HealthyGamerGG - I Can't Handle My Partners Depression

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Dr. K talks about being with a partner that has depression. He dives into psychiatric illness, maladaptive adaptations, responsibility, and more. 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

So what's going on here? How do we know what someone with depression is responsible for and what they aren't responsible for? So am I the asshole for telling my husband I'm sick of his depression ruining our lives? I 26F and my husband 28M have been together for eight years. We love each other deeply and I'm still madly in love with him. Both of us have struggled with depression our whole lives. I would never judge him for something like that. My problem is this. He does not in any way try to try to treat his depression, so he keeps going through a cycle of self-sabotage. He cannot hold a job. Since the beginning, he's had a pattern of getting a job doing extremely well for a while, feeling good and happy. Then it always falls apart. He calls out one time, then it spirals.

Suddenly he's calling out or showing up late three plus times a week, then sometimes daily until his bosses have to let him go. Every time I go into a panic mode working overtime at two to three jobs and taking out loans to keep us afloat while he drags his feet to find another job. Then he finds one and the cycle starts all over. He does great, we catch up on bills, I feel like I can breathe, it all falls apart again. Each time he gets fired, I tell him that it's going to be okay and that I will support him. The last time he was jobless, I was working two full-time jobs and had to sell my car to pay rent and his car payment. I was devastated, but I never cried in front of him. That was a year and a half ago. Then he got a great.

great job. He started kicking ass as usual, and I loved it. A year in, I felt a bit of relief. I thought this one would stick, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Then three months ago, the cycle started over. He went from being a wonderful employee to calling out twice a week, showing up late daily, and barely showering once every 10 days. One day, he decided not to go into work 20 minutes before he was supposed to be there. I got a horrible gut feeling and pleaded with him to please not lose this job, that things were better, but we were still on shaky financial ground and that I needed help. He shrugged it off, told me that his bosses loved him and would never fire him, and texted that he wouldn't be in. Sure enough,

he was fired. I lost it. I started sobbing and yelled that I could count on one hand the number of days I had had off in all our time together, that I couldn't believe he had done this again. He said that it was my own fault for never taking days off and that my depression isn't as bad as his, so I wouldn't understand. I told him that I couldn't take any days off. I told him that I couldn't take any days off, because one of us has to make sure we don't end up homeless. I scream sobbed about the pressure I was under to always be the stable one and to never acknowledge my own struggles. He said I was acting like his mental illness was his fault. I said that the depression is not his fault, but the fact that he doesn't treat slash manage it is,

that I love him, but I'm so sick of his depression ruining our lives. I said, I have nothing left to sell, and there was no way I could get another loan. So without his income, we're going to lose our apartment. He told me to FO, which I assume means screw off, with my blaming verbal abuse and stormed out. Now he won't answer my texts or calls. I need to know. Am I the asshole? So, sometimes we look at posts like this on the Internet.

And when we look at posts like this on the Internet, it's very easy to say, oh, my God, you're not an asshole. You should dump him. You should move on. you know, like you're totally within your rights. For eight years, you've been supporting someone with depression. And then the challenge is that, like, when you're in a relationship with someone with depression, like, you don't want to be mean, right? You don't, you want to be compassionate.

You want to have understanding that, like, this isn't their fault. Like, having the depression isn't their fault. And then, like, if you try to, like, point it out to them, if you, if you kind of like, try to get your partner to take accountability for the depression, it's verbal abuse. It's like, you don't understand how bad I have it. Easy for you to say. Right? So, like, it's kind of weird because depression can almost become, like, an invincibility potion

against criticism from someone in your relationship. And if you break up with this person and you move on, right? So, like, you're sharing your side of things with the internet, where who knows what the actual truth is, right? You're looking for like validation from a bunch of strangers. And so you like, it's your perspective on things. And then if you actually break up with this person, you know, they go to social media. They share their side of things. Oh, like my partner, like I've been struggling with depression for a while and my partner dumped me because of my depression. Because you want to be like, you want to be a good partner, right? It's like, especially if you're

married, it's presumably till death do you part and you don't want to give up on your partner. It's not their fault that they're depressed. and yet you're at the end of your rope. So what's going on here? How do we know what someone with depression is responsible for and what they aren't responsible for? Right? Like, how do we know, like, when is it compassionate and when does it mean?

