HealthyGamerGG - Un-take the Black Pill

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

Dr. K talks about the Black Pill, how echo chambers and beliefs factor in, and diving into emotional processing, emotional awareness, behavioral alteration, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So how do I get rid of the smell of farts? How do I stop smelling farts? Getting out of the room helps a lot. So I'm slowly believing the black pill stuff. How do I not do that? Black pill adherence believe that looks are genetically determined and that women choose sexual partners based solely on physical features, lookism. So whether or not a person will be an in-cell is predetermined. There's this YouTuber called wheat waffles that's just talking about this stuff. about how looks matter the most, and it feels like it makes sense to me, and he's not the only YouTuber. It's just making me down and a little resentful of living and kind of sad. How attractive guys get more of a free pass and how ugly and average guys are seen as creepy. It's a lot to digest

really. I have also seen videos of Tinder experiments with average and attractive guys which just prove the point further. Also, how women, even ugly ones, only want to date the top 10% chads of guys. My current source of interacting, if you can call it that, with women, is Tinder, which isn't really getting me any matches. I'm a shut in failure at life. I don't even want relationships on Tinder, just friendships, and that is still asking for too much. But I'm not sure.

Maybe I just want to cuddle with a female and hold hands, but that's relationship stuff. I don't want sex because of asexuality. I'm kind of looking for some counter evidence because I don't like thinking as a black pill, but if that is reality, then what am I supposed to do? Maybe something about how looks don't matter, I don't know. At this point, I should get surgery to change my height and facial structure or better learn how to be isolated from females and be alone with video games. I'm also autistic, so if looks don't matter, I feel like I'm doomed to forever.

So this is kind of challenging because sometimes we feel hopeless about something. And what's happened is on the internet, we have support communities, right? So I want you all to kind of think about this from the top. So if I'm hurting about something, let's say I'm starting to take the black pill. And I feel those negative emotions. What I'll do is gravitate towards a community that validates my experience. And as I gravitate towards that community, I feel better. but then sometimes what can happen is the community itself can become toxic.

So we've seen this in our own community where sometimes if you go to our subreddit, it's a pretty hopeless place. So we have a lot of people coming for help. And we have a lot of people who are trying to help them. But essentially, if you like read even our subreddit, which is supposed to be like a mental health positive, validating, accepting place, what it does is it like it draws in people who are like burnt out and frustrated.

And then they lean on each other with for support. which is absolutely what communities are supposed to do. The challenge is that if we're not careful, we see this a lot, and there's actually data to support this, which we'll talk about a little bit, is as this starts to happen in a community, it actually worsens our mental health and distorts reality even more.

We have a common phrase for this now, which is an echo chamber. You'll see this in political discussion, like, you know, discussion places. You'll see it on 4chan. If you have a discussion about the quality of League of Legends on a Dota forum, there will be a very uniform.

How do I believe that League of Legends is not worse than Dota? I hang out on a Dota form. Or you go to a League of Legends forum and you talk about Dota, you're going to get the opposite result. Everyone there believes this too. So if you want counter evidence, let's just unpack this for a second. The first is that none of this is actual evidence.

These are YouTube videos. YouTube videos are not evidence. that are just YouTube videos. So if you want simple evidence that this statement is not true, I want you to just look, go to a park where there are people who have kids or go to a grocery store and look at how attractive are the parents. Because if women are only willing to date the top 10% of guys, what you should find is every mother has a father who's like in the top top 10% of guys.

what you should find is every mother has a father who's like in the top 10% of handsomeness. Right? Like, that's all you need to do is just go outside and look at who has kids. So what you'll discover when you do that is that this statement is patently false. Right? It's not even an experiment. It's like this experiments are like scientific studies that are controlled and have variables and blinding and randomization.

That's a study. That's how you get data. We've also looked at a study recently on AI that sort of determined what's the most likely thing that leads to high quality in relationships. And it's actually belief that your relationship is good.

So success in a relationship doesn't have anything to do with income or this or that. Actually, that's not true. That's an overstatement. But it's not all this stuff that people think it is. And the question is, why do people think this stuff?

