HealthyGamerGG - Why Normal Life Feels So Boring

Episode Date: September 12, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K unpacks why so many of us cycle through hyper-expensive hobbies every two weeks, investing heavily in new gear only to quickly lose interest and move on. He explains the neurobiology of the "addictive personality", detailing how our brains process impulses, and how ancient teachings from the Buddha can help us break the cycle of constant excitement and disappointment.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

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Do I have to do everything myself? You want to want! I'll give you a... Mobland, new season hits September 18th on Paramount Plus. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get

when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. I'm supposed to chase money, bitches, cocaine, right? I'm supposed to chase happiness and marriage and a fulfilling fatherhood and a rewarding career. We're supposed to experience bits of pleasure and then we try to duplicate that pleasure. And the Buddha says this is a mistake. Today we're going to talk about the addictive personality.

So we know that there are addictions to particular things. Like if I have a history of alcoholism in my family, I have a gene mutation in my gabber receptor that makes me predisposed to being addicted to alcohol. And we also know there are other kinds of addictions like behavioral addictions like pornography addiction, which we explore over here. And so there are addictions to particular things. And if you listen to sort of the wisdom out there, there's this idea that a particular addiction has an evidence-based approach. And that's true. So here, for example, is my cognitive behavioral therapy for substance use disorders. This is specifically around cocaine addiction. Here is my treatment protocol for helping people with cocaine. Okay. But there's a problem because some of us aren't. addicted to one thing. We have a tendency to get addicted to a lot of things. And this is what's tricky is that we don't stay addicted to the same thing forever, right? So it's not like we fall in love with art and then we spend the next 50 years becoming an artist. We pick something up, and this is sort of this special kind of autism of not like being a math genius, but getting super into this hyper

expensive hobby, right? We pick something up, we invest a ton of stuff in it. It consumes our life. And then inevitably we kind of like move on. And then we get addicted to the next thing and then we get addicted to the next thing. So if there are evidence-based approaches to a particular addiction, what do you do if you have an addictive personality? So the first question that we have to ask is, doesn't addictive personality exist from a scientific perspective? Is it a real thing? And the answer is sort of. So we know from numerous studies that there are certain personality traits that predispose you to addiction. So here's a great summary. Overall, the reviewed literature supported a putative personality profile of the behavioral addicted individual as an emotionally

fragile, unstable subject driven by short-term gratification with poor impulse control and difficulty in managing their feelings and relationships. That is a damning personality to have, right? So this is what's so tricky about this is like, some people are like this, like I'm like this, like this, like we're like this, right? And this is such a damning personality because a personality is who you are. So what are you supposed to do if you have a, you know, a fragile sense of self, if you're emotionally unstable, have difficulty feeling things and being in relationships and are impulsive,

right? There's all this stuff about how we're so ADHD and things like that, right? Like, what do you do if you're this person? Is there a protocol for this? Because this isn't an addiction to a particular thing. And the really scary thing is that it's not. just personality features, we've actually tunneled down to the level of neuroscience, and we've discovered some really fascinating things. Like people who are like this, literally they're wired a

little bit differently. Their brain is less sensitive or less responsive to reward. So some people can get immense joy out of drinking a cup of tea. But if you have an addictive personality, there's a good chance that the simple things in life don't actually give you a lot of pleasure. And the reason that you have a quote unquote addictive personality is because you have to go hard into something. Or if you find that one thing at the moment that really triggers your dopaminergic circuitry, it makes everything else in your life pale in comparison. Right? Oh my God.

I found this thing in like, let's go. Okay? And if we track this further to a neuroscience level, what we find is that there's basically for people who have addictive personalities, there's basically an imbalance in certain parts of their brain. So the ventral tegmental area in the amygdala give us two basic drives. VTA is where our dopamine comes from, dopamine pleasure circuitry. So this is where our drive towards pleasurable things comes from. And our amygdala is our fear and survival center of the brain.

