HealthyGamerGG - I’m in love with a streamer…

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about loneliness, scratching that itch of loneliness, what you can do about it, 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 it's almost like parasycial relationships. There's like imitation cheese. It kind of looks like cheese. It kind of smells like cheese. It kind of tastes like cheese, but it isn't cheese. I have a porn addiction and have been drowning myself in parisocial relationships. I did something very creepy yesterday and I need advice. I'm a 30-year-old.

I watch porn and masturbate to it almost every day and have done this for most of my life, especially late teens onward. I often think about sex and finit. that I'm involved in the act when I'm watching porn or maybe I'm thinking about doing it with someone else. I never had a romantic relationship with any women. I've really only had two dates which happened in high school, but nothing came of it. I've had female friends in high school, but afterwards I made a couple of online friends, but didn't really keep contact. I often fantasize a lot about women I am very attracted to and tend to develop a crush on them. We start as friends

and I find them attractive, but once we interact more, I tend to develop crushes on them and fantasize a lot about them. Also, I've stocked the social media pages of one of them. I have confessed to two of these crushes and was ghosted or had contact broken from. Fast forward to now, I gave up on relationships and interacting with people socially. I've always had a parisocial, I've always been a parisocial Andy, but in more recent years I've been watching streams more now in a very parisocial manner, with a few specific female streamers. Yesterday, one of the female streamers was doing something IRL on stream

that was unintentionally raunchy. I recorded that because I was too afraid. I was afraid they would delete the vaude. I was aware of what I was doing and could feel shame about it, but ultimately went through with it. Then I jerked off to it later while fantasizing having sex with the streamer.

Now, because I had the fantasy in my mind, there's this new love slash adoration. for the streamer. So, edit number one, I guess people just want to downvote but not offer any helpful advice. Sorry, I thought this was a safe space for AEOE healing and working on self to be better people, not a gatekeeping community that ignores certain people with certain issues. It's nice to see that this was crossed out. Edit two, I wasn't expecting this response.

This post initially was downvoted to hell and had no responses, so I thought I would get lost in the sea of posts. Thank you for all the helpful feedback. 207. Nice job, my dude. Nice job, community. So let's talk about this. So sometimes we find ourselves in kind of a weird situation. We know that it's not good to develop parisocial relationships. We have this vague idea, especially about pornography. Like, is it helpful or is it like, is it healthy or is it not healthy? Like, what's addiction? What's not? addiction, like masturbation is, you know, a healthy part of human sexuality. Like, we sort of, like, know that some of this stuff is okay and some of this stuff isn't okay. And we find ourselves sometimes being in this situation where, like, okay, like social relationships have been challenging for me. I went on a couple of dates back when I was 18 in high school. And then,

like, things didn't really go well. And then, like, I kind of got behind. So, like, I got behind some weird stuff started happening in my mind. I recognize that I'm developing like crushes on people way too quickly. I recognize that I'm fantasizing about these people. And sometimes I'll even like try to talk to these people about it, but I usually get ghosted. And so then like since I'm getting ghosted and clearly I'm not good at this whole relationship and socializing thing, I'm going to just kind of give up on it. Right. So I'm going to give up on relationships because clearly I'm not good at it. Clearly it's not working out for me. People don't appreciate, you know, what I say to them. I'm getting burned by trying to connect with people.

So Gigi out. Then what happens is we kind of like fall into this like parisocial weird pornography kind of stuff. And this is really tricky because we tried, right? Like this is, it's really hard to be in this situation because you sort of know that like this is not healthy. But you tried it the normal way. and it didn't work out. And you tried it again and it didn't work out. And you tried it again and it didn't work out.

And you gave up for a reason. So you're kind of stuck in this particular situation where like this kind of goes on for a while and you're sort of like okay with it but you're not really okay with it. And you start to develop and then like technology changes and like over the last 10 years because of Twitch and parasycial relationships and stuff like that, you can connect with people online in a way that you haven't been able to before. And then as you connect with these people, the fantasy, start to grow, the interactions start to grow, you start to get to know this person, right?

