HealthyGamerGG - Why Brain Rot Might Be Your Biggest Enemy

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

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Hey, y'all. Today we're going to talk about brain rot and how to fix it. So when I was working full-time as a psychiatrist, I noticed that people would come into my office, and they would be like cognitively not in the best headspace. They would be sort of very lethargic. They would have difficulty focusing, difficulty motivating themselves. They couldn't really find direction, and anything was kind of hard for them to do. So when I was working with these people, I would develop what's called a differential diagnosis, which is let's see if we can figure out why there's a lack of focus, why there's a lack of motivation,

why there's so much lethargy and a lack of energy. And sometimes this would be due to something like a physical or a mental illness. And we've covered that elsewhere in the channel. Increasingly, I saw more and more what's called brain fog. So brain fog is like a neuroinflammatory condition that causes like cognitive problems. So people who will have really bad COVID will sometimes have this post-COVID syndrome that's characterized by brain fog. But that was sort of another sort of thing that we've also covered elsewhere. And by the way, apparently is one of our best YouTube videos. So check it out if you think that

that could be happening with you. Hey, just a quick note. A lot of people will ask us, what do I do next? And that's why we built Dr. Kay's Guide. It's a comprehensive resource that distills over 20 years of my experience, both as a monk and as a psychiatrist. And it's designed in a way that's tailored to fit your needs. So if you're interested in better understanding your mind and taking control of your life, check out the link below. But the third and sort of devastating thing is sometimes you couldn't blame brain fog and you couldn't blame a mental illness. And these were people whose brains had just kind of like rotted from like engaging in the

wrong kinds of crap for like years or even decades. And this is kind of what I call brain rot. And what I sort of discovered is that these were people whose minds had essentially become incredibly rusty. So one thing to understand is that the mind doesn't wear out with use. It actually rusts with disuse. So oftentimes the people that I would be working with were people who like didn't have an infectious condition or something like that. Didn't have like celiac disease.

But these were people who were just kind of like DGens. And they had stopped using their mind in a productive way over long periods of time. Or sometimes they weren't DGens and they were just not controlling certain aspects of their life where they were polluting their mind with sort of external negative things. And so as I started working with these people, I sort of realized, okay, like medical training isn't really going to help. Even like frontier of medical training, like brain fog, which is like a new condition, isn't really going to help.

What these people really need is a way to unrust their mind and really tune it up and get it back to functioning. And so what I drew on is more of my yogic training. Because what I kind of realized is, if you think about what a yogi is, what is a yogi? There's someone who actually over-clocks their brain. There's someone who understands how to use their mind in a very functional way, and then they optimize their mental function. And once they do that, they can have all these weird enlightenment experiences and, like,

you know, have visions of their past life and all this other weird psychedelic crap. So these are essentially people who overclocked their brain, and what these people needed, what the brain rot people needed, was essentially that is an antidote. So we're going to start off by using an analogy of what an act. actual infection is like, because I think that actually really explains what happens in our mind. So when we get a physical infection, the first thing that happens is we have a breakdown of a particular barrier, and then bacteria cross over, we're assuming a bacterial infection for a second. So bacteria kind of cross over, and then they invade us in some way, right?

So there's some kind of invasion of the mind with brain rot. The second thing that we're going to talk about is once bacteria cross the barrier, then they start to colonize that particular space. Right? So you can start with an infection that's just one small cut, but over time, the cut will become inflamed. It'll swell. It'll spread. And if you don't treat it properly, the bacteria start gobbling up your healthy tissue and start replacing it with bacterial colonies. And this is also what happens in the mind of people who have brain rot. Certain thoughts will start to colonize your mind. So the experience of people with brain rot is that

any time they try to do something, their mind keeps on telling them to do something else. So if I'm trying to sit down and study, my mind is like starting to think about video games. And it's like, oh, why don't we do this or why don't we do this? I don't want to study. Let's think about this. Let's think about this. So literally, anytime you try to do something, you have to overcome the thoughts that are in your mind. So that's colonization.

And the third thing, and this is actually what's kind of terrifyingly devastating, is adaptation. So in an infection, some of the. worst things that happen are not the infection itself, but your body's adaptation to the infection. So in the most dire circumstances, when we're talking about young kids, like kids that are a year old, when they get an infection, their immune cells hyperactivate so much that they will get fevers that will climb to 104, 105, 106. And at that point, the human brain does not function properly. So young kids who get viral infections can actually have febrile seizures, which means that they have a seizure because the temperature in their body is so high. And why is the temperature in their body so high?

