HealthyGamerGG - When Flirting Becomes Creepy...

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about being creepy when flirting, how to get to know someone, and working on your conversational skills! 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

And I want you to join me in this bliss. Get in my van and I'll drive you to a place that has endless happiness. Get in my van and we'll go to a place. I can't do it with a straight face. Are you going to see how terrifying that is? It's like, I don't even need to mention the van. You know the van is coming. It's coming.

Right? You know something like something is weird here. Introverted and being seen as creepy. So I went on this date with this. girl a couple months ago and we went out to eat and being introverted, I'm not a real big talker. After the date, she texted me and said she thought I was creepy because I didn't talk much. Yes, that is literally what she said and didn't want to go on any more dates. Why do introverts get mislabeled as creepy just for not talking a lot?

In honesty, it kind of bothered me. Any thoughts? So, one of the most challenging pieces of feedback to get. and we don't even think about it as feedback, is being called creepy, right? Because here's the thing. Like, if someone's, let's say you like this person, you go on a date and then they tell you like, oh, like, you're creepy. I don't think I want to go out anymore.

Like, what do you do about that? Right? How is that actionable in any way, shape, or form? And not only is it like, how is it, how do you just, like, be less creepy? You can't really do that. And so not only is it, like, not actionable. It's really confusing as to why some people get labeled as creepy. Is it because we're introverted?

Like, what does it mean to be creepy? Like, how do you even get labeled creepy? Like, what are the features of creepiness? And this is why it's so challenging is because, like, people will use this word a lot, right? Oftentimes in dating and relationships. But it's the kind of thing that is devastating. It's like a devastating label to receive and absolutely nothing you can do about it. Because even if you were to go and ask this person, I'm not sure that this person would want to

have a, you know, long conversation with you about it after one date. But even if you did have someone who, let's say, would sit down and talk with you about, you know, what creepy is, like, what would they even say? If you ask someone, if you feel like someone else is creepy, like, what would they say? Like, how, if you ask them, okay, what is it that makes me creepy, it's going to be very hard for people to even tell you what it is. And so I thought in honor of Friday the 13th, what we would do today is actually talk a little bit about what it means to be creepy. And the interesting thing is that thankfully we have a very sophisticated language in psychiatry about different kinds of nonverbal sort of cues and other things that I think we can

actually unpack what creepiness is. And the cool thing is, as we unpack what creepiness actually is, then what we can do is also figure out some way to actually address each of those components. okay so the first thing to understand about being creepy is that it's kind of like a it's kind of like just a feeling that you get right so like someone if you think about the times when you've been creeped out even if we were to ask you okay what is it that makes this creepy you may not really be able to say so maybe there are some things that you you may be able to say because your mind is going to come up with answers but we don't really know that those are the features of creepiness so what we're going to first do is understand okay like what are the

features of creepiness. And if we can kind of break down what are the features of creepiness, then we'll get an avenue if you've been told that you're creepy before or you have a friend who's creepy and like doesn't really, is having trouble socializing, then, you know, like maybe you can give them some feedback that's a little bit more constructive. Like, we can help ourselves and potentially help other people. The other cool thing about it is even if there are people that we feel are creepy, maybe we can give them some more formative feedback to try to make the world a better place. And so the first thing, that we're going to do is dive into like, okay, what does it mean to be creepy? Okay?

So what I want to point out to begin with is just that creepiness is kind of a, creepiness is kind of a, it's a gut check, right? So we have in our minds or brains, okay, I guess this is clipped off in the top. So maybe my face involves creepiness, which we'll get to for a second. We have in our minds or our brains, all this kind of, of signal processing stuff that is going on. And we're not really aware of what the signal processing is. But there are certainly things that we know, like people who make movies, for example, we know that there are certain things that we can do to give the audience a sense that

this person is creepy. I think the Joker is a really good example of this, because if you watch this movie, like, it's kind of creepy, right? The dude is creepy. But what aspects of it are creepy? because some people, like, as we saw on our subreddit post, they sort of say, like, I'm an introvert, therefore I'm creepy. No, it's not like that. Introversion, if you really look at the original definition that Carl Jung, I believe, came up with, it's not about being quiet or shy. That's not what introversion necessarily is. It's about whether you get drained or energized by interacting with other people. So after a long day of work, this is the way that I kind of think about introverts. Like if you're exhausted at 6 p.m. on a Friday and it's been a rough week. week, how do you spend the next four or five hours, like relaxing, unwinding or having a good time?

Do you go out and socialize or do you sit at home and kind of like spend time with yourself? So when you're like regenerating your manabar, do you spend it with people or without people? And that's a good example. I think that's the best kind of description of introversion versus extroversion. And a lot of this other stuff like shyness or like, you know, not being able to relate to people. So that's all completely different. Okay. So now if we look at the Joker, the question sort of becomes, okay, what are the features that are

involved that make this creepy? And so the cool thing is that we've done research on this kind of thing, and what people have discovered is this thing called the uncanny valley. So if something like looks human-esque, but doesn't look human enough, we kind of consider it creepy, right? So this is where the brain sort of decides that, okay, like this is not a human, therefore I'm not going to it in kind of a, I don't need to judge it at all. Like, it's not human. There's nothing I need to be afraid of. Oh, okay, let me move my camera actually. Okay, so I will just be part of, I'll be part of the slides. So Dr. Kay can be part of the uncanny valley. All right. So if we kind of look at this, actually, you know what would be better? It's probably if we just did this. How about we do