So this is where our avoidance drive comes from. And then we have our frontal lobes, which are sort of the master circuit and where our willpower comes from. And if we take someone who doesn't have an addictive personality, there's a balance between their negative impulses, their positive. impulses in their willpower. Whereas if you have an addictive personality, your willpower is outgunned by your negative impulses or your impulses to run away from negative things, as well as your impulses to move towards positive things. And so now we're faced with a problem because this is kind of like your brain and your personality. So how do we tackle this? And this is what I love about doing addiction psychiatry work is that there are evidence-based protocols

for various addictions. But if we tunnel down into this, basic issue of like an imbalance between pleasure, pain, and willpower, how do we solve that? And that's why we have to get to the fundamentals. Hey, all, if y'all want to learn a little bit more, by all means, watch another YouTube video. If you guys are actually interested in finding the practical tools to change on your own, that's where memberships comes in. And if you all are interested in getting some help or achieving a particular milestone

four weeks, eight weeks, or 12 weeks from now, check out coaching. So if y'all are interested, check out the link in the description below. And when I work with someone who has an addictive personality, we really have to focus on the fundamentals of your internal decision making. And this is where I'm going to boil things down to one really interesting scientific concept, which is something called negative urgency and positive urgency. So negative urgency is the tendency to act rashly in response to a negative emotional experience. That's what negative affect means. Positive urgency is the tendency to act rashly in relation to a positive affect or emotional experience. So when I get excited, I order a bunch of things on the internet because now this is my new personality.

And when I feel afraid of something or I want to avoid something or I feel anxious, I will act rashly. I will act rapidly in response to that thing. And if there's one skill that I would choose to teach, if I took all of the patients I've had who had addictive, personality. And I had to teach them one thing. I would teach them this concept and teach them how to free themselves from positive and negative urgency. And if you've got an addictive personality, I want you to think about this for a second. The core of the problem is that, you know, you get excited about something and then you can't restrain yourself, right? That's the core of the problem. The other thing within addictive personality is that oftentimes when we get excited

about something, we are running away from something else. So these two things go hand in hand. And so how are we going to get to the root of this? And this is we're going to turn to the teachings of the Buddha. And this is kind of fascinating because I realized something recently. I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but the teachings of the Buddha are really hard to find. You guys ever notice this? Like, we have the Bible, we have the Quran, we have the Bhagavad Githa. Like, what's the text of Buddhism?

Because Buddha was around. He spoke. People actually recorded what he said, and we have record of it. But if you look at Buddhism, we don't get the teachings of the Buddha. We get the teachings of Buddhists. And so I got confused about that sometime ago. It's like, I've read all these books on Buddhism, like, Zen and stuff like that. But like, I've never actually read the teachings of the Buddha.

And as I read the teachings of the Buddha, I understand now why no one teaches what the Buddha teaches. No one actually reads what he says. And that's because if the Buddha was like on the internet and teaching today, he would get hard canceled in a second. Like there's no way what he teaches is so unpalatable that it has to be filtered through. modern Buddhist teachings. And we're going to dive into this because this is the root of what he taught, but people don't like it. It is so contrary to the way that we live our lives, but it is actually the source of immense freedom, control, and salvation. I know it's like crazy, right? But that's what made the Buddha, but the Buddha is like he taught this stuff and people like, oh my God, this is mind-blowing.

So let's dive right into it. We're going to start with this concept of something that he called the two arrows. So with the Buddha, first thing that he realized, and you guys may have heard of this, because we as psychiatrists love to talk about this, but we only talk about half of the teaching. That's what's so interesting about it. We conveniently ignore the prickly half, okay? So the first half of the teaching is he says there are two things in life. There's pain and there's suffering.

So pain is that which you cannot control and happens to you. And suffering is something that you can control and is what you do in response to the pain. And the analogy that he used is this is like the two arrows. So one is the arrow that you get hit with, that you have nothing to control. No control, right? You're just walking along. Someone shoots an arrow. You take an arrow through the knee.

