HealthyGamerGG - Lindsay Clancy Trial Breakdown by Expert Psychiatrist (Dr.K )

Episode Date: August 22, 2026

Dr. K's NEW Guide to Love, Sex, & Relationships is here! Order now: https://bit.ly/4dO3x0VHG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQIn this episode, Dr. K steps away from his usual content to offer a raw, clinical, and philosophical breakdown of the Lindsay Clancy trial. Analyzing this tragedy from his perspective as an MGH-trained psychiatrist, he separates social media sensationalism from medical reality. Dr. K dives deep into the neurobiology of the postpartum period, the terrifying reality of clinical psychosis, and how a fragmented healthcare system failed everyone involved. What to expect in this episode: The Postpartum Reality & Motherhood Pressures: How hormonal and physiological shifts, like changes in progesterone, estrogen, and oxytocin, can completely alter a woman's emotional baseline and blunt her normal fear centers. Dr. K explains the immense pressure on new mothers to feel instant love and perfection, which can lead to severe isolation when they instead feel overwhelmed or disconnected. The "Edge of the Cliff": Why hundreds of thousands of women are rallying behind Lindsay Clancy. Dr. K notes that many mothers recognize how close they themselves came to the "edge of the cliff" during their own postpartum periods, and how a complete lack of support and deep shame can make suicide feel like a logical escape. The Science of Postpartum Psychosis: How postpartum psychosis is far more common than society thinks—affecting 1 to 3 out of every 1,000 live births, translating to roughly 20 women every single day in the US. Dr. K breaks down how first-episode bipolar disorder often remains hidden until uncovered by postpartum changes. What Psychosis Actually Feels Like (The "EASE" Scale): An eye-opening explanation of clinical psychosis utilizing the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE) scale. Dr. K describes severe delusions like Capgras Syndrome (believing loved ones are imposters) and the Cotard Delusion (the belief that you or your organs are already dead) to show how profoundly a psychotic brain distorts reality. A Fragmented Medical System: How the American healthcare system failed to protect Lindsay, featuring a cocktail of 12 prescribed psychiatric drugs and a psychiatrist who only had 17 minutes to evaluate her due to insurance constraints. Dr. K examines how having 6 to 7 independent providers who never talk to each other creates a recipe for tragedy. Echo Chambers & Algorithmic Realities: How social media platforms and algorithms divide us by feeding us entirely different "data points," causing people to live in separate realities and jump to extreme, ungrounded conclusions with absolute certainty. How to Handle a "Cooked" World: Dr. K's psychological steps to combatting hopelessness. He explains why hope is tied to autonomy, not outcomes, and how admitting your own ignorance is the first crucial step toward introducing the cognitive flexibility needed to change your life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Alo Canoja, but you can call me Dr. K. 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. Thanks for coming, everybody. Thanks for your patience.

I know we're running 30 minutes late. I need it some extra time. Okay, so welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. My name is Dr. Al-O. Kanoja. that everything we discuss on stream today is intended to be for educational and entertainment purposes only nothing is intended to be taken as medical advice if you all have a medical concern or question please go see a licensed professional so this disclaimer which we say at the beginning of upstream i really believe and i need y'all to understand that this is like actually a thing right so

i'm not your doctor and today's not going to be very entertaining because we're going to be talking about something that's terrible um and we're going to be talking about psychiatry which is not terrible Dietary is great. So today we're going to be talking about the Lindsay Clancy. Why are we talking about this today? A lot of people are curious. Yeah. So we're going to be talking about this Lindsay Clancy trial. Now, this is what's really interesting. So before, you know, we had this problem on Twitch and we got delayed, I just asked chat. Hey, like, do you guys like, you know, know what's going on? And what's really interesting is that half of chat was like, yeah, there's way too much of this stuff or like a third of people. were like yeah I'm following it but I really don't want to it's flooding my feed another third of people were like yeah it's really interesting really tragic really sad like you know people are following it because it's important and the other third is like what is this who is this person what's going on okay so just to give you all some some background in in Massachusetts there was there is a woman

named Lindsay Clancy and she is a mother of or what was a mother of three and there is there's currently she is on trial for the murder of her children. And so part of her defense is that she was psychotic and we'll explain what that means. And so therefore is not responsible for the death of her children. So first thing is, and so today we're going to like dive into this. And why am I talking? about it. Because it's not just the trial.

So we're going to start off by talking a little bit about the trial going over some of the documents. But what's really interesting is like the internet phenomenon this has become. And the internet phenomenon this has become is getting like really weird. Like so I want to just show you guys like stuff like this. Right. So young like so so so you're really breaking up with me over a fucking opinion. I'm not breaking up with you over an opinion. I'm breaking up with you because that opinion showed me a fundamental difference in our values.

I can have compassion for someone struggling mentally without excusing what happened to those children. If I'm choosing someone to potentially be the mother of my kids, I need to trust their judgment completely, especially when it comes to protecting them. What you said created a doubt in me that I can't ignore or gamble my future children on. So, like, this has gotten to the point where, like, it's starting to impact all kinds of things. And this is something that even has crossed my plate. So two days ago, my wife was like, hey, I don't think you're taking this Lindsay Clancy thing seriously enough. And I was, like, really surprised by that. And so I was like, what?

So there's something going on here where this is not just the case. I think the case, the rabid, the rabid interest in the Lindsay Clancy case is uncovering so many things about what is going on with us as a society and what is wrong with us as a society. And so this is going to be like not a simple take. There's a really good chance that no matter what you believe, whether you believe she's guilty, whether you believe she's compassion, deserves compassion, whether you believe this guy is justified in breaking up with her, whether you believe that a woman is justified with breaking up with her male partner because they're not supportive enough of Lindsay Clancy. Like whatever you believe, there's a decent chance I'm going to piss you off by the end of the stream. And the reason I'm going to piss you off is because as I've dug into this, and I've dug into this a ton, but not just the trial. So what I've tried to do is look at a lot of stuff that's going on the internet and then also review peer-reviewed publications. Let me see if I can find them.

That explain like what is happening. So I'll give you guys just a simple example. So one of the things that's going on is that a lot of women on social media, believe that Lindsay Clancy is basically being framed by her husband. And her husband is really the guilty party. She's taking the fall for it. He divorced her a few months after this happened. And so there's like this whole element.

What I realize is like a lot of these people are operating on like women's intuition. So this is like a good example. Okay. Like sometimes women believe like like they see something and there's this sense called women's intuition. Okay? And so something is happening where like women on the internet are seeing parts of this trial. They're seeing parts of this testimony.

And somehow they are coming to the conclusion, not all women, by the way. This is just some women and we'll get to which women. That like the guy is the one who's guilty. And this is all a framing job. So like what fascinates me as a psychiatrist is like, hold on a second. So she's on trial. Okay. And the prosecution, so she's being tried by the state of Massachusetts for murder. So this is the government against Lindsay Clancy. And they're saying she murdered her children. Her defense is not that she did not kill her children. Her defense is that she was psychotic when it happened. There's a second lawsuit, which is she and her ex-husband on behalf of their children are suing. all manner of psychiatric providers.

It's a civil lawsuit that says, you guys did not take care of me appropriately. That's why my kids died. It's your fault that this happened. So what's really interesting to me about this is like, even the defense does not dispute that she killed her children, sort of. We'll see how that is like kind of a wiffly kind of thing.

And there's even on the record, she has confessed to killing her children. And yet this is still happening, right? A lot of people believe this. Now, this is what's going to piss everybody off. So if you're someone who believes this and I make this statement, you're already like, oh my God, Dr. Kay, you're one of them. You're one of the people who doesn't understand.

You're one of the enemy. And so I pissed you off. Good. I mean, not good, but like it's going to happen. And then on the flip side, there's going to be a lot of people that are Like, duh, bro. Like, duh, like, she confessed to killing. I don't understand how people can believe that this is not factually correct.

Like, what on earth is going on? How is this guy? Like, what is going on? And this is where, this is where I get curious. So I'm like, okay, if I'm not the arbiter of truth, I'm a psychiatrist, okay? So if even the defense is not claiming that she didn't kill her children, it's not part the defense. Like, she's not saying she didn't kill her children. What on earth is going on that people will be so distorted, and I'm making the assumption they're distorted, I could be

wrong, right? I could be wrong. I'm not the arbiter of truth here. But, like, how does someone get, how does someone get from she, the person herself claims or does not dispute, that she killed her children to she's being framed. And this is where I'm going to piss everybody off because this is exactly what's wrong with the world today. We have a world today where so many people are behaving so irrationally. And what we tend to do is make no attempt to understand. What we do is blame.

What we do is call them stupid. And if you're like, ha, yeah, like all those stupid people, all those stupid women on the internet who are like think that it's a conspiracy they're like they're all dumb no this is this is my point i want you all to understand this this is happening across the globe to all manner of people this is just one pimple that is like popping so what's happening right now this is really scary we've been seeing stuff about this right that we have echo chambers what is the impact of having an echo chamber the really scary the really scary thing, the reason that there is so much conflict in the world. If you ask me, Dr. Kay, what is the one thing?

If you had to pick one thing that is the root of the world's problems today. And I don't mean a person's problem. I mean the world's problems. Why is there so much strife? Why is there so much war? Why is there so much political stuff? Why is there a gender divide? Like, what is going on? We have birth rates that are low. Like everyone, everything's getting worse. Why? And it's one simple thing, because we are no longer living in the same reality. So I asked my wife, so I've been following this trial, and I've been following this trial on Reddit. And my wife has been following this trial, and she's been following it on Instagram. And the interesting thing is that our perceptions of the trial are completely different.

and the more that a human being gets data, like the more that they see something, and this is what algorithms are doing, I think like literally algorithms are destroying society. That's not even like a, I don't think it was intentional. People are taking advantage of it. But I don't think these like tech companies set out to do this.

The tech companies, and this is what's really scary and is going to be theme, like today is going to be like a bit philosophical, a bit detailed, a bit nuanced. But like this is. really scary, right? Because if I spend eight hours a day in front of a screen and the platform

is like, okay, we're going to give you what you like. This is not a problem. Right now, the Dota 2 International is going on, so my feed is full of Dota 2 international stuff, which I love. Like, that's why I use the platform, right? Like, I want to hear what's going on. What's going on in the interview? Who won? Who lost?

I don't want spoilers, but whatever. Right? So this is the way the internet, like the whole purpose of the internet is that when you use it, it shows you things that you're interested in. That's the point. Like, who the hell wants to spend time on the internet where it's like RNG what you see? Right?

Like, no one wants that. And so platforms are like, okay, cool. Like, we've got this cool thing. We want to share information with people. Like, let's give them the information that they want. Duh. But somehow, we have gotten so good at this that we have now become disheartedly. distorted from reality.

And so today, what we're going to do is we're going to start by going through the civil complaint. I'm going to explain to you guys what's going on in the trial. We're going to have a psychiatric kind of perspective with it. And then, so like we're going to just understand what's going on in the case. Okay. I'm not even going to claim that this is even reality. It's going to be my take of psychiatrically what's going on. And then we're going to also get to stuff like this, okay?

