HealthyGamerGG - Therapy and Gaslighting Yourself

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

What is therapy? Is it just a fancy word for gaslighting yourself into feeling better? In today's episode, we try to answer this question, and more! Check out more mental health resources here! https://bit.ly/3xsk6fE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The real gaslighting is your parents telling you that the only way for me to be happy is for you to achieve. The real gaslighting is, oh, you made a mistake. How could you be so stupid? Of course you made a mistake. You're learning. So a lot of people think that therapy is just gaslighting yourself, right? And this is a perspective that I tend to hear more and more, which is kind of like, okay, I have this life. Things are objectively challenging with your life, right?

Like, so you may be behind in life, you have difficulty dating. you're still living at home if you're in your 20s, which by the way, 50% of people are doing. So a lot of times people will look at their lives and they'll say to themselves, my life is objectively bad? And if I go to therapy, is that just going to be me gaslighting? Is the therapist going gaslight me into believing that my life is better? Is it actually a distortion from reality? They're like, yeah, like you're so great. Like, you're an amazing human being and like you can do anything that you put your mind to, man. Like you believe in yourself. But you look at it. your life and you're like, I don't have a reason to believe in myself, right? They're the people

who believe in themselves and the reason they believe in themselves is because they actually accomplish stuff. But I don't actually accomplish things, right? I am, I've failed out of college. I've, I procrastinate way more than I should. I play too many video games. I watch too much pornography. All of these like ideas of believing in yourself feel like complete BS. And there's all this stuff like acceptance, right? Oh, in theory. like I learned to accept my flaws, but it's like, I don't want to accept my flaws. I want to change them, right? I don't want to be this way. So people get kind of confused and they ask themselves, okay, is therapy basically gaslighting myself? I don't need to go to therapy. I need to actually

fix my life. And so this is the core problem of therapy. It's like we have all of these experiences. We have some of these beliefs. We have some of these facts. And I don't understand how talking about my problems actually helps me fix them. And if I go, a therapy, you're going to have some compassionate, like, believe in yourself kind of therapist, right, who's going to try to convince me that I'm a decent human being. But like, I don't want to be a decent human being. I don't want to just believe I'm a decent human being. I want to actually accomplish stuff so that I can have a good reason to have faith in myself. So it turns out that therapy is not gaslighting yourself. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Because all of the negative, not all,

but many of the negative beliefs that you have about yourself are actually the gaslighting. Now, you may say to yourself, Dr. Kay, you don't know my life. I am genuinely, I suck at life. And like, I don't, there's all these objective reasons. I've never been on a date. I'm a virgin. Like, this is true. This is not me gaslighting.

This is truth. It is truth. It is not me gaslighting. So that turns out to be somewhat correct. And this is where the subtle nuance of therapy actually comes in. So I want you all to understand why, even if you're not, you know, you failed up until this point, it is you who are doing the gaslighting. So let me explain. Okay, I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds crazy. Hear me out. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in

applying some of the principles that we discuss to your life to actually create change, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. The guide synthesize my years of training as a monk, along with years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist to cover common topics like meditation, ADHD, and trauma. The guides include over 100 additional videos that can be navigated based on your needs or interests or in a more open, choose your own adventure format. The guides are now available in the YouTube store below. And if they're a little bit outside of your price point, you can check out a piece of them with our free resource packs, which are also linked below.

So definitely check them out. So we have to start by understanding what a normal human being is, right? This may not be you. Sorry, it's such a dick thing to say. Really, though. I say this is someone who's not a normal human being. I sucked at life. you know, I was a virgin for a really long time, whatever, okay? So I'm one of y'all, okay? So I say this

with love. So let's start by understanding like what a normal human being is. So if we take a child, a child has confidence. A child believes in themselves. Confidence in belief in yourself is actually the natural human state, right? So if we really look at it, when does a child lose faith in themselves? And this is where we tend to think that, okay, so I lose faith in myself because I'm a failure. That is incorrect. It is objectively incorrect. I'll give you all a very simple example. So a child needs to learn how to walk, right? And so they get up and they try to walk and they fall. And then they try again and they fall. And they try again and they fall. And they fall and they fall. And they fall and they fall. Despite the fact that a child fails over and over and over and over again, they don't feel like a failure.