this? Okay. Easier. So if we look at this concept of the uncanny valley, what we see is that there's this sort of like, there's this ratio between familiarity and similarity. And there's kind of this interesting place where we're like not too worried about things if they don't look human. And then if they look superhuman, we're not really worried about them either, or like just a regular human. But then there's this, there's this sort of like lack of humanness that our brain assigns a creepiness value to. And the interesting thing is if you tunneled. down into what are the features of the uncanny valley? What do we see in these things that like make

us feel kind of disturbed? They're actually discrete features that will move us from here to here and trigger this sort of idea that things are creepy. So if you look at this, like what about this picture makes it creepy? What about this makes it creepy? Right? What do you all think? Right? It's disturbing. And so then there's also other things that as we kind of look into creepiness and stuff like that. What we'll kind of see is like, this is just kind of frightening, but there are certain features that get kind of changed a little bit, and like, that's what makes it creepy. But the key thing here is that there are certain features here which actually, like, make it creepy. So let's kind of tunnel down into what is it that makes all of these things creepy, okay? So the first aspect

of creepiness is... Okay, so we're going to talk about a couple of different... Before we dive in. So let's just kind of recap what we've done so far. So sometimes you'll see something, right? I'll be walking down the street, and I'll see something, and then I'll think that is creepy. So what that...

Let's say I'm walking down the street and you see like someone who's homeless. And this is where like homeless people oftentimes evoke a creepiness or fear response from people walking down the street. And the question is like, why is that, right? So even when I was in training, one of the key things that one of my mentors or teachers once taught me is they were trying to tell me like, okay, if you're trying to figure out if someone is depressed or someone is psychotic, there's a very simple, what they called a limbic test. So it's kind of like trusting your brain instincts about whether

this person is depressed or whether they're psychotic. And the test is if this person were sitting on the subway and there was one seat open on the subway and the seat was right next to this person, would you sit down next to them or not? And if you would sit down next to them, they're depressed. If you wouldn't sit down next to them, they're psychotic. And it's kind of like it's not precisely true. It's not a true scientifically validated test. But it's a really interesting perspective because there are some things that our brain is interpreting about other people. There are certain features which our brain is keeping track of, which make us like, hesitate with some people and make us not hesitate with other people.

So the other interesting thing is that we can lean on a couple of different areas of research. So one is attachment theory and some of those things in terms of child development. And then we can also look at research in schizophrenia because oftentimes, you know, if we're talking about psychotic disorders and oftentimes what makes people who are homeless, like difficult, like frightens people kind of instinctually, there may be all kinds of different biases and things like that, which I'm not saying that those don't exist, and this is entirely explanatory for it, but there's like something about some kinds of people that set us off. And the interesting thing is that we know through neuroscience analysis of people with schizophrenia,

what some of that stuff is. Because oftentimes when people are actively psychotic, they creep other people out, right? And like, you'll look at someone, you'll be like, that person is on something, that person is high, and you kind of like steer clear, you walk across the street. So these are experiences that we all have. And the cool thing is we can do research to sort of understand what's going on. Okay. So the first thing to understand about creepiness is what we call fixed affect. So fixed affect is, so affect is the display of emotion on your face. So when we think about it like fluctuating affect in a normal kind of way, like a certain amount of fluctuation in your facial expressions calms other people down. Okay. So like I'll

give you guys a simple example. We're going to do it real quick, right? So if I go like this, right, this is great. Now, like, think about how do you feel if I'm doing something like that, right? If I just start smiling, I'm like, hey, how's everybody doing today? There's something about that that could be comforting or maybe you're smiling to you're like, what is this guy doing, right? And then if I stop fluctuating it, I'm still smiling, right? And the second that my affect changes, now my affect has changed. So all it takes is fluctuation of affect. So as long as my facial expression is changing,

and this is where even if you look at, like, I don't know if you all have had experience with kids, but the most terrifying thing for a child is when you have a neutral facial expression that they can't get you to react. So if you like, go to a child, don't do this to children, but just does it to illustrate it.

Like, go to a child and you have a completely neutral affect. Like, it's not even about smiling. It's about the fact that the affect doesn't fluctuate, right? So I can just do this. And that's creepy. It's freaking creepy. Right? You'll see that? So there's not a fluctuation of affect. And then if you do that with a kid, what the kid will do is they'll like try to get you to respond. So first they'll make a noise. They'll like start laughing. They may like touch your face. They'll do something cute. They'll like show you something. They're like going to try to get some kind of reaction.

And then like if that doesn't work, they're going to start crying. Like anything to get you to react. And so sometimes part of what we'll get to like why this is a problem for people, but the first thing to understand about creepiness, and we can even look at things like we can go back to our, you know, kind of Joker, taking a quick look at the Joker. Okay. And what we find is that like this has a certain amount of like, if y'all have seen the Joker, you know that he kind of like laughs inappropriately, right? So like he just smiles for way too long. And that's partially potentially what. why clowns are creepy. But what we see is a non-flructuating affect leads to people feeling creepy. Okay? Next thing to talk about. Oh, no, no, my notes went away. Okay. So, we talked about kind of fixed affect. The other thing that we can sort of touch on for a second is flattened affect. So we know that this happens in people with schizophrenia where their affect gets blunted. So the range of affect, so if I go from this, this, to this, right? There's a wide range, whereas you can have kind of flattened or

constricted affect. You'll see this sometimes in late-stage Parkinson's as well, whereas, like, they just don't smile much. They don't get very sad. So there's like a, like, there's like a, flattening of the affect. So instead of going like this, what I can do is I'll just do this, right? And one, one has a wider range and is like more comfortable. Like it makes people, like if you laugh kind of fully, right? Like a full, like a hearty laugh is something that makes people feel comfortable. Whereas like if you just kind of like slyly smile all the time, that constriction of affect where you don't display a whole lot of positive emotion and you don't display a whole lot of negative emotion, it's not just the fixedness of it. It's the fact that there isn't the range.