How, like, how much patience should I have? How many second chances should I give this person? Because the thing about depression is, like, it gets in the way of people taking care of themselves, right? So it's like, how do I know if they're not doing something? is it like, is it lazy or is it depression? And the tricky thing is that if it's depression, are they ever lazy? Like, is it possible for someone to be both depressed and lazy? And how do you tell the difference? So it's really challenging to be in a relationship with depression,

with someone with depression. And what I'd love to do is lay out a couple of basic principles, actually share with you all some potentially mind-blowing insights about the correlation between lazy and depression. Because one interesting thing that's happened is that as people have become more aware of mental health issues, mental illness issues, we've actually, as a society, become more understanding. And as we've become more understanding, it's had some interesting effects. And so we're going to look at some really interesting research about laziness and depression. And then we're also going to try to frame things for y'all in terms of like a couple of tips about how to have conversations and how to think about this if you're in this kind of relationship.

So the first thing that we're going to talk about is psychogenic seizures. Let me see if I can take a look at this. So sometimes people have a diagnosis of something called epilepsy. Okay. Epilepsy is like a seizure disorder. So you have this abnormal electrical activity in your brain and it basically causes a seizure. So we also know that there's something called psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. So what this means is like basically fake seizures.

It's someone who pretends to have a seizure. Oh my God, I'm seizing. And it's not a real epilepsy, but like it looks like a seizure to some people. They kind of act like they have a seizure. And so this paper is looking at the incidents, which is how common do, how commonly do people get psychogenic, non-apoleptic seizures. So this paper looks at the incidents, and it's three out of 100,000.

So if I take a group of 100,000 people, three of them will develop psychogenic non-aphyptic seizures. Essentially what we call, kind of you can think about it as fake seizures, right? But there's a really interesting finding. So three out of 100,000 isn't very much. Very rare.

But 25 to 40 percent of people who have psychogenic seizures also have real seizures, which is kind of interesting, right? That's bizarre. Three out of 100,000 in the regular population. But very, very high comorbidity with real seizures. So what's going on here?

One of the really interesting things is that when someone has seizures, they subconsciously discover a couple of really important. important things. They discover that if I have a seizure, I get excused from stuff. Oh, I didn't do my project. If I have a seizure, I can get more time. I don't feel like going to a party if I have a seizure. Not my fault.

I'm applying to college and I'm afraid that I'm not going to get into a good college. If my seizures get bad, then I have an excuse why I did not get accepted to the best college in the country because my seizures got in the way. So it's kind of like a devastating thing to think about, right? So like, here I am. I'm saying, oh, my God, like, oh, is what I'm saying, cruel? Is it unusual? This is a fact that people who have real medical illnesses will subconsciously learn

how to use those illnesses to meet certain psychological needs and get excused from responsibilities. Now, I'm not saying that everyone with seizures does this. right? So this is like somewhere between a fourth to half of people who have psychogenic seizures will also have real epilepsy. And it turns out that there's literature on this. So then the question is, can that be true of depression? Can someone who has real depression fake their depression to get excused from stuff like paying bills and going to work? And it turns out that the answer is yes. So this is an area of research which is growing, but we actually don't have really good numbers. but what we know is that sometimes people who have real psychiatric illness will also fake psychiatric illness.