But then he said something interesting. When we get hit by the first arrow, we shoot a second arrow at ourselves. And the majority of our suffering, because pain you can't control. Like bad stuff happens in life, right? That's just life. It's like R&G random chance. But then our response to that pain is actually the, actually not the majority. 100% of our suffering isn't from the temporary pain. It's from what we do after. So if I stub my

toe and I'm like, damn it, stupid step, and I kick the step, what he says is that I can't avoid stubbing my toe, but kicking it is what I can control. So here's a good example of this, okay? So let's say I'm going to a bachelor party. And I'm waiting for my flight and my flight is delayed by two hours. So when my flight is delayed, like this sucks, right? Instead of being at the bachelor party in like happy hour or whatever like I'm gonna I'm stuck at the airport so now I'm going to miss the shared transport because we're all going to fly in around the same time I'm going to miss happy hour I'll barely make it to dinner right so this is this is a reality instead of being at the bachelor party with my friends at happy hour I'm now waiting on an airport and waiting at

an airplane this pain is outside of my control but what I can control is my response to it so oftentimes what happens when bad things happen to us is we get like really upset about them right like okay I I miss the happy hour, but I'm still going to the bachelor party. I'm going to still hang out with my bros over the weekend. Like, not that big of a deal, except sometimes we make it a big deal, right? We're like, now we're stewing and like now the airport sucks and like the food sucks and I'm missing this and oh my God. And now they're doing this and oh my God.

I'm going to miss out. I'm going to miss out. I'm going to miss out. So there's the actual missing out and there's the being upset about missing out. Another simple example of this is something like a breakup, right? So like there's the breakup itself with which comes with certain amounts of sadness. Right? Like, ah.

And we actually know that there's a certain amount of literally biological withdrawal that you experience after a breakup. Those are things that you cannot control. What you can control is what you do in response to that. So you start stalking your ex. You're like stalking them on social media. They meet somebody else. That person is slightly better looking than you. Or maybe they're not even better looking than you.

But you're in such a bad headspace that you see all of the things that they do better than you and ignore all of the things that you're better than them at. You also maybe are starting to project into the future about how you're never going to find someone like this. Or you go down the social media rabbit hole and you get weaponized against their particular gender and you think these people are terrible. That's suffering. So Buddha says you can't control the sadness of the breakup, but you can control what comes next. So now we get to the fun part of the teaching. Because everyone's like, duh, right? Like, hey, I got broken up.

I don't want to be stuck and trapped in this in my head for the rest of my life. Like, Obvi, bro. So he says the same is true of pleasure. He says, equally bad is we have pleasure, which life gives us, which we have no control over. Or I come home after a long day of work and I see there's a package at my door, someone has sent me a gift. I can't control this. He says, what we can control is the obsession that comes after pleasure. So in the same way that a pain ripples out into suffering, if we pay attention to ourselves,

any pleasure will ripple out into what he calls obsession. So when something good happens to us, we want more good things. And this is what's really scary. This is like the way that we're supposed to live life, right? We're supposed to like want good things and chase good things. I'm supposed to chase money, bitches, cocaine, right? I'm supposed to chase happiness and marriage and a fulfilling fatherhood and a rewarding career. We're supposed to experience bits of pleasure and then we try to do it.

duplicate that pleasure. I want to, I enjoy having money, so let me come up with a passive income stream. And the Buddha says, this is a mistake. Now, this gets really confusing, so we're going to get into it, right? But I want you guys to think about it for a moment, right? Experiencing pleasure is one thing, but what happens when you start to chase that pleasure? Man, I love playing a game of Dota. Oh my God, Dota is so fun. We made a comeback. They were at our throne, and, man, we made a comeback like, let's go. Video games are so fun. Let me play another game. Let me play 10 hours more. Let me play 20 hours more.

Let me pay 5,000 hours. Let me play 8,000 hours. My favorite thing about so many video games is 8,000 hours play, not recommended on Steam. This game will waste your life. Why? What are we chasing there? There's the joy of the game, and then there's our attempt to duplicate it in the future. And he says, this is true of all pleasure.