People think this stuff because of things like, YouTubers, right? So if I watch 10 videos from wheat waffles and wheat waffles believe something, I'm going to start to think that this is real. And then what I'm going to do is join a community of other black pillars because who watches wheat waffles? It's already people who agree with them. So human beings gravitate towards things that they agree with. And so then what you're going to have is this community where everyone is saying the same thing and then you form an echo chamber. So this is not really evidence at all.

I've also seen videos of Tinder experiments. What were the controls for their Tinder experiments? What was their sample size? What was, you know? And then the other thing is that you're making a big assumption that success on Tinder correlates with success in relationships. Where we've actually had recent posts where people even were like, Dr. Kay misses the point. Tinder is toxic and is terrible.

Tinder is not necessarily about relationships, I think. I mean, I don't really know. But like, Tinder is not, it's just one slice. Like, I also want you to, like, look at people who are in relationships and how many of them met at Tinder on Tinder. For thousands of years, people have been forming relationships without Tinder. And even today, it's unclear to me what percentage of people who are getting married today met on Tinder. I'm not saying Tinder is bad. Let's just be honest about what Tinder actually accomplishes and what it doesn't accomplish. And whether it is a good proxy, for relationships or success in relationships. Okay? But what I want to talk to you all about today is this person's actual question, which is, how do I not do that? So let's understand the process of emotional processing, okay? Because this is something that is under-explained. So everyone talks about validation and emotions, but what we don't actually talk,

about is like if you have negative emotions, like how are you supposed to deal with them? Like, what is the process of dealing with our negative emotions? So the first thing to understand is here's me. And something happens. Let's say I have some kind of experience. And this leads to a negative emotion. And then what happens is I go to a community. Right?

So like, oh, like I start to believe these things. I start to black pill. and so I'm going to engage in the black pill community, and I feel hurt. And so I go to the black pill community, and here on the internet, we see this in our community as well. So there's a lot of people who will validate my emotional experience. And so what happens is the negative emotion gets validated and vented out into the community. But participation in the community, if you read black pill posts over and over and over and over and over again, what's going to happen? I'm going to start to feel worse.

Right? So participation in the black pill community is a source of both venting emotions and actually receiving negative emotions. And if you look at mental health communities on the internet, what we tend to find is that everyone there is talking about acceptance and validation, but no one knows how to process. So essentially what it becomes is like, it's like a room full of people who are farting.

And it's like, I'm going to fart, and it's going to get distributed throughout the room so it's not like stuck within me. But then everyone else, it's like, it's like, you know, people who struggle with farting convention is what the internet becomes. It's like, hi, my name is all look. I struggle with farting.

I fart. And it's like, oh, yeah, man, that's tough too. And then, like, that person farts. And then, like, eventually, like, we're just in this room that becomes, like, full of farts, okay? Right? Because no one is teaching it. Like, all I knew, know is how.

to like fart it out of my butt. I don't know how to open the window. So they don't teach us the rest. You all get that? So it's like it's kind of bizarre because even the communities that are trying to help, hey, we all struggle with this problem

of like passing gas. So like other people don't understand this, but like you understand this. You're my fart bro. Right? Or you're my fart girl. And that just don't Google that. Please God. So, so like we, because we share this problem.

There's like the people out there who don't struggle with passing gas. And then there's us. And then we all get together. And then like, you know, like, then we're like, it kind of helps because we understand each other. But then we also like get their negativity too. And we've even had posts in our community of like, I just can't stay here anymore. Like this is too bad for my mental health. So how do you deal with this?

Okay. So now we're going to talk a little bit about the steps of emotional processing. Okay. So when I have these negative emotions, so I participate in this community, and as I get these negative emotions and I get this evidence, right, which by the way, this isn't real evidence. It's just sensory input. It's like if I subscribe to a bunch of flat earther YouTube channels, it doesn't mean that the earth is flat. I will think that there's a bunch of evidence that the earth is flat, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the earth is flat. You'll get that? I can subscribe to a bunch of YouTube channels about reincarnation. And I can start to believe that, oh, look at all this evidence, all these stories of reincarnation. Doesn't mean it's necessarily true. There's like science and experiments and evidence. And then there's people talking on the internet.

Those are not the same thing. Okay? Doesn't mean that there isn't value to those things. There can be value to YouTube. Hell, we're on YouTube. But just because something is on YouTube doesn't make it true. Shocking. I know.

