Latest / Vibe Sesh Podcast / Vibe Sesh #16 | Are We Healing—or Learning to Stay Broken?

Transcript

Vibe Sesh #16 | Are We Healing—or Learning to Stay Broken? · Vibe Sesh Podcast

0:03
SPEAKER_02: How's it going, bro?
0:06
SPEAKER_02: How long does it feel between Monday and now, dude?
0:09
SPEAKER_02: I feel like it's been forever.
0:10
SPEAKER_02: It feels like a week.
0:12
SPEAKER_02: Why is that, bro?
0:14
SPEAKER_02: Why is that?
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Is it because of Vibe Sesh or what do you think?
0:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, man.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: I understand what you're saying.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: That's weird.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Bro, this time thing is so weird, bro.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: That's right there.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: Damn, bro.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: Hey, we got our first question here.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: Wisdom, please, about all this ghosting going on.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
0:38
SPEAKER_01: I would like to know, too, bro.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: I'm getting ghosted, too.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: You're getting ghosted, too, bro?
0:43
SPEAKER_01: It's all good, bro.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: It happens to everybody.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: Oh, shit.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: We got Josh Gambino.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: While we wait for our special guest, Mr. Richard Blake, PhD, Psychology.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: In the meantime, what's up, what's up?
0:59
SPEAKER_02: Hold on.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: Hold on.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: What's up, brother?
1:03
SPEAKER_02: What's up, brother?
1:04
SPEAKER_03: Nothing much, friend.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: Bro.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Handsome man.
1:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: You like the hair.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I like the hair, baby.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: Bro, is it a paint to shampoo and shit or what?
1:17
SPEAKER_03: I haven't showered in like five days, friend.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: Damn.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: Damn.
1:23
SPEAKER_02: Damn.
1:23
SPEAKER_02: Damn, bro.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad I'm not.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad this is alive, brother.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: Damn.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: Don't worry.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: I don't stink.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: I do not stink.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: How do you not stink, bro?
1:33
SPEAKER_02: How do you not stink, bro?
1:35
SPEAKER_02: I can say that.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: No, bro.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: Bro, you know, Asians have a certain like enzyme where we don't smell when we sweat and shit.
1:43
SPEAKER_02: Did you know that, Cisco?
1:44
SPEAKER_02: Brother.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: Italian Asian.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: Italian Asian.
1:49
SPEAKER_03: A little bit of Hawaii.
1:54
SPEAKER_03: Really?
1:55
SPEAKER_02: A little bit of Hawaii.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: I can feel it.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: Bro, you know why?
1:58
SPEAKER_02: You got that like kind of laid back, you know, that laid back vibe, bro.
2:03
SPEAKER_02: Like you're cool and shit.
2:05
SPEAKER_02: You got the little Asian thing going on, right?
2:08
SPEAKER_02: Like Hawaiians.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: Oh, what is that?
2:13
SPEAKER_01: Little shrooms.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, shit.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: A little shroom.
2:16
SPEAKER_03: Hey, you ready?
2:18
SPEAKER_02: Bro, what's your name?
2:19
SPEAKER_02: What's your name?
2:20
SPEAKER_03: My name?
2:22
SPEAKER_03: My name is Josh.
2:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Josh.
2:24
SPEAKER_03: Good to meet you, Josh.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: Josh Gambino.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: I am.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: Bro, Josh, so how do you, do you know us or you just joined the live or what?
2:34
SPEAKER_03: I've been watching your reels recently.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
2:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:38
SPEAKER_03: I was a little confused at first, but then I, you know, I got along.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: What the hell are you confused about?
2:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm a samurai, bro.
2:49
SPEAKER_03: I didn't work with your username and you started talking about a Vibe Samurai.
2:54
SPEAKER_03: I was like,
2:59
SPEAKER_03: who the hell?
3:03
SPEAKER_03: You said you get a little faded too.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: A little faded?
3:09
SPEAKER_02: I've never heard that term before, bro.
3:13
SPEAKER_02: Bro, Cisco, you've heard that?
3:14
SPEAKER_02: I get a little faded?
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course.
3:18
SPEAKER_02: What about you guys?
3:19
SPEAKER_02: You can drink and smoke, you know?
3:21
SPEAKER_02: Nice.
