HealthyGamerGG - What Men Don’t Understand About Pregnancy (Postpartum Depression)

Episode Date: September 26, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K breaks down the clinical realities of postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, examining why new fathers often struggle to provide effective support during this high-stakes period. He explains that supporting a partner requires balancing emotional validation with active, practical help specifically by preserving her sleep, reducing her cognitive load, and actively building her self-efficacy as a mother. Framing fatherhood as a "second childhood," Dr. K offers actionable guidance for men to redefine self-reliance, replace toxic coping mechanisms, and successfully navigate the massive identity shift that parenthood requires.Mental health resources designed by Dr. K and made with love: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQTalk to a HG Coach 1-on-1: https://bit.ly/46bIkdoDr. K's NEW Guide to Love, Sex, & Relationships: https://bit.ly/4dO3x0VDr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 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. All right, chat, today we're going to talk about postpartum depression and postpartum parenting. So if you have a partner who's just had a kid, what should you do to support them in the best?

way. Now, if you're a dad out there, I think this is tricky because we're oftentimes blamed as dads and men and all men are trash and all that good stuff, which we see on social media, for not being supportive enough. But I think there are a couple of important things to remember. The first is that most of what we learn how to do, we learn from our parents. And let's say 40, 50 years ago, dads were not nearly as active as they need to be today and as expectations are high today. So oftentimes men are blamed for not, providing something that no one ever taught them how to do. And that's what we're going to try to correct here today. So in the United States, there's a pretty controversial trial that's going on right now. A woman named Lindsay Clancy is on trial for murder after killing her three children. And her defense, which there's ample evidence for, is that she had severe postpartum depression that turned into postpartum psychosis. And psychosis is when you have like a break from reality. And during her psychotic period, she actually killed her three children and then jumped out of a window on some high story and is now paralyzed from the sternum down. And so I think like, you know, we have this

legal defense of like, yeah, I'm not responsible because I'm insane. And I think postpartum psychosis is like one of those diagnoses that that defense is kind of for because we know that in psychosis, you literally have a break from reality. You think that, you know, you've been possessed by the devil. And you really believe that and you act accordingly. And this has created a lot of problems on the internet. People are breaking up over it like women are supporting Lindsay Clancy. A lot of men are like really confused by this. I think. a lot of people don't understand what psychosis really is, and they sort of think about it as like depression or anxiety where you're still tethered to reality. The really scary thing about this is also that she was in psychiatric treatment. So she was declining and getting worse. She saw, I think, seven health care providers was hospitalized at some point, was prescribed 13 medications. So she was trying to get help. People were trying to help her. And this still happened. And that's kind of why I'm making this video today, because I think the postpartum period is like really hard to manage. And part of the reason is, reason it's hard to manage is because if you're a dude, you were never taught how to take care of your wife in the postpartum period. Because there's a really good chance that your dad was not super active in the postpartum period. Or maybe you were a little baby so you didn't really observe it. And so it's like really hard to know what to do as a dad. It's a really scary situation. And what I see most dads do is they try their best and they actually do try, but they actually don't know what the goal is. So parents, you need to do two basic things. One is support,

self-efficacy, which is kind of like interesting. So it's not just that you need to do work, but the primary mental health goal is to help your partner feel like a good mother. So it's not to like assuage her concerns about appearance and things like that. Like if she asks you like, hey, is the baby weight gone? Let's like a jabate, right? There's no right answer to that. And so there's all this stuff that we're kind of like scared as dudes. Like, oh my God, like, what do I say? Like, the baby weight isn't gone. Like, how do I proceed with this? So this is where the main goal is to support her self-efficacy. The best protective factor for her to not get depressed, which we'll talk about in a second, is for her to feel like she's doing a good job. And that's our goal. The second thing is

that we want to actually do some of the work, which we will get to, which will then help our partner feel self-efficacious. But oftentimes what I find is that most dads do like one or the other, right? So dad shows up, says, I'm going to be an active parent. I'm going to change diapers. I'm going to do all this stuff. And that's where all of their focus and energy goes. And they don't provide the right kind of support. Or what they try to do is provide moral support and be supportive and things like that and say nice things to their partner, but they're not supporting self-efficacy, so it doesn't work as effectively as it could. So these are the two things that we're going to really focus on today. Now, let's start with some statistics because this is a scary AF, okay? So