So then the question is, and I really appreciate this person's post because it's like, they're like, how do I stop this? right? How do I break the cycle? Because I think that's exactly the kind of courage and insight you need. This person is recognizing, okay, like, they're seeking counter evidence. They're stepping out of the echo chamber. And they're coming to our community and saying, like, hey, like, help me step out of this echo chamber. So it's awesome that they did that. I think it's a huge step forward. So now what we're going to talk about is what do you do when you experience negative emotion. So this is what we do with it. Here is my negative emotion. So as I get all this negative emotion, what happens is I take that negative emotion and then I pack it in here.

So I'll usually distract from it, right? So I've got negative emotions venting out. I've got negative emotions coming in. And then over time, as I experience negative emotions, like I'm not really processing them, right? So what I'm going to do is distracting behaviors like video games or even watching YouTube. right so there are evidence that this stuff suppresses our amygdala limbic system there's all this negativity in my mind and in order to function what do i need to do i need to pack it in okay as i pack in more and more negative emotion something interesting starts to happen keeping it buried requires more effort so the more full my subconscious gets with negative emotion the more energy it takes to suppress it.

This in turn decreases our motivation and available energy. Does that make sense? It's like a load on our mind. Okay? And so like then we start to see something really interesting, which is that if you go to these communities that have a lot of negative emotion in them,

their members have difficulty actually doing stuff. No one's going out there and saying, like, okay, just talk to more people. Like, if Tinder isn't working for you, like, go do this stuff. And this is where the concept of just comes from. Just go do this. Why is just hard? It's because we have so much energy spent suppressing our negative emotions and distracting ourselves that, like, we don't have any bandwidth left over for other things.

The other problem with this is that the more full this is with negative emotion, the more we have to go into distraction. And interestingly enough, the more likely things are to overflow. Okay? The more likely things are to overflow, what essentially means is that it doesn't take much to trigger our negative emotions. So what this means is that people who are in this kind of cycle,

all it takes is a single conversation, let's say, with a woman, to like create an eruption of negativity. And then that becomes a self-fulfilling cycle too, because when this negativity erupts, like you can't talk to the person anymore because they didn't respond to your text within five minutes. And then like, you feel really hurt.

And all of this negative emotion starts to well up. Okay? So now what we sort of see is that it's very easy to get triggered because there's all this pent-up emotion. And we keep on distracting from the emotion. so it gets stored even more.

And then the more that it gets stored in our subconscious, the more energy we have to spend, like suppressing it. Right? And that creates this current situation. And the more that we get triggered by our negative emotions, what is our experience? There's me. I'm walking around, and then suddenly there's angry me.

And it doesn't take much to do this. And then what happens is like, this makes it hard for me to re-engage with life. And then I become angrier and angrier and angrier, right? And then like it gets worse and worse and worse. And then like we have an angry, hopeless, negative emotional blackbiller who can't do anything in their life and is just in a state of doom and gloom because they're getting triggered so easily. It doesn't take much for all that emotion to get like overwhelmed you.

And the more that the emotion overwhelms you, the more you retreat into video games or distraction or whatever, you spend time in that community, you vent that anger, and every other person, boy, do you let that gigantic fart rip. And everyone else in that room smells that. And they're like, oh, that's terrible. Right? And so you'll get these, like, rant posts in these communities. And you'll get people making YouTube video after YouTube video, after YouTube video,

about how terrible everything is. And where is that coming from? It's fundamentally coming from the fact that this emotion is. is just built up and has nowhere to go. So, how do you stop? So if we look at the process of emotional processing, it involves three steps. Appraisal of emotion. Okay.

Second thing is, let me think about this. Third thing was regulation. What was number two? I'm blanking for some reason. I can't believe I'm waiting on this. Okay, so it involves appraisal of emotion. Regulation of the emotion is number three. It'll come back to me.

I blame the illness. It's sort of not too relevant, but we'll get to it in a second. Okay? So from a neuroscience perspective, we've got like parts of our brain that are aware of emotions, and we have parts of our brain that modulate emotions. Oh, here's what it is. Interpretation and regulation. So we've got parts of our brain that modulate our emotions.

And then we've got parts of our brain that modify our emotions. Okay? So the first thing that you've got to do in this process is become aware of the emotion. So what are you feeling? Okay? Like, you feel angry and stuff like that. And then we may, once we feel angry, sometimes what we'll do, is we'll vent and that'll decrease our emotion. So that's one thing that you can do.