So both of those things will lead to a sense of creepiness. Okay. So the next thing that's really, really important is the lack of mirroring. And this is what a spikers. causes kids to freak out is that generally speaking when we like interact with another human being, we want to like mirror the affect. And you can sort of feel this yourself, right? So you're ready? Like, I'm going to go like this. And as long as I have enough fluctuation and changes and like, you know, do like as long as there's movement and fluctuating this, it's going to cause you to respond. But like think about what you do when I go like this, right? What are you doing? You're smiling and you can't even help it. Like, you're just, you're at home.

You're like, what is this guy doing? I don't even know. It's not even funny, but what the hell is happening? I don't know. It doesn't matter. But the point is your brain is responding. You can feel yourself respond. And so that emotional mirroring is what comforts people.

Because if we were sitting across from each other and I went like this and you started laughing too, then like we know we're kind of on the same page, right? And this is where like emotional mirroring is very, very important for helping people feel comfortable. it's very important for people feeling understood. So emotional mirroring is a huge component of it. And what I oftentimes find in people who get labeled as creepy is that they're not very good at emotional mirroring. And we'll get to why that is in a second.

So like this is where like, you know, if someone else is feeling sad and you're not like able to display sadness, then like that's going to cause some problems. And they're like, okay, this person just isn't on the same wavelength with me. And so if we think about these vague terms like, okay, this person is just not on the same wavelength, like what exactly does that mean? It has to do with things like emotional mirroring. And if you're really on the not the same wavelength at all, if that gets really, really bad, then you end up being perceived as creepy. Because here I am crying about something, and this person is like, you know, like that's kind of weird. It's kind of creepy. It's like

doesn't make me feel comfortable. So the next component that we're going to talk about, which is kind of related to that, is discongrant affect. So this is another thing that makes people feel creepy, which is that there's a certain display of emotion which is appropriate, and there are other displays of emotion that are not appropriate. So if, for example, you'll see this in the Joker as well, where he has this tick where he starts laughing, right? And it like creeps people out because you shouldn't be laughing in a situation like this. And so when you display discongruent affect to what you're talking about, we'll also see this as a defense mechanism where sometimes, you know, we'll be talking about really, really sad and terrible things and will like start laughing or people will crack a joke

or like something will happen and there's like a discongruent affect. The other thing sometimes that we'll see is that if, you know, if I'm talking about, yeah, I just won the lottery and I'm the happiest person alive. I love life so much. I love people. I'm so happy. I have everything in the world to be thankful for. And I want you to join me in this bliss. Get in my van. And I'll drive you to a place that has endless happiness. Get in my van and we'll go to a place. I can't do it with a straight face. But you can see how terrifying that is?

It's like, I don't even need to mention the van. You know the van is coming. It's coming. Right? You know something, like something is weird here. Like alarm bells. So this is what I want you all to tune into. If you want to understand creepiness, why the hell is that so damn creepy?

If you're watching that, you're like, oh. Right? And even now, if I do this, that's going to make you feel more comfortable because that's emotionally mirroring what you were feeling, which is like, get away from me. I don't want to get in your van. I don't want to go to your world of bliss or whatever is like, you know. So that's where like emotional, this discongruent affect is very important. So if you're talking about things that are a lot of fun and you don't display a lot of emotion, or you're talking about things that are terrible. you're laughing, right?

Like, I'm not going to do that because that will even bother me. I mean, I'm sure theoretically I could. But, like, you know, you could talk about something really, really terrible happening, and you could be like smiling while you're talking about it. And then when you combine it all, that's how you get your traditional crazy villain from a movie. So if you go back and you watch movies where there are villains that are very, very creepy, I'm thinking about movies like, you know, no country for old men and like some of these other, who's that, there are a couple actors that are really good at this.

And if you really look at what they do, why they're so damn creepy is because they'll have disc and grue and affact. They'll do brutal things to other people without, you know, like displaying any kind of emotion. And that sets us, it like comes across as creepy. And so then like, like this is where if we think about creepiness, it's all about the display of the emotion. And if we think about what's going on on neurological level, someone else's brain is

factoring in all these things. And it's so fast, right? I can just like go neutral. And like, it happens instantly. It's like, what the hell is, what the hell is that? And so when you're thinking about, you know, if someone calls you creepy, it's like the reason they can't tell you what's wrong is because it's that circuit of the brain that's active. Now, I'm not saying that you're behaving the way that I am. I don't think people are, hopefully it's not that bad because I'm really doing gigantic caricatures. But there are features of that that are going to become really important, which we'll kind of get into soon. Okay. So there's one more thing that makes people hell of creepy, which is responding to internal stimuli. So generally speaking, once again,

are the empathic circuits of our brain are kind of like attuned to what's going on. And generally speaking, people respond to like certain signals in the environment, right? So if you're like eating dinner and someone gets up and like gets down on one knee and, like, gets down on one knee, and pulls out a ring and is proposing to someone, everyone in the environment is going to be tuned to that person, right? And then, like, everyone's kind of, like, tuning in to this external stimulus. And we're all sort of responding together.

So when we sort of all respond, like, when we have this kind of, like, crowd mentality of responding together, where, like, that's very, like, emotionally comforting. Even if you think about things like peer pressure, right, let's all get out our pitchforks, we all rile each other up. And then, like, we're all in the same, like,

we're, you know, stamping our pitchers. forks and we're like, ah, you know, down with whatever. Like, so whatever is happening, we're all kind of doing it together. And we have this kind of mob mentality. So if you think about it, the mob mentality, whether it's good or bad or whatever, it's just how human beings work. So when you are not in the same wavelength as other people, when you're not responding to external stimuli and you're instead responding to internal stimuli, that's very creepy.