So I want you all to understand this. So Lindsay Clancy's fans have raised over 700,000 for her after she killed her three children while on a cocktail of prescribed psychiatric drugs. Over 700,000 now raised for a woman who strangled her three children to death with exercise ropes. Every single donation is from a woman. Hundreds of thousands of women in a TikTok true crime psychosis where they believe the husband did it because he looks mean. Okay? because he looks mean is how we're by the way.

So I was like, okay, let's like, let's get into that for a second. Oh, no. Is like where I got to this. So it's like, hold on a second. What's going on with these women who think that he looks mean? So then I looked at the research of when a woman looks at a person's face, what can she tell? Or a man. Okay.

So she's about to be jailed for life or something her husband did. he killed the kids his voice his was the voice that she heard he threw her out the window she woke up and and did what she was told you know like since this trial has started i have not been okay women didn't hear voice in that diary we heard our own she loved those babies with her heart she carried the entire mental load that home uh let me show you guys so like there's like she was a good mother right So there's actually mother blame and the just world theory

and child abuse sex cases. So the really interesting thing is like I got into the research. Like what is actually going on? Like what is happening here? And this is what I want you all to understand. So if a woman

kills her children and millions of women across the internet raise support her, raise hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can say that these women are all brain rotted from conspiracy theories. I think there's an element of that that is actually true. But this is something that a lot of people do not understand. It seems so irrational.

I don't get it. And so this is something that I've learned as a psychiatrist. Shocking thing, one of the most important things I've ever learned as a psychiatrist is that people are not, for the most part, 99% of people, people, 99% of the time, I don't know if that's statistically correct, ballpark. Let's say 95% of people 95% of the time, just to be safe. Pretty sure that that's when safe bounds, are not behaving irrationally. I want you to think about this for a moment. Think about the times in your life where people have thought you are behaving irrationally. Were you actually

behaving irrationally? Here's the crazy thing. People have a reason for what they do. It makes sense to them. And if we want to understand, there is some amount of conspiracy theory brain rot at play here, in my personal opinion, right? And there is data to back this up where conspiracy theories tend to run wild. There's this weird element of social proof. Like, we'll get into that. Right.

But we have to understand where people are coming from because what we're going to see in this trial is that it shows us a lot about what is going on in society and what is wrong in society right now. And there is, hopefully this makes sense. Hopefully this is not disputed. Irrespective of whether you think there's rationality or not, one thing we can all agree on is there's an incredible emotional energy that is coming out of us, evoked from us, triggered by this trial if you're following it. And that's what I want to get into today. Because if you want to understand what's going on with the Lindsay Clancy trial, not just in terms of the courtroom, but what's going on in society? You have to understand that. Why is everyone getting so caught up? So without a further ado, and enough of a disclaimer, it's been 20 minutes

of a disclaimer. Let's get into it. Okay? Actually, let me pause for a second. Does this make sense? Do you guys understand what we're going to try to cover today? Okay. Okay. So like here's the thing. A lot of, like, people, like, yeah, okay. Can you repeat? I just do, fuck, man. She get wrecked, noops. Okay, let's start with the original civil complaint. Okay, so step number one, there's two legal proceedings.

Number one is the state of Massachusetts against Lindsay Clancy for murder. They said, you murdered your children. in which her defense is, I was crazy. Second thing is there's a civil lawsuit from Lindsay Clancy and her ex-husband, which, by the way, he divorced her after she killed her children, right? So he's a bad guy. You abandoned her in his time of need, in her time of need, sorry. Or abandoned her in his time of need.

So they are suing the psychiatric provider. So this is the civil complaint. So number one, this is not the. The truth. This is a civil lawsuit in which these people are alleging. These are their claims. Right. So when someone sues you for doing something bad, they are going to emit lots of stuff that let you off the hook. It's not going to be fair, right, which is another really important thing you need to understand about this trial. No one is trying to be fair. No one is trying to be correct. The prosecution has a job. The defense has a job. The civil case has a plaintiff that has a job.

It's your fault. And the defense in that case is going to say it's not my fault. It's your fault. Okay? So everyone has an angle. No one is talking about the truth. Okay? People are, everyone has an objective.

So, this is a wrongful death brought by Patrick Clancy, individually as personal representative of the estates of his deceased children. Patrick's wife, Lindsay Clancy, is alleged to have murdered. murdered Cora, Dawson, and Kalan. Prior to the alleged murder, Lindsay sought medical treatment for anxiety and increasingly deteriorating mental health condition, as alleged herein, the treatment providers, Jennifer Tufts, Rebecca Jalotta, Astor Mental Health and South Shore system exacerbated her mental health struggles. Okay, so let's look at a couple of things.

Okay. So Patrick and Lindsay married in December 2016. settled in Duxbury. By the way, Lindsay began her career as a nurse working at the Massachusetts General Hospital, my alma mater. So this is pretty close to home

to me. I trained at MGH. I saw people with postpartum psychosis on the labor and delivery floor at the Massachusetts General Hospital during my residency training. Okay? She worked as an L&D nurse.

She herself is an L&D nurse, which probably, probably means she is at a minimum seen postpartum depression and probably also given when she was there, 2016. I don't know when she was there. But I was there from 2014 to 2018. It is very possible that she, we cared for the same patient who had postpartum psychosis, which is just wild.

Okay. So this is going to be important. Lindsay began working. So Patrick and Lindsay jumped into parenthood and worked together to provide the best possible environment to raise their children. This is the plaintiff, right? This is their case. In order to spend more time at home with their children, Lindsay began working part-time night shifts in the MGH Labor and Delivery Unit. So this is an important point. We're going to talk a lot about bipolar disorder today. In bipolar disorder, the best medicine is sleep. Okay? The moment that your circadian rhythm gets messed up, you increase your risk of problems with bipolar disorder. One of the key symptoms of biosephysm, Polar Disorder is inability to sleep, decrease need for sleep in a manic episode or hypomanic episode, and then too much sleep are on the depressive side.

So this, I think, is an important data point. Okay, so then she has Kalen, who I think is her third child. Patrick returned to work approximately 12 weeks after Kalin was born. And while he was able to work from home, for the first time Lindsay was challenged with taking care of three children single-handedly during the weekdays. Okay. Now, we're going to play a fun game chat. So, like, we're live streaming this, right?

So I could just record this to an empty room. But I don't want to do that. We're going to play a fun game. And this game is going to be read Dr. K's mind. Why did Dr. K highlight this passage? What do you think is the importance of this? Thoughts. Okay, which passage.

Show it again. Okay, yes. Fair point. Okay. Patrick returned to work approximately 12 weeks after Kaelin was born, and while he was able to work from home, for the first time Lindsay was challenged with taking care of their three children, single-handedly during the weekdays. Okay. She was faced with her own return to work at the end of September 20. Okay. End of maternity leave, going back to work and doing what? Why am I showing this chat?

Ah, very good. Okay. Very good. Very good. Very good. Very good. Very good. Very good. Very good. Very good. Brilliant. Taking care of kids during the day while also working the night shift. Was husband unable to help? Not sleeping. If he's working from home, how is it single-handed? It's not the beginning of the decline. Okay. So this is really important. Okay. So remember. there's a lot going on here. So there's like the medical angle. But I want to show you guys some of this stuff. Right? So like, let's look at this. So there's like this.

Like this lady is crying. You know, and I like I don't have anything against her crying. Right? So this is going on. Okay. Let me try to find a better. better one. There was one

I wanted, there was one clip. Right. So like, like, I want you guys to try to think about the scene

outside of the courthouse, Lindsay can't, current scene is like lots of mothers are showing up in solidarity. Women are lining up to take photos with his lawyer.

Okay? Like, since the trial started, I have not been okay. Women didn't hear her voice in that diary. We heard our own. She loved.

those babies, she carried the entire mental load of home and was drowning the whole time. She asked for help. We didn't catch her. He knew it. Then he called her crazy. Right? And then like he went out to brunch. How dare he?

We'll get to the astrology. Like, don't get me started on the astrology. Okay. So this I think is really important. So I think that this is what's confusing about this and what I love about it is like it's not one thing. It's a lot of things. So I think what's really shocking, not actually, I'm like, I don't think it should be shocking, but like I think it is shocking.

So I think what's going on with a lot of women, and I was surprised. Like I said, so I started catching straight. So my wife, two days ago, was like, hey, you're not taking this seriously enough. I'm disappointed in you. She was like, she's disappointed. I'm like, what? Like, I'm going through court documents. I have it streamed about it.

I haven't made a piece of content yet, but that's because, like, I'm doing research and stuff like that. And, like, you know, I think I was, like, available as a dad. Like, I took some paternity leave. Like, I know how to change diapers. I cook for my kids. I tried to schedule a trip for her with her friends. And I'd take care of the kids for a week. Like, I thought I've been, like, a present in support of dad, right?

And this is not for me to say that she's irrational. This is like, hold on. There's something here that I'm missing. Right? So if you think concrete piece of advice, if someone is doing something that you think is irrational, one of the most important things, one of the most useful things, forget about important,

one of the most useful things that you can do is understand. And I think what we don't understand about what women like really understand why women are flocking to her is because we don't understand what child what the postpartum period most people do not understand

what the postpartum period is so like we tend to think about this and this is what's really scary is like for many people it's fine but I would say for somewhere around 20 to 30 percent of people the postpartum period is torture. So we as mammals and apes tend to, like apes tend to raise, it takes a village to raise a child.

Right. But the world that we live in right now, women are told all kinds of things about their fitness as a human being depends on the quality of their uterus. There's all kinds of just like terrible stuff. I'm going to just start naming random things. This is what I've seen as a clinician. So, we used to give kids formula. And then we discovered that breast milk is healthier. Makes sense, right?

So breast milk is perfectly evolutionary calibrated for the child. Really important part of breast milk. You transmit IGA, which is an immunoglobulin, I think it's IGA, that goes through the breast milk and provides immunity for your child. So for the first six months of their life or even longer, a major source of their immune system is coming in through the breast milk. Breast milk is superior to formula when it comes to brain health and brain development. There's a, reduces the risk of things like ADHD and mental illness when you use breast milk. Breast milk is great. Excellent.

problem is some women don't produce great breast milk. Problem is, some women have children that don't latch properly. So now, if you're a good, educated mother, and you've learned everything about the joys of breast milk, and then you have your first child, and you try to get them to breastfeed, and they don't. And you try again and you try again and you try again.

But like literally your body is not producing enough of what will protect your child from mental illness, what will protect your child from infection. Your body is failing. Except we as human beings have a problem, which is that when our body doesn't do something, we don't think of it as our body. think of it as ourselves. So now you are failing. Right? You want the best for your kid, but you can't provide it. And this is like, add to this situation that you're, you've just delivered a child. You've just lost like some gigantic amount of blood. Your hormones are all over the place. sometimes the blood loss in postpartum period is so bad that you can get like necrosis of your pituitary gland all kinds of bad stuff is happening it's the most physically demanding and dangerous thing that the average woman does

the highest risk thing that most the average woman will do over the course of her lifetime is to give birth not to mention the nine months of investing and creating like this new human being tack on to that the fact that we live in a world where now thankfully we're equal but we judge human beings so harshly based on their appearance, right? So looks maxing is huge. Plastic surgery is huge. Medi spas are huge. People are injecting concrete into all kinds of things. We have TikTok filters and Instagram filters. Like being beautiful is everything. And this used to be a female problem, but thank God for equality. Body dysmorphia is on the rise for us men too. And you're fat. And you're bloated. And you've gained baby weight. And you're doing a bad job.