And when people offer validation, that can also decrease this emotional energy. So that can both, both of those can work. But then this is usually as far as people go. This is where there's another really important step, which is explore the origin of emotion. So when I get triggered by something, When I watch a YouTube video and the rage comes boiling up, what I want you all to remember here is that each segment of this rage that comes boiling up actually came from a particular experience. Right? So some of the rage came from this experience.

Some of the rage came from this experience. Each of these experiences causes a little bit of rage to come up. And as we distract, instead of acknowledge and process, the rage just builds up. And then what we do is it comes boiling up and then we suppress it again. But it's there next time. So what you tend to find is that people can get triggered by the same stuff over and over and over again. Right? Like, so it's like if you don't process, you're going to continue getting triggered.

So this is where, like, so this is where, you know, in our coaching program, we teach our coaches about how to find the origin of a sumskar. So a sumskada is like bottled up emotional energy. This is stuff that's thousands of years old. we do this stuff in therapy as well, but this is just a fundamental of how the mind works. So Sumskod is a concept from like ancient yogic psychology about this basic idea that anytime we experience emotions, whatever we don't process gets stored. And then whatever gets stored can be recalled. And so if you ask someone out on a date and you're very, very, very anxious about that,

what you'll recognize is some of that anxiety is coming from that experience, but some of that anxiety is left over from the last time you asked someone out, or tried to ask someone out. And some of that is coming from the time before that and the time before that. And you had a crush on someone in the seventh grade, and they ended up dating your best friend. And so, like, some of that leftover emotion projects onto this relationship. And this is what we kind of call emotional baggage.

So we even know this, right? So we'll say like, oh, why didn't that relationship work out? Oh, that person had too much baggage. They had too much relationship baggage. What does that mean? It means leftover emotions that have not been processed, and they project onto the current relationship and make this relationship more difficult than it objectively is. Okay, so explore the origin of the emotion.

Start to recognize in the moment that some of what you're experiencing is actually not from this person, that you're not just angry with this person. this is anger that's left over from the past person. And as you do that, as you become aware of the origin of the emotion, you'll start to treat this person differently. And then what you'll stop, do less of is sabotage this future relationship. Okay? Next thing that you've got to do, this is really important,

is as you gain awareness of the emotion, this emotion is going to push your behavior. as you acknowledge and recognize the awareness of the origin of the emotion, what you need to do is intentionally alter your behavior. So I'll give you guys a simple example. So there's all kinds of stuff if you guys have seen the nice guys subreddit, right? Someone like doesn't respond to my text and I say, hey, I'm a nice guy. They don't respond for a day. And then I start calling them all kinds of nasty things.

Nice girls exist too. It's not just, you know, it's not a gender issue. So what happens is in that moment, the nice guy, they give in to that emotion and they start cussing out the person that they're talking to, which in turn ruins the relationship. It's not even a relationship potentially. And then that in turn is going to cause another samskar, which in turn is going to fill up our emotional bucket even more. So what happens is nice guys become nicer and nicer and nicer with each interaction that they have, which in turn actually means they become nastier and nastier and nastier. So what you've really got to do is alter your behavior in the moment and don't send that text message.

But in order to just don't send the text message, it's not that simple, right? If I just don't send it, no. The way that you overcome your impulses, the way that you manage that is actually, actually by the discovery of the exploration of emotion and the awareness of the emotion in the present. Because oftentimes when we give in to emotions, we're not even aware that we're feeling them. Okay? The last thing that you've got to do is reintegrate your negative experiences into identity. So we had a lecture on post-traumatic growth.

A couple months ago now. And one of the key things about trauma, so trauma is like a negative emotional experience, right? The interesting thing is that when you process trauma properly, people feel stronger than when they started. And so a good example of this is the idea of a cancer survivor. Getting cancer sucks. When you first get cancer, you start to think all these negative things. Why me? life is terrible. I hate God. I no longer believe in God. I started believing in God and God is an ass.