3:23
SPEAKER_02: Hey, Josh, so you're going to hang out with us for our special guest tonight?
3:26
SPEAKER_03: I might as well.
3:27
SPEAKER_03: I don't got nothing going.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but you're going to contribute or are you just going to be like the jester high guy?
3:34
SPEAKER_02: I can do both.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: I can contribute to society a little bit.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: All right, let's do it.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: Good.
3:39
SPEAKER_02: Well, I can't wait.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Samurai in training, all right?
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, wait.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: Let me...
3:43
SPEAKER_02: Let me send this thing to our...
3:45
SPEAKER_02: He's the first time that...
3:48
SPEAKER_02: Hold on, let me flush my toilet.
3:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, let's do it.
3:53
SPEAKER_03: Don't want to leave a treat for my girlfriend.
3:56
SPEAKER_02: Oh, man.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: Bro, where have you been, bro?
4:01
SPEAKER_02: Bro, you literally just discovered
4:02
SPEAKER_03: me or what?
4:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like about recently.
4:06
SPEAKER_03: Like...
4:07
SPEAKER_03: A week ago?
4:08
SPEAKER_03: A week ago?
4:10
SPEAKER_02: You saw my Kill the Buddha and then Buddha Shitstick one?
4:14
SPEAKER_03: The Buddha Shitstick was the one that I actually researched the most.
4:18
SPEAKER_03: And what was him?
4:19
SPEAKER_03: His name started with a Y?
4:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Yijin.
4:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, him especially.
4:24
SPEAKER_03: I was like, wow.
4:26
SPEAKER_03: I didn't know that people could have that much like, you know, at first I thought irreverence.
4:33
SPEAKER_03: Irreverence.
4:34
SPEAKER_03: But then I was like, wait, no, everything is equal.
4:37
SPEAKER_03: Even the shit on the ground that my cats,
4:40
SPEAKER_03: like what they do, that is the same thing as everything else.
4:44
SPEAKER_03: Nothing is above something, I guess.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: And that really got me thinking.
4:50
SPEAKER_03: I was like, this doesn't make any sense to me, but now I'm starting to learn.
4:54
SPEAKER_03: So I can see that it's jokes, but it's also seriousness.
4:59
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: You got it, man.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: I've been purposely doing that.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: I'm testing out a new thing.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: It was my second video.
5:05
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: The first video was Kill the Buddha.
5:08
SPEAKER_02: The second one was the shitstick one.
5:10
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
5:11
SPEAKER_02: But the Kill the Buddha resonated a lot more.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: It resonated a lot more because it was talking about more things like
5:17
SPEAKER_02: the politicians that you think are gurus,
5:20
SPEAKER_02: you know,
5:20
SPEAKER_02: like there was more universal than you thinking about the shitstick
5:24
SPEAKER_02: and everything is on the...
5:25
SPEAKER_02: Equal level.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: You know what I'm saying?
5:27
SPEAKER_02: It's a different video,
5:28
SPEAKER_01: you know?
5:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: All right.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: Let's bring up Mr. Richard Blake, our special guest.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: And we have our co-host, Cisco.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: And we got a new co-host, Josh.
5:39
SPEAKER_02: Why are you laughing, Cisco?
5:45
SPEAKER_01: Richard.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: He's ripping a bone.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: Richard.
5:47
SPEAKER_02: Look at this handsome man, guys.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: Guys, this guy was an ex.
5:51
SPEAKER_02: Guys, this guy was an ex- A men's health model.
5:55
SPEAKER_02: He was the cover guy.
5:58
SPEAKER_02: Long time ago.
5:59
SPEAKER_03: You look the part.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: Bam, bro.
6:03
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Vibe Sesh 16, Richard.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
6:07
SPEAKER_02: How are you feeling?
6:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: It's been a long day, but happy to be here.
6:14
SPEAKER_02: You nervous?
6:15
SPEAKER_02: How are you feeling?
6:16
SPEAKER_02: How's your vibes?
6:17
SPEAKER_00: I think it's good.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's pretty good.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
6:21
SPEAKER_00: Am I giving off bad vibes?
6:23
SPEAKER_02: No, you're giving off very, like, serious vibes.
6:27
SPEAKER_02: Serious vibes.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: Serious vibes, like, especially in your videos, you know, like, I am a little bit like that too.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm Samurai, I'm the monk.