A child feeling like a failure is something that they are taught. So now if we really tunnel down into it, the people who believe that they're fundamental. mentally broken. This is not something that they do because they fail. It is something that they were taught, which causes them to fail. So you have a parent, for example, where nothing you ever do is good enough. So I sometimes, you know, do therapy with Asian kids. And therapy with Asian kids is brutal because no amount of accomplishment is ever enough, right? They're like, oh, like, you got an A on the test. You should get, why didn't you get A plus? You got 98. Why didn't you get 100? One of the most devastating things I've ever heard from a patient is one patient once told me, when I get an 89 on a test, why is it that no one looks at the 89 questions I got right

and instead focuses on the 11 questions I got wrong? Why is the world like this? So the negative beliefs that we have about ourselves are actually things that are taught. This is the gaslighting. Right. So if you grew up in a household where, you know, things were abusive, your parents were neglectful or your parents don't know how to be happy so they want to live through you. They're not happy in their own lives. So they put all of the pressure onto you.

I am unhappy. Therefore, if you screw up, then everything comes out. Right. So this is crazy, but I was talking to someone recently was telling me that, you know, the biggest challenge I have is my parents don't know how to be happy and it becomes my responsibility. Now, whether I get married on time, whether I get the right profession, whether I have kids, all of these things, my parents happiness is dependent on me. This kind of stuff leads to gaslighting. This is the real gaslighting. The real gaslighting is your parents telling you that the only way for me to be happy is for

you to achieve. The real gaslighting is, oh, you made a mistake. How could you be so stupid? Of course you made a mistake. You're learning. And when people learn, they make mistakes. But if you exist today and you think to yourself, oh, my God, I should be perfect at everything I do.

If you look around at the people around, you say, oh my God, that person is so great at dancing, this person is so great at surfing, look at how in shape that person is, this person is so good at socializing. And you look at yourself and you say, I am worse, I am bad. If you make a self-based judgment about your character or your brokenness as a human being, because you look at other people and you say, they're good and I'm bad, that's the gaslighting. What's the difference between them and you? The difference is not that one is bad and one is good, it's that one person was gaslit to not believe in themselves, whereas someone else was supported in their endeavors. So you'll see this a lot where, like, musicians have kids who are also really great musicians. Oh my God, talent, it must run in the family, nah? Look at how genetics are so good.

There could be a genetic component, but it turns out that the parents that you grow up with instill certain kinds of skills in you. They instill even things like a worldview, right? And so the real advantage of therapy is not that you gaslight yourself. It is that you undo all of the gaslighting that has been done so far. And this is the crazy thing, because if we look at the outcomes from therapy, what we begin to realize is that our attitudes, our perceptions, all of these things actually determine our outcomes. So when I perceive that I'm not very good at a subject,

how do I feel and how do I respond? So when some of the patients that I've worked with, unfortunately, when they feel like they're not good at something, they have been taught, right? This is crazy. They have been taught that no amount of effort will make a difference. This is why they're lazy. It's because when they were very young, they tried really hard and then they could never make their parents happy. So if you can never make your parents happy, what do you learn about the value of effort? You begin to realize that, oh, effort is a waste of my time.

because nothing I ever do will be enough. And if you are someone who is looking at your life and you say to yourself, oh my God, I'm so far behind, nothing I ever do will be enough. Well, hold on a second. Think about how illogical that is. Nothing I ever do. If you put forth a thousand hours of work, that won't be enough. Like, that's crazy.

If you put 10,000 hours of work, 20,000 hours of work, 30,000 hours of work, that won't be enough. That is crazy. This is how you've already been gaslit. So the value of therapy is in undoing all of the gas. lighting that has been done so far. Now, a lot of people will say, but objectively, I have this problem, I have this problem, I have this problem. And I don't disagree with that, right? So your life may objectively be challenging. But the question is, why? What is it that contributed to your life being