So I think what a lot of people, the reason, and this is really, important to understand. I'm going to just say this. I have no data to back this up. The reason tons of women, not the reason, there are two reasons why women are rallying to Lindsay Clancy. There is a, in my opinion, positive, fair, emotional reason, and there is a brain rot reason. And these two are combining. The positive emotional brain rot reason, the reason that people are rallying around her, and this is really scary, and I want you guys to understand this, so many women looked right over the edge of that cliff. Their experience of having a child

was this close to turning into her. They were just once, they walked all the way up to the edge and they looked down. This is something that I think very few men understand. It is something that I have never even heard a woman articulate, even though I am a psychiatrist

who at times has treated postpartisan. depression. I have friends who work in women's health. I have never heard it articulated how close you get to things completely unraveling. And it's these little things like maternity leave is over. But it takes most women a year or two to get rid of their baby weight. It's not even about baby weight. I want to understand baby weight. I understand baby weight is a return to a healthy normal physiology. which weight is one thing. Right. So maternity leave ends. You're taking care of three kids during the day. You're working L&D overnight. Okay? Let me explain something to y'all. Some of the energy that you guys see here is what you see on L&D. L&D is a unit full of, literally, hormonal women.

And I don't mean that in like a denigrating way. It's like their body, and this is something that's really important to understand too about like women's experience of childbirth. See, we as men have no frame of reference. So there's one really important thing that I realized as a psychiatrist a couple of years ago. If you're a dude, you exist roughly the same every single day. Like sure, if you've got a biphasic mood disorder, like, sure, if you've got a biphasic mood disorder, bipolar disorder, you understand what fluctuations are. But like, we believe, like, our experience of life is, like, relatively constant.

Our physiology is not changing on a monthly basis. And the crazy thing is, like, the physiology has effects on your brain. So I want you all to just imagine, okay, because this is literally what happens. Okay, so let's talk about progesterone. What is progesterone's effect on the brain? What is oxytocin's effect on the brain? Let's talk about oxytocin. This one's more fun.

So oxytocin is the bonding hormone. It's the hormone. This is why if you have sex and you cuddle, you catch feelings for someone. It forms emotional bonds. So oxytocin is released by physical contact. Oxytocin is also released, also causes, the breast, the milk that is stored in the breast to be secreted through the nipple when a child feeds. So it's the milk let down hormone. This is what's really interesting.

Oxytocin also blunts, shuts off the fear center of the brain. So if you're a normal human being and you are faced with danger, there's this part of your brain that's like, hey, don't go fight this bear because we could get hurt. Oxytocin turns it off. So now you like neurochemically, your capacity to appreciate the consequences of your actions has now been blunted. The way that this feels is like,

you know when you don't give a fuck what happens, you're just pissed off. Like, I don't give a fuck. fuck. If I get banned from this game, I get banned from this game, but I'm going to put this person in their place. Like, you know, like when you start thinking in a stupid way and you're like, oh, I really should like shouldn't do that, but you just get so pissed. Now imagine that one week out of the month, that's how you're feeling all week long. Just fucking random. Like the most pissed that you've ever been in a video game, that's just how that's your default state for like one week. and then it just goes away

and you're kind of back to normal. In addition to that, let's talk about estrogen for a second. So estrogen increases the emotional, our awareness of the emotions that we experience. So let's be clear about what this means. What does it mean to increase our emotional awareness?

Truth is, increasing your emotional awareness sucks. We're like, oh, build your EQ, cultivate emotional awareness, Alexa thymi has bad,

increase emotional awareness. It's good, right? You should know what to me. No, what it means is you feel more emotion. Okay? So it's like, it's not a great thing

because we as men experience sadness. And then it's just like, it's like if you're listening, the best analogy that I have is if you're listening to a song, Actually, this is a good analogy. You know how when you watch movies, like at home, and the volume is all messed up?

So, like, the background music is way too loud and you can't hear the voices. And then at other times, the voices are really loud and there's explosions and it's all out of calibration. And you know how fucking annoying that is? Imagine that that happened every month for like 10 days. just your, but not just a movie, your whole life, like your internal experience of, of life is just like out of calibration. Someone does something nice to you and you start crying. And you're like, why am I doing this? I don't know.

So a lot of dudes will like complain. And this is where, once again, I'm going to piss everybody off. I think that's reasonable. I think it is genuinely difficult to live with. someone who is experiencing these states. Right? It's like, hey, I didn't do anything wrong, but suddenly this person is mad at me. Like, that is difficult.

To deal with someone who has more dysregulated emotions is objectively difficult. What is also difficult is to be the person who has the dysregulated emotions. And so I think what we're seeing with the Lindsay Clancy trial is, like so many women felt such profound isolation, depression, everything. They were like, oh, my God, motherhood is supposed to be great. I'm going to feel all of this joy, but you don't feel joy. People are like, oh, I would do anything for my child, but you wouldn't do anything for your child. We'll see this in a bit, but there's this great segment.

Oh, I think it's, let me just find it now. Hold on a second chat. I think, man, there's just so many references. Hold on. Let me see if I can find it. In 2012 months interviewing Lindsay Clancy's then husband. In 2024, I spent several months interviewing Lindsay Clancy's than husband. Patrick Clancy for a New Yorker story.

In the course of my reporting, I got to know many of the real people affected by this case. What I saw wasn't a true crime mystery, which is what much of the internet seems to want it to be, like complex tragedy with no easy resolution. Pat agreed to speak with me in 24, in part because he wanted to quash what he called lies and misinformation about his family, and about the kind of mother that Lindsay was. He told me, I wasn't married to a monster. I was married to someone who got sick. Lindsay's trial began last month in Massachusetts.

She's accused of fatally strangling her three young children in 2023 while in the midst of a postpartum mental health crisis. Unfortunately, since the trial started, the misinformation has only appeared to multiply. Social media commentators have propagated conspiracy theories about the case, including a theory that Pat himself, rather than Lindsay was responsible for the killings. Now, there is no evidence to support such an idea. Both the prosecution and the defense in this case agreed that Lindsay killed her the question is whether the defense can persuade the jury that Lindsay met the

to the difficulty of making sense of a case like Lizzie. Part of what makes a tragedy so confounding is that by all accounts, Lindsay had been a devoted mom. It's hard, however, to say it was two conflicting realities. That Lindsay clearly loved her kids and that she ended up killing them. This, by the way, I think is pretty good. This is pretty good. In 2024, I spent several months into... No, there's something about her...

I can't find it right now, but... Okay. So, there's a Facebook post where Lindsay has a 19-month-old, and she's saying, like, This is terrible. Like, I don't know what to do. She reaches out for help to, like, a Facebook mom's group. And she's like, I don't feel good. The person that I hate the most on the planet is my 19-month-old.

And I can't find it right now. Let me see if I can. Man, I really want to find it. Yeah, here it is. Nope. Yeah, there's just so much material about this. It's so hard to find. Okay.

There's just this point, right, where she's like, like, like the thing that I dislike the most on this planet is my kid and the crazy thing is like that's a that's a really common experience right that that and if you have kids you kind of know this like there I mean my experience I think I'm relatively lucky because I love my kids and we make that seem like an achievement right that you love your kids but I think one of the key things that like I have discovered is that I mean there's a lot that you can do to foster your love for your children, but a lot of is automatic. Like when my first daughter was born, people will describe this feeling of like, oh, there's this overwhelming feeling that you would do anything for this.

And I had none of that. I was like, wait, where is the love? I like, I don't feel the love. Right? And so I was present and I did lots of things for her and I changed her diaper and all that kind of stuff. And we like started like we built that bond over time. Right. But I think this is like important to understand. A lot of people will think like, okay, if this child is biologically yours, moment they pop out, you feel lots of love. But I've, I've known many people in my life who have genuinely loved children that are not theirs, have genuinely been a parent after, you know, they marry someone who had a child with somebody else, who do this thing called adopt. And is the love that a parent develops for an adoptive child more or less than for a

biological child. I personally don't think so, right? You can make an argument for it, but I don't think so. And so love develops. And so having kids isn't all great or easy. But let's get back to the content. I mean, the, this. We got, I got sidetracked because I asked you guys why did Dr. Kaye show this. Okay. So now we get to some really interesting stuff. Now we're going to dive into the psychiatry, okay? Dr. Tufts treated Lindsay from honor about September 15th to 2023, prescribed a

variety of different medications but failed to monitor her reactions to these medications or to attend her

worsening psychiatric conditions. Remember, this is the civil suit. I personally

don't think that this is the case based on what I've seen. And I think most

psychiatrists and most mental health professionals don't really consider this to be a

failure of treatment, FYI. Okay. So felt it was difficult to differentiate between how she felt before taking the medication, experienced overnight racing thoughts, and was paranoid of getting suicidal thoughts, something bad was happening, and doesn't want to be alone.

So there's a great clip from the trial. I want to talk about this for a second. So if you guys, a lot of people will criticize decisions that get made, especially by the mental health professionals. So I want to talk about this for a second. So the defense attorney, I don't have the clip right now, but the defense attorney finds this in Dr. Tufts's notes and says, the patient was paranoid for getting suicidal ideation. She was worried that she would become suicidal and basically says like, why didn't you do more? Like, why didn't you, he doesn't say this exactly, but why didn't you hospitalize her, things like that. And I want you guys to, this trial is a great example of a lot of stuff.

sounds bad. It sounds really bad, but I want y'all to play the tape through to the end. If you are someone who is not suicidal, should your doctor hospitalize you because you are worried about getting suicidal? What is the appropriate course of action when something could happen? And if you get hospitalized for the possibility of suicidality, then when does that end, right? So this is what's really challenging about being a psychiatrist.

There's a great paper from, I think, Matt Knock, which I don't have access to right this second, but that basically shows that about 50 to 60 percent of suicidality, or 50 to 60 percent of suicide attempts, happen within five minutes of making the decision that generally speaking. speaking, suicidality is a highly impulsive act. This whole like media idea of like, oh, putting all your affairs in order and all this kind of stuff is, um, it is like not usually what happens. It's highly impulsive and highly acute. So this trial has a lot of like armchair quarterbacking. Hindsight is 2020, except it's not 2020. What it has is a lot of oversimplification of complicated things.

And so there's like other kinds of stuff here that, that, you know, I think just gets kind of misrepresented. Let me find this. Okay. So like here's a good example. So I think because a lot of this stuff is on like short form content, right? And this is why like I don't like short form content. So I'm going to show this.

Now at this point, she's on at least 12 different medications, including the antipsychotic surrecession paranoia. Okay. I'll start. Either she's committed for life or imprisoned for life. Now, how did we get here? So after her third kid was born, she started losing her mind. Postpartum, anxiety, depression, paranoia, insomnia, and evolving psychosis.