And then like something weird happens where someone does something and you recognize, like, you save a vaude and you, you know, tug one out. And then like you're like, this has gone too far. But what do you do about it? Because at this point, you've missed the milestones, right? Like, you dated people in high school and you're 30 now. And you're like, this is not okay, but like, what do I do I do about it? Right? Because like, I don't know how to start. I don't know how to stop. It's like so confusing. And there's a ton of shame. Right? Like you can't talk to people about this. Right? Like you feel ashamed of yourself. You feel pathetic. Like what like, you know, sometimes you even try to reach out to people. You'll confess your feelings for them. And it's like you're going to get ghosted. And you're kind of like stuck between a rock and a hard place because you don't know.

you sort of recognize that something about this is not, first of all, fulfilling. Something about this is starting to feel unhealthy, but you don't know how to reach for health. So what's going on here and what can we do about it? So let's start with almost like an evolutionary perspective. Okay, so this is sort of like a synthesis of my learnings. I don't know that this is like there's actually an explicit scientific paper about evolutionary impacts and parisocial relationships with streamers on Twitch and pornography addiction, I don't think the research has gotten that far. So when we're entering into

this realm, the first thing that you'll have to understand is we don't have scientific studies about this. The best that we can do is read a bunch of scientific studies and then extrapolate based on those to what's going on. Because the rate at which technology is affecting our mind and brain is way faster than the rate at which science can understand what it's doing to us. Caviote. At the same time, I feel pretty good about explaining what's going on here. So here's the tricky thing about a lot of technology, especially with some of these things with parasycial relationships and social media. So why do we feel lonely?

Loneliness, why does the brain feel loneliness? Like, why have we evolved to feel loneliness? Why aren't we happy all the time? So for the survival of the species, we develop this feeling of loneliness, and that's what causes us to reach out to other people. Right? That's what, like, when you feel lonely, like generally speaking, if you have healthy friendships and stuff like that, if you feel lonely, you reach out to a friend, they, they reach out to you. And loneliness is a signal to connect to another human being. The same way that thirst is a signal to connect to water. Hunger is a signal to connect to food. Loneliness is a signal to connect with another human being. Now, the problem is that we now have certain things that will satisfy our hunger, satisfy our thirst, satisfy our loneliness without actually connecting to another human being.

This is exactly why these platforms are successful. So when you form a parasycial relationship, what happens is your ability to see this person in their natural habitat, see their emotional expressions, even interact with them a little bit in chat, allows certain parts of your brain to be satisfied in terms of loneliness. It checks a couple of like evolutionary boxes. So you feel connected to them, right? You see them. You can even have like some kind of like even dopaminergic or oxytocinal response.

Where generally speaking, when you have an orgasm and you associate that orgasm with another person, what we tend to think of is we get a release of oxytocin. And oxytocin forms neurochemically and emotional bond between two people. what happens to oxytocin when you watch a streamer and they do something that's kind of raunchy and you masturbate? We don't know. But some kind of like that that neurochemistry is there. That architecture of bond formation is there. And this is what happens in parisocial relationships is that if we look at like our brain and the way that our brain forms connections with other human beings, it checks like half the boxes.

So it's almost like parasycial relationships. There's like imitation cheese. It kind of looks like cheese. It kind of smells like cheese. It kind of tastes like cheese, but it isn't cheese. But the thing about imitation cheese is it like, you know, it stays good for years. It's cheap. It's easy.

It's accessible. And so a lot of times we'll start using imitation cheese instead of cheese because it's close enough and it's easier. And it checks enough of the boxes. And sometimes people even like imitation cheese more than the real thing. They can actually conclude, like, they're like, you know what? It's just not as melty as real cheese. It doesn't go bad. It's actually easier for me to just eat imitation cheese.