It's actually an overreaction of the body themselves. So half the time, if we're talking about things like sepsis and stuff like that, when we're treating infections, we're not just treating the infection. We are trying to prevent a particular adaptive response from the body from causing more damage. And this is exactly what we see in brain rot as well. When you're sort of bombarded with negative thoughts and your mind is colonized, your mind will start to do things to try to fix this. And those can actually be more damaging. So let's run through these three things in sequence.

Let's start with infection. So the first thing to understand is that in our current society, we have stopped filtering our perceptions. So people who have brain rot are people who have brain rot are people who, don't filter what comes in. So let's start with a simple example of someone who wants to get a job. So they work really hard, right? They struggle against themselves. They overcome their anxiety. And they apply for a job. And they end up getting rejected. Now, if we really pay attention, if we sort of think about it objectively, like a rejection isn't that big of a deal. Like it's a normal

part of the process. Generally speaking, people will have to get rejected from a dozen or two dozen or even three dozen jobs before finding a job and even more for the right ones. I personally got rejected from 120 medical schools before I got into med school. So rejection is actually a normal part of life. But for people who have brain rot, a single rejection gets translated into something else. Right. So you get one rejection and then your mind starts thinking, oh, like there's no point in trying. Like there's no way I'm going to get a job, right?

It starts to populate or respond with some of these thoughts. And so we don't really pause and think a little bit about the actual factual information, which is I got rejected from a job to our reaction to it. There's no gap between those two things. The moment someone gets a rejection, they automatically start to believe and think that there's no way that they will get a job. So we kind of see this all throughout our society. We also see it with things like trigger warnings, where what's starting to happen is instead

of being able to handle information internally, what we're starting to see is people will become increasingly avoidant. So what's happening is if I'm socially anxious, I'm not going to go to a party. So what's sort of happening is I'm starting to control the circumstances which lead to particular sensory inputs, but I can't control my reaction to those inputs. This is the exact opposite of what a yogi does. So a yogi is someone who can recognize that if there is sensory input from the outside, that my reaction to it is actually something that I can control. And if I can control my reaction to negative things, then I don't need to let negative things

control me. So a simple example of this from my clinical experience is like when I was working in the emergency room, let's say on an overnight shift. And at 2 a.m. in the morning, someone comes in high out of their mind on like cocaine or methamphetamines. and I walk in the room, and the first thing that they tell me is how I'm a fascist, how I'm an asshole, how I'm a terrible human being, I'm the worst doctor on the planet. These are all very objectively hurtful things to say. And do I get hurt by them?

At the beginning, I did. But eventually, I learned how to filter my perception. Instead of those letting those words directly into my mind and letting them shape my truth, what I learned how to do is create a barrier, between those two kinds of things. So I'm not going to let the infection sink all the way in. So instead, what I start to do is I start to realize, okay, this is what this person is saying. Let me pause for a second and think about why would this person be saying this?

Do they actually have, they think I'm the worst doctor on the planet? What do they know about my medical expertise? How long have they were? They haven't even worked with me. I walked in and the deck was stacked against me, right? So as I start to create distance, as I start to recreate that barrier between the outside perceptions and my reactions to those things, those words hurt me less. And eventually what can happen is something really cool, which is that you can actually

develop positivity and compassion towards someone who is treating you like crap, which is literally what you learn how to do in psychiatry residency. Right? You pause and you start to think, oh, wow, like, you know, I know we just met and I'm sorry to hear that you think I'm a terrible doctor. Really curious what you base that on. But it sounds like you're really struggling right now and you really think about me as the enemy. Like, I can totally understand where you're coming from because I can imagine you don't

want to be trapped in an emergency room right now and you're restrained to the bed and I can get that that's really terrible. What's your understanding of like what my job is? So if we sort of think about what we get trained as as medical professionals is not to react to what things, what happens to us. And I've seen medical students that are good at this and bad at this. Right. So the medical students that are bad at this kind of stuff, any kind of feedback will send them crumbling. Like, it'll just make them fall apart. So even if you're in medical school to learn, for example, but if an attending tells them, hey, like, by the way, you did this thing wrong, it will be such a bruise to their

ego. They're like, oh, my God, I'm such a terrible medical student. They don't even realize that making mistakes is literally your job as a medical student. That's why you're a student, because you're not supposed to know everything. and you're in med school for four years because you're supposed to make a ton of mistakes. And it's my job or the attending's job to teach you how to correct those mistakes. It's not about being perfect when you step into the hospital for the first time. It's being competent enough when you leave for the last time.

