HealthyGamerGG - How To ACTUALLY Stay Mentally Healthy

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Starting point is 00:00:46 Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Alokinoja, but you can call me Dr. Kay. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around. you. So let's dive right in. All right, guys, today we're going to talk about how Dr. K stays healthy. So I have a lot of responsibilities in life. I'm sure you all do too. I work as a psychiatrist and medical doctor. I do this whole healthy gamer thing, which sometimes means that people will

Starting point is 00:01:22 comment things on the internet that aren't the nicest about me. Sometimes people like the New York Times will write articles about me. I also take care of five people over the age of 70 in terms of certain medical things, winterizing their house, stuff like that. I've got two kids at home. There's like parenting involved and my wife is just a touch high maintenance. So how do I stay mentally healthy, mentally focused, excited about the work that I do? I'm lucky in a lot of ways. So let's kind of dive in. So how do I stay mentally healthy? First thing is I engage in a shocking number of bad habits. So the first bad habit that I engage in purposely, which I think really helps me a lot, is I sleep with my cell phone right next to my bed. Now this is advice that I have given that you should not sleep

Starting point is 00:02:01 with your cell phone right next to your bed. It's a bad idea. Have your phone out of reach. There are studies that show that even having your phone face down in the same room with you drains your willpower a little bit. So why do I do this? Really simple. So one is because I'm a medical doctor and because I take care of five people over the age of 70. Sometimes I get phone calls in the middle of night, so I need the phone there. But I discovered something that's a little bit more important. See, a lot of us try to create an environment and a habit sort of structure so that things are easy for us. So a lot of us go for, I want an easy life and high outcomes, right? So I want everything to be efficient. I want everything to be easy so I can not get out of the park. What I sort of discovered is that there's a whole scale

Starting point is 00:02:40 deconditioning of our capabilities in society, especially by technology. So we're seeing that the more you make things easy on yourself, the less capable you become. So I sleep with my cell phone right next to me. And when I wake up in the morning about a year and a half ago, I used to spend 45 minutes on my phone first thing in the morning. It's the advice that Dr. Kay absolutely says you should never do this, drains your dopamine and all this kind of stuff. I used to do it too. And so then I thought to myself, okay, should I like, should I stop doing this because this is not good for my brain? It's not good for my dopamine. I said, actually, no, I'm, what I'm going to do is wake up every morning and I'm going to intentionally not use it for the first hour of the day. I'm actually

Starting point is 00:03:17 not going to make things easy for myself. I'm not going to turn things into a habit. I will wake up in the morning and I will struggle with it. So this does a couple of really important things. The first is that it messes up your performance, right? So there are many days where I would crack and then my dopamine stores would be messed up for the rest of the day. But over time, as I said, one really specific target, I'm just not going to use my cell phone in the morning, fail many days a week. That's okay. About a year, year and a half later, now I almost never get on my phone in the morning. And here's the really, really interesting thing. As you train yourself to not use your phone, you don't make it easy on yourself. You train yourself to be able to resist. What I found is that my

Starting point is 00:03:57 cell phone use has decreased from about four and a half hours a day to about one and a half to two hours of the day. Strengthening your willpower first thing in the morning actually translates through to the rest of the day. So the first thing that I do to stay mentally healthy is to stay sort of cognitively fit. So don't just make everything easy on yourself and train yourself up in the particular skills that you're interested in. Part of the reason that I'm able to resist my cell phone and granted it takes about a year is because I've done some amount of mental training. So I talk about this in Dr. Kay's Guide to Meditation, but there are two specific things that I think you guys can look into if you're having trouble with this. One is Bratihara. Bratiyahara means sensory withdrawal.