on a given day, 10,000 live births, about 1,000 to 2,000 women are going to end up with postpartum depression. This is a staggeringly high number. What's even scarier is about 2 per thousand, women will end up with postpartum psychosis. So this is the situation that Lindsay Clancy is presumably in. I think there's ample like medical evidence for that. Like, I mean, she was in care. There's lots of notes. This is not like I showed up in court and by the way I'm insane. There's just piles of evidence that she was really moving towards postpartum psychosis. And so it's two per thousand. So that means that every day in the United States, about 20 women will enter into postpartum psychosis. And then this is also kind of scary, arguably reassuring, about. 6% of people who wind up in postpartum psychosis will have a serious suicide attempt or commit suicide.

About 5% will be violent or homicidal to other people. So on the one hand, these numbers are really low, right? 10,000 live births, 20 people are psychotic. 5%. So one of those women will try to kill themselves or kill somebody else. So that's like pretty small, like one per 10,000. But it's also like scarily large because that means it's kind of happening every day. it could be happening in your situation. So how do you detect postpartum depression and postpartum

psychosis? This is not really your job as a partner. This is the job of a medical professional. Here's an example of the standard that people use. It's called the Edinburgh Depression Scale. There are some criticisms that this depression scale doesn't really pick up psychosis. But basically, like the features of postpartum depression are the same features as regular depression or unipolar depression. So we'll see changes in appetite, changes in interest, feeling guilty, having a lower energy level, difficulty concentrating, feeling sluggish, slow, or even activated in potentially suicidal ideation. Now, the tricky thing about this is that many of these things are a normal part of postpartum, right? So difficulty sleeping because you've got a newborn.

Low energy levels because your body just pushed out and grew a whole new child. You lost a lot of blood from the uterus. There's necrosis going on in the uterus. Like there's all kinds of weird stuff going on. So that's what makes things like really tricky is that if we look at the features of depression and we look at the normal course of delivering a baby, there's a lot of overlap. So there are a couple of things that I want y'all to be specifically on the lookout for, but generally speaking, this should be the responsibility of your partner's pediatrician or obstetrician to screen for this like everyone kind of looks out for it. Key things for you to keep an eye out for. First of all, sleep. So if there is a sense of lack of fatigue, despite not sleep,

that's a huge warning sign. So this is what's kind of interesting. For a lot of women, the first time they get diagnosed as bipolar instead of unipolar depression is in the postpartum period. So women can have a history of depressive episodes. And then after they have a kid, they like convert to bipolar. It's not that they convert to bipolar. They've always been bipolar.

One of the key risk factors for a manic episode is disturbed sleep. So this is where like once their sleep gets messed up, their underlying vulnerability for bipolarity. kind of comes out. Okay. So you really want to be paying attention to sleep. You want to be paying attention to the inability to sleep disturbances in sleep. If their sleep is really messed up, that's a very concerning sign. Second thing to look out for, this is highly specific, is something called anhadonia. So this is the inability to experience pleasure from activities that you normally find pleasurable. So energy levels will be low. You may have difficulty

concentrating. You may not be sleeping great. But one of the key things about the postpartum period is that fun stuff should still be somewhat fun. People should be able to derive. Sure, you're exhausted, but you should be able to derive some joy, you know, a month. And remember, we're talking this is like up to 12 months after delivery, right? So like a month in, your partner should be able to enjoy certain things. Whether it's watching a movie, whether it's spending time with the baby, whether it's spending time with you, fun stuff should still on some level be fun. So Anhedonia is highly concerning. A couple of other things to look out for are extreme versions of persistent emotions, okay? So it's normal for women to be irritable, for women to be sad, tearful.