And in 2022, she started telling mom and husband that she was having thoughts of killing her kids and started seeking big time medical help. Now, at this point, she's on at least 12 different medication. So this is the kind of stuff that I think is really scary because I think a lot of people will comment and they'll summarize, but she's not on 12 different medications. So I went through and I tried to put together. I had some nice help. Let me find this.

No, notepad. This is what her medication regimen looked like. And we'll get more into this. So, this is where she's not on 12 medications. She was prescribed 12 medications,

which is like really, really different from being on 12 medications. Okay? So this is where like a lot of people will like simplify, but this is like important stuff. Being prescribed 12 medications, is not the same as being on 12 medications.

The problem is that if you want to put together a timeline like this, you have to like sit down and look at the look through her prescribing history, okay, which is what's going to come next. So instead of, so this too, like these kinds of things of instead of working to identify the source of Lindsay's condition, I don't accept that she didn't, that Dr. Tufts didn't do that. Like, I think that's actually what was going on. As we'll see, I think this...

So then the other really important thing about this case is there's one psychiatrist, Dr. Tufts. Then there's Julie Paul, who's a nurse practitioner at a different program, who is now independently, as far as I can tell. I don't know if they're part of the same health care system or what, prescribing medications. It's not clear to me that... So like this is where, like, right? So by mid-November, her insomnia became so bad that she was sleeping approximately three hours a night, went to the emergency room, prescribed tracidone, right? So now an emergency room physician is prescribing something in an attempt to assist her daughter-in-law, Patrick's mother, a nurse at South Shore Health. So now what we've got is we've got the mother-in-law calling someone that she knows from work and is like, hey, can you help?

my daughter-in-law, right? So this person is like, of course. So perinatal behavioral health program at South Shore Health, it's not clear to me if this is connected to Aster Health. So now we've got a third person prescribing medications. And then this also is to me, this to me is wild personally. Like I don't know exactly what the situation was, but to prescribe Ambien, Clonopin and Rameron all at once, I think is like, doesn't sound great.

So the problem with prescribing a lot of medications all at once is you don't know what's working. So let's say this is all prescribed for sleep. You don't know. So if you get a good night's sleep, which one of these bad boys is responsible? Now, it's very possible that, because this is the other kind of detailed thing, we don't actually have the prescribing pattern in lawsuits like this. Right. So one of these may have been a standing medication. Remmeron every night. Clonopin as needed once in the evening. And ambient for like breakthrough. Even to me that sounds

excessive to prescribe three things all at once. But I think what this shows is that she was in immense distress, which she kind of talks about quite a bit. Right. So then she reported nurse, Paul, she was still struggling to continue with sleep, feels disdainting. disoriented, forgetful, not connected to my body. This, by the way, is one of the features of psychosis. So people with schizophrenia will, or not necessarily psychosis, but people with psychotic disorders. There's a, let's see if we can find it. Examination anomalous self-experience, PDF.

So if you guys want to know why, this is the full one? Okay. If you guys want to know what psychosis looks like, this is what psychosis can look like. And do we screen for all of these things? Absolutely not. The examination of anomalous self-experience is a fascinating, I don't have access to it on this PC, but it's like body disintegration. Somatic depersonalization, bodily estrangement. Boom.

What was it? Feel not connected to her body. Right there. Body is this integration. Somatic depersonalization. Morphological change. Anxiety. Six subtypes.

Ontological anxiety. Right. So here's what's really interesting. Feels disforiented, forgetful, not connected to her body. If you go through Lindsay Clancy's complaints, you will see a lot of this stuff. But very few mental health. This is like very hard to use clinically. Because insurance will not pay for this.

And for a psychiatrist to go through these takes about an hour. The only place that I've ever really been able to use the ease is on inpatients who are there 24 hours a day, who are hospitalized for psychosis. Okay. And then there's like passivity of mood, motor disturbances, diminished sense of basic self. we'll see a lot of these. Inability to discriminate modalities of intentionality. Like, what does that even mean? Okay. I mean, I can tell you guys what it means if you guys want to know.

So there's different kinds of things that motivate you. And you can't tell why you want to do something. It's an impairment and motivation. Right? So then Nurse Jolada enters the picture. so like now we have another provider involved is reporting the so she's getting physically dependent on benzos in order to sleep mind is constantly running is feeling overwhelmed

feeling afraid that something awful might happen this also tracks onto some of the stuff in the ease let me see if I can find this maybe not ontological anxiety exactly but like this kind of smells like the ease okay but I I've never seen the ease regularly used in clinical practice outside of McLean Hospital. And I haven't worked into bazillion places, but I've never even heard about people regularly using it. Maybe if you have a first episode psychosis clinic or something like that, someplace that's

highly specialized, they'll use these. And this is not standard of care, by the way. This is like beyond standard of care, right? This is like McLean hospitals, Harvard Medical School, arguably best psychiatric hospital in the country, maybe the best psychiatric hospital in the world, definitely in the running, that has a specific unit. Most hospitals have a psychiatric floor. McLean is one of, there's many across the U.S. and across the country that are excellent. But it's like one of these places where the whole hospital is psychiatry. So there's a whole floor of psychotic patients.

We have multiple floors of psychotic patients at McLean. So you get really specialized care. is not standard of care. So then she reports that she has experienced intrusive thoughts of wanting to die and contacted aspire crisis support, an emergency service over the weekend. So now there is another group of people involved. So then the symptoms persisted, presented by Lindsay caused nurse general to ask if she was having thoughts of harming herself or children. So now this gets really interesting. Denied having such thoughts, but has this vague sense that something bad might happen. So now we have a psychiatric provider who's actually asking her, right?

So this is good. Like the nurse practitioner is like, hey, are you going to hurt somebody, including yourself or anybody else? And she's like, no. So now the question is, now what happens? So do you hospitalize someone against their will? because they're not doing well. Prescribed valium, this seems strange to me, but whatever. I wasn't there.

I'm not in the room. I'm not going to pass judgment. So Patrick called Nurse Gillotta's office, asked for a call back and made it clear that Gillada's office that it was fairly urgent. When Patrick and Lindsay spoke to Nurse Gillotta, they advised her that Lindsay was still experiencing panic and suicidal ideation. Nurse Gillotta advised Lindsay to continue taking the medication. after being prescribed a stronger dose of Zoloft did not sleep for 48 hours.

So this is what's kind of interesting. I don't know if this Zoloft was prescribed by Dr. Tufts or somebody else. But there's this part of the trial where they get on her. Because, yeah, so see, this was prescribed by doctors. Tufts. Let's see if it was prescribed elsewhere. Yeah, this is kind of confusing. I don't know exactly what the timeline is.

Um, right? And this is also where like all the conspiracy theorists who were saying like, oh, Patrick was like a bad dude who was not supportive. And it's like, hey, he's calling the nurse practitioner. He's like worried about his wife. And he's like, hey, this is not working. Um, in mid-December, the emergency. So she continued to seek help, then went to the ED at Massachusetts General Hospital where I was on call for four years. Good times, chat. really working the ed at MGH is a lot of fun during this time period reported having persistent thoughts of suicide right reached out to Dr. Toffs who prescribed her additional medication admitted herself into a day program for postpartum depression started Seraquel so severe depression a feeling of numbness let's go back to the ease diminished sense of basic self

it can fall into this numbness diminished presence there's a lot of questions that you can ask like do you feel like you're not connected to your body the ease is really good I just can't find it worried that she was messed up beyond repair this is also like some of this stuff over here distorted first person

perspective that's something in let me see if I can find this morphological change psychophysical misfit body disintegration spatialization of body experiences. This is like the worry that she was messed up beyond repair, this is what patients who are becoming psychotic or are psychotic or have schizophrenia will say.

So one example of this is something called the cotard delusion. So the cotard delusion is the belief that a part of your body is dead or rotting. It's like, yeah, I'm here, but my kidneys are like rotting inside my body. They're filled with maggots. They're just like, there's a dead thing. you need to take my kidneys out there rotting. Okay. Lindsay's condition continued to deteriorate.

She was admitted herself to McLean. Good job. Remained at McLean, despite her core condition, Dr. Tufts met with Lindsay for only 17 minutes. Ha, ha, ha. Now we get to the fun stuff. So if you guys want to know, like my take, and then ultimately, let's just finish this and we'll offer.

Right. So, and at this point, on January 16th, no suicidal ideation. And then on 24th, she began, did so because she started hearing a compelling and unrecognizable singular male voice that told her, this is your last chance and that she had had to take them with her. She also reported that the voice indicated to her that she should die, that this is her last chance and that her children would suffer if she was gone.

Lindsay then cut her wrists and neck and jumped out of a second floor window in her home. She fell approximately 20 feet to the ground below and suffered a, traumatic spinal cord injuries she is now paralyzed below the sternum this is the villain in the story right and there's a lot of stuff here that suggests bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis and stuff so let's talk about what actually happened okay so this is where things get now we're going to talk to psychiatry okay forget about internet things for a second so i think one of the key things that people forget, really easy to forget, is what is the natural history of postpartum psychosis?

If I get diagnosed with the flu, what is the prognosis of that condition? The prognosis is that generally things get better. What is the prognosis of bipolar disorder? Which, by the way, in my training, one of the key things that I was taught is oftentimes first episode of bipolar disorder manifests in the postpartum period. So what will happen is you'll have a woman with a history of a mood disorder like unipolar depression and she won't have her first manic episode or her first psychotic episode until she becomes postpartum.

And that's when the bipolar disorder becomes uncovered. Okay. So it's cool. Like what I love, I like situation. I mean, like, I'm grateful for my training when I look at something like this because it's like so cool that like I was taught this. It's cool. Like I'm so grateful for the people that taught me these things that, you know, Dr. Leibson taught me to use the ease. All kinds of people taught me about postpartum psychosis, Dr. Beach, right? Like all kinds of people were like,

hey, like, this is the stuff that you need to know. Super cool. Grateful for my training. I feel really well grounded, not to treat this kind of person necessarily, but to like understand what's happening here. So let's talk about what's happening. What is the prognosis for postpartum psychosis? So this happens in about one to three women per thousand life births, which first of all is like really high. Okay, so how many births are there? Let's see. How many births per day in the U.S.? Okay, about 10,000 babies are born each day in the U.S. Okay, about 10,000 babies are born each day in the U.S. Let's say two per thousand live births,

which means postpartum psychosis is happening to 20 people every single day in the U.S. Like, this is not a rare condition. And postpartum psychosis is extreme. So the thing to understand is this stuff is a bell curve. So, you know, the number of people who get postpartum psychosis is like 2%. but what percentage of people get close to postpartum psychosis or 50% of the way there or get severe depression? That number is astronomically higher. And this is something that I think we don't really understand as a society, okay, is that this is like way more common than people realize.

Happens to 20 people a day in the U.S. Right? Like that's really scary. and that for every one person it happens to, there's probably a dozen or 100 or 200 or 300 or 300 people that get halfway there. Not rare? Two out of a thousand is not that rare. We're not talking about some like pre-on disease that happens like one out of 20,000 people, 50,000 people.

It's not rare. One out of a thousand is two out of a thousand is not common. but my point is the event happens a lot. Right? This is what's important. I like the question of not rare. Of course that's rare. This is really important about medicine.