So in the case of something like a psychotic disorder or, you know, substances of abuse where people are like hallucinating and stuff, that creeps people out. Why does it creep people out? Because this person is like responding to stimuli that you can't see. So self-dialoging is a really good example of something that creeps people out. So if someone has auditory hallucinations and I'm talking to my hallucinations, it creeps people out. We call that self-dialoguing where it's like, I'm not even talking, like I'm talking to y'all. There's no one in the room with me. But this is not creepy, right? Because I'm talking to you. Like there's this, it's weird. There's like no other human here, but this somehow is not creepy.

Even though I'm talking, I'm literally talking in an empty room. And I keep talking in an empty room. But I'm talking to you. And you know that I'm talking to you. So it kind of feels normal. Whereas if I was, you know, if I was like at a food court and y'all were sitting at a table nearby

and I was just doing this with no camera or anything like that, if I was just talking, sitting at a picnic table, then people would be like, what the hell is wrong with this guy? Y'all get that? so this Kamaug is like there's no camera

we aren't real oh my god you guys are real copium monies oh my god I'm wrecking myself but y'all get what I'm saying

like seriously like I know the memes and stuff aside okay hilarious no one's real this is all in Dr. Kay's head but you get it like so there's this thing of

responding to internal stimuli where like when you're talking in the worst scenarios this is auditory hallucinations and self-dialogging, which is when you're talking to yourself, and it creeps people out. So now the question is like, okay, so these are the features of creepiness, right? There's a certain amount, and basically what it comes down to is this weird kind of empathic stuff about facial expressions, the fluctuating ability of facial expressions, the, you know, the congruence

of facial expressions with what's going on around you, kind of like being on the same wavelength as someone else emotionally mirroring other people, which when parents don't do that with their kids, their kids get messed up in all kinds of different ways. You know, that's all fixable. Don't worry about it if you wound up in that situation. So don't give up hope. But we sort of know that like the lack of mirroring, like, you know, fixed affects, you know, like the lack of fluctuation, all this stuff comes across is creepy.

Last thing is responding to internal stimuli. There's one other thing that we will talk about towards the end. But should we talk about it now? Okay. We'll talk about the end. Remind me. Okay. So this is why it's so hard to deal with because first of all, we don't really know what we're doing, right?

You're not really paying attention to like, okay, how much am I fluctuating my face in a 30-second period? Is my face fluctuating a lot or is it fluctuating a little? And even then, like you guys may have noticed like this is a little bit creepy. It's not as fun as when I was doing it earlier. And why is that? It's because there's a certain range of affect. since I'm exaggerating a bit too much, it, like, feels a little bit creepy, right? And even when I do this, maybe you feel a little bit more comfortable because, like, now I'm

mirroring what you're feeling. Okay? So this is what's going on. It's all this subconscious stuff. And this is what's so frustrating about is you don't know what you're doing. Like, am I smiling too much? Am I smiling for too long? Am I smiling when I shouldn't be smiling?

These are all the different features of affect, which make other people feel creeped out if we don't do it kind of properly, okay? And so then the question is, okay, what do we do about it? So the first thing to understand is that if you try too hard, all of this stuff is going to happen. So that's where people will say, if you're going on a date, just relax, right? Like, don't worry about it. Get out of your head. And why is that really important?

Like, sure, that's good to do. But let's understand what does that have to do with creepiness? If I'm in my own head and I'm over-analyzing, okay, like, should I have, how often should I change the fluctuation of my smile? Should I go 20% smile? Should I go 30% smile? Should I go 40% smile? I've been at 40% smile for way too long. Let me go back down to 20%.

If that's literally what's going on in your head, how empathically connected do you think you are to the other person? Like, not at all, right? And so this is what we tend to find in people who get called creepy is a lot of them will have problems like social anxiety. And what does that literally mean? How does that work? What that means is that when you sit with someone,

you're not actually attending to them. You're in your own head. and you're thinking through a bunch of things. They're telling a funny story, and then you're like, you're like busy, like, thinking about what you just said and, like, how you don't want to stumble over your words. And so you're not paying attention to the story.

And then they kind of like look at you because they're like, they just, you know, got to the punchline to the story and you're supposed to laugh. And then you didn't realize it. And then, like, some part of your brain is like, oh, there's the punchline. Laugh. And then you're like, ha, ha, ha.

That's so funny. and then the other person is like, what the fuck was that? Right? And so then you become like, if you try, if you're socially anxious, instead of interacting with someone,

you become like an alien or a reptile in a human's body trying to interact with them the right way. And you get so caught up in your head that you start forcing, okay, this is when I'm supposed to smile. Like, I'm supposed to smile when I first meet someone.

So you meet someone at the very beginning, you're like, smile. Execute smile. EXE. Hello! I'm so happy to be here right now. It's nice to meet you. And then the other person's like, what the...

Right? And they think you're a little bit creepy. So in terms of responding to internal stimuli, I don't think most of us are psychotic. But even if we come across as creepy, the reason for that is because we're literally stuck in our own head. And so the facial expressions that we're displaying are going to be based on this, right?

So even if like you're on a date and the other person is having a good time, if you think you screwed up and you should have ordered something else or you should have let them order first or you interrupted them and then you're in your own head, suddenly you're responding to internal stimuli. And they're like enjoying the atmosphere and some live music just came on something like that. And they're like, so they turn to it. But you're thinking about what you just said and you're like, and then you're not attending to the external world. You're responding to the internal stimuli.

