HealthyGamerGG - The Hidden Emotion Infecting Your Life (Dislike)

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K breaks down why disliking someone feels useful, addictive, and justified, yet quietly causes real damage to your mental clarity, stress levels, and long term decision making. Using personal stories, clinical examples, and research, he explains how hostility narrows your thinking, fuels rumination, and keeps you emotionally stuck, even when you believe dislike is protecting you or motivating change. Instead of pushing forgiveness or pretending bad behavior is acceptable, this episode focuses on removing dislike itself. Dr. K walks through a practical mindset shift rooted in compassion without tolerance, helping you judge people clearly, set realistic expectations, and make calm long term plans that are not driven by fluctuating emotions. Topics covered include: Why dislike is one of the most addictive emotions and how it distorts perception Hostile attribution bias and how disliking someone limits your ability to solve problems The physical and mental health costs of chronic hostility and stress Why forgiveness often fails and how removing dislike is different A step by step mental process for seeing people clearly and planning boundaries without emotional reactivity HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Alokinoja, 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. So the other day, my wife is like, look, I want to go to dinner with these people. I know you don't like the husband very much.

I know it's going to be hard for you, but I'd really like to go. And I said, oh, no, it's not that big of a deal. You know, I used to dislike him, but then I worked through that and now it's totally fine. And then she was like kind of confused by that. And she's like, what do you mean you worked through it? And I was like, yeah, I disliked this person. But then I went through my process and now we're actually, it's totally fine. Like, I'm totally cool with them.

And then she's like, this is the kind of stuff that you should really make a video about. How do you go through a process and stop disliking someone? We talk about conquering a lot of emotions, like sadness, regret, how do I overcome grief, how do I overcome anxiety? But dislike or hostility is one of the emotions that most of us never even want to conquer. Maybe if you're in anger management, you get in trouble with the law, then you need to work on your hostility. But for most of us, disliking someone is one of the most addictive emotions that we experience. If we dislike someone, we won't interact with them as much. We won't let them get away with the crap that they usually

get away with. Dislike is one of the emotions that we think helps us a lot because it motivates behavior. I hate my job, therefore I'm going to quit. I'm starting to realize how much I dislike my friend, therefore I'm going to cut all ties with them. So we become reliant on dislike and we're actually, we love it, right? Think about the things in life that you dislike, the things that you hate, oh my God, we're in late stage capitalism or I hate this particular group of people or this particular political party, and it's so damn addictive. But it turns out that dislike is actually one of the most harmful emotions. And even if you use it as motivation to move you in the right way, it's not going to work. And the reason for that is very simple. See, anytime we use an emotion

to motivate our behavior, the problem is that the emotion will fluctuate over time, right? Dislike or hatred is maybe a little bit different. The emotion will go up and go down. That's just a natural nature of emotions, right? So I'm angry today. I'm fucking going to uninstall this video game because it's so annoying. And then a couple days later, I'm less annoyed with the video game, so I reinstall it. So we tend to rely on dislike as a motivation, but that tends to lead to inconsistent behavior. Now, I want to tell you all the story. So I had a patient once who really disliked his boss and really disliked his job. So he worked in finance, and then, you know, his boss would be like, okay, we're traveling to Europe to do this big.

deal and boss like to do cocaine, boss liked to engage with prostitutes, and my patient just was not into that. So sort of disliked this guy, but the straw that kind of broke the camel's back was one day boss says, hey, we've got a client meeting at 8 a.m. I need you to be at the office. It's 6 a.m. I know it's early. I want to go over the presentation between 6 and 7 so that everything is buttoned up. Boss is supposed to look at the presentation the day before, got busy, who knows with what, maybe said cocaine or prostitutes. So it's like, I need you to be there at 6 that We can go over everything. Be ready by seven.

We're going to leave at seven. Go to the client's place. My patient, being a very, very good banker, shows up at $5.50, right, 10 minutes early, proceeds to wait for 40 minutes because boss is late. Boss shows up on the 48th floor of their building. Is flustered. It's late at 630.

He's like, hey, I'm sorry that I'm late. Boss has keys to the office because this is before the reception people and things are there. So my patient has been waiting for 40 minutes outside of the office. That's bad enough. Then boss says, give me just a second, I really need to go pee. Runs down the hall and uses the bathroom while my patient is waiting outside. Doesn't even have the courtesy to let him in and instead decides to go pee.

This is the kind of thing that my patient absolutely hates. And you may have people in your life that you dislike because of these reasons. Because we love to dislike people. Disliking people is a huge problem. And it costs us so much that we don't even realize. Because dislike is one of the most addictive emotions we have. So there's something called the hostile attribution bias. And basically, the more you dislike something, the more hostile you are towards it,

the less clearly your mind functions. There are huge biases that start to enter your mind when you dislike someone. And if you've ever been on the receiving end of someone's dislike, once the professor or teacher or parent or one of your friends decide, someone in your social group decides that they dislike you, winning them over becomes incredibly difficult. They start to see all of the things that you're doing in the wrong light and it feels like you can't win. Here's the crazy thing. When you dislike someone, there is an equal level of cognitive bias. And we don't quite realize how crucial this cognitive bias is. It shapes our perception.