6:35
SPEAKER_02: But then here, I'm just like, whoo.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: I can tell.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fair enough.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, I'll keep it loose then.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: All right, keep it loose.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: Bro, so I took your test.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: So everybody, please follow Richard.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: Amazing follow.
6:51
SPEAKER_02: He has a bunch of different things on his link tree.
6:53
SPEAKER_02: And I took your two-minute mental health audit.
6:58
SPEAKER_02: I got 76 out of 100.
7:00
SPEAKER_02: Is that good?
7:01
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty good.
7:02
SPEAKER_02: That's good?
7:03
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: I said I'm well defended.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: That's the category.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: 76, well defended.
7:07
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
7:08
SPEAKER_02: Well defended, actually.
7:09
SPEAKER_02: Why well defended?
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess I kind of see sometimes I see mental health as like things
7:15
SPEAKER_00: that can harm your mental health and then buffers against mental health.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: So good habits, good community, good diet, you know, all those things.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just kind of making sure people have enough buffers and not too many things
7:29
SPEAKER_00: that can be harming their mental health.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:34
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, like I saw your report and it said that I apparently need more daylight.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: More nature, more hugs and affection.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I get enough.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: Wow, interesting.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: And more time with my cat.
7:50
SPEAKER_02: Damn.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: Interesting, yeah.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: How worried should we be, Richard?
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think with a score of 76, you should be fine.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's obviously, you know, different people, especially genetics.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, some people have to work much harder on their mental health than others.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Some people need a lot more buffers than others.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: So it depends where you're at, you know, genetically.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: You know,
8:12
SPEAKER_02: one question that I really love,
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Richard, it was so there was 26 questions when I had to get to this score.
8:19
SPEAKER_02: But I think it was like question number three,
8:20
SPEAKER_02: which is very synchronistic because I just made a video about Awe
8:25
SPEAKER_02: because I'm reading the book Awe by Dr. Keltner.
8:29
SPEAKER_02: Are you familiar with his book?
8:31
SPEAKER_03: No, you got to read it, bro.
8:34
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's recent
8:35
SPEAKER_02: or something.
8:35
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, he was on the Huberman podcast and everything.
8:38
SPEAKER_02: I made a video about that whole thing.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: And then I'm taking this test and you're like,
8:44
SPEAKER_02: How often do you feel genuine are or wonder is one of your questions.
8:49
SPEAKER_02: But I never hear you talking about it in your videos.
8:51
SPEAKER_02: So tell me what you think of awe and wonder, especially because you didn't read that book.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: So I'm wondering what you're getting at with that question.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I did a randomized control trial on breathwork as a treatment for anxiety.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: And the breathwork that I did a study on is called conscious connected breathing.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's the one that's sort of like a psychedelic experience.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of the same mechanisms that happen with this type of breathwork
9:18
SPEAKER_00: and psychedelics like mushrooms and ayahuasca.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: And one of the sort of hypothesized mechanisms of action for why psychedelics Are
9:26
SPEAKER_00: so good for mental health is because it creates that feeling of awe.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: So I was sort of transposing that where you get awe from ayahuasca and mushrooms,
9:34
SPEAKER_00: you get awe from breathwork.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Are we getting enough awe in our day-to-day lives?
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And of course you can get awe from many things,
9:40
SPEAKER_00: seeing the Grand Canyon, going to church, seeing your child for the first time.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of ways to get awe.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: Cisco, what
9:50
SPEAKER_02: is the most awe?
9:51
SPEAKER_02: When do you feel awe?
9:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm curious.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I've been more struggling with that because of constant rumination,
9:59
SPEAKER_01: but the walking I've been putting myself through with just no headphones,
10:03
SPEAKER_01: no stimulation and focusing on the breath,
10:06
SPEAKER_01: that's been kind of my version of like the past doesn't exist,
10:10
SPEAKER_01: the future doesn't exist just right now.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: And then I try to,
10:14
SPEAKER_01: so I'm practicing,
10:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm not like experiencing awe all the time, but I'm trying to get there, I guess.
10:22
SPEAKER_02: You know what's interesting about this book and what I talk about in the video is
10:26
SPEAKER_02: that the book,
10:28
SPEAKER_02: it's a lot of research behind it and it talks about how like awe is measurable
10:35
SPEAKER_02: and it's trainable.