Starting point is 00:04:38 So basically what happens is in our attention, in our mind, our mind will go towards the sensory objects outside of us. So I like, think about my phone, I want my phone, I see my phone, I reach for my phone. There's literally a meditation practice that is all about withdrawing your attention from the senses and back into your mind. When you train in Bratiyahara, I find that it makes it way easier to do a lot of stuff because it basically reduces our distraction. I keep seeing comments. Dr. Kay, how do I apply this to a situation in my life? That's literally why we created a coaching program. Our coaches are certified on an evidence-based curriculum designed to help you get unstuck. This involves analyzing your patterns, increasing your

Starting point is 00:05:20 understanding, and working with you week to week to help you develop a plan to create lasting change. So if y'all are interested, check out the link in the description below. Second thing that I do is I really think about my energy like a battery. Now, a lot of us, when we feel tired, we will take a break, right? Oh my God, I can't work anymore. Now I have to take a break. Once I take a break, I'm kind of like veging out for a little bit. Like my mind gets kind of numb. I'm doing something. A 30-minute break ends up being an hour, two hours, and then I come back to work and I'm even more exhausted. So one of the things that I do is I literally pay attention. This is an exercise that I learned when I was running this thing called the smart program, the stress

Starting point is 00:05:57 management and resilience training program for 600 physicians across the country in the United States. So there's a really cool exercise called the energy battery exercise, which is just to ask people what drains your energy and what gives you energy. As I go throughout my day, I really pay attention to what really drains my energy. So at the top of the list is caffeine. So caffeine does not give you energy. All it does is block your sensation of tiredness. So I noticed that there are a lot of things that I do that would let me power through, right? So I'm going to drink a cup of coffee at 4 p.m. Because I have all this work to do.

Starting point is 00:06:30 And this is important to understand. Caffeine doesn't give you energy. It is a loan against future energy. There are a lot of things that I do throughout the day that actually decrease my energy. Another good example is the way that we take breaks. So I just sort of noticed that when I would take a break and let's say I pull out my cell phone

Starting point is 00:06:45 or I browse Reddit for 15 minutes because I can't focus on the paper I'm reading or whatever. What I notice is that there's a lot of stuff I do in my breaks that actually drains me more. And then it gets really like, you get into this cycle that's like, okay, I'm going to take a break, I'm going to browse on my phone for an hour, but then you don't feel like refreshed and rejuvenated when you go back to work. The purpose of taking a break is to recharge your energy levels so that you can work more efficiently.

Starting point is 00:07:13 Instead, we've got this combination of doom scrolling and caffeine, which is depleting my energy, allowing me to finish this work, but is sort of leaving me completely intact. at the end of the day. So really pay attention to what can you do during your breaks that actually improve your energy level. As I started paying attention, I noticed that there are also all kinds of other things that really cost me a lot of energy. This includes things like social relationships. So there were certain people that would call me just to chat or sometimes I'd get text message or invitations. And they're like some people in my life that I just found absolutely exhausting. Now, I have to maintain a relationship with these people. I want to

Starting point is 00:07:51 relationship, maintain a relationship with these people, but I also don't have to do it like right when they call. So I think a greater awareness of through just asking yourself a simple question, at the end of this, what will my energy level be? And focusing a lot on breaks and recovery is crucial. So for me, a couple of things that I do to increase my energy level are take naps and walk. These are the two biggest things. So naps become a bit tricky because a lot of people that, you know, I worked as a psychiatrist will say like, okay, if I have nap, I end up napping for like three hours or four hours, I can't take a 20-minute nap. I can't take a 30-minute nap. So if you are sleep-deprived, if you're using too much caffeine, then a nap may turn into a three-hour nap. The other thing that I

Starting point is 00:08:32 learned about napping when I was meditating is sometimes I would fall asleep during meditation. You know, I'd be meditating for an hour, two hours, three hours. And so my teachers, and I thought this was a problem. So I'd go to my teachers and I'd say, hey, I keep on like falling asleep during meditation. What do I do about this? And they said, look, if your body is tired, if you're sleep deprived, then you will fall asleep during meditation. That's okay. It won't last forever. And what I've noticed about napping specifically is as I cut back on my caffeine, as I maintain my energy levels better, I start to sleep better at night, and now I'm down to about 20 or 30 minute naps. So I strongly recommend that you all set a timer for about 20 to 25 minutes if you're having