How common is the event? The event happens to 10,000 people every day. So two out of a thousand is like it's happening every day. You need to be on the lookout for it, right? So I think this is going to be like, you know, we talk about the messed up American health care system. And I think this is a good example of kind of everyone's to blame, so no one's responsible. So why does Dr. Tufts have a 17-minute visit?

Because that's what insurance will pay for. Why do people not review medical records? Why do they not see medical records? Why does Dr. Tufts know so she, so Lindsay Clancy calls the suicide hotline twice? Why does Dr. Tufts not know that? because the suicide hotline and Dr. Tufts don't know how to talk to each other. You've got at least five, not including the inpatient providers, that's six or maybe seven. You have seven people trying to take care of this person and very little communication in between them.

And then you may say, but Dr. Kay, like, they should communicate. I totally agree. And my question is when? in what hours of the day? So compensation is an issue. We don't get paid for that, which you can say like, hey, fuck you. You don't deserve to be paid for it.

Fine, but my question is when? Right. So how many fewer patients should I see per day? Because I'm on the phone trying to get medical records from seven different people over the course of a month. And this is how bad the American health care system is. I think this is a good example. of the natural history of this illness is not good.

What a lot of people don't realize is that mental illness can be terminal. We don't think about it like it's terminal. But the mortality impact of something like schizophrenia is really high. Reduces life expectancy by like 20 years or something. I don't know what the exact statistics are. Like that's insane, dude. Bipolar disorder, I'm sure has a mortality. It's not my area of expertise.

I don't have the stats right on my fingertips. And I think this is a case of, I mean, I don't know if her husband's a bad dude. I've never met the guy. You can do an astrological analysis as some people have done to demonstrate how bad he is. Fine. I'm not privy to that. I can't comment on that. I don't know what his star chart says.

we're going to get to that in a second. But like, mentalness is bad, y'all. And pregnancy in the postpartum period is bad. And what I think is really scary about this is like, sure, Lindsay Clancy is on trial and we're all paying attention to it. But my point is that like literally this happens to 20 people every day in the U.S. So in the last year, Lindsay Clancy is not the only person that this has happened to 6,000 women, 7,200 women.

in the last year in the United States. Did we realize that? Maybe it's 3,000 women, maybe it's 4,000 women, maybe it's 10,000 women. But like people saying, hey, this is, this is, what was it? People thinking like this is like a super rare occurrence, this is the case where things got really bad. But actually, this is what's scary is this is the case where we know things. got really bad. What's really scary about this is 6,000 women a year

in the U.S. experiencing postpartum psychosis is like, that's insane. Right? And then when people are like, what is wrong with these people, right? They say her fans have raised

over $700,000. And a woman who killed her kids, like, I'm not going to comment. We'll get to the crime psychosis, true crime psychosis in a second. But like, I want you guys to understand that, like, this isn't, I don't think this is women being crazy. I think this is women understanding that this system has really let her down, arguably. And even then, I don't know how much of this is, even if you have the perfect system, you're still going to have bad outcomes or if you have a great

system. I think there's 6,000 women statistically, somewhere in the ballpark who experienced what Lindsay Clancy went through. They didn't kill their kids, thank God, or at least not that we know of, or not that was public publicized or sensationalized. Okay? That's why people are rallying behind this. The true crime bit will get to in a second. And then the other thing is, you know, we kind of emphasize that she killed her kids, right? Like, that's, and that's not in dispute as far as I know.

So we'll get to the true crime psychosis. This is what I think also this really demonstrates like a lack of understanding of what psychosis is. So I want you guys to think about this for a second. Right. Psychosis is one of the few conditions that I as a medical doctor can hospitalize you against your will. It is so severe. This is one of the things I think we get right. A lot of people in the anti-psychiatry movement who don't like this.

I'm not saying this is 100% right. I'm not saying they don't have a point. I'm not saying that we as a medical system don't take away the rights of our patients. I think we do it all the time. It's a messed up system. But generally speaking, I think people, this is really to me an ignorance of what mental illness can be. Because now what's happened, this is so sad. But as mental illness has become so popular, right, and there's a bunch of TikTok diagnosis and everyone's depressed and everyone's got trauma, we have this vague idea of mental illness.

as a bucket. And it's like, bra, you can be as depressed. I struggle with depression. I have trauma. I have ADHD. I'm not going around killing people. Psychosis is when your experience of reality is so distorted, right? That like psychosis is also, hey, my kidneys are rotting inside me.

Can you please surgically remove them? Like, that's a documented delusion called the co-executive. called the Kotar delusion. People believe this. People will go to a hospital. I've seen these patients. And they will ask you, oh, you're a doctor.

Can you please remove my kidney? And then I'm like, what are you talking about? And then they turn around and they said, I tried to do it myself, but I couldn't get the angle right. And that's when you see there's blood dripping down their side. And it's like, do you think this person is responsible for their actions.

Are they in their right mind? That is psychosis. And I don't know what the deal is with this jumping out of windows thing, but like that's something like literally I've seen that clinically as well. That patients who are in the grips of psychosis will jump out of windows.

And it's not even clear like why. This is what's really scary about it and this is why it's so hard to understand. Because you ask them, why do you do this? what were you thinking? And they have a inability to discriminate modalities of intentionality. They can't tell you why.

Because when I ask you as a human being, why did you do something? You have some perception of why you do things. Sure, you're struggling with motivation and you can't tell like, why do I never wake up on time? Like, you can struggle with yourself on motivation. This is what I'm telling you. guys don't like get it's scary their brain operates their subjective experience of life is completely different there's all kind there there's some weird anchorings that we have as a human being i am me you go around all day long being you you take it for granted that every single day of

your life you grow up as you but if you have psychosis you wake up one day and you have a diminished sense of basic self. That is the scientific term. Your basic self, I am me. That becomes diminished. You are no longer you. Who are you? I don't know, but I'm not me.

Okay? Another delusion. Really interesting. Flanking on the name. Kotar delusion, what? It's right at the tip of my tongue. Capgras. Capgras syndrome.

This is what's really interesting. So in Capgras syndrome, you think that, everyone around you has been replaced by impostors. So they look the same. They smell the same. You see everyone, but

they're all impostors. They've been replaced by aliens or robots. You're living in, what's that movie with Jim Kerry, where he's like in the simulation? Like, that's what people really think. And it's like, like, when you see these patients and they're like looking at you and they're like, I know you look like Dr. Kay, but you're not.

The Truman Show. Thank you. Right? So I don't know if this makes sense. Because, see, this is what's so scary about psychosis is there are so many things within the average person, even if you're depressed, even if you've got ADHD, there's some stuff that basically works that we take for granted is the ground of our experience. Like, if I told you, hey, you know, some of these people wake up and they're not, they're no longer themselves. And you're like, what does that mean? And you're like, oh, yeah, sometimes I don't feel like I'm self. That's not what I'm talking about. you don't feel like yourself that's fine there's a normal fluctuation with not feeling there is

what i'm talking about is like you are not a you're not a human anymore you wake up one day and your sense of fundamental humanness is gone capgras syndrome is really scary you know how like you like there's like your part like you you hang out with your dog and it's not just the physical shape or the smell or the sound of the dog the feel of the dog's fur they're licking your face it's not just like those physical things. There's a dogness to your dog. It's your dog. There's an identity. The ability that allows us to recognize another human being, that becomes impaired with the capgras solution. And so then the question is, if you are literally so out of your mind in a way

that most human beings, myself included, cannot really grasp. You have no idea what it's like when there is a voice in your head that you cannot resist. And it's not your voice. It's an external voice. Persecutory or command auditory hallucinations. In this case, it was a command auditory hallucination. Scary as fuck as a psychiatrist. We even classify the kinds of voices that people have.

Way more common to have persecutory, auditory hallucinations that are more persistent. It's just a voice in your... head is not you, it is something in your head constantly commentating about how you're a piece of shit. Now people say, but I sometimes have negative self-talk. This is not self-talk. This is someone else inside your head telling you all the time that you're a piece of shit. And they exist within you.

And they're constantly tapping you. It's almost like imagine the most toxic comment section that you can on the internet and then inject it into your thought process. So you're there trying to think, trying to do your things, and the most toxic comment section on the internet is there in there making noise. Another feature of worsening psychosis is when there's more than one voice. Then they start talking to each other. Most human beings on the planet have no idea.

They say she killed her kids. You guys have no idea what psychosis is like. I will say this as a psychiatrist. I don't specialize in psychosis. I have no idea what it's like. The one thing that I have come to understand is that we take a lot. And I was not planning on showing the ease over and over and over today, but this is insane, guys. Right?

And so when people are saying, like, she's not responsible. And you can get these glimpses. You can see this text that says, yeah, a voice told me to do it. And then she went and the defense is not disputing this, but they actually, it's really interesting. In the civil lawsuit, they don't admit that she did it. Right. And then she like strangles her kids.

And I think this is, I mean, this is a really strong case for mental illness causing the death of her kids, in my opinion. Right? This has all of the appropriate flags. This is not someone who did something really bad and then is claiming like some dissociative fugue or something like that. This is someone who has a well-documented decline into psychosis, which is why they're suing the providers. The really scary thing is that just because you have a decline into psychosis does not mean that the providers actually did anything wrong. This is the reality that a lot of people have difficulty facing. If I get diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, knock on wood, heaven forbid, I do not.

But if that happens, no one's like, oh yeah, like some people who get diagnosed with cancer die, despite treatment. What we don't say to ourselves, which is really scary, is sometimes people who get diagnosed with mental illness die despite treatment. It's not necessarily a failure of treatment. I'm not passing judgment on whether they did appropriate treatment or didn't do appropriate treatment. What really scares me about the trial is like these little things like medical documentation. So like medical documentation is so tricky because what are you documenting for? Are you documenting to not get sued? Are you documenting for clinical usefulness?

Are you documenting so that insurance pays the bills? These are all three different kinds of documentation. patient. And what do you want doctors to do? You want them to document in a way that insurance covers your bills? Do you want them to document in a way that is actually useful to you and the other

providers who are taking care of you? Or do you want to document in a way that they don't get sued? And this is the world that we live in. Now, speaking of this, like, sometimes bad things happen. This is where there's a lot of stuff. I think psychologically, that's kind of

going on. So, you know, I don't think that there's really any evidence that I've seen that Lindsay Clancy was a bad mom. And this creates, so what do I mean by evidence? So for example, there's no evidence that she was abusive to her children. Even I think the Facebook post, which kind of shows that she was like, I detest my 19 year old, that to me as a mental health professional is a step in the right direction because she's not accepting this. She's like, hey, this is a problem. Can y'all help me? Can y'all other mothers on the internet help me how to like learn patience and love for my child? She's trying to move things in the right direction. And you guys can think she's a bad mom because she murdered her kids. I personally think that

that speaks to ignorance of mental illness because yeah, I just I just don't think that that's, that's not my take on it. And also I'm not saying that I'm like the arbiter of truth on that. I think like once you understand psychosis, like you understand that like it makes people do crazy things. That's why we call it psychosis. The whole nature of the term is it's a separation from reality. You're no longer functioning. And like once you understand the kinds of delusions that people have, like Capgas syndrome or Kotard delusion or all kinds of other delusions that people will have, like you realize like how messed up people are.