There's so much stuff I want to do. It's filled with all these negative emotions. And then some people wallow in that and they stay stuck. Other people will like integrate that into themselves. And what they can actually do is, okay, if I've got five years left, I'm going to make the most of it. So when experiences affect us, if we're not careful, they alter our identity. And then we can go through the process of reinterpreting that and reintegrating like that experience into our identity in a healthy way. And so this is, this sort of involves cognitive reframing. And this is where the identity of someone like a cancer survivor arrives, right? So I use that as an example because it's a good example of like something that happens very commonly where people will say like, okay, I'm a cancer.

cancer survivor. If I survived cancer, I can definitely handle this. And then suddenly what that person, like, even though cancer is definitely not a good thing, that person actually looks to the future, like, more resilient and with like more hope and capability than if they had never had cancer in the first place. In this step, we definitely don't get into if you're in a black pill community. How does this happen? This happens as a consequence of emotional work and self-reflection and talking about who you are and stuff like that. This is what coaches will sometimes help people do. Therapists can help people do this as well.

Sometimes you don't need either of those things. It's just like you hike and you spend time with yourself and long, dark nights of the soul. But then you start to think about yourself differently. Right? So instead of thinking about yourself as a black pillar or dumer, you start to think about yourself as I'm someone who has struggled in relationships. And as you start to alter your behaviors and you stop. sabotaging your relationships, you are going to form relationships. And as you form relationships, you're going to start to change the way that you think about yourself. And then instead of someone

who is doomed to never have a relationship, right, which is sometimes what we see here, right? Like, how attractive guys, blah, blah, blah. And then like, I'm a shut in failure of life, like this has got to change. And as you start altering your behavior and as you start engaging in things in life, you'll start to realize, basically, I mean, this is, I see a lot of myself in this person. So I was like, you know, 18, 19, started to get into the pickup artist scene myself. I had a friend who was super into it. And I was like, oh, I need to like, and then the pickup artist evolved into red pill and then evolved into black pill and in cells and stuff like that. And so I started blaming other people for my shortcomings. And then as I started to make

alterations in my life, I reconceptualize that. And now, like, the biggest reconception is, I understand this person to some extent. Therefore, I'm grateful for those experiences, because my hope is that I can help them. I'm an in-cell survivor, in a sense. Because then I discovered, oh, actually, like, all of those thoughts and feelings are, like, I completely understand where they come from, I experience them as well. And they're not necessarily true, and there's a way to get out of it. So if you want to learn how to, like, get out of the cycle, what you've got to do is process your emotions.

The thing is, thus far, the Internet has figured out how to validate emotions, but hasn't figured out how to process them. So what we end up with is these, like, collections of people who share the same problem, vent their emotional energy. It gets absorbed by everyone else in the community. As the rest of the community absorbs that negative energy, they in turn vent it themselves. And then we're in a room full of people

who struggle with passing gas and fart too much. And then that actually weighs us down. And we get confused because we were told that talking about it is supposed to help. And I did talk about it. Why isn't it helping? And then the very community that is supposed to support us actually makes us feel worse. And that's because we're missing some key steps in emotional processing.

The first is to be aware of the emotion. The second is to understand the origin of the emotion and recognize this cycle of every time I have a negative emotion, do I suppress it through something like video games? Do I give into it by lashing out to people? You have to recognize, okay, what am I feeling? right now. I'm feeling hurt and rejected. I'm feeling unlovable. That's why I'm calling someone the C word or the B word or whatever. That's why I want to hurt this person back because this person hurt me. You get slapped across the face. What do you want to do? You want to slap the other person.

Be aware of the emotion. Once you become aware of the emotion and once you recognize, oh, like some of this hurt is actually coming from all of my previous rejections. The wild thing is they weren't even explicit rejections. As you start to go back and you explore the origin of the somskaar, and this is the work that our coaches do, you start to reinterpret and you start to realize, and y'all will see me do this. So, like, for example, if you look at some of our interviews with in-cells, right,

will, like, help them reinterpret their prior experiences. Instead of interpreting it through an emotional lens, they start to really interpret it through a logical lens. The problem is that everyone who is controlled by their, their emotions thinks they're thinking logically. Whereas the truth of the matter is they're not thinking logically at all. It's just hard for your mind to recognize that. That's why it oftentimes requires help of an external person to help interpret, reinterpret