So it shapes even the way that we pick up particular bits of information. It shapes the way that we interpret that information. It even determines what our solution space is. So when you dislike someone, there may be certain methods that you can use to actually solve problems with them, which your mind will not let you see. And most importantly, dislike shapes our behavior. And generally speaking, all of these effects are in the negative direction. Hey, all, if you want to learn more about different mental health concepts, check out Dr. Kay's guide. How does experience shape us as human beings?

How do we strengthen the mind itself as an organ? So it doesn't really matter what studies you look at. It turns out that meditating for about 20 minutes a day is what we're shooting for. And if you want to go further with meditation, we just added a feature to help you build a consistent practice no matter where you are in your journey. With meditation tracks, you can set goals and track your progress through beginner, intermediate, and advanced paths. Each practice builds on the previous weeks, so you're not just developing a routine, you're leveling up your meditation skills along the way. Get Dr.K's guide and meditation tracks today at HealthyGamer.ggy slash guide,

or click the link in the description below. Now, back to the video. The more dislike and hostility that you have towards someone, the more it will affect your cardiovascular system, and it is associated with all kinds of negative physical health outcomes. Dislike is also associated with things like rumination. So I know this one sounds kind of weird, but even if I'm disliking this person over here, it turns out that disliking this person will affect my mental health in all of these other categories. So this is where things get a little bit tricky, but the more that I dislike someone,

the more cortisol I have floating through my system, the more my stress system is activated. I don't like them. And the problem is that that cortisol lasts in our body for about 24 hours. And shapes our thinking, shapes our ability to see in non-black. and white. So cortisol basically makes our mind function in a black and white sort of way. And if you look at people who are hostile and engaged in a lot of dislike, they have a lot of difficulty seeing nuance. They have a lot of difficulty seeing shades of gray and they have a lot of difficulty solving problems effectively. So even though we're addicted to hostility and disliking things,

turns out really doesn't help us. So how do we deal with this? This is where a lot of the research on hostility and disliking someone also talks about forgiveness. So here are a couple of studies that analyze the role of forgiveness, self-forgiveness in reducing hostility, being able to forgive other people. And this is where I have to depart from the literature a little bit. Even though there are a lot of good studies that show the value of forgiveness, in my mind, there is a separation between forgiving someone and not disliking them. So I think we get actually all of the health benefits from removing the dislike without even necessarily forgiving them. Because a lot of the people that I work with will sort of fall into this trap of, okay, I hate this person. Now I have to forgive them.

But once I forgive them, I'm opening the door to their crappy behavior. So they sort of oscillate between forgiveness and dislike, forgiveness and dislike. And then it doesn't end up working well. And I think the reason it doesn't work well is because of the fundamental way that emotions work. So if I am relating to you in an emotional way, if I let my emotions dictate how I react to you, if that emotion changes, my behavior will change. And this is what's really tricky. A lot of times that forgiveness is actually driven by guilt. So I dislike you. I'm never going to talk to you again. Now I feel guilty. Now I feel bad. Now I feel some degree of compassion for you. And I'm

controlled by that emotion as well. So I forgive you. I let you back into my life. And then you end up hurting me in the same way again. So many of the people that I've worked with really don't want to forgive. I've had plenty of patients who have suffered all kinds of abuse. And so forgiveness seems like something that is like really, really hard to do. But the real problem with forgiveness isn't the forgiveness itself. It's the behaviors that we start tolerating when we forgive someone. So I have this process that I go through to stop disliking someone. And I find that this process is really helpful. Not only for me in my own mental state reduces my rumination, reduces my stress, hopefully improves my cardiovascular help, but it actually allows me to deal with the person way more effectively. And the reason for that is because I'm looking at them, with a tranquil mind. So internally, I'm not letting my dislike color my perception. I see them for who they are. And this is what's really interesting.

What I try to do is be as judgmental as possible without disliking them at all. So I want to judge their actions dispassionally. I want to be able to look at their behaviors and their patterns and not get bent out of shape because they're behaving a certain way. I even do this when I play video games, right? So if I'm playing a game of Dota 2 where people are like doing things that are really stupid, if you dislike this person and you let your dislike get in the way, it actually narrows your solution space.

You don't see how, just because this person is feeding in a particular lane, you don't see how, okay, the reason they're feeding in a lane is because they're bad. And since we're all at the same rank, everybody is bad. And if they're feeding in a particular lane, there's a good chance that the enemy will also make stupid mistakes. Once you see things in a dispassionate and clear way, it allows you to actually navigate the situation in a healthier way. So how do we go through this process of removing dislike from the equation and seeing things more clearly? So this is where I cultivate some degree of compassion, and now that's a loaded word too, because compassion doesn't mean tolerance of behavior.