10:38
SPEAKER_02: So you think the awe is just like looking at the Andes or the Grand Canyon
10:42
SPEAKER_02: or something like that.
10:43
SPEAKER_02: But like Richard said,
10:44
SPEAKER_02: it could be like some psychedelics,
10:47
SPEAKER_02: it could be watching a big mountain, so you need that scenery.
10:52
SPEAKER_02: Or a big one is, I forget what it's called, moral beauty or something like that.
10:56
SPEAKER_02: When you see someone do something courageous and beat all odds, Brings up awe in you, right?
11:03
SPEAKER_02: Like, so there's many different ways.
11:05
SPEAKER_02: And so for me, I was talking in the video that I wake up every day in awe.
11:09
SPEAKER_02: And one of the reasons is because I have AI to like talk about anything I want.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: And it's like expanding my mind and whatever I learn, I want to share with you guys.
11:19
SPEAKER_02: And I've created a little awe machine, right?
11:24
SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, so you can, you know, like, what do you think, Richie?
11:29
SPEAKER_02: I know.
11:30
SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think like I don't cry much,
11:33
SPEAKER_00: but when I see something like amazing,
11:36
SPEAKER_00: like humans doing amazing things, that makes me well up more than anything.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I feel like I need to cry, like I haven't cried in like a year.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: I should probably cry and just make sure I still can, you know, to like unblock the system.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: Derek Redmond, he was running the 400m in the 1990 Barcelona Olympics.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: He's a British guy and he was in the final and he pulls his hamstring in the final.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: He's like, what should I do?
12:07
SPEAKER_00: This is really hard.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: He was on the floor writhing in pain.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: And then he starts to hop to the finish line.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: And then you see some commotion in the crowd.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: And someone's arguing with the security guard.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, no, I'm his dad.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm his dad.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: And the dad runs on to the track and carries his son around the 400 meter track.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: And Derek is crying his eyes out.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And the dad's crying his eyes out.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: And I'm crying my eyes out.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: And I feel better after it.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: That's deep.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: Bro, that was super detailed example of where you got...
12:45
SPEAKER_02: Damn, Richard.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
12:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:49
SPEAKER_02: What do you think, Josh?
12:51
SPEAKER_03: Any thoughts?
12:53
SPEAKER_03: Personally, on the awe, I feel like I've been struggling with that.
12:57
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you can see my hat.
12:59
SPEAKER_03: When you said psychedelics, that piques my interest.
13:01
SPEAKER_03: Because the only... Like you said...
13:06
SPEAKER_03: I forget your name.
13:07
SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
13:08
SPEAKER_03: Yes, let's go.
13:09
SPEAKER_03: That was the name of my dog.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: Crazy.
13:11
SPEAKER_03: Because we named him the last show.
13:13
SPEAKER_03: But anyway, yes.
13:14
SPEAKER_03: Like the awe, when you mentioned psychedelics, I feel so ruminated.
13:19
SPEAKER_03: Like what you said, rumination.
13:20
SPEAKER_03: That's all I can do when I'm not high on a psychedelic, I feel.
13:24
SPEAKER_03: Because the mundanity or the mundane nature of life,
13:29
SPEAKER_03: going to work, waking up early just to get money to pay for this place here.
13:34
SPEAKER_03: And They pay for vices.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: It just feels so mundane, you know?
13:42
SPEAKER_03: So I seek awe through intense psychedelic experiences, intense, like almost abusing acid.
13:50
SPEAKER_03: Like I know that's not a thing you can do technically because it's not
13:53
SPEAKER_03: an addictive substance,
13:55
SPEAKER_03: but I look forward and even crave those two weeks to go by so I can just feel on top
14:02
SPEAKER_03: of the earth.
14:03
SPEAKER_03: So I can just feel like, Everything is new again.
14:07
SPEAKER_03: So I almost feel like I'm addicted to awe.
14:11
SPEAKER_03: That's why I drink every day.
14:13
SPEAKER_03: I need that new experience.
14:17
SPEAKER_03: Nuance.
14:18
SPEAKER_03: I need that.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: Nuance.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: We're missing nuance nowadays.