that experience. As you become aware of the origin of the emotion and you become aware, oh my God, there's all of that emotion from all my past rejections coming up, you can alter your behavior. As you alter your behavior and stop sabotaging your attempts at connection with other human beings, you'll start to form relationships. As you start to form relationships, you can start to reintegrate your past experiences into yourself in a healthy way. And that's how you untake the black pill. Got to process those emotions in a nutshell. The other thing to consider is that spending time in that community, so how do I get rid of the

smell of farts? How do I stop smelling farts? Getting out of the room helps a lot. So even though it is emotionally validating to spend time in some of these communities, it doesn't actually help you in the long term. And even though it's nice to spread your fart around other people, you're smelling all of theirs. And that may not be a good idea. Okay. This is also a problem that sometimes we encounter in group coaching. So we see this sometimes where group coaching essentially turns into, like, negative venting sessions without any sense of, like, progress or growth, where people are just, you know, like venting negativity. And then the air in there can get very oppressive. And hopefully, you know, our coaches are sort of have some amount

of skill in managing this where I'm actually thinking about putting together a specific emotional processing curriculum for group. But it's like something. that happens a lot, where it can feel really oppressive, and then it's the coach's job to help you work through that stuff and, like, do those processing steps, challenge your viewpoint, start to think a little bit about, like, how to view your situation differently, but sometimes it can get dark. And it's a valid concern, valid complaint, absolutely. And speaking of which, so someone actually recently sent me a list of concerns that people have about group coaching, so I just wanted to talk about those for a minute.

So here's some reasons that people don't believe in group coaching. The first is I'm not going to get personalized advice, therefore it won't be helpful. And other people are going to give me advice that doesn't work for me. So the reason that group coaching is so hard to explain is because there's no advice. So people come into group coaching. We saw this a lot in our high performance group where people came in and they were like, someone was a CEO of a company and they're like, I was, this is not what I expected. I thought I was going to be with other CEOs and they were going to give me tips on work

life balance. Like, I'm not getting any tips. So my first question to you is when people give you advice, how effective is it in changing your life? It's not. People come there looking for answers. The internet is full of answers. And have we solved motivation in the human race? So people come expecting an answer, and that's what's so confusing about it, is we don't give you one. Because it's our belief that giving answers doesn't actually help people. What helps people is understanding why you can't take the advice. So group coaching is about understanding yourself. Now, this is where people say, but like understanding myself, like, if the goal is understanding me,

shouldn't I do personal coaching? why should I do group coaching? I'm going to make this very simple for you all. So if you're watching this and you're a part of our community, have you talked to Dr. Kay? Have you benefited from anything that we've ever done? But how is it possible for you to benefit if you've never talked to Dr. Kay?

Very simple. This is where the AOE healing concept comes in. So here's Dr. K. here is the person that we interview. Person that we interview has a problem. When we talk to this person, does this person benefit? Yeah. But then here's all y'all that are watching.

Do you benefit? Yes. Why? You're not the one who's interacting. So this is really important to understand. When you see your problem, In someone else, it becomes a lot clearer. Holy crap, I'm doing it.

Because you're not subjectively caught up in the emotion. It's your problem, but it's in someone else. So it's actually easier to understand. If this principle were not true, AEOE healing and we would not be a thing, do you all get that? So it's really interesting. Because what I want you all to do is think about this for a second. When I finish interviewing someone on stream and I ask them, What have you learned today?

They're like, I have no clue. But if I ask Twitch chat, what have you learned today? You all have clear answers. Clear takeaways. You can see it clear as day. You're not caught up with all the crap that they were going through. Do you all get that? It's like, there's like each and every one of you will take away something from each of these streams.

This, and it's because of this concept. When you work one-on-one with someone, the subjectivity and the experience of emotion makes it hard for you to learn lessons. This is why group can be valuable. Because it actually engages, what a lot of people think is that personal coaching is closer to what we do on stream. I actually think, ironically, group coaching is closer to what we do on stream. Because in terms of your perspective. So if you get something out of watching streams and out of watching videos, why is that? it's because you're the observer out here and you're learning over here.

It's kind of a bizarre concept that not many people get. Okay, next thing. I will not have enough time to share my problems and time will be split among the group. That's a fair point. So if you need one on one time, personal coaching is better. No question. But I think that the whole point of group coaching is that your problems and someone else's problems are actually the same friggin' problem. Once again, if this, if everyone needed

individual help, this would not be a thing. AEOE healing would not be a thing. The whole point, the premise upon which our Twitter channel, our YouTube, Healthy Gamer was founded is that we share the same problems. And if we come together and work on them, like we can actually solve them together. What I saw the reason I, literally the reason I started streaming and this whole thing is because it occurred to me that working one-on-one in my office was not enough. And that there's a certain scalability to this that is absolutely necessary right now. And that same spirit is embedded into our group coaching program. Here's the next one.