And it turns out that there are a couple of interesting hypotheses for this. So this is where I'm just going to read this out a little bit, okay? Malingering is an adaptive response. This model proposes that malingering represents an adaptation to hostile circumstances. According to this model, there are two broad dimensions of lingering. Malingering. Cost-benefit analysis and adversarial setting. Malingers perceive the environment in adversarial or risky terms, and malingering is seen as a behavior which maximizes the chance of success in such a situation. Now, malingering is a slightly different diagnosis for a couple of different reasons, but the key thing here is that we actually have some interesting papers about how people, when they're faced in adversarial situations, i.e., my partner is yelling at me because I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

What's the cost-benefit analysis? How do I maximize this situation? Like, how do I go eight years in a marriage without taking responsibility for my mental health? I cite my depression. So this is what's so, like, tricky about this kind of thing, because are they faking it? Well, the answer is possibly sometimes. 20 to 40% of people with psychogenic seizures also have real epilepsy. I'm not saying that everyone with depression does this kind of thing,

but we do know that some people actually do do it, right? And this is where as a psychiatrist, it's a real struggle for me, too. Like, how do I know when a patient just doesn't show up for their appointment? How do I know whether it's depression or like they're just feeling lazy that day? And even the person, we have to assume, we have to remember for a moment that a lot of this is subconscious. So the person themselves may not know. So the tricky thing is that when you have a diagnosis that gives you excuses in life, it's very, very easy as a human being to start leveraging that excuse. And this is what's so frustrating about being in a relationship with a person like this.

is that like you're trying to be compassionate, but in the back of your mind, you sense the BS. You're like, this isn't always depression. There is actually like more you can be doing, but you're not doing that. And the problem is that if you hold people responsible to that, that's when they come back with like, oh, you're verbally abusing me.

You don't understand how bad my depression is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, they play their trump cards, which is that like you are not sensitive to people with mental illness. is devastated. And what do you do in that situation? So let's try to understand how to approach this. Okay? The first is that I'm a big believer of this statement that mental illness is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. So the way that I kind of think about this in terms of whether I quote, quote, blame someone or not, right? So this is a very individual approach. But here's a kind of

general rule of thumb. It's not how you behave when you're depressed. It's how you behave when you're not depressed. This is what I hold people accountable for. Right? So if someone is depressed and they miss an appointment, that's okay. But if they're missing appointments, like, once they start to get better, that's actually on them. That's not an excuse for depression. So this is where a lot of people who struggle with depression, they'll have episodes, right? They'll come in and out of it. The real question is, how seriously do they take it when they're not depressed? So if I struggle, if I've lost five jobs because of my depression. And then I start to feel better. I need to be in therapy. I need to connect with a psychiatrist, even if I'm feeling better, because I need to protect against the next episode.

And this is what's actually so devastating is that a lot of people who are depressed or suffer from, you know, a depressive disorder, basically have like the hope-based strategy. So this is what I call the hope strategy, which is when you ask them, like, okay, like, what's going to happen a year from now, two years from now, three years from now? Like, what's your strategy to deal with the depression? And what it comes down to is, like, basically, I hope it'll be okay. Like, we heard it from this person where, like, you know, the partner expresses concern, hey, maybe your bosses are going to fire you.

Oh, no, no, no. They love me. I hope it'll be okay. I'm not going to do anything actively about it. I'm just going to hope for the best. If you've lost five jobs, well, like, I just hope it'll stick next time. Like, I'll figure it out eventually. Right?

It's just like there's not a concrete strategy. It's just, like, hoping that things go away and fix themselves. And so if you're someone who's in a relationship with someone who's depressed or you yourself adopt this attitude, which is, by the way, it's sort of not your fault, right? Because when you struggle with depression, you, the hope is what sustains you. Does that kind of make sense? Like, when you're struggling with depression, what you start to do is start to like develop this idea that, okay, like tomorrow, a better tomorrow will come, a better tomorrow will come, a better tomorrow will come, a better tomorrow will come. And that's what sustains you through the dark times. And then the better tomorrow comes, and that sort of becomes the whole of your strategy.