There's like this thing that we call postpartum blues, which lasts about two weeks. So like that kind of stuff is normal. But if the emotion feels really, really large or is persistent. So they're like they're super irritable one month in, six months, six weeks in, six months in, then that's kind of a red flag. If they're extremely sad, tearful, crying for weeks, you know, some of that stuff is like normal in the postpartum period is your hormones recalibrate and things like. that but if that really persists, that's a concern. And then the other two things that are really scary, this is kind of touching on the road to postpartum psychosis, is disorganization. So this is number one. So when we, when people become psychotic, this is something we don't quite realize,

is that they become highly disorganized. So they're not able to like function because their mind is not like operating correctly. So they may try to do a bunch of things, but like the stuff just doesn't click. Like you'll go to the grocery store, but you'll forget your wallet. And then you kind of, you buy some groceries, but the groceries that you bought don't actually like make a meal. So we start to see like if you're feeling like your partner is getting disorganized, that is absolutely something to look out for. And the last thing to really look out for is what we call mood cycling. So this is where like there are rapid fluctuations in mood.

So persistent extreme sadness, irritability is a concern. But also like extreme sadness being okay for a couple of days, extreme sadness being okay for a couple of days, being extreme sad, being extremely irritable. intensity of mood fluctuations is also something to look out for. If you detect any kind of suicidality, homicidality, those are like huge red flags, definitely warranting emergency services. Once again, this is something that really should be handled by clinicians, but as a partner, you should be on the lookout for this stuff. Now let's take a look at what's the best way to support your partner. So here's what's really shocking. So if we look at the risk factors for

postpartum depression, what we find is that intimate partner violence increases the odds of postpartum repression by like 2.5, right? So it's like a 250% increase. Like, that's pretty big. What's really interesting is poor social support increases the risk by like 350%. So what's really insane about this is that a good partner, proper social support is actually more impactful than like violence in the relationship. Like this is insane, right? So this is how important your role in the postpartum period is. If you navigate this right, you are like more impactful. The weight of the weight of your intervention is worth more than intimate partner violence. And here's a list of other risk factors with their relative sizes just for you all to take a look at. But let's talk about how to

provide that good social support. So two tasks. The first task, how do you support your partner in preventing depression, is build their sense of self-efficacy. So number one thing that, and this is we're going to kind of talk about this for just a second. Like what do women experience, right? So they're socialized in a way where like motherhood is everything. This is changing a little bit now with like the current generation, but still they've like grown up, right? If they're having kids today, they still grew up in a period where motherhood is sort of everything. Even on social media, we have all these like trad wives and things like that. And like motherhood is a huge part of being a woman. And some women may not want to be mothers. Like that's fine. But if, you know, if you're having a child with one, there's a decent chance that she wants to be a mother and she wants to be a good mother. What most people don't realize is being a good mother is like a skill. We talk about it like it's like just this natural thing, right? Like you just this is this natural thing. Right? Like you just. I have this baby and you feel all these feelings. And then you're just like, oh, my God, I'm a mother and everything is great and everything's wonderful.

And we're taking pictures and we're uploading them to Instagram and like, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. But what we know is that something like breastfeeding requires, like, potentially intervention. So breastfeeding support is a highly protective factor against depression. And why is that? That's because if you can breastfeed properly, you feel like a good mom. You feel like an efficacious mom. You've got a child who knows how to latch. There's, like, positioning going on.

there's like latching going on. There's training your body, training the child. And like the child is also like a day old. So they don't really know how to do much. Right. So there's all kinds of weird stuff that goes into this that people don't really understand, don't appreciate. And so then if you don't learn properly or your biology is just such that like you don't produce enough milk. And so the child really doesn't like, you know, doesn't get enough because this is the first time that your body is doing this. Then you switch to bottle feeding and then you feel like a failure as a mother. And like basically all this stuff is a confluence towards being a failure as a mother. That's the primary thing that we're going to try to prevent. That's where we really come in, right? We're going to help our partner be a

good mom. So that involves a couple of different things. The first is support herself efficacy and think about yourself like a coach. So think about you've got like an Olympic athlete. What are the things that you can do to help your Olympic athlete win the Olympics? Right? That involves things like making sure they get good sleep. It involves things like cooking meals for them. Like let them focus on the task of learning how to be a mom, and you are going to be the coach for your partner. And that also involves some concrete skills. So here are a couple of studies that look at programs. So here's a program that is psychoeducational, randomized controlled trial that basically we're like, okay, we're going to teach people. We're going to educate them about problems in

motherhood, problems in postpartum period. We're going to teach people what they should do. Okay. That's what we do over here. And what we find from this trial small is that this basically has no impact. And this is also what I think like a lot of dudes get blamed for everyone. It's like, here's what you should do. Look, I'm going to give you a list of all the things that you should do. Right. So if you want to dance, put your right leg in, put your right leg out, put your left leg in, shake it all about.