Anything that you're chasing will lead to an obsession. And an obsession will inevitably lead to problems in suffering. And one of the basic reasons for this is that, unfortunately, in our brain, we have this dopaminergic circuitry, which develops tolerance. If we didn't develop tolerance, then the whole situation would be different, right? But the whole problem is that the first time that you use heroin, you have an amazing high. And for the rest of your addiction, you are chasing that high for the rest of your life. Right. And as long as you are chasing what was in the past, you're never going to find it.

As long as you're looking for the relationship that you used to have, you'll never be able to appreciate whatever you find next. There's one additional layer to this. I know this is going to raise lots of questions. Like, hold on a second, Dr. K. If I'm not supposed to chase pleasure, then how the hell do I motivate myself? We'll get to that in a second. We have, by the way, if you guys want more detail on this, a whole deep dive, a six-hour workshop into inaction and action that you guys can check out.

If you all want to get into the detail of how to motivate yourselves. But we're not done yet. So now we get to something kind of important. So remember that the roots of the addictive personality are negative urgency. So when I have pain, this induces suffering, and then I start to avoid pain, right, which causes problems. And then I have pleasure and obsession. This is positive urgency.

So in order to restrain myself, I need to be able to just sit with this pleasure and not go chasing after it. Like, oh, man, this is fun. Let me, but just because I had fun today painting something doesn't mean that I'm going to order $1,000 of art supplies and like set up, redo my room so that I have a studio and all this kind of stuff. This is the problem with the addictive personality. Is that positive urgency is there? Negative urgency is there and we can't restrain it.

The root of controlling it is understanding this relationship. There's one other thing that he said, which is that the other response that we have to pain is to chase pleasure. Now, this is where things get even we're even we're saying this is a problem. He says, if you have pain in life, we think the antidote to pain is pleasure, right? If you're hungry, eat something, bro. If you have low self-esteem, get high self-esteem. If you lose a game, learn how to win.

Like, this is literally the way that we live our life. So he says, this is a problem because when we move from pain to pleasure, obsession rolls in. Because now we're obsessed with the pleasure, right? So this is the nature of addiction. The nature of addiction is, I feel bad. I'm going to do something to make me feel good. That is the problem described thousands of years ago by the Buddha. And he says, hey, the moment that you start chasing pleasure is an antidote to pain,

you obsession will roll into it. Then you will become obsessed with it. And then you'll run into all kinds of problems. So what's the problem with this? So this raises two really, really tricky questions. The first is, Dr. Kay, are you saying that I shouldn't fix my problems? Right? Like you're saying, like, hey, if I have pain, like I should just sit in the pain. Like if I'm in an abusive relationship, if I'm in a crappy job, I should just tolerate it forever? Shouldn't I fix my problems? Excellent question. This is why the Buddhist teachings don't get taught because they're kind of confusing. There's a couple of nuances I'm going to try to tease apart for y'all. Okay? Here's the first one. The realm in which the Buddha acts is not physical. He never talks about action. He never says

you should do this or don't do this. The realm that he exists in is in here. Suffering exists in here. Pain exists in the outside world, but suffering is created in here. Pleasure is evoked by the outside world. If I jump into a pool of water, that's going to feel great. but my craving for the pool, my obsession with the pool, my jealousy that comes from, man, I wish I had a pool. All of that comes from here. This is where he acts. So he's not actually saying that you need to change anything physically. What he's saying is you should change something in your mind.

And when it comes to an addictive personality, this is kind of the problem, right? Is that it is not localized to a particular circumstance, to a particular object, to a particular thing. There is something within you that repeats that. pattern outside. So the work must be done internally. This is what he's teaching us. So then the question becomes, okay, what is he actually saying? And this is where, let's use a simple example, abusive relationship, right? So this is part of my day job. I have patients with PTSD who are in abusive relationships. And you may say, but Dr. K, if they're not running from pain into pleasure, how are they ever going to get out of the abusive relationship? And I would argue, and I agree with

the Buddha, this is what's so weird about it, is that the suffering and obsession is what keeps them in the abusive relationship. Literally. It's not the pain or pleasure. It is the attachments that they make. And this is what the patience will tell me. Okay. If I leave this person, how am I going to pay my rent? This person has so much control over my life. If I do the right thing, leave them, then it's going to create all of these other problems. It'll lead to all this other kind of suffering. I can't do it. And the scarier thing is their obsession with pleasure. Because you may wonder like, why on earth do people stay in abusive relationships if they're abusive? Duh, bro.