So this too, what we have to understand about these adaptations, right, is we're not trying to blame the person or even the hope-based strategy. there's a reason why people have those strategies. And also, just because they have a good reason for this adaptation does not mean that it can't become maladaptive. And this is what we tend to see in relationships like this. So if you're in a relationship with someone like this, you start to do the heavy lifting as an adaptation to survive. Right?

Oh, my partner lost their job. I'm going to work two full-time jobs because I have to adapt to my circumstances. And over time, that becomes a maladaptation. Because the more lifting that you do, the less lifting they have to do. So then, like, when they start working again, are you quitting your other job,

or do they just start to rely on you more and more and more? Like, what's going on here? Right? So you can do all of the right things in the moment and still end up in the wrong place. And if you're having trouble with someone if you're dating someone who suffers from depression, I think you should absolutely be compassionate.

I think you should absolutely be understanding. I think you should absolutely try to do the heavy lifting when their times are down. And also, they should be responsible for what comes tomorrow. They should do everything within their power, whether they're feeling good or not feeling good, to prevent the next depressive episode. And so that's where the real emphasis is.

It's not like what you get, do whatever you need to to survive today. But once things start moving in the right direction, what amount of commitment is your partner willing to make? Or if you were in that situation, what amount of commitment are you willing to make to never put your partner in that situation again? That's the key thing. Because hoping that you never get depressed and, oh, this time it'll be different. Like, why? What makes you think that? And what you realize is it's just a hope.

There's nothing to it. So last thing that we're going to kind of do is talk a little bit about how to have conversations with your partner who suffers from depression. So this is where I think there are a couple of simple questions, right, which is like starting off with trying to understand what's your understanding of depression. And what you want to try to do is develop sort of like an expectation of what's going to happen and what we're going to do if particular things happen. So we want to go through sort of like a set of contingencies.

So if you're feeling better, when you're feeling better, like are you planning on engaging in treatment? Yes or no? If yes, why? If no, why? Help me understand what is the role of treatment in depression? And if you don't engage in treatment, what do you think is going to happen? And if that happens or if something else happens, then how are you going to adjust? And if you don't engage in treatment, what are you expecting from me?

what are you signing me up for if you don't go to treatment? And this is where they may use the hope-based strategy. I'm not signing you up for anything because I'm going to conquer it this time. It's not going to happen again. I would never put you through that. What is your plan in terms of making sure that that happens? Willpower. I'm just so sure.

So you want to have these open-ended conversations about expectations. What do they think is going to happen? You're not going to tell them to do something or tell them to do something else, right? can. We'll get to that point in a second. And that's when you start to establish your boundaries. Right? And you can say, like, I see where you're coming from, but, as someone in chat, as Athena Almighty said, this time, we've been through this rodeo before and you haven't gotten treatment. I can't continue to do this. What are you expecting me to do when you get depressed again? It's happened five times already. What are you expecting of me?

What does this mean for the number of days off that I have over the next year? What does this mean about our finances? Like, I'm trying to plan and build a life with you, and I need help answering these questions because I can't answer them on my own. When you have conversations like this, people may feel attacked. They may feel like you're verbally abusing them, which, if we look at this post, it sort of sounds like this person was quite emotional, right? So that's why, like, you need to emotionally process before you sit down in

have this conversation. The good news is that if you kind of keep chill and you sort of process some of your emotions and you really approach it problem solving, they may still play their adaptive defensive cards. This conversation is making me depressed. Okay, I understand that. I'm sorry it's making you feel that way. I still don't know how to plan a life with you without having this conversation. What would you recommend instead?

So you want to be solution focused. not blame focused. It's like, okay, if this doesn't work for you, like, how do we plan? Right? And it's actually like really devastating to have these conversations with someone who's depressed. Because when you don't blame them and you're trying to move forward, they kind of don't have a safety blanket. Because if you get angry with them, if you start blaming them, then they can play all their defensive cards. Oh, no, you don't understand how bad I have it.