challenging? If you're someone who's, let's say, 28 years old and you've never been in a romantic relationship, you look at yourself and you blame yourself. But then the question becomes, how does a 28 year old, what's the difference between a 28 year old who has a relationship and a 28 year old who's never been in a relationship? Well, I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with their parents. Maybe that one person's parents are divorced and one person's parents aren't. Maybe it has something to do with the way that they were socialized. Maybe it has something to do with the way that their birthday parties were organized. So it's crazy. One of the best questions that I'll ask people, if I'm trying to assess, okay, how much was this patient neglected? If I'm trying to figure that,

ask one really simple question. Did your parents throw birthday parties for you? Did your parents, make sure you had friends. Did your parents talk to you about your friends? Did your parents notice if you had these kinds of problems? Did they intervene to try to help you move in the right direction? Because the crazy thing is that self-esteem is a reflection of the esteem that other people give you. That's where self-esteem comes from. That's why it's so hard to gain self-esteem.

Because we have this real scam where we call it self-esteem because we think it comes from us. Self-esteem is taught, not discovered. It's crazy. Like, I know, look, oh, I'm alok and I'm meditator and I will meditate. And if you find meditation, you will find that there is self-esteem deep within you. All that stuff is true. I'm not saying it isn't true, but I'm saying that for 95% of people, right, if we're looking at normal human beings who don't spend months like meditating in the Himalayas, right, that's where I found some of my self-esteem. But most of us don't have that. What's the difference between the normal people who have self-esteem and the normal people who don't have self-esteem?

It's something that was taught. The kids that were supported, the kids that were loved, the kids that were when they failed, they were taught that you can work hard. And if you work hard and I will help you and you're not alone, then they develop self-esteem. So therapy is not about gaslighting yourself. It is about undoing the gaslighting. So then the question kind of becomes, all right, well, so what is the normal state of mind? How do I know if my mind is healthy? How can I separate out between, okay, what is a real belief and what is a fake belief?

Where does gaslighting end and where does gaslighting begin? You know, it's kind of like people will ask me that naturally. They're like, okay, fine. So I undo the negative beliefs. How do I know what is a legitimate negative belief and what is a illegitimate negative belief? So now we're going to turn a little bit to yoga because I like the yogic concept because the yogic concept is very subjective. So it teaches you about, you know, your mind from your perspective, from inside your mind.

So there are three things to understand. There are three components of the mind that we're going to focus on. There's the manas, the buddhi, and the ahamkar. So the monas is the emotional mind. the Buddha is the intellect and the Ahamkara is the ego. So if you are trying to understand how do I know if my mind is working properly or if it has been gaslit, there are only three things that you need to do. The first thing that you need to do is notice the contribution of emotion.

Now, this is important to understand because a lot of people I work with will say, oh, I don't feel emotion, right? Doesn't bother me at all. I have no emotion. I have ice in my veins. I worked with a kid once who said that, you know, people call me the ice man because I don't feel any emotion. I have no emotion.

So the first thing to understand is there's a difference between not feeling emotion and not having emotion. One, it's not that you don't have it. It's that you're blind to it. Right. So we have this part of our brain called the amygdala. And that is part of this broader part of our brain called the limbic system. This is our emotional circuit of the brain. And I hate to break it to you all, but these circuits are active 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Right? It's not like there's some part of your body that just has no blood flow or activity. Your kidneys are active 24 hours a day. Your stomach is active 24 hours a day, maybe a little bit more active, maybe a little bit less active. There is still cellular respiration, even while I'm sleeping and I'm not moving my hand. There is cellular respiration and cellular activity going on in my hand. The same is true of your emotional circuitry. It's active 24 hours a day.

There are times where there's more blood flow and less blood flow, but it's always active. So the first thing to understand, if you're trying to figure out, am I being gaslit? Is this a real thought? Is this a fair thought? What is the accurate thought? is to notice the impact of emotion. So the first thing is, if you don't notice any emotion, then you cannot be thinking clearly, right? So I'll give you all a simple example.

So if you talk to someone who's angry and you ask them, hey, are you upset? They're like, no, I'm not upset. I'm perfectly logical. I'm not upset at all. You're upset. And how logical are they? How clear is their thought process? How thinking, are they praising the situation appropriately?

No, no, no. I'm not, I don't ever get dumped. You're going to get dumped. I'm dumping you before you dump me. I'm not tilting. You're tilting. I'm not making a mistake in a video game. We're losing this game because of you.