It comes across is creepy. Right. So the second thing about affect. So this is where oftentimes people who are creepy will get stuck in some kind of negative. affect. Or they'll try too hard and get stuck in like some kind of positive affect, where you're trying too hard to have a good time. And even when I say the phrase trying too hard, it's like, what is that? How do you define that? But y'all kind of know, right? Like you know when someone is trying too hard. And what does that mean trying too hard? How do you know when someone's trying

too hard? It's because they tend to exaggerate affect that becomes kind of non-genuine and they'll like amplify it artificially. So you're not feeling it internally. So what you do is like you ramp everything up. But then it's not congruent. It doesn't mirror what the other person is feeling. Oh my God. That's so hilarious. Oh my God.

That's the funniest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. And you're the funniest person ever. And I'm having such a good time at this date. And I would love to do it again. Right? So there's like, that's a little bit creepy. Like not quite as bad maybe. But you'll see that?

It's sort of like this amplified affect. And why do you amplify affect? Because you yourself don't feel comfortable. So then we have this kind of phrase of like fake it till you make it, which I think is a terrible idea. Okay? So if you are struggling with being creepy, recognize that a lot of this stuff is actually changeable.

Like you can act on it. Okay? There are things that you can do. So here are a couple of tips. So remember the goal here is to be relaxed. The goal here is to have a fluid and mirroring affect. affect that is generally speaking full range, right? So we want it to be fluid, fluctuating. Right. So we're going to, sometimes we're going to have fun. And sometimes we're going to be like,

oh, my God, so serious. Oh, so serious. And then it's like, oh, wow, that's crazy. Right. So we want a range of affect. We want to be able to pace the other person. And range, pace, fluctuating, full range, and mirroring. Right. So we want to pace the other person. We want to go high when they go high. We want to go low when they go low when they go low. and we want, you know, to be able to move. So we don't want to just stay in one place for a long period of time. Okay. So then the question is, okay, like, how do I do that? Because if I'm trying too hard, if in my mind, it's like, the other person is smiling,

I should smile. The other person is stop smiling. Stop smiling. Terminate smile.exe. Execute smile. exe smile.exe. execute smile. exe at 50%.

If you go down that route, you're going to be responding to internal stimuli and you're not going to actually be attending to them. You're going to feel like some kind of reptile in a human's body and they're going to creep them out. So what do you do? A couple of things. One is think of a positive memory. So if you want to force yourself to smile and you want it to be an authentic smile, so there are two kinds of smiles. There's this kind of smile, which is creepy, right? Because the smile doesn't reach my eyes is what people say. And then there's like this kind of smile, which is like a little bit better, right? It's a little bit better. So there's kind of a full face smile. And the way

that you do those two things, if I tell myself to smile, what you're actually going to do is, is you're going to just do this, which is kind of creepy, right? It doesn't touch your eyes. Whereas if I think about, like, you know, how much my kids love Pokemon, it's going to make me feel like more emotionally connected and I'm going to smile more naturally. So one thing you can do is just think of a positive memory. Like, I know it sounds kind of weird. You don't want to do it too long.

Otherwise, you're going to slip into the responding internal stimuli thing. But as you're, let's say you're about to meet the person and you kind of like walk up to the restaurant, you see someone waiting outside. And as you're walking up, like, just think about like, man, that, you know, it's Overwatch 2's player base has dropped by 99%. God, that's got to suck for the Overwatch devs, right? And you're just thinking about that. And as you walk up, you're going to have some kind of active fluctuation of, in generally

speaking, lulls, right? Right? Right? So it's got to be hard for them. But you're like, wow, that's a mess. Like, NFTs, lull, right? So whatever it is, just think about something. be nice and short, and it's going to, like, create sort of a natural smile on your face because

you're thinking about it. And then what's going to happen is you're going to be thinking, right, as you walk up and you see them, you're going to be, hey, how are you? And then that's going to change. The affect is going to change. You're going to introduce yourself, smile, right? And that's where, hey, my name is, olive. Nice to meet you. And they're going to see all of that. And even in the five seconds of you thinking about something and attending to them, introducing yourself and smiling, there's going to be some leftover, like, sort of fluidness from your memory, which is going to of like, and you've won at that point. In the first five seconds, if you've, like, made a decent introduction, like, you've won. On the flip side, for those of you all that are paranoid, if I screw up

the first five seconds, does it mean that I'm screwed for the rest of the date? No, not at all. Right? But that's kind of a key tip. To evoke some kind of internal emotion, don't dwell in the memory, don't get lost in the memory, but just kind of evoke that emotion, let it sort of relax you a little bit, think a little bit positively, and then go into the interaction. The next thing that you really need to do is try to be with them. Okay? And this may sound, I mean, it's simpler to say than it is to do. But recognize that you're not there. So the people who get caught up in their own head, right? What they're trying to do is they're trying to do well on a date. So there's like a certain outcome. Like, I want to be liked. And if you're chasing that outcome, you're not going to be

enjoying the date. I want to be liked. I want to be liked. I want to be liked. I want to be liked. Then you're not actually like enjoying the other person's company. You're just trying to get them to like you, which, by the way, is creepy. We'll get to that in a second. So this is where what I'd really encourage you all to do is just recognize that this is an opportunity for you to get to know someone and see if this person is worth liking. Right? So like this is another human being that has a whole set of experiences that could be good, bad, interesting. They could recommend books to you that you'll really enjoy.