Which is why we have imitation cheese. Because at the end of the day, cheese in a can that I can easily spread over nachos, cheese whiz, is like good enough. Right? It's kind of like all this hydrogenated oil crap and like it tastes kind of fake and like all this kind of stuff. But it's good enough. it scratches the itch. And this is what parasycial relationships do in our brain,

is they check enough of the boxes. And this is why this is absolutely devastating. Because the part of your brain that wants you to foster a connection with someone else now has a way to feel satisfied without a real connection. And this is where people really get in trouble. because you can trick your brain into thinking that something is water, even though it's not real water. And so as you drink this crap over and over and over again, which satisfies some of your brain circuitry, which notices like, you know, solute concentration and all this kind of stuff.

So our brain, for example, releases this hormone called vasopressin. And what vasopressin does is puts water channels. into different parts of, puts water channels in the colon and things like that. Activates parts of our body that cause us to pull water back in. And so that's like how this works. And so we could sort of like trick our brain and our body into feeling connected without actually being connected. It's almost like imagine if you had false water that made you sort of stop feeling thirsty but didn't actually hydrate you. This is what parasycial relationships are.

They take the feeling of loneliness away without actually hydrating you. They make the thirst go away because we're thirsty. And it's interesting, right? Even as a society, we use the phrase thirsty. What do you call someone who takes a clip of a vaude of something that feels kind of raunchy and like, you know, does this thing. We call them thirsty. So it sort of satisfies our thirst without actually hydrating us. And then we feel all of the effects of dehydration.

But now we don't even feel thirsty because we're. are drinking this imitation water. And now you're in a lot of trouble because the very signals that cause you to reach out to another human being are being satisfied enough to not motivate you to connect to people. And this is the real problem with parasycial relationships and technology in general, is that they give us easier alternatives to the real thing. That's why they're successful. I can feel triumph in a video game or I can feel triumph in real life.

There's a part of my brain that doesn't know the difference. there's a part of my brain that does, our cerebral cortex, the part that makes us human, the part that allows us to analyze things and really look at things objectively, recognizes that there's a difference between winning in a video game, like saving a life. So I've done this. I've saved a life. And I've made a comeback in a game of Dota. I've literally done both of these things. And I, on the cortical level, I understand the difference. One is like an actual human being. And one is like, it's just like noobs on the internet.

It's all fake. But I can tell you the emotional part of my brain can't tell the difference. The sense of triumph and satisfaction and relief that you get is honestly it's like better in the game. Because even when I'm thinking about a particular person I was doing chest compressions on, when you save a life in real life, you don't even feel triumph. All you feel is relief. Like, thank God, this person is alive. My God, that was terrible.

It doesn't even, like, feel, like all you feel is thank God it's over and we did it. You're not queuing up immediately after. It's not like you do chest compressions on one person and then like 15 minutes later. You're like, yeah, let's go. Let's do it again. I remember in this case, I was wearing gloves. I started doing chest compressions on the person. So this is tricky.

They don't show this on the TV shows. So when you start squeezing really hard on someone's chest, sometimes what they start to do is vomit. And this person started vomiting. And I remember the vomit was somewhat projectile and got into the gloves. And I distinctly remember, it was almost a traumatic experience. I went into the bathroom afterward, right?

Got a change of scrubs and stuff like that. And pulled off the gloves. And there was like vomit on the backs of my hands. This is what it feels like to save a life. you're not queuing up for that crap immediately afterward. I guarantee you. So the problem with technology and parisocial relationships is that they scratch that itch on the primitive brain level.

They make you feel connected. You get the spurt of oxytocin. You get the relief of orgasm. You get those neurochemical effects. You watch this person day after day after day. You see them. You get to know them because they're authentic. Empathically, you see this person's ups and downs

and you're there all the time, watching, watching, watching. And because we have empathic brains, when someone else smiles, you smile. When someone else cries, you cry. And so you feel a connection to them. But the connection is never reciprocated. It can never be reciprocated.