When people start trying to remove their own organs because they think they're dead, not I'm not all dead it's just one of my organs is dead right and like when that's the thing that she's got because they just use this term psychosis we don't know what that is most human beings don't right that's like like do you think that person is in their right mind so and this is what's also scary about it is like the distortion of right mind that most human beings are familiar with, like depression or anxiety. We say that too is not right mind. And I'm with you. But the really scary thing about psychosis, it's like distortion on a whole different level. So I'll tell you guys a pleasant version. And by the way, you guys do not need to be scared, okay, of people with

schizophrenia or even who are psychotic. Very few of them are violent. So I'll give you guys a great example, my favorite example of a patient that taught me about psychosis. I was working as an intern. And I was working with a patient who had a delusional disorder. She had all kinds of delusions. And one day she comes up to me and she says, you know I'm your mom, right? I'm like, what? She's like, yeah, there's a conspiracy. They're not going to let you know, but like, you're my son. And I was like, no. And she was like, no, really, you are. Like, I know it's hard to accept, but you weren't there when you, like, you don't remember your birth.

I remember your birth. Like, I'm your mother. I'm like, no, you're not. Lady, you're like 10 years older than I am. And she's like, nope, I'm your mom. She's like, if you don't believe me, get a DNA test. So I was like, okay, I'll see you tomorrow. Next morning I see her in the hall.

She's like, hey, did you get that DNA test? I was like, no. She's like, well, you should probably get that DNA test. I'm proud of you, son. And then the next day, she's like, did you get the DNA test yet? And it's like, I don't even know. Like, what do you do? Like, I'm not going to get a DNA test, right?

Because a DNA test would be, I need to collect a blood sample from her. And I have to go, I guess, draw blood somewhere and get a D. And like, I'm not going to go to my attending and be like, hey, like, So I can't prove her wrong. And every single time she gives me this like knowing smile, she's like, yeah, I know. Oh, you didn't get it. Okay. Probably safer that way.

And this is the thing. It's like I've worked with a lot of patients with schizophrenia and psychosis. Many of them are like really pleasant, wonderful human beings. And it really is the illness. Like sometimes they have like bad days and things get hard. But I think Lindsay Clancy is like a good example of in some way. a good patient. They're really trying. Right. And I think that's why her, there's a tendency to sue her providers because she tried really hard, which is what her civil complaint seems to paint.

Right. That's her civil complaint. She was absolutely engaged in treatment. I think the sad truth is that even if there isn't a successful, I mean, messed up mental health care system, we still are not, we don't bat at 100. Like part of the problem of psychiatry is that we can't MRI you. We can't do a blood test. We can't know definitively what's wrong. What's really scary about this is we can ask, right? The most we can do is ask, hey, are you suicidal? And then someone says no, but that could change tomorrow.

And how do you sit with it? Like, what do you do? Do you just hospitalized people until they're what? What? What's the outcome that causes you to discharge them? Because they may still be afraid of becoming suicidal in the future. How many people did she call sons? though, quite a bit, many. That was part of her delusion.

Is that she frequently thought that she was the mother of people. And not thought, like, she really, like, believed it. Like, it's a delusion. So in the same way, so if you guys want to understand, you know, what delusion really is, you know who your parents are, right? With the same degree of certainty, which is not like, I know who my, it's so, it's not even conscious. it's like in the background of your existence.

These basic things like, I know who my parents are. This is mom and this is dad. It's like it's the groundwork, the foundation of you're consciously thinking about what you're going to eat for dinner tonight. You're not even like focused on that. There's all kinds of stuff that we take for granted. That's what's disturbed in psychosis. And that's what makes it such a scary illness.

That you're you. like we take weird things for granted. Like when I die, all of me will die at once. Just really basic stuff that we just take for granted. We have no idea that we take for granted. When I live, I will live all at once. But if you've got the Kotar delusion, that simple truth of that there is life and there is death, not for Kotar delusion.

There's life and death coexisting at the same time. Completely weird. right and then we have the internet which doesn't understand these things but is quick to pass judgment all these people are crazy right i'm going to break up with you because right and so there's stuff like this too which is like lindsay didn't have support she had multiple therapist psychiatrist her parents his parents daily did care right apparently i don't know if this is true and nanny that stayed with her five hours a day three days a week while her husband was working from home, right?

So I think this is an example of, of, I don't know exactly what's going on here, but I don't know if, like, this is an example of one of these things where I don't know if this person understands what psychosis is. Maybe they do, right? And this is a lady that, let's not forget, was, like, jumped out of a window and is now paralyzed from the sternum down. So how do you, like, factor that in to her rightness of mind? um the last thing is like let's talk about the husband thing so there's a lot of evidence that

spending time on the so there's a couple of different things that are going on in my opinion this is now i'm just flying by the seat of my pants okay so there's the evidence based scientific medical understanding of postpartum psychosis and all that kind of stuff that we've talked about there things like the examination of anomalous self-experience. And then there's what the hell is going on on the internet. So I think what I see in women who this is affecting deeply is that there's a strong sense of empathy. What people are seeing, what women are seeing with Lindsay Clancy is there would I be but for the grace of God. What they see is in the back of their mind, there was one path.

Rare path, but you can see the possibility of everything just really going downhill. And they see a woman for whom everything went downhill. They see a woman who did try to get psychiatric help, who did try to figure out how to learn her 19, love her 19 month old. Right? And they feel those feelings. They grapple with those feelings. And they oftentimes felt those feelings in complete isolation because there's so much shame for having those feelings.

And it's such an immense, lonely struggle. And so I think a lot of people rally around that. Right. And I think if we really want to understand what's going on, we need to understand if you're a dude on the planet today and you're confused about why all these women are rallying behind Lindsay Clancy. What you really need to do is talk to a dozen women about what they're experiencing. of having children was like. And that conversation should ultimately try to include the worst parts of the experience for the woman.

Now, I'm not saying that men don't have it tough or anything like that. I'm just saying, if you want to understand why women are doing this, this is a great place to start. Right? Just talk to women about what's it like to have kids. What were the worst parts? I mean, you can't start with that. You've got to get to it eventually.

and then you'll understand. You'll understand the immense sense of, I don't know if this makes sense. You feel like such a failure that like suicide becomes a good idea. Like your children would be better off without you. Right? And to have something that you love

and to do such a bad job at something that you care about so much, and something that you want to do a good job with, something that deserves something that this child didn't do anything wrong. They don't deserve a depressed mom. They deserve a loving mom. They deserve a caring mom. Because you do love that child in some way.

And you feel that. And it gets all weird and tangled up. I don't know if this makes sense. Right? You love it so much, but you can't feel that love. And you're angry at it all the time. And then it's like, oh, my God, like you didn't, it doesn't deserve this. And who are the, who am I who is doing such a bad job?

something that is young and precious and beautiful and innocent. And here it is saddled with your terrible self. Right. And like that is like really hard to live with. And I'm not saying that men are like impervious to this feeling as well. It's just, you know, we don't have hormones the same way they do. But I think there's like more to it. Because while I think the energy, the emotional energy,

of isolation and empathy is very, very strong. The way that this ends up is not necessarily healthy. So I'll give you an example. Okay, so like, I'm going to just kind of talk for a second. So, like, there are a lot of these posts on social media that will, like, have pictures of Patrick. They'll be like, yeah, I don't trust him. And so I was trying to figure out, right, instead of just assuming, I did something dumb, chat, I did something dumb.

Instead of saying, man, these women are just crazy, they have no idea. Let me just stop there. I did something dumb. And I was like, okay, let's do some research and try to understand when all this women's intuition is going off, what's the deal with women's intuition? Right? Because one of the weird things that I've learned as a psychiatrist is to, and it sounds weird, believe my female patients. And I'm not trying to be like a champion of feminism here. I'm just saying, like when a patient comes into my office, my approach is, you know what, if a patient says something, let me at least see if it's true instead of assuming it's not true.

And there's evidence that, so here's where I piss everybody off, that a women's intuition is not significantly superior to men's intuition, number one, but there are some features. So what women's into, what women are better at is like reading facial emotions. Okay. But if men, if it matters to men, we, we are basically in the same ballpark. But women are able to detect discongruity. This is kind of my clinical take. Okay.

So what I understand women's intuition to be is they can tell that something is off. But what I've never really seen convincing evidence of, they can tell that something's off, but it doesn't tell them necessarily what the truth is. That's how I understand it based on my experience. So when I have a female patient and they tell me, hey, I think something bad is going to happen, like I think it's really worth digging into it because the conclusion that their mind jumps to is not necessarily correct, but the suspicion that their mind has absolutely is based on something. That's the assumption that I operate under. Does that make sense? And that nuance, I think, is completely lost on social media. Like, you can tell that something shady is going on, but you don't actually have the data to know what it is. but you can detect emotional discongruence.

Something here isn't right. And this is where the brain rot sets in. Because there's something about this. There's some combination of shared empathy. There's some combination of something called a just world hypothesis, which is like that things should be good. I think a big part of this is also displaced blame from women's own experiences towards their main.

partner. So there's, I think there's a big sentiment. And I'm not, this is just like my sense. Of everyone's blaming her, why is no one blaming him? That this is unfair. That he was their dad. He should have done more. He was working from home.

He didn't take care of the kids. And there's a lot of like empathic resonance with that, right? Because a lot of women who have kids will have some degree of anger. towards their male partner, whether it's justified or unjustified. If you're jumping to a conclusion there, like, that's where, like, I warn you to be hesitant, right? Because we don't know. And what we're seeing is a woman who tried her best being crucified. And that's not right.

And so someone is really at fault here, but it's not the mother who loved her kids. So who is it? Let's blame the man. Let's blame her husband, who divorced her for three. months afterward, who started a go fund me that raised $1.7 million that's not paying her legal defense, right? Maybe he got remarried, I don't know. Or he got remarried maybe a few months after, something like that. Right. And so now what you've got is if you divorced her, if he divorced her after this happened and then got remarried, what is the resentment that women hold towards their

male partners who divorced them during a time of difficulty and then got married to? someone else. So all of that energy, my take, not having spoken to a single one of these people, is that this stuff is coming out. And then this is like we're making ice cream. So we're adding some ingredients to the ice cream machine and then we're going to whip it up. And we whip it up with the echo chamber. Right? We whip it up with this idea that some people start to believe this, okay echo chamber effect on social media where there's this really interesting like sentiment or there's this really interesting thing that happens on social media which is when you see a lot of a theory that theory starts becoming truth right because social media becomes data

our brain doesn't know how to tell that just because i see something 15 times on social media that's actually zero data points but our brain doesn't know that that it thinks it's 15 data points. And so there's this increasing sentiment that this is almost like this kind of social proof that other people are saying this too and other people are saying this too. And this is what an algorithm does. Right? It pushes you towards things that you

have already watched, makes things more extreme. And then eventually you're seeing so much of this stuff that in your mind, this is data. And before you guys go say, oh my God, like y'all, these women are crazy. It's like you take anything.