So this is a huge problem that people fall into, where if you are struggling with brain rot, I strongly recommend you think a lot about what is the actual factual truth of the situation and what your reaction to it is. And what you'll find is that people with brain rot, the reason they're so lethargic is because they do not filter their perceptions. So if someone, if I get one rejection, it becomes really, really, really hard to apply again. I can't focus on it. I feel unmotivated. I'm really lethargic. And that's because there's no gap between the actual objective world and your reaction to it. So what you need to do is increase that gap. And the way that you do that is by a simple but difficult yogic practice, which is, okay, what was actually said and what is my interpretation of it.

And what you'll notice is that in the brain-rodded mind, there's no distance between those two things. And you will think that particular things are true. But the more that you pay attention notice, okay, what is objectively correct? What is my interpretation or what is my conclusion? And stretch those two things apart. The second thing that we're going to talk about is colonization. So this is where, if we look at it in the mind, one of the key ways that yogis overclock their mind is by being very careful what colonizes their mind. So here's how the mind works.

The sensory inputs we have will determine which thoughts arise in our mind. And like game developers understand this really, really, really well. Because what do they do the three days before a game releases? They advertise heavily. They have a bunch of sponsored streams where streamers are playing the game. everyone's talking about it. They have teasers. They have this trailer.

They have that trailer. And why are they doing that? What are they doing? The more sensory input that they can bombard you with, the more thoughts will arise in your head about that particular thing. And this is why how they get people to pre-order crap, right? Which pre-ordering is a terrible idea because we keep on pre-ordering half-made games that end up being like defunct at launch, but like there's no, it doesn't cost the company

any financial, it doesn't do anything. Because you've already given the money. And why do we pre-order? Because our mind is so overpopulated with thoughts of a particular game. So this is what you have to understand if you have brain rot. Is that when you try to motivate yourself towards something, what you'll notice is that your mind is colonized by all kinds of other thoughts. So instead of just being able to do a task, the task is made 10 times harder because of all the

random thoughts that crop up in your brain. So when I sit down to study, I can't focus my mind on this because my mind is thinking about this particular video game. It's thinking about playing Tears of the Kingdom or Diablo 4 or this particular thing or this movie is going on. And my mind can be populated by other things as well, right? So if I had a call last night with my parents who were like mildly toxic and they're like, alok, why haven't you gotten married yet? What are you doing? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If I let those thoughts into my mind, they will colonize. it. And as I talk to my parents every single day and they bludgeon me, then I have to overcome those kinds of thoughts any time I try to do something. So the yogis are very good at preventing colonization.

This is literally why they live in caves in the Himalayas, because what they sort of discovered is that if I want to achieve optimal brain function, I cannot have a single distracting thought. and the best place to have zero distracting thoughts is literally in a cave in the Himalayas because in there I have no sensory input. I'm in a cave, it's dark, there's no noise, there's no people around, I'm completely free from externally colonizing influences. Now, what does this mean for you? Now, the real problem, the real reason we're seeing a rise in brain rot is because our society

today is very invasively colonizing. We have notifications constantly, right? We have notifications from Steam, notifications from our apps. People are texting us all the time, right? Because communication is now a 24-7 thing. You're getting emails from your boss. All of this kind of crap is continually invading your mind. And I know this sounds very cliche, but this is where you've got to limit your technology use. And you're saying, but oh my God, this is. overwhelming. I can't stop using technology. I'm not saying stop using technology. What I'm saying is notice that the more you get bombarded by this, the worse off your brain rot will be. And we sort of see this, right? Because when I work with people with brain rot and I ask them,

how do you spend your days? They're like, I spend the whole day binge watching YouTube or on Twitch or playing video games or things like that. And this is where if you kind of think about it, why do you think about a particular game? You play five hours of it. You watch streams of two hours of it while you're eating your food and you're listening to a podcast where popular streamers are talking about the game while you're cleaning up. And so what are you doing during all of those times? You're colonizing your mind with this stuff. Okay. So the more that you can trim it down, and this is where it's like it's a scale. So if you do even cut out a single one of those activities, like eat while not watching streams or clean stuff while listening to music instead of listening

to whatever, right? Any progress that you make will decrease the burden on the mind, will reduce the bacterial load in your mind, and will mean that you have to overcome smaller hurdles in order to do what you need to do. Not saying you need to go all the way to the Himalayas and cut out all things, but that's why people love doing that crap, by the way, because if you kind of think about retreats, right, why a retreat's so restful, it's because you intentionally cut yourself off from all that kind of stuff, and then your mind can actually like clean.