They may play games that you really enjoy. They may recommend movies. They may recommend music. You can learn about the world through this person. experience. And if you go on a date, I try to attend to them, right? It's not just necessarily in being polite and trying to be like the nicest guy on the planet. Like, I'm going to be such a nice guy. Like, I'm going to make sure that they're, they have the best and happiest time ever. That's bad too, because then you're sort of forcing a particular kind of interaction where someone

is like, oh yeah, you know, the food isn't my, my chicken could use some salt. And then it's like, okay, like, do you want me to get a waiter for you? Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, let me get then you're like, I want you to have the best experience possible because you're amazing and you deserve the best. Like, how do you know that? You just met the person. You don't know what they deserve. They may not disturb the best. They may be awful people. And so instead of trying to, you know, shoot for a particular thing or display yourself in a particular way, just genuinely attend to the person, right? This is an opportunity. You have an hour, you have two hours to get to know someone and you get to learn about the world. And the more you have that attitude, instead of chasing a particular outcome, either honoring them with your presence or trying to get them to like you, like all of those things are outcome oriented and you're not going to kind of enjoy yourself. And you're kind of trying too hard.

As you try too hard, all that stuff we talked about, about affect is going to start to come into play. And then you won't be able to like attend to what they're saying. You're not going to be emotionally mirroring because they're actually okay with the chicken. it's a little bit, could use a little bit of salt. But then when you call the waiter over and you're like, we need a new chicken, this is terrible. I don't know how you could serve this stuff. Discongrant affect.

Because the person's fine with it. They're like, whatever. I can survive without perfectly salted chicken. And so this is a lot of stuff that people do that they don't realize that they're doing, but it essentially boils down to these things. Okay. So the last thing that we're going to talk about, and this is very important for creepiness. So this is one thing that you really have to be careful about.

So the other thing that makes people creepy is not respecting boundaries. Okay? So you can do all the affect stuff, but then the other thing you need to be really careful about is if you are not respecting people's boundaries, they will think you are creepy and you should not do that. So good examples of not respecting boundaries are, you know, like repeated hammering text messages, expecting responses in a brief period of time. Like if you feel like, how can I say this? This is difficult, but sometimes people who don't respect boundaries have emotional needs that can only be met by the other person. So that you have to be very, very careful about. If you are in a situation where your emotional needs and comfort depend upon this person, you can come across as creepy.

So I'll give you all a couple of examples. So if I felt like I did poorly on the first date and I message you and I'm like, hey, sorry for screwing up on the first date. And they had kind of a good time. They're like, oh, no, it was totally fine. But their response doesn't soothe me because I don't, I think they're just being nice, right? So I feel like I screwed up. They're just being nice. And then I hammer at them again. Because what I really need from them is for them to tell me, yeah, you did screw up, but it's okay. Like, let's go out again. I'll give you another chance. I'm looking for some kind of emotional, like, resolution from them. Whereas they're not kind of on the same page, but I'm kind of relying

on them for emotional needs. Other examples, so this can also be sort of like what crosses into the clingy territory. Right, we go on two dates. Why aren't you messaging me back? Like, what's going on there? Like, because you feel lonely. You feel like, so like, look into yourself. Why do you need this person to message you back after two dates? Right? And then you get angry and then you start, you know, calling them bitches or assholes or whatever. But like, think about your own emotional needs and how much you were relying on this other person to soothe your emotional. You're emotional needs. And oftentimes people who are creepy don't really think about it that way. They don't think about what they're not even aware of like what kind of needs they're pursuing. Does that make

sense? Yes. So loneliness is absolutely, as Rubric Kroob says, loneliness is sad and can turn us ugly? Absolutely. And the problem is when you, when it turns you sad and then you depend upon that other person to resolve your sadness. And by resolve, I don't necessarily mean make you feel happy. Sometimes what people are looking for is like essentially abuse, right? They're like, you know, why aren't you texting me back after two dates? Either call me an asshole and just be playing with it or, you know, give me another chance. Like, don't stop leading me on. So we're looking for some kind of resolution. So be very careful about your own emotional needs and how much responsibility for soothing those things or addressing those things you put on the other person. That's going to lead to boundary problems.

And the last thing is explicit boundaries. So like there's a certain, you know, standard of like what you're allowed to do in terms of physical contact, right? So if you're on a first date with someone like don't, you know, put your arm around them like in the first five seconds, like, right? Don't put your arm around their waist. You know, don't try to hold their hand like right away, right? There's a certain kind of like boundary, which is kind of like evolves over time and you

have to kind of give it that time. So there's also boundaries, which you have to kind of give it that time. So there's also boundaries, which I don't really understand too well about, you know, what's the frequency of text messages and things like that. You know, calling people drunk is another example. Like, you know, you've got to be careful about that sort of thing. You know, there are all kinds of emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, you know, like, I don't even know, like interaction boundaries for lack of a better term. And if you violate those kinds of boundaries and don't really respect them from another person, like that's going to make you come across as creepy. So those are explicit behaviors that have nothing to do with what's going on over here. It's all about how you treat and behave with another person.

So just to kind of summarize, the challenge with being called creepy or telling someone that they're creepy is that that's not, we don't really know what that means. So people will label you with it. And that's really challenging because, like, you don't know what you're doing wrong. If someone calls you creepy, like, what do you do about that? How do you get uncreepy? Well, the truth of the matter is that you can't actually do something about it. And that's, in order to understand what to do about it, we have to understand what creeping this actually is. And it turns out there's very, very sophisticated and nuanced circuitry within our brains

that tells us when something is comfortable and safe and when something is creepy and dangerous. And a lot of that circuitry has to do with things like affect. Affect is the display of emotion. And what we tend to find is that safe affect is affect that is fluctuate full range and appropriate and mirroring. So it's like, you know, there's a full range of affect. It changes a lot. It is tuned into what's going on.