How logical are they behaving? Not at all. Oh, what's the matter, bro? Are you tilted? Angry much? No, I'm not angry. You're angry. Mm.

Right? This is idiocy. So the first thing to understand if you want to think clearly is acknowledge the impact of emotion. If you cannot acknowledge the impact of emotion, your thoughts are not clear. Give you all another example, right?

So this is crazy, but sometimes I play games on the internet. And even when I get pissed, I will say, man, I'm so angry. I'm so tilted right now. Brough, I'm so tilted. Feels like you fed this game. I played a great game. We were making a comeback, but you threw in the towel, you inted down. I'm so pissed off at you.

The moment that you acknowledge what you are feeling, it changes the feelings power over you. Right? So if I say to myself, oh my God, I'll be alone. for the rest of my life. Are you feeling sad? Are you feeling hopeless? No, this is truth. This is objective. I have evidence. It's not an emotion. Whereas, what's the alternative? Hey, I'm feeling really hopeless because I've been working on this stuff for a long time. I haven't made any progress. I feel hopeless. The moment that you acknowledge an emotion, at least you understand some of its impact into your thought process. The moment that you acknowledge, oh, why am I behaving

this way? It's because I'm jealous. Wow. How does jealousy, shape my thought process. How does anger shape my thought process? How does sadness shape my thought process? Because it is doing the shaping. That happens, right? That's like, that's fact. That's scientific fact. But unless you understand how sadness is shaping your thought process, you will never arrive at the correct thought process. Oh, I'm feeling a little bit more hopeless, so everything seems negative to me. But since hopelessness causes me to view things negatively, things are not quite as bad as what I perceive. Let me give it 24 hours and hopefully things will be better. Do you all see the difference? Huge night and day. So this is the importance of the munas. Second thing to think about is the

hum god or the ego. So this is the other part of our thought process that if we miss this as a component to our thought process, then our thoughts will not be correct and we will gaslight ourselves into something. Okay. So I'll give you all a classic example. So when we're talking about ego, best example is narcissism, right? So a narcissist never believes that they're narcissistic, right? That's the whole problem with narcissism. They have no insight into how egotistical they are being. And so if they have no insight, they are not viewing the world in the correct way. So what do we do in psychotherapy with narcissists? We help them develop insight into their own narcissism. And it's not that it disappears overnight, but once they begin to realize, oh, this is my narcissism, this is my ego, right? Why am I

insulting this person? Why am I avoiding going to my friend's birthday party? It's because I feel inferior to them. I feel like they're so far ahead of me, and I don't like the way that my feels. My ego feels bruised when I meet them and they say, hey, bro, what are you up to? And this real story from my life. You know, I went to this Christmas party, and I met a friend of mine from high school. I hadn't seen her in six years. And I was like, hey, what are you up to?

She's like, oh, yeah, I'm like, I just finished med school and I'm going to be an ophthalmologist, right? So I just started, you know, I started my internship in ophthalmology about six months ago. And she's like, what are you doing? And I said, I'm applying to med school. Same age, went to the same high school, sat next to each other. She's already done, and I haven't even started. It's not even clear if I will be able to start. Such a blow to the ego.

So there are two things to keep in mind in terms of ego. Anytime your mind makes a comparison, that is the action of ego. Anytime your mind pumps yourself up or puts you down, or puts someone else up or puts them down, that is also the action of ego. If you all want more details on this, check out our videos on Vedic psychology. you, we go into a lot more detail there. But the key thing to understand is when we are trying to think about our thought process and what is gaslighting and what isn't, the presence of ego will allow our thought process to be messed up, right?

So when we believe ourselves is low, oh, this person is so much smarter. My partner, my romantic partner, they're so much better than me. I'm so much worse than them. They're so capable. I'm so incapable. That's ego, right? It is a sort of negative ego, which you can absolutely have. and this is what I like about the yogic system,

is that even insecurities or a form of ego, it is a belief about yourself. I am a loser. That is ego. Because it is anything that I am dot dot dot, dot, dot, anything that comes after the I am dot dot dot dot is ego. That is the action of ego. So once you notice the action of ego,

then your thought process will be better as well. Oh, I feel inferior, therefore I don't want to go to this party. I'm making a comparison, therefore I look at, at my friend who, and I don't know if you all have ever done this, I do this all the time, or used to, really, is I used to look at my friends who are better than me at something. And then I would say to myself, I can't do it.