Do the hokey pokey, turn yourself around and that's what it's all about, right? That's what we tell people. This is how you dance. I'm going to give you a list of instructions. Now go do it. That's very different from skills building. So here's another trial that did find efficacy. But this trial is looking at, or this intervention is actually a 10-week skills building program

that involves things like gratitude and mindfulness and all this kind of stuff. So those are skills that need to be built over time. That's why we have stuff over here on the membership side where we like dig into these things. And we have these things like meditation tracks and stuff like that where it's about skills building. Information is not necessarily sufficient for change. If it was, all you need is one motivation video on YouTube and everyone would be motivated. So skills building is different from education. So education is important.

but it is not sufficient. So you should support your partner. That's actually going to go a long way. And then another part of self-efficacy is kind of emotional support, right? So when she is feeling down or sad or whatever, validating that, offering her some emotional support of like, hey, your Olympic athlete just, she didn't win the gold in this Olympics or didn't even get a medal. How would you talk to that Olympic athlete?

So your partner is frustrated because the baby isn't latching. She feels ugly. And you can validate that. So one of the key skills is validation. So like, yeah, I know that there's a lot of. lot of changes that go on in your body. And I'm, I'm amazed at, you know, how, fuck, man, I don't even know that's one that I've been figured out, man. The body changes in body image issues. Dude, I'm a fucking Harvard trained psychiatrist. I still don't know what to say. So what I do is just

kiss my wife when she's feeling that way. And this is like really like, I don't know if this really works. She feels flustered. Like, that's her response to it. It's like she gets like really flustered, but like I'm indicating love. So I'm indicating support. Sometimes I'll say things like, yeah, I, like, obviously, I won't say that. I never say it. I still haven't figured that. That's a bad example. That one is arguably unsolvable.

And if you guys have figured it out, let me know. What you can do, though, is like physical touch is really important, right? So my solution is when she believes she is grotesque, there are no words. It's jubated. Like, I haven't figured that out. But what I can do is demonstrate to her that she's not grotesque. By coming in, giving her a kiss, giving her a hug. You know, like, my thought is like, yeah, you'll get there one day.

Like, but that, yeah. It can't do that. You can't say that. Like, yeah, like, your baby waits there, but, like, you'll get there one day. I think telling her that she's beautiful goes a long way. Like, I still believe that. And I've always thought she's beautiful. You know, so there's, like, some of that stuff going on.

And I think the other big thing that really works well in terms of self-efficacy is praise when things go well. So my favorite example of this is like my wife struggled with breastfeeding. And then there were times that, like, you know, it worked well. And when it worked well, you have a milk-drunk baby. And I don't know if you guys have ever seen a milk-drunk baby, of milk-drunk. of milk drug babies are like cute, right? So like this is the kind of thing where there's a lot of small positive reinforcement stuff that is not falling into the jibate.

It's like snapping a picture of your milk drunk baby or telling your wife, you know, partner. Man, that milk drug baby, like she slept like a rock, right? So like positive encouragement on the things that your partner does do well, right? So like being like, wow, this is awesome. Like look at this, look at this, look at this fat little baby. Like look at this chub. Look at this chicken wing. Like this, look at this thigh, dude.