14:22
SPEAKER_02: What do you think, Richard, about what Josh said?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel quite sad that you have to go through that to get through life.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: I've certainly been there.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering if you've tried to sort of go the opposite direction and sort of just,
14:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:40
SPEAKER_00: appreciate the sort of the more boring things in life,
14:42
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:43
SPEAKER_00: reading a book,
14:43
SPEAKER_00: sitting in nature, mindfulness meditation, if that ever has worked for you.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: The small moments.
14:51
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I have tried.
14:53
SPEAKER_03: It's like,
14:55
SPEAKER_03: It's weird because when you have those small moments,
14:57
SPEAKER_03: you're like, oh, I could exist forever with just this.
15:01
SPEAKER_03: But then the next morning you wake up and you have that dread in your head.
15:07
SPEAKER_03: And the only thing that can solve that is getting high.
15:12
SPEAKER_03: And I think you said multiple times, I think it's...
15:16
SPEAKER_03: Moments pass.
15:17
SPEAKER_03: Those moments can pass.
15:19
SPEAKER_03: Like even the sexual urges with porn and stuff like that.
15:22
SPEAKER_03: You'll have that.
15:23
SPEAKER_03: You'll be scrolling and see like a random AI porn ad because
15:27
SPEAKER_03: of how fucked up Instagram is nowadays.
15:29
SPEAKER_03: And you'll be like, oh, I got like, there's even a fucking gift for it.
15:33
SPEAKER_03: Like the, oh, hopping over to Safari or Instagram, like after you're on Instagram.
15:38
SPEAKER_03: And I think those moments I've realized they can pass if I just let them, you know?
15:44
SPEAKER_03: So, yeah,
15:46
SPEAKER_03: I've been trying to get more into that mindset of just trying
15:50
SPEAKER_03: to enjoy those small moments and realizing that not every moment has to be awe.
15:55
SPEAKER_03: Like, I forget who said it, but not every moment has
15:58
SPEAKER_02: to be awe.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: Not every moment has to be awe.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that makes sense.
16:04
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
16:05
SPEAKER_03: It's unfortunate, but it's life, right?
16:08
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's just looking at my cat.
16:11
SPEAKER_03: That's, you know, good enough.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm also wondering if you've ever tried dopamine fasting?
16:18
SPEAKER_03: I haven't.
16:19
SPEAKER_03: That sounds rough.
16:21
SPEAKER_03: May I explain just a little bit?
16:24
SPEAKER_03: It's not an excuse,
16:25
SPEAKER_03: but I have what they called extreme ADHD,
16:30
SPEAKER_03: and my girlfriend's mother thinks I'm undiagnosed autism.
16:35
SPEAKER_03: A diagnosis, humans can't diagnose shit.
16:38
SPEAKER_03: Honestly, they can't.
16:41
SPEAKER_03: One person will tell me one thing, the other person will tell me another.
16:45
SPEAKER_03: But I do know I have a dopamine lack thereof, if you will.
16:50
SPEAKER_03: So I feel like I need to fill it in with,
16:54
SPEAKER_03: I forget who said, I think you did, Cisco, something about music?
16:58
SPEAKER_03: Or was that you?
16:59
SPEAKER_03: I feel like music, as soon as I wake up, I have an AirPod in.
17:03
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
17:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I have heavy music going just immediately.
17:08
SPEAKER_03: So I feel like I have that dopamine lack.
17:12
SPEAKER_03: So I have to fill it in with, This, with this, with DXM even.
17:18
SPEAKER_03: Recently, I've relapsed on that because it's so intense.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: What's DXM?
17:23
SPEAKER_03: DXM is the main component in Robotussin, cough syrup, stuff like that.
17:28
SPEAKER_03: But there's this company that makes completely freebase, like it's just the chemical itself.
17:35
SPEAKER_03: It's called Robotablets.
17:36
SPEAKER_03: It's fucked up to even buy, but it's so cheap and very effective.
17:41
SPEAKER_03: Thigh can get you fried.
17:43
SPEAKER_03: Like out of your mind, disassociated like ketamine.
17:46
SPEAKER_03: And to me, I feel like I need that.
17:48
SPEAKER_03: I was in a very long depressive streak because I quit that stuff.
17:52
SPEAKER_03: And then when I went back on it, it sucks to say, but I got happier.
17:56
SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't know.
17:59
SPEAKER_03: It felt like there was something missing and that filled that gap.
18:05
SPEAKER_03: You know, that need for all.