You take alpha males. You take beta males. You take Republicans. You take Democrats. You take Israel. You take Palestine. This is happening to all of us. I think anywhere that you look at the largest problems in the world, you will see an algorithmic

shaping by technology. Really good example of this is like data centers and AI. These companies have billions of dollars worth of value. have billions of dollars of costs and have tiny revenues and are investing billions of dollars in data centers, that it's not clear who's going to pay for it. At this point, AI has become speculation that we're going to get in while it's rising, and I still don't understand what the business model is. Maybe that's my ignorance.

Maybe I'm a complete idiot. But I don't think so. I think what's going on is all the people who are pro-AI are living in one. world and all the people who are anti-AI are living in another world. Like all the people who are pro-AI are not talking to the high school teachers that are now dealing with kids who can't read because AI is writing all their essays. Right. And if you're if you're a professor in college, it's a terrible place to be because all of your students are using AI. And if all of your students are using AI and you start failing them, they stop coming to college.

And if they stop coming to college, your tuition revenues go down. And if your tuition revenues go down, your small liberal arts college goes out of business. And so you have administrators in universities that are like, yeah, just pass them. They get their money either way. Right? Now, I don't think that people at AI companies are taking the responsibility. for what's happening in college, which is how our society works.

Right? I'm responsible for this thing, not the downstream impacts of this thing. That's not my problem. Case in point, if somebody else is struggling in the world, that's not your problem. You're responsible for yourself.

This is my domain. I'm not, it's not my fault that people are struggling over there. That's not my responsibility. Okay, fair enough. But then is it the AI guy's responsibility? for the fact that college is falling apart. Yeah, it's there.

Other people should take responsibility for the rest of society. Ah, you're right. Oh, fuck me. That's the one thing that we can agree on, right? Is that other people should take responsibility. That's the one thing that we can agree on is that it's somebody else's fault.

And if you guys want a summary of the Lindsay Clancy trial, there it is. It's somebody else's fault. The only problem is that we disagree on whose. Yeah, so then there's this weird stuff like astrology, which, let me see if I can find this. This is fascinating to me. Here it is. Right. So like, then there's stuff like this. Leos don't kill Gemini's do. Leos don't kill their cubs. Nope. Not buying it. If he's a Gemini and she's a Leo, it was toxic between it. He did it.

That's all I need to know. Like, right? So, and then we get to the last kind of weirdest, most subtle problem. This is the biggest reason I don't believe him. So like, I want you guys to appreciate. for a moment. Like, this is what I think is fascinating. When someone makes a post about what's wrong with these people, what they show is the worst thing. Does that make sense? They don't, they're like all these women are supporting Lindsay Clancy.

Right? So, like, here's an example. Right? So we have this post. We have this post. Right? Like, this is crazy. These people are right.

And then, What's really interesting to me is in the same, in the same Reddit post, we tie this to this. This is the problem with the internet. And no one is, this piece of content is going to go nowhere because it requires some thought. So if you look at the stuff that has the most engagement on the internet, it takes a factual premise. and then it takes the worst example. So in philosophy, we call this straw manning. We, I'm not a philosopher.

Right, but that's basically what the internet is made of. It's like, let me find the worst example of this thing that I don't understand. And once I find the worst example, it will validate my sense that these people are stupid. and you can take any brain-rotted corner of the internet, any React content polarizing piece, and you will find this formula. I'm going to find something that is true, and then I'm going to find,

and I'm going to have a reaction to it that is generally negative, and then I'm going to find the stupidest example that supports my view. This is basically A, B, C, and, done. Happens with political stuff. Happens with just generally like React streamers, right, React content creators. When I do react content, I fall into this too, because this is another general problem, which is that when we're reacting to something, we have 60, we have a small thing

to react to. Ah, I wish I could find this paper. There's this other really great principle at play here, which is when something is ambiguous, it gets filled in with our own experience. So when you see a tweet, when you see a picture like this, okay, this is the biggest reason I don't believe him. I want you all to think for a moment, what data does this person have?

None whatsoever. In fact, there is an absence of data. There's no data here. but we see something really scary happening on the internet, which is the less data you have, the more sure you are. So what's going on there? What's going on there is the more ambiguity there is around something, the more your own experience has to fill in the gaps.

So a simple example. If someone says, hey, oh look, you want to come to a birthday party? I say, sure. In my mind, they haven't told me what the birthday party is. I come with a present. Why? Did anyone tell me to bring a present? No. I come expecting cake. Why? Did anyone tell me that cake was there? No. They just used the words birthday party and I fill in the gaps. So we're living in a world where the more ignorant you are, the more sure you are. Because of this basic, simple aspect of human psychology that we are not aware of. And it is literally destroying the planet. that's not even an exaggeration.

It's not an over, it's like literally, like causing environmental problems, causing war, causing death, causing health care problems. Like, we're just feeling, we're just judging people without understanding what the fuck we're doing. And we are so confident that we're right. And if you want to say I'm guilty of this too, even in my assessment of this, arguably I'm falling into the same trap. Because I don't really know, oh, what's going on the on the internet? I'm Dr. Kay. I know what's going on on the internet. I know.

It's ambiguous, and I'm feeling it in with my ideas. It could be happening right here. And I'm really worried about what this trial shows. And people are, like, we see the effects of it, what's cracking at the edges of our society, right? We're seeing dropping birth rates. We're seeing men who are no longer going to college. We're seeing struggling with dating and mating. We're seeing political problems, climate issues, right?

We've got these terrible heat waves and like, oh, yeah, that's not climate change. it's not like this was actually predicted. It's not like this is in accordance with some models. And there are some shortcomings to climate science to be sure. Some major ones. The simplest of which is we can't run experiments. Right. Like, let's not forget that.

A lot of science is about running experiments. It's hard to run an experiment on an atmosphere. But this is like, I'm scared, y'all. Like, this is a problem. And then I have to ask myself the question. So when someone's saying Dr. Kay, it's already cooked, I think it is cooked. The weird thing is I'm not hopeless. So when you're faced with a cooked society, a cooked planet, cooked situation, cooked dating situation,

there's so much outside of the world, I mean, sorry, so much in the world that we have no impact on. And man, it's going in the wrong direction real fast. And by the way, we're hurtling towards disaster. Y'all. The rate of change is increasing. Okay? So then the question becomes, what do we do? What do you all think, chat?

What do we do? Back to the caves. Get high playing a rocket league. That's the wrong thing to do. Clean your room. Yeah, now we're getting there. Meditate. We give up.

give up. I'm not blackpilled. Cry and cry some more. That can be step one. Abandon all hope, absolutely not. Take a DNA test. Become social. Control what we can. Yeah, that's the, I mean, that's my answer. Okay. That's my answer. How can I not be depressed when this is the reality of the situation? To realize that, okay, so I mean, there's some good practical questions there. So the first is to realize that just because a situation is bad. So how do you not be depressed when the world is falling apart? Step number one, recognize your own ignorance. The more firm you are in the conclusion that the world is falling apart.

You're not the arbiter of truth. You don't actually like, you have lots of data, sure. Step number two about recognizing your own ignorance is understand that you can't see the future. you can't see the future. I know it's insane. Like you can't see the future. Like I know, I know you think you can, but hopelessness requires being able to see the future. So the more that you recognize your own ignorance, and the more that you recognize that you can't see the future, the better off you're going to be.

And those are two really important steps. And the reason they're important steps is because we need fluidity with our thoughts. We need flexibility to do what comes next. This is the big problem. When we're dealing with hopelessness, we try to fix it. But the first step to fixing hopelessness is to put our mind in edit mode instead of read-only mode. If you try to start making changes in there before you introduce that fundamental cognitive flexibility, which comes through humility, which comes through ignorance, which comes to the admission of your own ignorance,

Admission of your own ignorance is the first step to learning. Learning is a neuroscientific change. It's neuroplasticity. Literally, those two things are one and the same. So in order to create neuroplasticity, your brain has to be in an editable state. As long as you have a conclusion, there's no neuroplasticity. So the first thing that you've got to do is realize you're wrong about the hopelessness of the world. all of these things can be true, but you're not omniscient and you can't see the future.

That's step number one. Step number two, take a deep breath. Step number three, I love this, is work on what you can control. Now, here's the problem with that. Because if I say work on what you can control, you're like, but it's not enough. How do you know that? Because it doesn't solve the world's problems. You don't need to solve the world's problems.

this is where some really cool stuff comes in. Hope, psychologically speaking, is tied to autonomy, not to outcomes, not to realities. Like, just how it works. The more you control about your sphere, the more hope you will have, period. So the world is falling apart. Oh, my God.

Everything is going wrong. And what can one human do? Right? What can I do? What can one human being do? Get watched by about 10 to 15 million people per month. Unique viewers across our platforms. What can one human, oh, but you are Dr. Gay?

I'm not. You're right, so you can do way better. You're not some reject a loser whose past midlife. I'm not midlife, y'all. Life expectancy for men is like 72 years. Midlife was 36. I'm seven years post midlife. I'm on the I'm on the down swing, y'all.

I'm on the downhill. My back aches. I've got gray in my hair. It's so hard, man. Suck it life. Right. So this is where the last thing about hopelessness. Hopelessness is tied to ego.

It is tied to your perception of what you are capable of. And I think a lot of that ego is wrong. You'll say, but yeah, but I know this because historically I used to be this way. Look at all the data that I have. This is going to be kind of hard to explain. Your ego was not determined by the data. Your identity is not determined by your past, like technically. Because people will say, yeah, I believe I am this thing because of look at all the – I'm a loser because a girl has never looked at me.

That's a fact. Therefore, I am a loser. the interesting thing is it's actually the opposite. It is your belief that you are a loser that determines which data points your brain hangs on to. So you think your identity is logical because of the data. It's actually the exact opposite. That's just not how the brain works. The sense of identity is not informed by data.

In fact, it's the opposite. The sense of identity creates the filter that you use to look at your past. fact. If you guys want, if you don't believe me, let's go through some sources. Cognitive biases and depression. We know there's a cognitive filter. We know that depression is hyperactivation of the default mode network. We know that the default mode network is where our sense of identity comes from.

Hyperactivation of identity increases cognitive biases when looking at the past. Right? That's one piece. I can give you more. Other examples. Psychedelics. psychedelics artificially, not artificially, chemically, induce deactivation of the default mode network. When we deactivate the default mode network and we deactivate the identity, what follows is a reinterpretation of your past.

Oh my God, I realize now that things were not that way, that really I do have self-love and I do have value, is used as a healing modality in psychiatry and in shamanism. through clinical trials, not FDA approved yet. Don't try this at home because you can fuck up your brain. Second bit of data. Right? And this is the tricky thing. No, no, no, but Dr. Kay, I know I'm right. Ah, how?

I, I know, I am right. Cognitive bias is for other people. Default mode network activation to reinterpret the past is for others. But I, I am right. I'm 100% right. Oh, interesting. No, but Dr. Kay, it's not just me. Really?

Yeah. This happens to everybody. What do you mean? Oh, yeah. There's this cool thing, Dr. Kay. It's called the Internet. And on the Internet, you get lots of data about other people's experiences. And it happens to everybody on the Internet.