Look at this well-fed baby. Like, look this fat little chunky little monkey. And so that kind of stuff, the positive reinforcement, really supports self-efficacy. Like I've said, one of the most frustrating things about OCD is how often it gets misdiagnosed. People can spend years trying to manage anxiety, depression, or even something else entirely, without realizing that underneath it all, it might actually be OCD. And because it's so misunderstood, it gets missed. Another study showed something like 50% of people with OCD get misdiagnosed at first,

which means they don't get the right kind of support early on. And even when it is diagnosed, not every therapist is trained in the specific treatment that is effective for OCD, like exposure and response prevention or ERP. But here's the real challenge. There's a shortage of OCD specialists out there. That's where our sponsor, NoCD, comes in. It's a telehealth platform that connects you with licensed therapists

who are trained specifically in ERP. Our scientific advisory board spent some time digging into NoCD's clinical approach and how they handle things like safety and escalation. And they were genuinely impressed by the level of rigor and understanding there. So if you're dealing with intrusive thoughts or you find yourself stuck in loops of obsessive thinking or repetitive behaviors, it might be worth talking to someone who really knows what to look for. 155 million Americans have insurance that covers the cost of their sessions, making it an affordable option for therapy.

They even offer in-app support when you need help between sessions, so you're never alone. You can schedule a free 15 minute call with no CD using the link in the description below. And so we also want to support things like sleep, which is where we get to the second part, which is moral support is not nearly as effective as actual support. So I know that we're managing some emotions over there. And this is why it's so hard for dads. And this is like, like no one teaches us this stuff. I don't even think most women know this.

But they're sort of like, some dads are like, I'm going to change diapers. And some dads are, I'm going to tell her she's pretty. And neither of those is really sufficient. And what's really frustrating about this is that if you're a dude, you can see that your partner is struggling that she's emotional. And so you're like, I love you. You're beautiful to me. That'll never change. And it's somehow not enough.

And then what's really scary about this is like other side, right, is like, I'm changing diapers. I'm doing all of the things. But it's like not enough. And so you really need to do both. And the super scary thing about this, and this is what's really terrifying, is you can do everything right as a dad. And your partner can still have a bad experience. for one of two reasons. One is that this is the way

that mental illness and postpartum depression work. They're not necessarily preventable, right? And going back to the Lindsay Clancy trial, I think if we look at the statistics, one person is homicidal or suicidal every day in the U.S. postpartum.

Like, this happens to people. And Lindsay Clancy is super scary because she was in treatment. People arguably did the majority of the things right. I don't think her husband was particularly absent. I mean, it seems like people on social media think that he killed her or whatever, but like that's, I think that's internet brain rot personally.

No offense. There just doesn't seem to be any evidence to support that. And this is what's really scary about this is like you can do everything right and things can go wrong. The other reason that things can go wrong is that your partner, who is a new mother, may not do things right. Shocking. Is it possible for new mothers to not be perfect?

Absolutely. Is it possible for some of them to be good? Absolutely. Is it possible for some of them to be bad? Ooh, because we don't blame new mothers, right? Like, we never, like, accountability for new mothers is like a big no-no in our society. But some of the men that I've worked with, I've seen this. I've worked with some of these female patients as well. Like, sometimes there's mental illness involved, but sometimes there's also, like, mistakes. So a really good example of this is social media use postpartum. So this is a study that found that basically the more likely you are to compare, the more you use social media, the more damaging it will be for your mental. So this is a study that found that basically, the more likely you are to compare. So this is a study. is where there is absolutely responsibility on the part of the mother. And that is not something that you can necessarily control as a dad. So we want to try to help you do everything right. But the really scary thing about life and medicine is you can still do everything right and still have a bad

outcome. So going back to what kind of practical support should you provide. So this is where the most important thing, in my opinion, is sleep. So sleep is medicine, especially in the postpartum period, in depression, in things like bipolar disorders. sleep is literally medicine and bipolar disorder. And postpartum psychosis is oftentimes linked to bipolar disorder. So this is where like letting your partner sleep as much as you can is going to be really good. Now, you need rest too, but that means watching the kid overnight. That means doing things like pumping and doing a bottle feed with breast milk or formula or whatever. Or it's waking up with the kid. I mean, it's amazing how much you can do. Like even if your partner is breastfeeding overnight,

waking up, pulling the kid out of the crib, bringing them to your partner, having your partner feed them, they're just basically sleeping while there's some amount of latch. They're awake for maybe 15, 20 minutes. Picking up the child, changing the diaper, settling them down, burping them, all this kind of stuff. So like what would be like an hour and a half endeavor of feeding them twice overnight, now becomes a 15 to 20 minute load twice overnight for your partner while you're doing the majority of it. Okay.