Starting point is 00:09:09 trouble with napping. And the reason is because that first 20 minutes is enough for physiologic recovery. And once we start entering stage two, stage three, stage four, and REM sleep, then it becomes really hard to wake up. Next thing that I discovered is absolutely fascinating. So I don't know if this happens to y'all, but I noticed that over the last couple of years, like, I would watch a TV show and I would pull out my phone during the boring parts of the TV show. I would also play video games and I was like, oh my God, this video game isn't fun. I'd check the reviews and be like, okay, I'm six hours in or like I'd watch a show, right? I'm six hours in. It doesn't really get better. So a good example of this is like, I tried watching six feet under. And I watched a couple of episodes,

Starting point is 00:09:45 and I was like, okay, does it get better? I tried to play like, Dune, awakening. And I thought it was like a really cool game and I really enjoyed parts of it, but I was like, okay, does it like really get better? I'm not thrilled with the combat. So I noticed something really interesting, which is that I force myself to power through entertainment that I don't enjoy. I keep on watching a show on Netflix to wait for it to get good. I keep on playing a video game in order for it to get good. I was wasting huge amounts of time, not even having fun, even being on my cell phone when I'm watching a show while I'm waiting for it to get good. And I looked at this and I was like, what the hell am I? Why am I trying to power through and force myself to waste 60 hours of my life?

Starting point is 00:10:28 Like, what am I actually doing? So I started doing something really, really simple, which is when I get bored with a game or a TV show, I stop it. So with my Dota friends, they've gotten a little bit frustrated with me because I'm kind of this one and done. They're like, well, you just logged on. You're like, hey, do you want to play Dota? We all logged on. Now we're all here. playing one game and then you're fucking bailing. Fair point, right? So I don't message those people anymore if I want to play a game of Dota. I'm going to stick around for a couple of games. But I think it's like really bizarre that we try to force ourselves to stick with entertainment in order for it to get good. I just stopped doing that. Like the moment that I pull out my cell phone, I said,

Starting point is 00:11:01 okay, hold on a second. I'm not having fun with this. So I'm going to stop and I'm going to go do something else. This is really bizarre, but I watch TV sometimes in my bed. And so I'll just literally turn off the TV. I will turn to my left side and I will close my eyes for about 20 minutes. Now, y'all may have noticed something kind of interesting. You guys know that when you're watching TV or you're on your phone or something, you start to feel sleepy, right? You're pretty tired. You don't feel like getting up. And then you turn it off and then you try to close your eyes and go to sleep because you're tired. And then something weird happens, the moment that you put your screen away or you turn off the TV, you no longer feel sleepy and your mind becomes active. So then you're like,

Starting point is 00:11:36 okay, do I go back to watching or what goes on? So the sequence for me used to be turn off TV, lay down, try to close my eyes and then pull out my cell phone five minutes later. So instead what I do, I lay down on my left side for about 20 minutes. Then what I notice is like I'm rejuvenated. Like I don't know if this makes sense, but when you turn off the TV and you close your eyes, then you feel bored and your mind actually turns on. So I stay there for about 20 minutes and then I get up and then I notice that my energy levels are actually way higher.

Starting point is 00:12:03 So I stop powering through because it's actually a complete waste of time to wait to get hooked. And that's really what we're looking for, right? Like we're looking to get hooked. We're looking to want to be consumed with this thing. But this creates another problem, and this is sort of what I've noticed as I stopped doing this, is like, now that I'm no longer like getting hooked to TV and video games, I'm noticing something really cool, which is that my enjoyment of other activities is actually skyrocketing. So I've started reading fiction again. I've started reading nonfiction. And it's sort of like if I don't force my brain into falling into dopamine orgic crap, it actually works way better for other kinds of things.