Right. I don't want to be, I can't do it. But of course I can do it. I just can't do it as well as them. And there's a huge difference between those two statements. So this is the second thing that we really need to focus on. Now, in terms of the intellect, I think there are certain ways to train the intellect. But in my experience with the patients that I've worked with, 95% of people do.

don't have a problem with their intellect, they have a problem with their ego or a problem with their emotions. So if you want to discover the right way to think, how do I use, how do I utilize my brain in the correct way? What is the correct way to think? It is very simple. If you look at your thought process, can you understand the impact of emotions on your thought process? If you do not see the impact of emotions on your thought process, you're making a mistake. Oh my God, Wall Street bets, diamond hands, baby, apes strong. I'm going to buy this crypto coin, stupid idiot coin because it's a meme coin. And I'm going to make so much money.

I'm going to make a billion dollars. I'm going to make a billion dollars. Not even dollars. I'm going to make a billion Bitcoin. Oh, yeah. That's because of your mind. You have an emotion. You have excitement.

Or when people yolo, right, it's not just excitement. They hate their current life. I want this life to change. I'm desperate for this life to change. I'm looking for a magic bullet that will fix my life. They're operating based on desperation. Could be, right? Who knows?

So the point is, notice the impact of emotion. Second thing is, notice the impact of ego. How do I feel about myself in this situation? Do I feel inferior? Do I feel superior? How does the feeling of being inferior or how does the feeling of inferiority shape my thought process? Because when you feel inferior, it negatively shapes your thought process.

that itself is a distortion. And this is what we do in therapy, right? So this is why therapy is great. It's not about convincing you that you're a good person. It is about objectively understanding what are the distortions in your mind? How do those distortions shape you? And the crazy thing about therapy, at least in my opinion, is that it's not about all the positive, right? Like, what do we talk about?

You're like crying a lot and you're talking about your traumas. And in therapy, at least with my patients, I try really hard to objectively look at their weaknesses. But there is a huge difference because once you objectively find a weakness and you acknowledge your ego, I feel like a loser and I've never had a date in my life. So one of those statements is true, right? You've never had a date in your life. That's an objective fact. And I feel like a loser. Now, as long as you feel like a loser, never having a date in your life becomes a destiny.

When you are a loser, your past becomes your future, right? Since I'm so far behind, I will never be able to catch up. But that is a construction of the mind. Because if you've never had a date in your life and you're 28 years old, there's two paths in front of you. One is that you could learn how to date. And the second is that you can believe that you are destined to never date. And I'm not saying that the people who have never had a date, they haven't tried, right?

Of course you all have tried. I know y'all have tried really, really hard. you're incredibly intelligent and oftentimes you all work way harder than the normies do. The difference, though, is that you are shackled by this sense of ego. Every single time you go on a date in the back of your mind, I am a loser, I am a loser, I am a loser. And so every sort of little thing, someone doesn't respond to your text in two hours, oh, I'm not a good person. They're not that into me. Of course, they found someone else, right?

These are the negative thoughts that populate your mind. And this is what's crazy, right? This is the gaslighting. It's not that they found someone else within two hours. It's that they were like in a tunnel or something like that. And they didn't have reception. Like, I don't know. Right, there's a thousand other reasons why anyone could not respond to you.

But once you have this ego construction, once you've gaslit yourself, which, by the way, they found someone better than me. Makes sense, right? Because depending on how you grew up, if you had a sibling who was the golden child, then there's literally in the house, there's always someone who's been better than you. So this is the real gaslighting. And therapy is not about gaslighting you in the right direction. It's about removing the gaslighting. And hopefully then, once you remove the gaslighting, you can actually look at your flaws. And once you look at your flaws, then you can start working on them, hopefully with the

compassionate support of an individual who can help you. Okay. So I know that a lot of people think that therapy is just gaslighting yourself in the right direction. It's not gaslighting yourself in the right direction. It is removing the gaslighting. And the best way for you to discover that is to get to. Give it a shot. So, a child wants to learn how to walk.

I know. I need to calm down.