So this kind of practical support is really important, changing diapers, things like that. Other big things to do are household-related stuff and cognitive load stuff. Right. So this is like what is really exhausting is in addition to, you know, having grown a human and birth debt, things like groceries, things like meals, the more of that stuff that you can take care of so that your partner can focus on the job of becoming a new mother and becoming an efficacious mother, the better the outcomes will be. So then we get to a really tricky thing, which is like masculinity. So a lot of the things that I'm advocating for, people will call like being a beta cuck, right? Like this is not a man's job, things like that. And we got to talk about this for a second. So I think it's fine personally. So like these are the values that I hold, is my, my experiences, I want to be independent. I want to be able to do stuff. I don't want to rely on anyone for anything.

It's not that I don't enjoy people doing things for me. And I have to rely on people doing things for me. But when it comes to my kid, I want to be a good dad. And for me, being a good dad is providing everything that my child may need. So I think if you look at masculinity, like independence and self-reliance are really good values. Like, I think those are healthy forms of masculinity. Linda. And so I think it's totally fine to learn this stuff. Like I was like, okay, like, I'm going to learn how to, you know, I'm going to learn how to change a diaper. And even now, like, people are blown away when like, if my wife wants to leave town for a couple days and I have a two year old and four year old at home, they're like, how are you going to survive on your own? It's like, what do you mean? How am I going to survive my children and I can change a diaper? I can put them to sleep. Like, I can do these things. I derive a lot of pride in this. I also derive a lot of pleasure and I derive a lot of frustration and angst and resentment at my wife. on day two for abandoning me with our children, not really.

But there's a lot of resentment for all kinds of other things. Okay. So I think it's like, okay, like you have to decide for yourself, like what feels right to you in terms of like, is this turning you into a beta cuck? Is this doing women's work? Which I think there's some interesting research around. So one really fascinating thing that we talk about in the guide to love sex and relationships, which if you guys are, you know, trying to figure out how to have a healthy relationship, if you're trying to build some of these communication skills and stuff like that, there's a lot of good stuff in there. But one really interesting thing I was doing research for the guide. And what I found is that rate of infidelity climbs for both parties with well-segregated gender roles.

So when the man goes out and works and the woman stays home and takes care of the stuff or vice versa, the woman is more likely to cheat and the man is more likely to cheat. So what we know about healthy long-term relationships is that they are partnerships. And there can absolutely be a division of labor and specialization. But I'd be really careful about assuming that these things are like not male behaviors, which is. you're welcome to do. And this is where we get to something else that kind of pisses me off. Like I'm going to piss everybody off today is my favorite thing to do nowadays. Is I think a lot of people don't understand that toxic masculinity, like we blame people for toxic masculineity. I don't think that's really fair. Toxic masculinity is the response, is the

coping mechanism to not knowing how to do something right. I'm a Harvard trained psychiatrist. And I had an intact family with a largely present father somewhat. And it was still really hard for me to learn how to be a good dad. Like, this is insane. What I had to learn, the gap that I had to fill was like night and day. And I think when a dude is faced with something that they can't solve, they don't, they have no idea how to solve. They resort to the tools that they have, right? And one of the tools that we have is like, I don't know how to do this. Therefore, it's not my problem. And like, we should be really careful about blaming specifically men for this because this happens all the time, right? This is why we have division of labor. I don't know how to change a transistor

plug in my car so I take it to a mechanic, right? This isn't my job. CEOs have lots of things that are not their job. I don't know how to do this. You know, lots of people who don't know how to use technology, they're like all these examples of the stuff. So I think a lot of that toxic masculinity response actually melts away once you give the men self-efficacy. So this is where like, if you're like, this doesn't feel right, this is not, you know, men's work and things like that. I want you to think about, ask yourself like this question, do you even know how to do this? Are you capable of doing this? Are you terrified on some subconscious level that you don't know how to do this and that you feel powerless? And your response to powerless is the tools that you were taught about being a man, which is overly isolating and all this other weird kinds of emotional stuff, displacement and things like that.