Starting point is 00:12:40 Next thing I do to say mentally healthy. I prioritize about one hour of work a day on passion projects. So this is really important. So the standard sequence of things is, you know, I wake up, I have to go to work. I go to work. I work there for eight hours. I commute back home. I have to take care of this.

Starting point is 00:12:56 I have to take care of that. We're just wiped at the end of the day. Okay. And so then there's like all this stuff that I want to do. Maybe I want to learn how to play a piano. For me, it's learning how to become a better writer. So there are certain things that I like want to do, meditation, yoga, all that kind of stuff. At the end of the day, we're just tired.

Starting point is 00:13:12 So this is actually something I started in residency. So when you're in residency, like, you work a lot. Okay? So you're working 80 hours a week to 100 hours a week. In psychiatry, sometimes we would work 60, 65. And so I sort of noticed that, like, for a period of four years, like, I'm learning psychiatry, but I'm not advancing in anything else. So I started getting up actually 30 minutes earlier or getting even getting ready faster.

Starting point is 00:13:35 It's not even 30 minutes. I'd get up like 15 minutes earlier. I just get ready really fast for the day. I'd plan a little bit the night before so I don't have to like pack my lunch or whatever. And then I would sit down and do like 20 to 30 minutes of like stuff that I wanted to do. And this is what I noticed is that when I spend some amount of time ideally every day, but realistically ends up being like four days a week, including weekends, doing stuff that I want to do, doing stuff that I feel passionate about.

Starting point is 00:14:00 Like two or three days ago, I wrote 1,917 words in 66 minutes. So what happened? It changes your perception of control and autonomy in life. There's a lot of research that shows that feeling out of control is not actually dependent on your environment. It is about how many choices you make. So there's a lot of research that shows that having control of your life, having purpose or direction in your life, comes from making choices.

Starting point is 00:14:26 So when we live in a world where it's like, okay, I have to go to work, and then I come home and then I feel exhausted. I have no energy. It's hard to do anything. Three months can go by. and all you've done is go to work and come home. You haven't made any progress in anything that you're passionate about. So this sounds kind of counterintuitive because people would say, okay, do the work first,

Starting point is 00:14:44 make sure you do laundry, make sure you do this, make sure you do this. But we live in a world where we're squeezed so, we're squeezed so hard. There's no juice left. There's nothing left at the end of the day. The world demands so much of you. The only way to stay mentally healthy for me is to do that stuff first thing in the morning. So at least at the end of the week, you know, I got to spend a few hours. hours, doing what I love, growing as a person, improving myself, and that really pays dividends

Starting point is 00:15:10 over the long run. The last thing that I do to stay mentally healthy is disbelieve my mind. So I know this sounds kind of weird, but like your mind is not a beacon of truth. In fact, quite the opposite. Our mind has evolved to have certain cognitive biases, depending on how active our emotional circuitry is, we start to think in black and white, we start to catastrophize, we start to make comparisons. And so one of the things that is, we start to think, that I've sort of noticed that really helps me stay mentally healthy is that sometimes my mind is wrong. If we look at the nature of most mental illness, the more severe the mental illness is, the more people believe their mind. So if I have psychosis and delusional thinking, which is generally considered to be a pretty severe form of mental illness, my mind tells me that the FBI is following me and I believe it.

Starting point is 00:15:58 If we look at people who are severely depressed and are suicidal, they're people who believe that their loved ones would be better off without them. That's what their mind is telling them, and they actually believe it. So if we look at the process of literally moving from psychiatrically hospitalized with severe mental illness to being in remission and no longer needing psychiatric treatment, the one thing that changes in basically every mental illness is our capacity to disbelieve our mind. So there are a couple of things that I look out for. The first is, is my mind thinking black and white. So am I thinking, I'm screwed. This is going to end in disaster. This is going to be amazing, right? This is going to be perfect. This is everything that we need. Oh my God, we're going