itself out. The third thing that we got to talk about is the adaptation. So remember that when we get an infection, our body will respond in particular ways, like we'll form scar tissue or other things like that. We have to somehow try to fix the damage. The problem is that in the process of fixing the damage, we can sometimes lose flexibility or set ourselves up for other problems. And what does this mean from the yogic perspective? This is where we get to the Ahamkara or the ego. So when I I don't filter my perceptions. And when someone tells me, when I'm in the seventh grade and someone tells me I'm a loser, that thought sinks in, right? The seven-year-old doesn't stop and think about, okay, hold on a second, this person is just mean. It doesn't mean that I'm a loser. So what happens

with the seven-year-old is the perception doesn't get filtered or adjusted in any way. The perception becomes a true reaction or your reaction to it becomes truth. So then seven-year-olds start to believe that they are losers. So what ends up happening is when you don't filter your perceptions and your mind is over colonized by sensory crap, you end up adapting by forming an ego. So you start to have beliefs about yourself as a consequence of number one and number two. So when you apply for a job and you don't get it. And when you apply for and you're like, man, I'm a loser. I shouldn't apply. There's no point. And then what do you do? You struck. right? You work with a lot of willpower. Your brain is very like rotted, right? So it's kind of like scoffed and it's

really hard. You can't just pick yourself off, dust yourself off and apply again. It takes two months for you to apply for a second job. And then you get rejected again. And then you take two more months and apply for a third job. And then you get rejected again. What ends up happening is you form a conclusion about yourself. I'm lazy. I'm undisciplined. Jobs just aren't for me. The corporate world is not for me. Other people are successful. I suck at school. I have. have ADHD. You discover lots of I statements. The second you start having I statements like I am dot dot dot, dot, you also, your mind starts doing something else, which is making comparisons. So then what happens is there's stuff that you want to do. But when you think about doing it,

your mind tells you you can't do that because you're not like this other person, right? You look at other people and you say, that person is different from me. They can succeed at it, but I can't. These are all egotistical statements. And so how do the yogis overclock their brain? They overclock their brain by eliminating comparisons and eliminating their ego. Now, this is really hard to understand, but I really want you all to try because it's transformative. So who are you?

Right. So who you are is determined by your actions. So you can say that, okay, I'm afraid of heights. Therefore, I cannot climb, right? These are very common things, something that I struggled with and still struggle with. So if we sort of think about it, once you say, I'm afraid of heights, I cannot climb a mountain. You will not climb the mountain. This results in a lack of motivation, not fulfilling your dreams, missing out on opportunities,

FOMO, whatever, all that crap. But the problem here is that you are letting your identity of yourself determine what you actually do, whereas the real tragedy is what you do determines who you are. So if I'm afraid of heights and I end up climbing a mountain anyway, how do I feel about myself? I feel amazing. I feel like, wow, even though I'm afraid of heights, I am so awesome. I'm so proud of myself that I was able to conquer that. And once you're someone who starts conquering your deficits,

you become a whole different person. Because then once you know you can conquer your deficits, then you have another thought in your mind, which is I'm lazy or I'm not musically talented. But if you've conquered the fear of heights, now your mind can say, you know what? I can still learn how to play an instrument. Even though I was afraid of heights,

I climbed at the top of that mountain. And even if I'm not musically inclined, I can still do it. So this is where we see another aspect, really, really important aspect, of the adaptation that results in brain rot. The first is that once I determine things about myself, those eye statements shape what I am willing to do and not willing to do.

And once I let those things shape my actions, I let it determine my future. And this is why people who have brain rot do not have control over their life. What they essentially do is live their life incredibly reactively. So if something from the outside comes and demands that I do something, like if I've got a test on Friday, then I can study. But the second the test is over and once Saturday rolls around, I cannot bring myself to read a book for the sake of learning. And then once I can't do that, I make conclusions about myself, I am lazy.