So while you feel connected to them, they're not connected to you. And in the absence of actual sensory feedback, what does your mind do? Your imagination takes over. And as your imagination takes over, the fantasies come in. And this is all.

evolutionary. Think about this for a second. When I first meet someone and I fall in love and I start to fantasize about this person, what does it cause me to do? What behavior does it cause me to do? When two people are young and in love, they're fantasizing each other about each other all the time. And those fantasies literally bring you closer together because I can't stop thinking about this person. If I can't stop thinking about the person, I call them. And then we hang out again. And then the fantasies increase and increase and increase. And it's kind of interesting, right? So the fantasies in a relationship happen at the beginning of the relationship. They don't happen 15 years in.

You don't fantasize about your partner 15 years in. I mean, you do fantasize, you fantasize, whatever. But most of the fantasies happen early. And that as you get data, as you get interactions, as you get experiences, the imaginations and the fantasies start to decline. You can think about this even in terms of a video game or a movie. Like, before you actually see it, you can fantasize about it. You can imagine all the possibilities, oh, my God, it's going to be so great.

This new movie is going to be so awesome. Dune Part 2, FF7 remake. Oh yeah, it's going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome. You can imagine you can fantasize all kinds of things. And the second that you actually have experienced, the fantasies start to decrease. And what is the purpose of the fantasy?

The fantasy is to drive you towards that person. So this is how we get into this place, which is first of all, that millions or billions or trillion, I don't even know when life began, but trillions of years of evolution cause things to mate. This starts with things like F plasmids and bacteria.

Right? So this is when there's a F minus bacteria and there's an F plus bacteria. The F plus bacteria transmits its DNA, the F plasmid, to the new bacteria. Now we're both F plus bacteria. Very, very old stuff from the beginning of life. The desire to connect. Even bacteria will move towards each other. They'll send chemical signals and they'll connect and they'll transfer DNA.

So this is like, I don't even know how old that is. This is like where loneliness comes from. If a bacteria has any perception of consciousness, there's some primitive level of loneliness, which we can observe. The bacteria will move to each other, and they'll exchange DNA. So this primitive thing is designed to connect you to another human being. That's why it exists. Now the problem is that we've got imitation cheese.

Instead of actually connecting with a human being, it's so much easier, right? Because if you interact with someone, what happens? happens. You get rejected. Or there's a possibility of rejection. There's depression, there's anxiety, but you can connect to someone on the internet. Danger free. Our brain is made to be risk averse. That's why we're alive today. Because I'm sure at some point there was some gene that caused human beings or monkeys or bacteria or fish to take really, really high risks. There's like a fish that's like, yeah, let's go jump out of the water. Let's see what happens. Let's go. That fish didn't stay alive to procreate. We became risk of it.

verse. So when you put all these together, there's the loneliness which is drawing you toward someone. There's the risk-aversiveness part of your brain that's sort of like, okay, if we can scratch that itch, if we can get a bottle of water from the sink, we don't want to walk through crocodile-infested waters, or we don't want to drink water from a lake that's filled with crocodiles if I can get it safely at the sink. And it scratches enough itches in our brain to where like we sort of don't know the difference. Or there's a part of us, the primitive part of our brain, the emotional part of our brain, the empathic part of our brain doesn't know the difference. We feel connected to them. And then we start to

to fantasize and this relationship grows in our mind and we get more and more sensory input, we see more and more of their vulnerability, and we end up getting stuck. And then we end up doing something that we're kind of ashamed of and we're like, wait, this is weird. It's not working. That's how we get here. So, what do you do about it? The first thing to understand is that as long as your thirst is being satisfied by an

imitation, the thirst is not going to motivate you to actually form real connection. So the first thing you've got to do is limit your exposure to the streamers or the people who have the parasycial relationships. You got to use your hunger for you. And this is where the more time you spend with them, the more the fantasies are going to build in your head and the stronger your connection is going to be. So I'm not saying you have to break up with them right away. You don't have to pull it off like a band-aid, although you can absolutely do that. But this is where I just want you to understand that the more your sense, organs are populated by this person, the more your thoughts will be populated by it.