Oh, no, no, that's fine. You just tell me how bad you have it. Like, I'm not blaming you. That's why I'm trying to figure out, like, how do I plan a future with someone who is this depressed? And that makes them feel more depressed. Because it's like, oh, my God, this person, like, my partner can't, like, I love them, but they can't plan a future with me. And that's sort of like, okay, so, like, if you feel that way, like, let me know. Does that make sense?

This is another thing we have to be really careful about is that sometimes I'll see people that are talking about this. We're just like, how do I keep my partner from not being suicidal? How do I share any kind of feedback with them and them, like, becoming suicide? So if you're in a relationship with someone, I want you all to understand something. Suicidality, do you influence it? Sure. But suicidality can sometimes be used as a form of emotional manipulation. Right?

It's like a trump card to avoid particular topics. Oh, this is making me suicidal. I guess we can never talk about it again. So that's where like sometimes, especially we'll see this, sometimes in like romantic relationships and stuff, where people will like threaten suicide. Like if you break up with me, I'm going to kill myself. And then what happens, something very subtle happens, is that if you're in a relationship with someone who uses suicidal blackmail to keep you in the relationship, you feel responsible for their behavior. You become responsible for their behavior. They say, hey, the responsibility for my mental health is now controlled by your actions.

I wipe myself of all responsibility for my own mental health, and it's now on you. take it. And then what we do, because we're terrified by suicidal, we're like, okay, okay, I'll take it, I'll protect you. I'll never break up with you. I'll be here for you always. And then the other person's subconscious is like, well, shit, this works great.

I can't do the dishes today. It'll make me suicidal. And so it's tricky, but I think that it's very important to remember that suicidality is really the responsibility of the person and also of their treatment team. Right? If your partner is suicidal, like, that's not something you can fix.

And even if you're a mental health professional, like that's not something you're supposed to fix. It's conflict of interest. But this is what's so difficult about being with someone who sometimes struggles with depression. And if you're someone who struggles with depression, you see these kinds of patterns. I get that it's hard.

Like, I'm not, in a sense, blaming you for this. But I think that you have to accept some degree of responsibility because if you have no degree of responsibility, you have no degree of power, then you can't actually fix it. And this is what's actually so devastating about it, is by absolving ourselves of responsibility, we also remove the power from our own hands. So even if I like queue up for a video game and I say, I can't do anything to win this game,

it all depends on my teammates. I'm just going to AFK and hope that I win. You may win some, you may lose some, even if you exert no effort. But by giving up your own power in that situation, you're actually like, you're absolving yourself of responsibility and removing your own power. And that's where I think in this kind of relationship, what the person needs to do is start accepting responsibility for their mental illness. It's not fair. It's not my fault, but it is my responsibility. And practically what that oftentimes means is engaging in a very, very strong treatment plan, not only when you're depressed,

but also when you're feeling well. Because here's the thing, when you're feeling well for a while, something tips you off, right? Something like triggers the depression. There's some amount of emotional suppression or work-related stress or something else, even physical illness, that will trigger the whole cycle again. And so you need to be well-insconced in treatment

when those kinds of challenges arise so that they don't knock you completely off your game. So just to summarize, it's really hard to be in a relationship with someone who struggles with mental, illness. The tricky thing is that sometimes people who struggle with mental illness will also use it as an excuse to absolve themselves of responsibility. And then the tricky thing is that we're stuck with this very, very careful balance of how do I be a supportive partner and not be mean

and lack compassion for someone who struggles with mental illness versus how do I get this person to take responsibility for their mental illness because I can't carry for both of us. I've been carrying this relationship for eight years. I can't do it on my own anymore. And then the really challenging thing is that even if you try to talk to your partner about it, even broaching the subject

can result in allegations of verbal abuse and a lack of support and it's not my fault and you're blaming me and like all this kind of stuff. And then you feel bad, right? because you feel guilty for thinking these things in the first place, and then they say it to your face, and then you kind of feel hurt,

and then you're never going to bring it up again, and the cycle perpetuates. So what do you do about this? Conversation, conversation, conversation. Talk to them. Try to get a shared forward-thinking approach. Okay, what are we going to do about this? It's not your depression.