Starting point is 00:16:39 to do this new hire. We just came up with this new idea for a video and it's going to be the best video on the planet. Anytime my thinking is 100 or zero, I stop. I take a step back and I'm like, okay, take a deep breath, take a walk for a little bit, revisit this. Just disbelieve your mind. The second thing that I disbelieve my mind with is comparisons. So anytime my mind makes a comparison. I take a big step back and I think to myself, no, this is like not correct. This is fundamentally not correct. And here's kind of my reasoning. So I sit in a weird space where I'm like a doctor. I'm a creator. I'm an entrepreneur, right? And I'm not trying to like humble brag here, but this is just where I said. I'm just sharing the inside of my mind. Okay. And the thing is I'm like

Starting point is 00:17:17 mediocre at all three of those things, TBH, right? So I look at doctors who are better than me. I look at influencers who are bigger than me. I look at entrepreneurs who are more wealthy than I am. So I know it sounds kind of weird, but like, doesn't matter where you are, your mind can always make comparisons. And so anytime my mind makes a comparison, I try to take a step back. I try to think to myself, okay, if I devoted 100% of my time to being a physician, could I match that person? Maybe.

Starting point is 00:17:43 If I focused on making a bunch of money, could I succeed in that? Maybe. If I focused on becoming the most popular content creator and I started making a lot more clickbait content, if I started doing interviews and things like that where there's a lot of lawyers in the audience and I try to make people cry. Could I be more successful? Absolutely. But do I want to do those things?

Starting point is 00:18:03 Do I want that life? Do I want a life where I spend two hours a day with my kids, on average? Or do I want to make a million more dollars a year? Right? What do I actually want? So I'm very careful about believing or disbelieving what my mind says and recognize that it's just an instrument that is designed to take sensory input and then form some kind of conclusion, but my mind is definitely not an arbiter of truth. The last thing that I want to

Starting point is 00:18:29 spend a moment talking about is how limited all of this stuff is. So I think I gain a ton of mileage. I think it's been very, very transformative for me to do all of these things. It's one of the ways that I stay, you know, mentally healthy and stay engaged and stay passionate about the work that I do. So it's a way to deal with burnout. But this way of living is very luxurious. So if you look at research on, you know, mental security and financial security and mental wellness, quality of life, things like that. There are a couple things that I have going for me that a lot of people don't. The first of which is I have a roof over my head and I'm generally speaking financially secure. I'm on a financial path where like I'm not going to be super loaded or anything like that,

Starting point is 00:19:08 but I'll be able to save for my retirement. I'll be able to support my children some. They'll probably have to work in their life. And so that is a huge load off of my back. There have been times in my life where I haven't been sure how I'm going to make ends meet. There have been times in my life where I haven't been sure like where I'm going to live or where I'm going to end up, you know, staying. And the cost of that for your mental cannot be underestimated. It is huge. And the other huge thing that I have going for me is that I have a nuclear family that I love and loves me in turn. There's like no abuse or toxicity in my household, right? I mean, maybe my kids will disagree when they're older. But, you know, I spend time doing homework with my kids.

Starting point is 00:19:45 My kids give me a hug every day. We play Smash Brothers together. We recently reached a really cool milestone. So about a year, year and a half ago, I used to be able to 2V1 them like pretty easily. But holy, like now when we 2V1, I don't stand a chance. They just take turns edge guarding me on cool downs and there's like no way for me to survive. I have a marriage that I think is relatively healthy. I'm pretty happy. My wife is pretty happy. And there's no way to underestimate the value of that. Part of the reason that we made the relationship guide and things like that. I just want to be clear with y'all that I think all of the stuff in this video is stuff that you can do. But make no stake that there are such important foundations for your mental health that are outside of this

Starting point is 00:20:27 stuff. And my hope is by implementing some of these things, y'all will be able to move in a direction that helps you have healthy relationships, be productive, and be financially secure. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.

HealthyGamerGG - How To ACTUALLY Stay Mentally Healthy

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