And it matches what the other person is doing. So as long as you kind of like work on your affect in that way, like you'll come across as less creepy. Oftentimes you'll find things like movies and video games and stuff like that will tap into these features when they try to create. someone who's creepy or scary or a villain. And people will say, oh, my God, this person is a such a good actor. And sure, they're good actors. But what are they actually doing? If you analyze what is it that they're doing that makes them creepy, it's what they do with

their affect, right? So this is why you'll sometimes even have like Breaking Bad, I think is a good example of this, where you'll have like protagonists who are villains, but they're likable. And what makes them likable? Like, you can have people who do bad things that are likable. What makes them likable? it's that affective, you know, fluctuation that makes them not creepy. Like, you like them. Right? And it's kind of interesting if you kind of watch movies and stuff. Look for these features.

Then you'll begin to see, okay, who's creepy and who isn't creepy? A couple of other things to remember about being creepy. First is that responding to internal stimuli tends to freak people out. So this, in the worst case scenarios, we see this with things like psychotic disorders with auditory hallucinations and self-dialoging, which means talking to yourself, which is really, really creepy. But unfortunately, if we have anxiety, if we're overthinking things in our head, we're going to get some of that same effect, right? Because I'm all up here and I'm not attending to what's going on around me. I'm not paying attention to the conversation. I'm not emotionally mirroring. And the last thing is boundaries.

So you've got to respect people's boundaries. So whether those are emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, you know, interaction boundaries, frequency of communication, when you expect people to get back to you. you know, we're not saying that people, the other party isn't at fault in some way here, which we'll talk about is one final point. But generally speaking, you know, there's like, don't text someone 15 times after a first date within like 15 minutes, right? Give them a chance to respond.

The last thing to remember, and this is unfortunate, but sometimes people will call you creepy just because they feel uncomfortable. And it may not be that you're doing anything wrong. So some people who have a low discomfort tolerance, right? So people who get triggered easily, for example, or people who don't know how to, you know, communicate effectively, sometimes people get called creepy and they actually aren't doing anything wrong. And that's just coming from sort of the insecurity or discomfort of the person that you're with. And that has really nothing to do with you. And that's what makes it so difficult to sort of deal with is,

because, like, sometimes people are, you know, you're not really doing anything wrong. It's just people will call you creepy. Because I think the other thing that people have learned over time is that creepiness is sort of like an impervious attack. Like, if you call someone creepy, like they don't get a discourse about that, right? And if they push you about it, what makes me creepy? What makes me creepy? Then that just reinforces the fact that they're creepy. So in a sense, it's almost like a trump card in some relationships or especially in terminating relationships or setting boundaries,

where if you call someone creepy, like they don't have any kind of recourse against that. And it's a very, very safe way where you can tell people, oh, yeah, why didn't I block that person? Why? He's a creep. Or she's a creep. She creeps me out.

And as a society, what we've sort of done is we've said, like if something creeps you out, you're allowed to just say that, and then nothing else needs to be done. So you have to be a little bit careful about being, you know, if you receive the feedback that you're creepy, I would be very, very critical of yourself and really do like a process of understanding. Am I in my own head?

Am I really attending to the other person? Am I sitting with them? Am I really trying to learn about them and their lives and things like that? Am I sharing a piece of who I am? Because sometimes what will happen is people will just feel creeped out, but that really has nothing to do with you. That has to do with their own somers, their own cognitive schemas, their own triggers and things like that, which is like you can't really do anything about that, right?

So be a little bit careful about it. that. So that's what creepiness is. Turns out that I think there's a lot of good neuroscientific basis for these kinds of things. This is really like wired into our core neurose like neuroscircetry. The challenge is that we don't really understand that. So when we get this kind of feedback, we don't really know what to do with it because no one explains, okay, what is creepiness? How can we understand this? The good news is that through things like film and television and other kinds of research on concepts like the uncanny Valley, we can actually break apart what creepiness is, and if you get that kind of feedback, what you can do about it. Make sense?

Good. Questions? Yeah, so your turn, my turn is saying if it's many people who are always telling you you're creepy rather than just one person, then that can help. Very good point. Right. So how do you know if the creepiness is on your end or if it's the other person's like discomfort? That depends on the consistency of the feedback. What if a narcissist doesn't give a F about the fact that they're creepy? So if people don't care that they're creepy or they don't care about your opinion, like, that's fine. So the interesting thing is that narcissism and creepy, I think, are not necessarily correlated at all. So we tend to toss around the term narcissism a lot. But generally speaking, if you look at people who are narcissistic, they're very emotionally attuned, which is how they get away with what they get away with.

They're so good at mirroring emotion. They're so good at provoking emotion and manipulating emotion. They're actually very, very adept. I almost think, I mean, it's not really true, but you got a narcissist who are absolutely creepy. But sometimes people with narcissism or especially like cluster B personality disorders, their emotional empathy is like through the roof. Like they're very, very like, their emotional circuitry in some ways is very, very competent. I don't know if that makes sense.

So acid army gaming is, how can you tell what other person considers too much texting? There should be like a safe number in a certain amount of time, right? Yeah, I don't really know. What do you all think? Like, what's the acceptable? Because I don't, you know, I don't like meet people on dating apps and stuff. So I don't know what the acceptable number is. I don't know what the frequency of texting, you know. Yeah. So J.K. Ray is saying, ask them about that. I think that that's an excellent point. The one thing that you've got to be kind of careful about is that asking too many things about boundaries and stuff early on can, be creepy. Right? So if we go on one date and I'm like, okay, tell me what makes you comfortable in terms of frequency of texting and stuff like that. Tell me what makes you comfortable with this, with that. Generally speaking, I'm a big fan of asking, just asking people. Yeah, so McThagfresh is saying, just got to match their behavior. Realize when you're striking

out. I think some of it's like kind of organic. Asking them about it, I think is a very good idea. Just to give y'all a sense of how to do that, right? So in kind of a safe way, you know, if it's been a day or like, let's say you send a text and they don't respond, I would say kind of like think about it like tennis where you send something and then they send something back, although I wouldn't adhere to that rule too carefully. This is where, you know, the second day or third day if you text them again, it's really tricky because you don't want to say, am I bothering you by texting you too much? Because that comes across as kind of like insecure and stuff like that. You know, you just, you also want to kind of acknowledge, okay,

exact number of texts per day after the first date. So people are saying like one to five. I would have put a lot of difference between one and five even there. But, you know, you can text them like, I'd say like once or twice. And then if a couple days go by, I'd say you can text them again. And then like maybe with that second text or with the third time you text them, maybe not the third actual text. But, you know, the third time you text them,