It's not my depression. It's our depression. What are my contributions and what are your contributions? I need to understand what to expect from you. I need to figure out what to expect from myself. What amount of responsibility are you going to take and what amount of responsibility am I going to take? It's not about blame.

It's not about you're not taking enough or you're not doing enough. That'll trigger the defensive response. And the key thing to remember is that if you're in a relationship with someone, you love them, I know the internet is almost certainly going to tell everyone to dump this person. But if you're in love with someone, then like you need to help them build a relationship that is worth being in.

That's the goal, right? How do you make this work? Because people in this situation want to make it work. The thing is you just can't make it work on your own. You need their help. And that involves a conversation. So talk about expectations. Talk about long-term plans.

Talk about strategies and contingencies. Like, what are we going to do if this happens? We're going to do if this happens. What can you expect from me? What can you not expect from me? what can I expect from you, what can I not expect from you? And if things don't go as you hope, what do you need to do to fix it? And this is what's really important.

When they're well, when you guys lay out this plan, if they make excuses, then you're in trouble. If they don't hold themselves to the, if you don't hold them accountable and they don't hold themselves accountable, then the relationship is going to be in real trouble. And that's something that you need, everybody needs to be crystal clear about. So it's tough. But I think one of the most devastating things that we can do in a relationship with someone who struggles with mental illness is assume that they're incapable. It's devastating. Like, this is what we're saying, right?

We're saying all along that just because you're mentally ill or you have a mental illness doesn't mean that you're less of a human. It doesn't mean that you can't be successful. Doesn't mean that you can't have a fulfilling life. There's all this positivity towards mental illness. What that also fucking means is that just because you have a mental illness doesn't mean. mean that you can't accept responsibility, that you can't make change, right? If we're saying that mental illness does not make you a crippled person and horribly disabled, that also means that you need to grow up and accept responsibility. Is it challenging? Absolutely. Are we here to help?

Absolutely. But it's going to require the person who struggles with depression's help, too. Questions. Great questions. So I love these. So how does someone take responsibility on something like that? Like I said, I think for people who struggle with depression, the real responsibility comes when you're well. It's not about when you're sick. It's about when you're well.

What do you do when you're well? Do you continue therapy? Do you start building healthy coping habits? Because it's really hard to start meditating when you're struggling with crippling depression. But are you going to learn how to meditate while you're feeling well? Are you going to continue to engage in therapy and learn like stress coping skills? Are you going to work on your deep set issues of shame and stuff like that? There's like kind of acute therapy, right?

Psychotherapy for depression when people are like really, really struggling. And then like there's a second phase of psychotherapy for depression, which is like digging in and getting to the root of it. There's like putting out fires and there's rebuilding. So what taking responsibility is, is recognizing that when your town is burning down, It's really hard to do rebuilding at the same time. But once the fires are out, it's time to rebuild. That's where I really think that people need to take more responsibility. The ones who do well, I should say, are the ones who take responsibility during the good times.

So that's kind of where responsibility starts. And how do I know how much power and control I actually have over my life? So this is really simple to understand. It's simple. I guess it's hard to understand. The power and control that you have is fundamentally only over one thing, which is your actions. You can't control what happens.

You just control what you do. So in the case of this depression, it's very simple. What I control is whether I go to therapy or not. I don't control whether therapy prevents me from becoming depressed again. I don't control whether I make a breakthrough in therapy or not. I don't control. What I control is whether I make an appointment with a psychiatrist and whether I go. I don't control whether the medication they prescribe works like a miracle or doesn't work at all.