But we know that tons of people, in fact, getting out of an abusive relationship is not easy. They're like things that make it very hard. So what is it that makes it hard? The hardest thing that I've had to help people with is like these kinds of thoughts, okay? I have a partner. He's a great husband, wonderful person, great dad, except when he drinks. And so what happens, the reason people stay in abusive relationships is, first of all, they're afraid of what will happen when they leave.

The second reason is because they think this person is great some of the time. And if I can figure out if they became sober, then everything would be great. Everything would be perfect. So do you see how this is not the pleasure of the moment that is dictating their actions? This is the obsession for that future pleasure. It is the attachment to that future pleasure. If only, if only. And from a personality perspective, many of these people may also have the positive urgency

and the negative urgency. Good example of this. Yeah, I left. My boyfriend's an asshole. I left. And now we're back together again. We're talking again. Why? Because he texted me and I felt really good and he made me feel special. And so now we're like talking a little bit. He apologized and oh my God. He apologized and he's done so much work. Oh my God. He's so like he's done so much work. He's a completely different person. And that's what your mind tells you. But the question is, are you feeling good in here? And if you feel good in here, do you act rashly because of it? So this is what's tricky about the addictive person. And so how do you act, right? If we're not moving from pain into pleasure, then how do we, how do we do this? And this is kind of like it's a weird thing, but remember, it's internal. So this is where I'd say, by all means, solve the problems of today, but be careful about what you attach to it. So if you don't like your job, then by all means, apply for another job. If you don't like your job, then apply, right? So work hard on a daily basis in order to apply. I'm not saying don't do that. The tricky thing, though, what the Buddha would say that you need to

avoid is the attachments of it. Oh my God, this resume isn't good enough. I need to have a great resume so I can find a great job. Oh my God. I'm interviewing for the job of my dreams, but there are other candidates here and there's so much more qualified than I am. I really need this job. I really need this job. If I don't get this job, everything is going to fall apart around me. I can't stand another day in this office. That desperation, that attachment, that inability to tolerate that negative affect and the positive affect. Oh my God, this person is amazing. We connect on such a deep level. God, yeah, no, I'm quitting my job and I'm moving across the country to be with this person. Absolutely, it's going to be great.

Oh, my God, yeah, I need to sell, I had a friend. I'm going to sell my GameCube because I'm addicted to video games. And then three months later, I bought my GameCube back for $100 more in all of my games because I couldn't live without it. I need to get rid of my game cube, but I need to sell it. And the antidote to this is too, this is where a lot of this generic stuff comes in. But I want you guys to pay attention to this. Live in the present. Acceptance.

What does this stuff meet? Pay attention to when something bad happens to you. Do you run away from it? Is it your inability to tolerate negative things that actually creates the problems in your life? And is it the inability to tolerate the positive things, the impulses that makes you screw up your life? Because the Buddha says, be in the present. Except that pain and pleasure will come and go. You do not need to chase them.

And once you separate these things, there's almost a way that you can live your life like a bot, where today I'm going to do the problems today. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I'm still going to do what is the right thing. You know what the right thing is. The problem with doing the right thing is that you want to do a good job. You're a perfectionist. In perfectionism, the desire to do something really good prevents you from doing it.

So separate out pain and pleasure from obsession and suffering. And if you guys want more information, if you want, like, if you're struggling to understand, how do I do this? Wait, like I'm still confused. We have another really great lecture on perception where we tunnel down. into some of these really, like, weird, simple things. And as you guys start doing this work, because remember, the Buddhist teachings

were not designed to be simply internalized from watching a YouTube video. You have to grapple with it yourself. So we've got a great lecture on perception where we show you that mechanism. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip an ad. I get it.

I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.