it harder for the next attempt to succeed. It's not a situation of if at first you don't

succeed, try, try again. It's if at first you don't succeed, each attempt will become increasingly difficult. And this is not just localized to this particular obstacle course. This is true of life, right? So if you apply for a job and you get rejected once, if you apply for a job again and you get rejected a second time. If you get rejected a third time, and a fourth time, and a fifth time, what happens to your chances of success with each subsequent rejection? I experienced this firsthand when I was applying to medical school. Getting rejected from 40 medical schools in my first year and then 40 medical schools in my second year did not increase my chances over time. So this is a myth that people who have hope can believe in, right? Because in their experience, if at first you don't succeed and

you give it another shot, like since the general cards are in your favor, you roll the dice a second time, and it turns out that things work out okay. The problem is that when we're talking about people who are blackpilled and they start to try to improve their life, the rejection and failures that they end up with actually end up traumatizing them and making it harder to succeed again. So you're telling me that I need to work on myself, so I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to go to therapy, I'm going to start meditating every day, I'm going to take cold hours. And they check these boxes and they go back out and they try to engage in romantic relationships. But at this point, they haven't had a romantic relationship for about six years, eight years.

They haven't really talked to people who they're romantically attracted to. And so despite doing all the right things, they still continue to fail. And so this is something that we really have to understand. And this is the crux of the problem with hopelessness in the black pill, is that the more you try, the harder it becomes. And the more failure you end up, experiencing, the more hopelessness you end up experiencing, that then sabotages your future efforts, right? So we know this from many studies of psychology. In 1985, you know, Aaron Beck sort of wrote this book on cognitive behavioral therapy, and he noticed one really important thing, that the emotions that you experience will interpret and color your experiences and the

information that you receive. Essentially, Black Pillars have a huge amount of cognitive bias. Now, we have to be a little bit precise here because that cognitive bias isn't necessarily wrong because this is the way that everyone's brain works, right? So on the one hand, we call it cognitive bias. But on the other hand, if you failed at something four times, your brain has this predictive capability. And it's kind of like, okay, if this didn't work four times, like, we should not invest energy into doing this again.

So this sort of creates this inertia that a lot of black pillars experience. And it's not that it's wrong. It's actually the brain trying to conserve energy, right? like, I don't know if you all have ever tried to fly, but when I was like a 40-year-old kid, I jumped up real high and I flapped my wings and it didn't work. And then I was like, the next day, I was like, you know what, I want to fly like a bird, jump up, flap my wings and it doesn't work. And then you try a third time and a fourth time. And then today, I know it may sound shocking, I don't try to fly anymore. I don't jump up and flap my wings because my brain tells me it's a

waste of time and it's not going to work. So now we have a very serious problem. Because on the one hand, we have black pillars who are hopeless and who have a lot of experiences that sort of teach them. Rejection is basically the default option. Failure is the default option. And then there's another issue as well, which is that black pillars will be very critical, right? So they'll be like very scientific. They're very logical people. They try to figure this out. And they'll assemble like things of research like this. So this is the scientific black pill page on the Incells Wiki. And it cites tons of papers on personality and mental stuff, race, looks, love, face, money that sort of support the black pill view, okay? And these are all like evidence-based, you know, peer-reviewed studies. And so they've tried really hard, and they sort of

start to develop this worldview that basically believes that failure is inevitable. And then sometimes what they do is they dig real deep, and they'll put themselves out there, and they'll listen to some advice, and then that doesn't go really well. And that doesn't just put them back to zero. It actually knocks them down a peg because now an additional rejection or failure has traumatized you. So now you have this additional problem to solve. And so a lot of people may conclude, and very easily so, that the black pill is correct and I'm going to be this way forever. But in my clinical experience, this actually isn't the case. That I've worked with a lot of people who have been very, very hopeless. And despite being hopeless, despite this being their reality, we've managed to create substantial

change quite reliably. And you may wonder, well, how do you do that? What are we missing? And that's because there are a couple of really screwed up things about how our mind works, that until we understand them, will actually end up sabotaging us. So if we want to break out of this pattern, we have to understand how the pattern is formed. So here's you, and you feel a little bit bad and a little bit hopeless. So now the question becomes, what do you think is the source of your hopelessness? You believe that, let's say, a lack of a romantic relationship, let's say lack of career, low self-esteem. Actually, let's not use this one. Let's use a different one.

Let's say, ugly. Let's just call it what it is. Sometimes we believe we're ugly. Sometimes we are ugly. Didn't mean to be so mean, but it's the reality of some of the situations that we deal with, guys. Not everyone's beautiful. And I wish that pretty people in the world stopped pretending that everyone gets treated like they're beautiful. Let's look at this, right?

So these three things, so when you look at these things, you think, okay, This contributes to my hopelessness. This contributes to my hopelessness. And this contributes to my hopelessness. So if these three things are the cause of my hopelessness, how do I feel hopeful? Well, it's very easy. I find a romantic partner, right? I fix this.