I will be required to solve other people's problems and I can't solve my own problems. How will I help others? Really, really valid concern. I can't even help myself. How the hell am I supposed to help someone else? Let me ask you something. Is it easier to cook for yourself when you're sick or cook for someone else, one of your friends, when you're sick?

What actually brings out, who can you work harder for? Can you work harder for yourself or work harder for a friend? So here's the wild thing. It actually goes the other way around. Helping others can sometimes be the first step to helping yourself. We see this a lot in the substance use community. that like we're going to come together and support each other and try to help each other stay sober. And like that actually is how you figure it out.

When you talk to your friend, let's say I'm in a community of people who are black pillars. And I offer words of hope and encouragement to a friend, like to one of my peers and group. That's where I learn how to say those things. And it's easier to see respect in other people and give respect in other people. How do you change that self-dialogue in your head? you start by changing the way that you talk to other people. Because it's easier to talk to them. It's easier to look at someone else in group

and say, even though you screwed up, you still have value as a human being. It's just a setback. Really hard to say that to yourself. So how do you learn how to say it to yourself? You actually learn the words by saying it to someone else. And then what happens as group is you see the intrinsic value in all seven people in the group,

but you still don't see it in yourself. And then they see it in you. and you're still confused. And then one day, hopefully you're a facilitator or someone else in group is like, hey, what do you all think about that? Who here thinks that they're the least helpful person in group? And everyone in group raises their hand. And that's when it clicks.

Holy crap, how is that possible? Like, what's going on here? The problem with personal coaching or therapy is if your therapist is like you have value, what do you say in response? What does your mind say? Your mind is like, you're paid to say that. So there's interesting study. The respect, so if you pull programmers, okay, developers,

whose respect matters to you the most? It's not your boss. It's your peers. The respect of peers is the most impactful thing for your sense of value. And we know this. We've discovered this. This is what all the research from the United Nations, World Health Organization, U.S. Surgeon General,

about peer support is all about. It's like, if one of you all talks to Dr. K, and Dr. K is like, you have a beautiful human being, you have intrinsic value, you're like, F you're Dr. K, of course you're going to say that. You say that to everyone. It doesn't even mean anything coming from you. Y'all get that?

But when it comes from your peers, it means something. It's like if I'm playing a game of Dota, and I ask my mom, Mom, do you think I'm good at Dota? And my mom is like, yes, betta, you're so good at Dota. Look at how talented you are and smart you are. You're so good at Dota, beta. Your best Dota player in the world.

But when my frigging peers in the Dota game are like, damn, son, you were amazing at this game. I once had someone tell me after a game of Dota too. I wonder if I can even find the screenshot. I don't know where screenshots go. I'll try to find it. I used up all of my good teammate luck for the year in this match. Best piece of feedback I've ever gotten a Dota game.

All of my, like, good teammate luck is gone because I queued with you. The respect of your peers matters so much more. I'll try to find the quote. Okay. Next problem that people have in group. I will feel lonely in the group because others won't be able to understand what I'm going through. If that were true, once again, this would not be a thing. The whole point is that we feel isolated.

And when we give into that feeling, no one else will be able to understand what I do. And we don't ever engage in a group. We never give ourselves the chance to disprove that belief. And we go on reinforcing the belief that I am alone, I am alone, I am alone. The value in group comes from coming into group believing you're alone. And leaving realizing that you're not. How does one realize that they're not alone in this world? It has to come from a group.