I would sort of check about their frequency of texting. Yo, so texted you a couple times. I don't know if you're busy or whatever. Like, that's cool. Just curious, I mean, do you want me to, like, should I try again or are you just busy or like, what's going on? Cool either way. I know people get busy.

I'm like, you know, I'm happy to hit you up next week if things are busy for you right now. And then if you don't get an answer to that, then I would let it go. Right. So you can sort of let people. know. So this is where, just to give you all an example, so sometimes I'll have patients who are late to appointments. And generally speaking, when I have appointments, it's like, you know, I have a 10 a appointment and I have 11 a appointment. If 10 a.m. shows up at 10.15, I'm not going to go late into my 11 a.m. appointment who's on time. So if they show up late, you know, we get less time.

So that happens a couple times. I'll talk to them about it. I'll just be like, so help me understand. So I've noticed you've been late two or three times. Like what, like, what should we do about that? Because, you know, I think we're doing a lot of good work. I'd love to be able to work with you for the full hour. So is this the kind of thing? Like, should I just mentally schedule, like, you know, 15, should I assume that you're going to be 15 minutes late to have reappointment? Because I can schedule that accordingly. Or, you know, are you going to show up on time or like, you know, so sometimes what I would do is have. Patients who are sort of late off and on, I'd schedule them at 11 o'clock, and then I'd have lunch

lunch, and I'd sort of mentally account for, okay, chances are they're going to be 15 minutes late, and then I can run into my lunchtime a little bit and get a little bit of work done at 11, so I can sort of mentally prepare for it, but you just have a conversation about it, right? What should I expect from you? And that's where that's a really good, non-judgmental way to do it, right? So you're not saying, I want you to do this. You need to text me back, because if you do that, that's going to be creepy. but asking people like, what are the expectations here?

Like, just tell me what the rules of the game are. I'm not saying that they need to be a particular way. I'm not asking you to change them. I'm just trying to figure out what are the rules of the game. Riggle Chi is saying also try to let them initiate text conversation once in a while. That way you know if they are interested. Yeah. How could someone work on incongruent affect?

That's a really good question. Ari Fon, 1, 2, 3. So the first thing to understand about incongruent affect is that some of it is like a healthy, normal adaptation. So even if you watch, you all watch the, you know, the interview with Iron Mouse, I think that's a good example of sort of like incongruent affect, which we see a lot. It's very normal for people to laugh when they're talking about like terrible things happening to them, right?

Because that's, it's a defense mechanism. It's humor. So sometimes incongruent affect is just a consequence of a defense mechanism. And so if that's the case, then like, you just need to be aware of that, right? and then like sort of ask yourself, why can't I sit with this emotion the way that it is? Like what makes it really uncomfortable for me to, you know, sit with this? So also joking, sometimes with my male patients, we would sometimes talk about, you know, when we have some heavy emotional experience, one of us would crack a joke.

And sometimes they would be dick jokes. And so instead of actually making the dick joke, what we learned to do is say like, okay, now feels like one of those moments where, you know, a dick choke would really cut the tension. And then we'd kind of laugh about that. And then we wouldn't need to make the joke anymore. Because we're acknowledging a little bit. And then we're going to stay in that kind of negative space. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay. Yeah, I guess as to be expected, people did not ever, did not really. Okay. Let's move on.

Dr. K. Ariamaki, Dr. K is speechless. Good job, y'all. Yeah, absolutely. I was trying to decide. So this is one of those things where, like, so, you know, sometimes I'll, like, look at chat, and it's like, okay, should I address this

or should I not address this? And this is one of those things where it's like, sometimes, you know, like, if you're playing a game of chess and you lose a piece, you just got to understand that if you try to keep fighting that battle, you're just going to lose more and more. pieces, right? It's like sometimes you just got to take the L and move on, because that's not a battle I'm going to win. And then I was debating, okay, like, what are the odds of like actually,

you know, but I think the truth of the matter is I think y'all know, you know, I think the community is actually, how can I say this, you all pretend to be far bigger degenerates than you actually are. It's almost like instinct or reflex at this point. It's not instinct, it's reflex, right? It's conditioning. It's like, oh, Dr. K said dick joke must respond with emo. And you all know what I mean. I think you understood what I was trying to say. And then if you all want to, you know, that's okay. Like, that's just how it works. Okay. So it's fine. Right? That's our dick joke. Y'all get that? It's like when I say something, it's like, that's the way that you manage the tension. Someone makes some great comment. Cut the

tension like a circumcision. That's hilarious. Right. But that's just our dynamic. So this is where when we're talking about mirroring affect and stuff like that, right? So regardless of the context, if Dr. Kay uses the word dick, like we have to respond in a particular way. And that's our social contract, which is fine. So I was just like working through that in my head a little bit. But do we want to, do we want to, you know, right? You can say, can't argue with the contract. You're right. You can't. And even then, I tried to go matter with the contract. And you all handled it for a little bit. And then now it's like, nope, back to it.