I can't control my own treatment resistance or my own biology, but I can control whether I try or not. And the trickiest thing about this is that since we're so outcome-oriented, our mind tricks us into complacency. Our mind starts to tell us, this won't work, so don't waste your time. medication won't help me. It hasn't worked in the past. There's no point in seeing a doctor. Therein lies the problem. Because sometimes what your mind does

is keeps you from trying because it tells you of a particular outcome. And that's why what we try to do is encourage moving away from outcomes and focusing on actions. And it's hard. Like, it's very hard. Because it's not the way that our brains are designed

and even I struggle with it. But really, all you control in life is your actions, not what happens. So if you're struggling with depression, you don't control whether you get depressed or not. All you control is, do you go to treatment? Do you take your medication? Do you exercise?

Do you eat healthy? Do you shower every day? Do you clean your room? Those are all the things that you control, only your actions. And be careful about that little voice in your head that says, don't bother because it won't work. Because I don't know if you know this,

but you certainly can't see the future. And like, if you're listening to that voice, how's it going for you? Is it working out when you listen to that voice? Are you happy with your life when you listen to that voice? Because the voice says, don't bother. Save yourself the hassle. And the more you listen to that voice,

what does your life become? Look at the outcomes of listening to that voice. It's trying to save you from pain and creating a life of it. Good question. So someone's saying, is it true that smarter people are more prone to mental illness? I don't think so.

I do find that sometimes IQ can make things harder in some ways. Like, it's not a straight advantage. Generally speaking, it's an advantage. But, like, I've worked with people who have anxiety where the number of calculations their brain is able to perform allows them to come up with more doomsday scenarios, which could be, like, devastating. This is a great question.

How do you rationalize the BS happening in the world? Start by understanding that the BS happening in the world is a judgment that's created by your mind. The BS happening in the world is a rationalization that's already created by you. Right? So people talk about how the world is going to hell. Like, oh my God, everything is so bad. And there are a lot of things to be worried about. Don't get me wrong.

There's a lot of stuff that we need to be careful about. But most of the world is just proceeding like it always has. Right. Like if I transplanted a random consciousness into this world for an hour and just walked around outside, it's not like everything is falling apart. So the first step in rationalizing what the BS happening in the world is to recognize that the BS is a judgment from here. So start by actually looking at your own thought process and how you can.

conclude what, I don't even know what the BS is, right? We have a, is matematical, sorry, is Kazimir is saying there's a biased perception of reality. All of us have a bias of perception of reality. So if you want to really understand what's going on and why BS is happening, you have to start with your own thought process. In fact, I think one of the biggest problems is that a lot of leadership in the world today is not critical of their own thought process. They look at the world and they see all this catastrophe happening, and they start making laws and policies and things like that based on their perception of what's going on, whereas they're not critical about their own thought process. As we start to enter echo chambers and stop listening to like contrary opinions,

the world becomes a worse and worse place and the more extreme I have to become to balance it. So, I mean, I'm not saying everything is great, right? There are a lot of problems that we do need to fix, but a lot of stuff has gotten better. I guess it's pretty cool that I'm, you know, I'm on the internet and I'm to people, is it that thoughts are more important than actions or actions are more important than thinking. So thoughts and actions go hand in hand. So if you want to control your actions, you can really start by controlling your thoughts. This is what a big part of Dr. Kay's guide to ADHD and doing stuff is about. Is the acknowledgement, like, let's start by like, where does action come from? Right. Like, ask yourself, like, how do you act? Whether you play a video

game today or you work out today. Like, where does that action come from? Right? So like, so this is what I love about yoga. And this is what I fell in love with when I wanted to become a monk. Because there's a group of people who, who like figured out some very fundamental stuff, like, how do human beings act? What is the relationship between thought and action? It's not one to one, right? Because I think about a lot of things. It's not like I do them. And then also, where do thoughts come from? And we kind of know this sort of, but we never sit down and really internalize it. So we know that, for example, going to a bar every night versus going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every night.

In one of those situations, it's easier to drink, and in one of them it's harder to drink. We kind of know that. But we don't take that fundamental principle, understand the underlying equation, and apply it to every other dimension of our life.