I build a career and then I become pretty, right? Go to the gym, get hygiene. I think there's a lot of stuff that you can do if you believe you're ugly. I really do think these are possible. And so we make a very simple mistake if we're hopeless, right? And honestly, I was there many years ago, is that we believe that changing this, into this and changing this into this and changing into this will create hope. This will cancel out the hope. But that's not actually what happens. Because what happens? So then once we try to move in this direction,

we end up getting rejected, rejected, rejected. We may not get fully rejected. There could be an element of cognitive bias here. But if you ask a black pillar, what is your experience of trying to date? What is your experience of trying to develop your career? What is your experience of trying to make yourself more physically attractive? Generally speaking, they will say that we have negative experiences and it doesn't work. That's why I'm hopeless because I've tried what other people tell me to do and it doesn't end up working. It doesn't end up working. And I become more and more and more hopeless again.

So the problem is that factors number one, two, and three contribute to hopelessness. And the way that I'm going to fix that is by turning these into factors four, five, and six. I'm going to change my life. And then I will have hope. Then I don't have to have the black pill. But the problem is when I try to change my life, these become negative. And instead of this actually reducing the hopelessness, everything just feeds back, right? So we just kind of went over this.

So now the question is, Dr. K, if this is true and this is everyone's experience, what on earth can we do about it? So this is where what we need to target is the hopelessness itself. We actually don't want to do any of this stuff. We don't want to worry about any of this stuff. The way that we want to act is directly on the hopelessness itself. Okay? So once you change this, as long as you are operating from a place of hopelessness, then things won't work.

Okay? So we have a ton of data on things like the placebo effect, the nocebo effect, that depending on what is in your mind, what is in your mind if you believe in yourself, things will go better for you. And if you don't believe in yourself, things won't go well for you. Now, here's the problem that y'all are going to.

going to say, right? But the problem is I don't believe in myself because I've tried and it's failed. So that's exactly what needs to be teased apart. So the work that we do with Black Pillars is not out in the world. We don't help them find girlfriends. We help them start to believe in themselves. And the way that we do that is really strange. What we actually do is encourage them to accept on some level their hopelessness, accept their situation as it is. Now, this sounds really, really bizarre because if you really stop and think about it, isn't that exactly what you fight against? Because I know y'all, right? So I know that y'all are there and you have this feeling of hopelessness and you feel like you're keeping it at bay. You're manning the walls. You're a city under siege.

This is the city of Minas Tirith, the white city and you're surrounded by legions of orcs. And you have just a little bit of hope left. And then all of this hopelessness is around you and some of y'all will struggle with things like suicidality. And you think to yourself, if I don't resist this hopelessness, then it will completely wipe me out. And this is what's really interesting. When we resist it in that way, I'm not saying give in to it and go commit suicide. If you're having problems with suicidal ideation,

by all means, see a professional because this is what we're talking about, right? I'm explaining the principles that I use as a professional when I'm working with someone who's hopeless. So here's the weird thing. So when we have this hopelessness, what do we do with it? We try to avoid it at all costs. We try to change it at all costs. We try to run away from it at all costs.

So I'm going to go ask this person, out, I'm going to ask this person out, I'm going to ask this person out. I'm going to try to do this for my career. I run away from it, run away from it, run away from it. Right? That's the whole point. We don't like feeling this way. So let's run away from it. Now, here's where the science gets really, really weird. It turns out that when there's a really interesting study that showed, that looked at people who suppress emotions. And generally speaking, when you avoid your emotions, when you suppress your emotions, this correlates with an increase in both depression and obsessional thinking, being latched onto certain kinds of thoughts.

So paradoxically, the first thing that we want to do, and we all kind of know this, right, if you're familiar with therapy and stuff like that, is we actually want to validate those feelings. It's not, we're not saying that you are hopeless. We're saying, if you feel that way in this moment, let's accept that. This does not have to be your destiny. This is a really important distinction that a lot of people miss. They think that acceptance means resignation.

Acceptance doesn't mean resignation. Acceptance means we are all acknowledging how crappy the situation is. We're not pretending that ugly people and pretty people get treated the same. We're not pretending that if at first you don't succeed, just try, try again will work. We're acknowledging that your situation is difficult. You've built up a lot of hopelessness. You've been traumatized a lot. You've put forth a lot of effort that hasn't worked.

And it turns out when you do that, this actually does. decompresses the hopelessness. When you're feeling crappy, when you feel ugly and someone's like, no, you're beautiful, bro, like you're so great, you're so handsome. And you're like, what? That doesn't make you feel better. If someone says, hey, I acknowledge that you may not be the prettiest person, I think there's a lot that we can do to change that.