And once I start to believe that I'm lazy, if I try to start doing something in life, that thought will crop up. oh, you're lazy, you can't succeed at that, don't bother. And so what we see is that actually our ego or our humkhar creates this idea of sort of like, I can't do what I want to in life, and I have to start living very reactively. This is why people with brain rot cannot actually move towards a goal. Their life feels purposeless or directionless, and you're kind of living from day to day without any sense of like picking a goal and actually moving towards it. And as we tunnel down into why you can't move towards the goals, it's because your mind has certain conclusions about you.

And the second that your mind makes that kind of conclusion or makes a comparison, it tanks your motivation and then you're Gigied. So what do we do about this? What we end up doing is beware of those two statements. So anytime your mind says, anytime you feel like doing something, right, you have some kind of tiny impulse for motivation. What does your mind do? Smacks it down. He says, hey, you can't do that. You're a loser.

And then you're like, oh, wow. Okay, then you don't end up doing it, right? Because overcoming that internal lack of self-esteem is hard enough on its own. And then even if you can do that, you have so little energy for the task itself. So here's what you've got to do. Notice that any time your mind says, I am dot, dot, dot, do your best to absolutely ignore it. And how do you do that? because it's hard, right? Because it's really powerful. You recognize that the conclusions that I have

about myself are also based on unfiltered perceptions. When I was seven years old and I sort of, when someone told me I was a loser, I formed that belief and I carried it with me. But it's not necessarily true. So anytime you notice I statements, try to actually move in the opposite direction. Notice the statement and set it aside and say, you know what, we're going to try this. Even if it's destined to fail, even if we're lazy, we're going to give it a shot. The second thing that you really need to be careful about is comparative statements. So the ego is what makes you compare. That's the two go hand in hand, and this is what the yogis kind of figured out.

So anytime you notice yourself making a comparative statement, what is the effect of that comparison? The effect of that comparison is to discourage you from acting. Notice that, right? This person is better than me. Therefore, I should not act. therefore I need to remain unmotivated. Therefore, I'm going to sit at home, and then I'm just going to browse YouTube. So these two adaptations that your mind uses to sort of respond to these events are actually what really devastates you.

At the end of the day, when I work with people who come in and say, I'm lethargic, I have no direction, I have no motivation, I can't focus. Some of these people have what I call brain rot. Now, this is not a medical condition. It's not a neuroinflammation. it is simply a deconditioning or rusting of the mind. And in order to overcome this, what we really need to do is tune up our mind. And thankfully, the yogis have figured out how to do that. And I would sort of say that the core feature of someone who has brain rot is that they live their life reactively.

Right. So my motivation is determined by external circumstances. If I've got a deadline, I can react to that deadline and I can sort of take care of it. But if I'm living my life reactively, and by the way, hey, I was doing this thing, I went to three classes where I was learning how to break dance. And then my friend showed up for class four and it was his or her first class. And they did better than me. And it was so freaking embarrassing that they are natural and I'm not a natural. So then I give it up.

I never go to class five. You are living your life reactively. What other people do determines your motivation. And this is why there is a complete loss of control. You're always reacting, responding, reacting, responding. You can't pick a direction and move towards it. How do you fix this? You take the yogic approach of preventing infection by filtering your perceptions.

Create a gap between what your actual sensory perception is and what your reaction to it is. Notice that a sensory perception is not the same as a reality. The second thing you need to do is control what colonizes your mind. and literally restrict as much as you can the sensory inputs. So what kind of sensory inputs create motivation and what kind of sensory inputs create distractions from motivation? And you can start small. You can start as small as five minutes a day,

15 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, one hour a day of simply being completely unplugged, go for a walk, right? Or go to some sort of like entrepreneurship. We have our Discord, for example, as an entrepreneurship community. Go to a drop into like their, you know, hour long voice calls and see what other people are up to. Start to colonize your mind with positive influences.

And the third and hardest thing to deal with is the Aham Gara or the ego. Because as a result of number one and number two, we form identities. And those identities start determining what we do. They start controlling and shaping our actions. And this is really when we get truly stuck. Because the big irony is our actions determine who we are, not the other way around. But when we start letting our ego determine what we're capable of or not capable of, that's when we sort of really get stuck in this cycle.

So use this yogic approach of filtering perception, decolonizing your mind, and paying attention to egotistical statements, and you will start to reverse brain rot.