So if we go to the field of advertising, the more they spam ads. If you see billboards, if you see Twitch ads, if you walk down the street and you see a car, if you see other people who have branded whatever, the more you see it, the more you're going to think about it, the more it's going to shape your behavior. There's something that advertising understands really well. they understand how to use our organs of perception to shape our thoughts and shape our behavior. So the more that you bombard your thoughts, your sensory organs with this person, the stronger your thoughts are going to be, the stronger your fantasies are going to be, and the harder it's going to be for you to change your behavior.

So you just, honestly, it starts with perception. I'd say like the first thing you should do is just cut back on the volume of time you watch this person. as you start to get other kinds of sensory input, your mind will think about other things. And we sort of know this, right? We know that sometimes people need a change of pace. People need a change of scenery. What does a change of scenery do? It changes your mind.

I need to get the hell out of these four walls. Go for a walk, and your mind changes. There are all kinds of pathophysiologic mechanisms for specifically walls and, you know, horizons and plants and all this kind of stuff. But the key thing is that your environment shapes your personality. perceptions. If you get out of a toxic household into a healthy sort of situation, then your perceptions will change, your mood will change, your actions will change. If you start hanging out with a bunch of people who get high and play Dota, like, that's what you're going to do too. So controlling your

perceptions is really important. People don't think about perception as linked to motivation. They don't think about perception is linked to behavior. So in Dr. K's guide to ADHD and doing stuff, the main meditative principle which we teach people is indrias and sensory perception. We think about organization. We think about prioritization. We think about inspiration when it comes to motivation and doing things. We don't think about perception. We don't think about perception as something that shapes my behavior. We think about it as just informational and something that comes in. So if you all want a bunch of detail about literally exercises to control your sensory organs, and get off of this kind of crap,

that's what is in Dr. Kay's Guide of doing stuff. So the first thing is reduce your sensory input. Next thing to understand is that as your sensory input reduces, your hunger will grow. Your thirst will grow. And this is going to be the really, really hard part. Because as you get thirsty, your brain is going to be like,

let me watch the Twitch stream because then you're going to get satisfied. You're going to get a drink by watching the Twitch streamer. That is the struggle. that you have to fight. In that moment, when you are thirsty, understand that your brain is going to give you two options. One is that I can try to go and interact with another human being, which is going to be filled with fear and anxiety and possibly bad consequences, because you've tried it before and hasn't worked out for you. Or I can log on to and watch my favorite Twitch streamer. And that's going to be risk-free. Maybe I'll even get, I'll get to know them better,

like it's going to satisfy your thirst. One's easy and successful, and one is painful and difficult. You got to choose the hard road. You got to recognize in that moment what the feeling of that thirst is, how much easier it would be to do this kind of thing. And so start to socialize, you know, start to get out there a little bit. Like, I don't know exactly what that does for you. I don't know if you have work kind of situations or what.

Like, I don't know exactly how you do that. Join Discord and, you know, try stuff. people talk about hobbies and all that kind of stuff. So like that solution is sort of, we're not going to cover that right now because it's kind of varied and there's a lot there. The main thing that I want you understand is if you want to overcome this problem, it's that moment and time that you have to resist and look out for it. And if you're ready for it and if you know it's coming, every hour that goes by, the thirst will grow and your mind will start thinking about it because that's what it does. Right. So if I need to like, you know,

once my, if you, for example, if there's a stray cat in the neighborhood and you start feeding the cat, the cat figures out, okay, where do I get my fix? If you're addicted to something and there's a dealer, you know where to get your fix. And the more the cravings increase, the more you go to the dealer. So the cravings for loneliness, the cravings to get rid of the loneliness increase, the cravings for connection increase, you know where to get your fix. And if you give in, then it's game over for that day. So reduce your income. input and start to recognize right out that urge. And the more that you're able to reduce your sensory input and start to build other kinds of sensory inputs, the more that you're able to

at least leave the house and start interacting with people, it doesn't have to be as friends. It can be something as simple as like going to the grocery store and asking the cashier, how are you today? And that's it. I'm well. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Have a nice day. It can start something as simple as that. Other really simple things that you can start with, I know it's very paralyzing, but I love it, is the nod. So this is, I'm not quite sure. So, you know, growing up as a cisgendered man, I have a different experience from many people. But as a dude to a dude, the nod works really well.