So how do I go through this process of removing dislike? So I start with sort of a karmic perspective. And what I sort of try to remind myself as a psychiatrist is that most human beings are doing the best that they know how to do. Now, you may be thinking about the people in your life that you think, oh, they could be doing a lot better, right? They could be trying a lot harder. But as a psychiatrist, I've seen that most of the people that I work with, the reason they don't try harder is because they actually don't know how to try harder. So I want you to think about the stuff that you could be doing, theoretically, you could be doing potentially way more stuff. But you don't try harder, right?

You sort of try in a really, like you try really hard, but from the outside, it may not look like you're trying very hard at all. And I've realized that this is like universal for the human condition and that most human beings on the planet do about as well as they know how to do. I've worked with some people who are incredibly narcissistic, incredibly sociopathic, and I used to dislike them. Now what I've discovered is through some degree of compassion, I recognize, okay, this person hasn't done the personal work that they really need to do to fix this narcissism,

to sort of learn how to relate to people in a healthier way. And as long as they are not going to do that, I cannot expect them to have compassion towards me. I cannot expect them to have empathy towards me. That even though this person is behaving in a very inappropriate way, once I recognize that every human being on the planet has their own karma, they were born in a particular place with a particular set of genetics. They were raised with certain expectations. They were shaped by their experiences and it has resulted in this mess of a human being. I can expect them to

behave in a narcissistic and sociopathic way because that's who they are. Now, I want you all to pay attention to a couple of subtleties here. When I take this attitude, it helps me interact with them even better. The first thing is that my expectations become really, really, really low because I made a judgment, right? With a clear head, I've sort of said, okay, this is what this person is capable of. I'm not going to expect more from them. So when I take this attitude, and I think it is somewhat compassionate and there's some amount of forgiveness, I sort of forgive them for being the person that they are. And I can even to a certain degree forgive their actions, but it doesn't remove my judgment from the equation. So let's come up with a long-term plan to remove ourselves

from this person and the equation. And this is the key thing. If y'all struggle with developing long-term plans and following through with those long-term plans, the number one reason is your emotions. Any plan that we make based on an emotion will fluctuate with our motivation. And so if we want to be able to follow through

and solve our problems, we need to remove emotion from the equation and dislike is at the top of the list. So how do we do that? So very concretely, I want you to think about one thing or person in your life that you dislike. And I want you to think about all of the circumstances that made them this way. And then what I want you to try to do is recognize that, okay, this person maybe even is being an asshole on purpose. It's not that they're like, have no free will, but they have lived a life where they have learned to be assholes, where they are rewarded for being assholes.

So why would I expect them to be any different? And once you realize who they really are or what the situation really is, I want you to take a deep breath and sort of have some compassion towards it, right? So how do you practically do this? Like I said, start with sort of a karmic perspective. Recognize that this person is the way they are. They're entitled asshole because they have lived a life where that kind of behavior has been rewarded. Maybe their parents were somewhat narcissistic, so they inherited a set of genes. they are surrounded by people who tolerate this behavior so it just gets worse over time.

But even then, if you sort of think about it, the things that you dislike about them have been selected for in their life. So once you sort of notice that they are the way that they are, that this is basically in their nature, and even if they have the capacity to change, for whatever reason they have chosen not to, which is fine. They get to live their life the way they want to live it. You get to live your life the way you want to live it. Once you, have that sort of weird sense of compassion or acceptance, once you realize who they are, think about your situation dispassionately and start to develop a plan. How am I going to deal with this person? I'm not going to wish they were different, right? Because that doesn't really help you

very much. It's not a good way to go through life wishing the people around you were different. This is the way that this person is. Accept it as a fact. Do it dispassionately. You don't have to get butt hurt about it. Now the question is, how are you going to deal with? with this person. And this is where there are all kinds of things that people are stunned by. You may have to tolerate some amount of interaction with them, which is fine. But you're going to tolerate that interaction. Every day you're going to go into work. You're not going to like them very much. That's just who they are. But you're not going to let it disturb your tranquility. Once you realize that your life does not have to be shaped around this dislike, that's when you

find real freedom. That's when you start to develop long-term plans and the capacity for follow-through. And the most important thing about this is that when we dislike someone, people are usually aware of it on some level. And so oftentimes the people that we dislike will alter their behavior to rope us in in some way. So your boss realizes they are being a little bit of an asshole. So they say, hey, you did a really great job. Here's a huge bonus.

You know, you're a really strong worker. Even the people that you dislike will sometimes do things that are kind to you. But if you were letting the dislike navigate that relationship, then that force will go down and you'll let them back into your life. So oftentimes what I tend to do when there are people like this is the people that I dislike will frequently as I start to distance myself and move away, start to live my own life, they will reach out to me. They'll be like, hey, do you want to do a collaboration? I've got this great idea. Do you want to do a partnership? Do you want to do this?

And you're like, hey, that sounds like a really great idea. Let's talk about it. Hey, I'm sorry. This is not something I have the bandwidth for. Good luck to you. 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. This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start at CarMax. Want to browse with confidence?

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