It has to come from your peers. Even if you have one-on-one sessions with Dr. K, you think one-on-one time with me is going to make you feel less alone, like Dr. K is the one person in the world that understands me. That's because it's Dr. K. But the rest of the humans out there, there's no way they could understand me. So how do you change this idea that I'm alone in this world? It's got to be through some kind of group interaction. When you share your problems, that's why like AEOE healing is. a thing because like every person who comes on here thinks that they're alone, thinks that their

problems are unique. And then everyone watches and they're like, you know what, we struggle with this too. I won't be able to participate because I have difficulty speaking and I'm shy. This is a great one. This is probably my favorite one. You know what? That is correct. If you are shy and you have difficulty speaking up, you are going to have trouble in group, which is exactly why we made it. Because let me give you the options. There's you who's shy and has difficulty speaking. There's the real world in which speaking up and looking like an idiot and sounding like an idiot has real consequences. You can't afford to speak up at work and look stupid in front of your boss because that can affect your pay.

You can't afford to go to the birthday party because if you look dumb at the birthday party, then like they're not going to invite you next time. there are real consequences to being shy and speaking up in the real world. If only there were a place where you could practice overcoming that emotion of shyness, if there were only a space that was non-judgmental that did not affect your relationships, did not affect who you play games with, did not affect your income. If there was only a sandbox, a practice mode for overcoming. understanding those feelings, that would be cool. So here's you, here's the real world, here's group. It's specifically a place where you're going to feel shy. And this is one of my favorite

things in group. So when we have a shy person in group, what do I do? I ask them, what helps you speak? Does it help if people ask you questions? Does it help if other people wear the burden of communication? or carry the burden of communication with you. Yeah, it helps, but then it makes me feel bad. So it's like, okay, who's going to step in and ask this person questions to bring them into the group? One person is like, I'm going to step in. Cool. So then they start asking them questions.

And the shy person is speaking because if someone talks to them, they'll talk back. I mean, they'll respond. But then the person feels guilty. And so we're like, okay, so now you feel guilty because the group is pulling you in. How can we deal with that feeling of guilt? What can you do to make things right? I don't know. Maybe I can ask other people questions.

Fantastic. Is there someone else in the group who feels shy? Great. Can you ask them a question and bring them in? Even though I'm nervous? Yeah, because I want to do my part in group. Ask them a question. Have a conversation.

And then suddenly, the shy person is engaging someone else, right? Then you feel guilty for feeling guilty, which is exactly why helping other people in the group is so crucial. The best antidote to feeling guilty for being helped by another human being is to actually help another human being. Because then you can say to yourself, yeah, did I need help? Absolutely. But I also gave it. I gave something back. And then you start living in the world, not as an independent person who no longer needs help. Because that's what keeps us stuck. I don't want anyone else's help. I don't need anyone else's help. I don't need anyone else's help. I need to be independent. You start to change the way that you look in the world. And suddenly the world is

about needing help, receiving help, and giving help. That's how this works. We're all going to help each other. So it's interesting because the very things that cause people to be afraid to sign up for group is exactly what group is designed to fix. But it's absolutely true. I'm not saying that talking in group is going to be easy. It's going to be hard. But where else are you going to learn how to do it? where else can you show up and like screw up and be welcome next week? That's why we have group. There will be a lot of time wasted because I have to listen to others' problems that I won't get anything from. This also we've addressed.

This is the idea of AEOE healing, the concept that you can learn from someone else's problems. And also that you can help someone else's problems. And as you help someone else get through it, you will learn how to fix it. yourself. I'll feel worse because people will just be complaining for 90 minutes. That is absolutely a possibility. When this happens in group and when group becomes essentially venting session after venting session after venting session without processing, without challenging, without, you know, learning and growing, then group actually becomes more toxic than it's worth. It has absolutely happened. It's a very real fear and it's a very valid concern. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen.

often, but sometimes the group becomes so oppressive and the facilitator actually lacks the skill to be able to steer it in the right direction. It's a valid concern. We've had people drop out a group because this has happened. What I can say confidently, though, is that that is not the majority of group experience. And I'd say that probably happens less than 5% to 10% of the time. We've had very few groups like literally fall apart because of how oppressive the atmosphere is. I won't be able to find people who are successful enough to be role models I can learn from. Once again, you're not in group to learn from other people. If you want to learn from someone else, watch stream.

If you want to learn from someone else, go to a class. If you want to learn from someone, group is not right for you. If you want to learn about yourself, group is right for you. If you want to see your problems existing in other people, and learn what they did to overcome their problems, if you want to help someone else with your problem, then come to group. But if you're coming there for a curriculum,

that's not the right place. We're actually still developing something like that, but if you're looking to learn from someone else, sign up for a class. Don't sign up for group coaching.