I don't do it to women, usually, because I think that could be perceived as creepy. But if there's a dude, I'll, like, make eye contact with a deal, I'll just nod to him and, like, keep walking. Bro-nod. So the thing about the bro-naud is it's very low commitment. You'll feel a lot of anxiety. And then like, you know, like you just do it and you kind of move on. I don't know. So I guess I just have to ask, you know, women in chat, if a dude bro nods at you, are you okay with that or is that creepy? Right? So like, I think the bro nod is like the most primal form of like platonic connection. So something is what I will do with all people. is smile. Like, if I make eye contact with people, I'll smile at them. Right? And then that's where also, if I, like, if I'm bro-nodding, I'll be a little bit careful about making it clear to them that no further interaction is needed. So I'll try. I'll experiment. Y'all can experiment too. Let's see what

happens. Ah, so for Lord Amir, who's saying no female in chat, that used to be true. When we started streaming, did you guys, so this is interesting. Our gender breakdown is changing. We used to be like 90 to 95% male, 5 to 10% female, we're actually like 30 to 40% women in our audience now. This is great. Okay, bro nod to women creepy? No. So most people are saying no. Okay, so we'll let, I'm going to try and I'll get back to you all.

So I find that smiling is totally fine. Like, especially if you don't make any other gesture, right? Like, if you don't walk over there, if you don't like, you know, like none of that business, then you're fine. You know, you don't, you don't do that kind of crap. You know, like, the headbobble, the legacy of my people, finger guns. You guys think that that's creepy for women? Like, do it too, dude, that'll be great. Okay, so there's a good question by Sayy Chen. What if you feel so behind that you don't even feel any hunger for a certain level of human relationships anymore? Great question. So, I don't know if y'all have done this,

but if you've ever been hungry or thirsty or really need to pee, what happens to that sensation over time if it doesn't get satisfied? So if you look at the experience of hunger, hunger signals increase, increase, increase, right? So your ghrelin, leptin, imbalance. So these are also hormonally mediated is in favor of hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger, hungry, you feel hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry, you're really starving. And then if you don't get any food, feeling goes away, right? You acclimatized to it. I need to pee, I need to pee, I need to pee, there's no bathroom. Feeling goes away for a while, if you're lucky. If it comes back, goes away, comes back. So when we don't satisfy some of our urges, our brain has a very simple, the body, actually,

has a very simple normalization of the signal where it stops sending that signal to us. So essentially what happens is we've been lonely for so long that we've been. We've been. become numb to connections, and we learn to survive without them. It's sad. Now, there are some cases where we actually have, like, you know, documented cases of something called schizoid personality disorder, which are people that are wired in a particular way where they don't actually seek connections. So this is sort of like the platonic version of someone who's asexual, where they just don't, that is not just something that they're interested in. So that's possible. So it's possible that that's not an adaptation or pathologic or anything like that.

We sort of call it a pathology, but some people are just wired to be like loners and they're actually okay with that. So that's a possibility. But generally speaking, in my experience, what happens is that you've been alone for so long that you just numb yourself to it, essentially. And that's when like all kinds of interesting things happen, right? Because if you're truly numb, then interacting with people should be easy because you don't actually care.

So how do you know if you're different? I mean, how do you know which one, which camp you fall into? Generally speaking, in my experience, people who are numb, if interaction with human beings actually comes up and is a possibility, it's not a neutral interaction, it usually is like, comes with something like anxiety or some kind of negative emotion or avoidance. So if you have numbness plus avoidance,

then chances are you have loneliness that's being numbed that you can't feel. Whereas if you're truly more on the schizoid spectrum, then like interacting with a, other people is like completely neutral. Like you don't really mind. You can go to a party every single day and it's like whatever. You're not like, you don't respond to interactions with something like anxiety. Great question though.