That changes the way that we interact with ourselves and we interact with other people. What we know about the science of emotion is that when we avoid emotion, it piles up dormantly in our subconscious mind. and then influences things like cognitive bias. It takes situations that could be positive and all we see is the negative. The hopelessness itself has to be directly dealt with. And this is what really confuses. People think that the way that I need to control my emotions is by shaping my environment

so that my environment no longer makes me feel a certain way. The way to develop confidence is to have a career, to have a girlfriend, and all these kinds of things. That is the same approach of a narcissist surrounding themselves by, Yes, men, yes, women, yes, people. I think I'm the greatest person on the planet. And the way that I'm going to make myself sure that I'm the greatest person on the planet is I'm going to surround myself by sycophants who tell me that I'm the greatest person on the planet.

That doesn't give them self-confidence. It only reinforces their narcissism. So we don't actually want to start with changing our environment. We want to start with tackling the hopelessness itself. The first thing that we want to do is acknowledge it. Now, there's another really important study that we have to talk, not one study. So there are 1100, there was a really interesting metadata. analysis that looked at 1,100 articles, 1,100 articles on psychotherapy to try to figure out

what quality within a patient leads to the largest improvement in psychotherapy. Because a lot of y'all black pillars have been to psychotherapy and you've even said, I tried therapy and it didn't work. So what is the factor that is responsible for improvement? And it turns out that it boils down. The most important thing is something called self-relatedness. Self-relatedness is the capacity to know what is going on inside you. It is not being blind to yourself.

And the number one way to gain self-relatedness, or the thing that moves us the most away from self-relatedness, is avoidance. So here's the really bizarre thing that I've discovered by working with Black Pillars. The solutions that they try to do by fixing their life are actually forms of avoidance. They're worsening the problem, which is exactly your experience. This is what we hear. I try to fix it. I try to fix it. I try to fix it.

And things get worse. That doesn't mean that you're hopeless. That means that you're doing the wrong thing. It's kind of like, how do I put air in a tire? I'm poking a hole in the tire. I'm poking a hole in the tire. I'm poking the hole in the tire. And the air is not filling up.

So what do we need to do? We need to stop doing the action that leads to this outcome. We need to stop paradoxically trying to fix our lives and start by fixing ourselves. So I know this sounds very. really weird, but there are a couple of things that we can do to tackle hopelessness directly. The first is acknowledge your emotions. Acknowledge what your experiences. Speak your truth.

Stop running away from it. Stop running away from this negativity. And this feels really scary because if we start to accept it, if we start to relate to ourselves, if we start to pay attention to ourselves, we are afraid of all of this negativity that's within us. This is why I think working with a professional is fantastic, right? Because they can help you hold that negative energy. But working with a professional doesn't mean going in and pretending to do therapy.

It means swimming around in the crappiness. And interestingly enough, this is why sometimes when I work with patients will do things like meditation. And when we meditate, a lot of negativity comes up. The point of therapy is not to avoid the negativity or get rid of the negativity. It is to accept the negativity. Let that stuff flow up. So if you're someone who swallowed the black pill and finds it very, very, very difficult to change that thinking because you've tried to solve the problem, recognize that focusing on the outside and solving the problem just as your experiences actually makes the hopelessness worse.

So instead what we need to do is target the hopelessness directly. Don't worry about fixing something else. Target it and what do we mean by target it. The first thing we want to do is increase self-relatedness. We want to be able to acknowledge what we feel. We want to be able to acknowledge our experiences. We need to stop running away from ourselves. And something beautiful will start to happen when you stop avoiding that hopelessness directly.

What you'll find is that even though it feels so profound, over time, it will equilibrate. So this is what's really interesting about the human brain, okay? If we understand the science of it, becomes very interesting. When we experience an emotion, the emotion naturally equilibriates. It returns to homeostasis. The joy of your wedding doesn't last your whole lifetime, right? If I'm angry today, it doesn't mean I'm going to be angry for the rest of my life. Not one emotional experience determines your whole emotional life.

What we do know about persistent emotions is emotions that are suppressed are the ones that will dominate your life because they live in your subconscious and act on you. There's a really fascinating study about this. So if we look at people who are acutely traumatized, early on we thought that when someone has an acute trauma, we need to help them not experience these things. So we used to give them these medications called benzodiazepines. These are things like Xanax, Valium, Klanazepam, diazepam. they're all the, you know, lorazepam, all the benzos.

So benzos are anti-anxiety drugs that people love. So we thought, okay, this person is suffering a lot. Let's give them benzos to help them sleep, to help them not feel anxious during the day. What we actually discovered is that administering benzos in the acute phase of trauma actually increases the risk of something like an acute stress reaction or post-traumatic stress disorder. That's suppressing the emotions that we experience, even if they're negative and they're hard to deal with suppressing those emotions actually increases the risk of mental illness down the road. And we know that as well from avoidance strategies and increases of obsessional thoughts and

depression. So what we want to really do is target the hopelessness directly. Really feel what you feel. Let that stuff come up because it won't live forever. What keeps it alive forever is your relationship with it. The way that you run away from it and it follows you. And you run away and it follows you. And you run away and it follows you.

And as you run away from it, you end up failing and failing and failing and failing. and it ends up growing and growing and growing.