This isn't my problem. Oftentimes what men will do is they'll throw themselves into what they know how to do, right? So I'm going to let my wife change the diapers and I'm going to double down at work. I'm going to do more at work. I'm going to be a provider for my family, right? So it's kind of interesting because like this is the direction that you move, but it's because you don't know how to do the other thing. And I think just blaming it on toxic masculinity is like not helpful. And I think it's actually harmful in many ways. Last thing that I'm going to say, and this is like

as a dude speaking to you, other dudes, what you all got to understand is that fatherhood is a new childhood. This is the way I understand it. Like you're learning this whole new set of things. Society has woefully unprepared you for. Your parents have woefully unprepared you for. The internet has woefully unprepared you for. Being a dad, I think, is one of the least resourced developmental changes on the planet. Because at least we know there's all kinds of like moms, groups and things like that. We've known like that it takes a village. Women will fly in, right?

Like when your partner is having a kid, her mom will come, your mom will come. That causes problems, whatever. But there's this sort of this idea like paternity leave is a recent thing. And whose dad is flying in to support you in the postpart period? Nobody. So this is one of the scary things. We'll blame people for being deadbeat dads or not supportive fathers or things like that, which they're not being, but like there's also, if this is a systemic problem, like, it's a systemic problem.

So understand that fatherhood is a second childhood for you. Second thing that I got to be like straight with y'all race, this is like my masculine energy, is like your life is fucking jover, done. So the moment that you have a kid, the life that you have and your partner, I think, needs to understand this as well, y'all's life is over. That life is gone, man. No more rating on nights and things like that. So, and it's not like your beta cuck.

It's like literally I want you guys to think about this. In your previous life, let's say you work for 40 hours and then you have 40 hours of recreation, right? Like that's how your distribution is. Once a child enters the picture, that 40 hours is gone. Like there's whatever amount of child, there's like there's just this whole other pile of work that is like constant. And every day for the next part remainder of your life, arguably. Right. So all of the things that you used to rely on need to go back to the drawing board.

And a really good example of this is I need to do something to relax. Like, I need my time. And this is, this is going to maybe piss a bunch of people off. But like, yeah, like, I get that you need your time. I too need my time. It's caused endless fights between me and my wife, that she needs her time, I need my time. The whole point is that like the total amount of time is no longer a certain amount of relaxation. We're used to a certain amount of sleep. We no longer have that amount of time. There's just, there are not resources to provide you with the way that you used to live life. So how do you navigate that? This is also what we don't teach people, right? So when a man has no emotional regulation skills outside of playing video games because that he was never taught. Now you're in the postpartum period and like you're feeling stressed out. Your wife is sad. You're carrying a lot of emotional load, which by the way men do a lot of uncredited emotional labor, which is the labor of emotional containment. So men hold the emotions of the people around them. We become punching bags and we become absorbing blocks. And then the way that we cope is by going off and doing things by ourselves. That's no longer possible. So this is where there's a huge thing that.

that you need to learn how to do, which is to derive emotional regulation, emotional relief, joy, fun in ways that you've never done before. And this is the hardest thing about becoming a new dad because no one teaches you this stuff. So if we look at the trial that is successful, this is a lot of those mindfulness skills, to be able to derive satisfaction and peace in life from serotonin instead of dopamine, from a sense of peace and contentment instead of pleasure and using video games, pornography, or whatever, for emotional regulation. And not to even touch the mess that is the sexual relationship in the postpartum period, which just is just, there's a whole conversation for a different day.

Okay. So your life is over. And this is like a skill issue, bro. But we're here to help you. Right. So this is where like you don't need to continue to do the things that you used to do in order to meet your needs in the way that need to be met. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't meet those needs, right?

We want you to be peaceful. We want you to be happy. We want you to be healthy. But you will have to change your approach to getting those things. You're going to have to learn how to derive peace and enjoyment from spending time with your child. And if you guys want some of these practical skills, we have a two and a half hour deep dive over on the membership side all about sleep and how to get a good night's sleep and what forms a good night's sleep. So thanks for watching the video today. And hopefully we will help you be a better dad.

Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourself. and each other.