I didn't realize that the Internet is the source of truth. Oh, my God, I'm so wrong. Forget about peer-reviewed scientific literature, studies on psychedelics in the default mode network, studies on depression and cognitive biases. Like, forget about all that. You saw it on the Internet. That must make it true. This is the problem. Because your brain can't tell the difference between data in the real world and Internet data.

Like, no one's can. Mine can't. And this is why what's so interesting is I had one impression of the Lindsay Clancy case. And my wife had an impression, too. But I browse Reddit, and she browses Instagram. So the realities that we're living in are completely different. And so someone in chat, Benjamin Pelletier is saying this is pure gold. Let's be clear about what this is.

This is a random dude on the internet talking. Like literally, let's be clear. What is this? This is just some guy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you are being impacted by this, like this is huge. Because if you look at, oh, my God, everything around you is falling apart. Oh, my God.

Everything's falling apart. Even Dr. K's like everything's falling apart. Oh, my God. But here on the internet, we may be able to impact you a little. bit. And if you're a little bit impacted, maybe you can change a little bit. And if you can change a little bit, maybe your life will be a little bit different. The world is not going to change, but you can change. And if you guys want to know my last take, by the way, anyone here, I'm just curious. Anyone here from someone asked about a deep dive into perception? We did that, right?

Blue Jazzcat, deep dive into perception. So like, this is what I like about live streaming and this is what I like about memberships. On memberships and on live streaming, I just get to talk. And what I'm actually hunting for, this is the really scary thing. See, everyone says, myself included, watching another YouTube video won't change your life. Action. Action is what creates change, not just watching something. But really scary thing is that I think what changes life is aha moments.

Like, that's what really changes. It's the aha moment, the moment when things click. And so the scary thing is that what I really try to do, like sometimes I'll talk about things and I'll teach stuff, but really what I'm trying to do is create an aha moment. But an aha moment is not teaching the thing. The aha moment is in you.

It's not me. Like, I can't create it for you. I can try. And so the weirdest thing is that I actually, think you can watch stuff on the internet and you can transform your life. The difference is the way in which you watch it. And the biggest problem right now is the internet can be used to transform you. The problem is the way in which our dopaminergic mind consumes the internet is not going to give you aha moments. It's going to give you dopamine. Aha moment is not dopamine.

So sometimes what I have to do is for those of y'all that stick around for a while and if you've been in memberships, you know what I'm talking about. We get to this point, and it's usually one hour and 75 to 15 minutes into a lecture. You guys know what I'm talking about? Yeah, working through an action reference. So, like, there's something that happens, but you guys have to be here for a while. You can't clip it and ship it. If you clip it and ship it, there's a really interesting, you know, like I was talking.

to my brother the other day. And I was asking him like how he learns. And he's like, yeah, I read these like textbooks. He reads tomes. And he was like, yeah, like they're really hard to understand. But when I, it's in the struggle to understand them that I learn. And when something is too easy to understand, I don't actually learn. And so what I kind of realized is I was like, well, hold on a second.

do you guys know what the subjective experience of learning is what learning feels like what is the subjective experience of learning right so the subjective experience of a caloric deficit is hunger very good beautiful beautiful palm zweigadler yeah tie out it feels like confusion the aha moment that so to have learned when you're done doing the learning is the aha moment. But like literally, the process of learning, the finality of learning is the aha moment. The process of learning is confusion. Dissinence, struggle, trying to understand. And what do we have on the internet?

We have everyone being sure they're right, which is why no one learns and everything gets worse because no one is learning. Everyone is sure. No one is learning. Right? So this egotistical, I am a perfect case example of watching and being transformed. You want to watch and be transformed. You can watch and be transformed.

This is what I hate to say. Because if you believe that you can watch and be transformed, you won't do anything. But I got to be honest. Like, let's be precise. Where does the transformation happen? It happens in the aha moment. And sometimes when you get deep into something, it can't be a 20 minute. Here's five tips.

Like, that's interesting. It's information. But getting deep into something. Which, if you guys have done memberships, like, that's what I really shoot for over there. And on live stream. These are the two places that I do it. This is why we don't want to give up live stream. Live streams numbers are terrible.

Because we don't view bot. Why do we do it? We do it because out of the 2,000 to 10,000 people that watch this. because this will get edited and uploaded to YouTube, but even then you may lose it in the editing. Which is fine, because people on YouTube are, you know, it's okay. No problem. But pay attention.

Don't give up. I'm not going to give up, y'all. Yeah. You just had three moments. Good. That's what we do this for. I think one of these other things that people think is true in today's world is that bigger is better. More numbers.

Number go up. Be happy. Stock market. go up, it's good. Stock market go up more, it's also good. Is it bubble? No. Bigger is better.

There's no consequence. Crash is not coming. Don't think that. Buy, nah? AI will save the world. It's good. Yeah, it's good. Look at how much graphics cards are worth.

Just buy. Buy everything. Everything's good. Everything's great. Everything's getting better. Right? Yeah. A is going to do everything.

Has AI done everything? No, no, no, no. Five years ago, three years ago, AI came out and it was good, and we was great, ag, artificial general intelligence is right around the corner. It's right around the corner. Yes, now we can do coding with it. It's good. We are firing people.

We are going to replace people. It's good. It's good. A is going to save the world. It's going to fuck you, but save the world. It's good. Don't worry. Everything's getting better.

Right? I don't even remember what I was saying. I think it's time to go, chat. I don't even remember what my point was. But yeah, we're not going to give up. Oh, yeah, numbers being bigger is better. No, so this is important to understand. And one of the things that I really dislike, actually,

so I both love and hate the 10,000 hour rule. I think it's a brilliant insight from that Malcolm Gladwell either discovered or popularized. But what I really hate about the 10,000 hour rule is then now everyone thinks that 10,000, hours is what you need to get good at something. I don't think that's true. The quality of the hour matters a lot.

And so watching more, this is what's tricky about it, watching more can be transformative. But it's not just that watching more is transformative. You know, and the 10,000 hour rule is not super bad. So medical school, for example, is 10,000 hours. I did the calculation some time ago. It's right around 10,000 hours. and you learn a lot, right? It's the quality.

You have to get into it. You have to work with it. And the person who's asking about deep diving or perception, I think it's, we did it, right? Didn't we already do it? So if you guys want aha stuff, a lot of it's over on the membership side, passively watching an hour long.

Dr. K video equals 10,000 hours of active learning. Yeah, dude. Give me that praise. Give me that copium. Yeah, feed that ego, boy. Let's go. Okay. Thoughts on you?

Bro, UFOs? Like, I don't know, but I mean, it seems like there's evidence. Like, a lot of people are like, yeah, they're real. I don't know, though. I mean, I think they're real. Even more important is I want you, I want, I want to believe they're real. Yeah, dude. Wouldn't it be cool if aliens are real?

Dude, I love the X-Files. It'd be great. Yeah. So I remember a video where you said people can. can use self-help videos as a means to procrastinate and not actually get better in life, what is the difference with what you're saying? Great question. So here's the difference.

So see, one of the biggest, I think, mistakes that we make when we're trying to fix our problems is that we devalue our own contribution. Okay? So the difference is the way that you show up. So another good example of this is like being ill. So being ill is something that can be quite genuine and negatively impact your work and you should take a day off. But if you're not careful, being ill will hijack. Your subconscious can use your illness as an excuse.

And there's a lot of data about this. So like the best example is the overlap between pseudo-seizures or non-epileptiform seizures and epilepsy. So pseudo-seizures are quote-unquote fake seizures. They're not really fake seizures. they're just not caused by neurological activity. They're people who are faking it. But the interesting thing is 50% of those people who have quote-unquote fake seizures have real seizures too. So what's really going on is their brain learns that when they have a seizure, it results in certain things.

And when the brain decides you need those things, it'll give you a pseudo-seizure, even if there's not an epileptiforma activity. So this is the scary thing is that I think a lot of people watch videos. to avoid facing things. That's absolutely true. And I think that videos can be transformative. That's also true. So what's the difference? The difference is in two places.

One is the quality of the video, right? The second is in your attitude. Your approach to it. So are you, like, I'll put it, I'll put it this way. Like, actually, an even better example is, is the knowledge of, of calculus in the textbook. Because you can look at a page of a textbook once and get nothing,

and you can do it again and get something. Even the first time you do it, you can get something. What's the difference? It is in your attitude towards the object. So it's like the more seriously that you pay attention, the more that you internalize what is there, the better it is. and someone in chat was saying I'm trying to sell memberships.

Let me be clear. So sure, that's true. But here's the real thing that I'm going for is that when we make a video for YouTube, we are not competing on that level. We are competing on the attentional level. Right? So in order to make a successful YouTube video, we have to compete on different variables.

What I like about memberships is that I'm not competing. I get to produce what I want. what I think is helpful, right? So we're not playing that game. That's the big difference. And the sad thing is we've gotten a lot of negative feedback around this. So, like, an example is title and thumbnails. Guys, it is brutal.

What the data that selects our title and thumbnails is brutal. And we don't even go like super clickbait. But it's like, we're talking. 50 percentage points of swing in performance. We tried doing it and I was like, title should be what is in the video. And it gets like, I don't know if you guys saw this, but so here's just a great example.

We had a video about erectile dysfunction. We changed the title in thumbnail to be something that was more resonant and it got like a million views in a month or something like that. you know so i i think it's it's that's just the world we live in would you ever talk about asexuality absolutely i have talked about asexuality i'm pretty sure deep dive into uap and ufo i don't know what i would say what do i know about uip and ufo i appreciate the sentiment but what kind of

psychotherapy do i specialize in i would call it eclectic i mean so so i i draw on a lot i think this is what a lot of psychotherapists do is they draw on a lot of traditions, but I, I, I, I draw on a lot of the roots that have developed into what's called third wave psychotherapy. What book can we read to learn about today's subject? Oh, I don't know about book, but it's a good question. I mean, I think it's such a new thing. And, um, I would say that the, the, the, because I mean, you guys, ask me for book recommendations a lot, and that's something we're actively working on. But I read scientific papers. I mean, I also read books, but, but like most of what I pull from, I rarely pull from a book, unless it's like a yogic text or like something like that. But I don't read,

you know, I'll reference like stuff like this. This is a great book. Let me see if this is the good one. Yeah, this is a good one. Depression and Dispression. P. Page 182 to 206. But like, I mean, it's not, anyway, I don't know. I mean, like, I have, I can show you guys the papers. So this is a good paper from my favorite journal, P-NAS. It's on here. I'll show you guys the, the paper is called, I think this is probably the closest thing. So echo chamber effect on social media. Sex differences in facial. This is, I was trying to figure out what's the deal with women's intuition. Decline optional cookies, bro. Right? So females on average are better than males at putting themselves in other's shoes and imagining what the other person is thinking or feeling.

Sex differences in the ability to recognize nonverbal displays of emotion. And what I really like, by the way, y'all, is everyone looks at the end. I actually think the best part of the paper is the introduction. So if you guys want to understand science, what you should do is read the background section and introsections of papers. Because background and intro is going to be the summary of the existing literature. It's really good. Background and intro is peak.

I oftentimes find that the discussion and results of a study are like not, for me personally, as is useful as the beginning. Okay. Thanks a lot, guys. Take care of everybody. love you guys and have a good weekend. 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.