18:08
SPEAKER_03: My acid plug is also, he stopped.
18:10
SPEAKER_03: So I don't have that.
18:11
SPEAKER_03: So all I got is DXM, weed and alcohol.
18:15
SPEAKER_03: And I try to cram that as much as I possibly can just to seek that off.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: Richard, what do you think?
18:23
SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
18:24
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I talked a lot.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: Because we're going to talk about therapy.
18:28
SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk about labels and identity.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: And wow, there was so much there, Richard.
18:35
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you were able to process it.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm sorry, brother.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, Richard.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: No, thank you for sharing.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess I'm thinking it's sort of like an arms race, you versus dopamine.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: And with neurotransmitters and neuromodulators and synapses,
18:50
SPEAKER_00: it's like the more dopamine you get, the more you need, the more you go get.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's just a never-ending spiral.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And what actually might help is that,
19:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:00
SPEAKER_00: that kind of reset,
19:01
SPEAKER_00: 10-day Vipassana meditation,
19:04
SPEAKER_00: 10-day silent meditation,
19:06
SPEAKER_00: some float tanks,
19:08
SPEAKER_00: those types of things to take your baseline dopamine back down to
19:12
SPEAKER_00: a more manageable level.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Don't know if you ever consider that darkness retreats.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: You can get some of that awe in darkness retreats as well.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: You've done darkness retreats?
19:23
SPEAKER_00: I've not done a Darkness.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: I've done a 10-day Vipassamo, but I haven't quite got the coverage for that.
19:29
SPEAKER_02: Got it.
19:30
SPEAKER_02: Hey, but Richard,
19:30
SPEAKER_02: so let's talk about your story because you're kind of like your account is your,
19:39
SPEAKER_02: what would you say, anti-establishment kind of thing, Freud versus Adler.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: And let's talk about your most viral video.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
19:48
SPEAKER_02: Why you think it went viral?
19:50
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about Freud versus Adler.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so yeah,
19:56
SPEAKER_00: I posited a question,
19:57
SPEAKER_00: you know, what if the mental health crisis exists because we followed the wrong guy?
20:01
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, we follow Freud instead of Adler.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And it's,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: it's not a historically accurate take,
20:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:09
SPEAKER_00: we followed a We followed a bit of Adler,
20:12
SPEAKER_00: but most therapy and therapy culture stuff is more Freud based
20:16
SPEAKER_00: than it is Adler based.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of therapy,
20:19
SPEAKER_00: I would say,
20:20
SPEAKER_00: especially now with some modern trauma theory and Gabel Mate and Bessel van der Kolk
20:24
SPEAKER_00: over the last Sort of 10 years has been like the cause
20:27
SPEAKER_00: of all your problems is something that happens to you.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: Someone did something to you rather than, well, what are you doing right now?
20:35
SPEAKER_00: What are your habits?
20:36
SPEAKER_00: That's why I created that quiz.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: What are the things that are harming your mental health?
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And what are the things you're not doing that could be buffering your mental health?
20:44
SPEAKER_00: And Adler was kind of more like, well, yeah,
20:46
SPEAKER_00: your past matters to some extent,
20:48
SPEAKER_00: but let's focus on the now and the future to get rid of the problems I helped
20:54
SPEAKER_00: with those mental health issues.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't say I'm necessarily anti-establishment.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm, you know,
21:02
SPEAKER_00: I work for a coalition or I'm sorry,
21:04
SPEAKER_00: I volunteer for a coalition of mental health professionals and we're trying to,
21:10
SPEAKER_00: we're trying to course correct therapy.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm not as sort of anti-establishment as some of my friends,
21:15
SPEAKER_00: let's say,
21:16
SPEAKER_00: the sabbatics therapists and the psychedelic instructors and things like that.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: I would say they're full on anti-establishment.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm more like, let's work with the establishment.
21:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, interesting.
21:28
SPEAKER_02: Hey, but so what is the difference between,
21:31
SPEAKER_02: so Past Base, but Adler, tell us more because he's less familiar than Freud, right?
21:36
SPEAKER_02: So what are kind of his most important ideas, would you say?
21:40
SPEAKER_02: Because you talk about him a lot.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, why don't you go over that?
21:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say I'm not a full expert on Adler.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: I studied him.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: I did two years of a master's in psychotherapy and then like,
21:52
SPEAKER_00: it was like, this is not that good.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go do a research track and I did PhD in transpersonal psychology.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'll tell you a little bit about what sort of brought me to that.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: It was actually more Thomas Sass.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: If you want someone who's anti-establishment, read some Thomas Sass.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: He's written a load of books.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: And he basically was like, we don't have an epidemic of mental illness.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: We have an epidemic of psychiatry.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: It's like...
22:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God, that is so true.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: I have a buddy in Brazil who's like killing it.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: And he basically started in Brazil from scratch seven years ago,
22:32
SPEAKER_02: an online site where you can find therapists for cheap.
22:36
SPEAKER_02: So like he promised,
22:38
SPEAKER_02: he puts a ceiling on the therapist thing and there's like hundreds of thousands
22:43
SPEAKER_02: of graduates every year.
22:45
SPEAKER_02: And everyone wants to use the therapy.
22:48
SPEAKER_02: They want a cheap therapist.
22:50
SPEAKER_02: And so his business has grown, right?
22:52
SPEAKER_02: It's crazy.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: Things like that.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, go on.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: So I was studying psychotherapy, writing essays, and I would be like, Therapy's the best.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Everyone needs therapy.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Everyone should go to therapy.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: And I started looking at,
23:04
SPEAKER_00: I also found this guy, Pim Kuypers, he's a really sort of famous academic.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, well,
23:11
SPEAKER_00: actually the effectiveness or the success rate of therapy for anxiety is about 45%.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: And then if you look at relapse rates, that's also about 48%.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And then if you look at publication bias,
23:23
SPEAKER_00: all the studies that found no effect of therapy,
23:26
SPEAKER_00: My math is that, you know, it's got about an 80% failure rate.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: And then I was,
23:31
SPEAKER_00: I did all the thing,
23:32
SPEAKER_00: all the therapists do,
23:33
SPEAKER_00: and they're like, oh, they're just, they're not using the right therapy.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I was going to say that.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: You got the low quality ones
23:40
SPEAKER_02: in the studies, right?
23:41
SPEAKER_02: What about that?
23:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: So that's where the dodo effect is the answer to that.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: So another big meta-analysis compared all different forms of therapy
23:53
SPEAKER_00: and found they all work just about the same.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: They called it the dodo effect because of Alice in Wonderland,
23:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:59
SPEAKER_00: there's the dodo, there's a race and he goes, everyone wins, everyone gets a prize.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's how it is with therapy.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: They all work just about the same.
24:09
SPEAKER_02: The dodo effect, I love it.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: Everybody wins.
24:12
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh, yeah.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so then I was also,
24:16
SPEAKER_00: I did the other thing is like,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: oh yeah,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: the reason that they don't work that well in the studies is
24:20
SPEAKER_00: because they just don't do long enough therapy.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Then I found other studies that show after about eight sessions to 20 sessions,
24:29
SPEAKER_00: The effects of therapy basically plateaus, diminishing returns.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: So every time I went down of trying to defend therapy because I was going to become
24:37
SPEAKER_00: a therapist, I just got slapped down with a meta-analysis.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I can't do this anymore.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to go research breathwork.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: I think it works really well.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go test that.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: How was that?
24:47
SPEAKER_02: Because you're a psychologist's PhD.
24:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, how did that feel too?
24:53
SPEAKER_02: And how were you able to,
24:55
SPEAKER_02: and we'll get into this discussion later,
24:57
SPEAKER_02: but you had to be very honest with yourself because you're like,
25:00
SPEAKER_02: you got some costs in there, right?
25:01
SPEAKER_02: You've like dedicated your life, right?
25:04
SPEAKER_02: And then you're finding this data And you're actually really, I mean,
25:09
SPEAKER_02: was it hard to see the data or were you like angry and like,
25:12
SPEAKER_02: no, no, no, this can't be right.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: What was the emotion you were going through?
25:16
SPEAKER_00: I was in denial for about a year.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: And then I actually did a float tank,
25:20
SPEAKER_00: speaking of float tanks,
25:21
SPEAKER_00: and it came to me,
25:21
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
25:22
SPEAKER_00: I just can't I can't pretend that this is really effective
25:26
SPEAKER_00: that I should dedicate another four or five years to becoming a therapist.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: So I took a pause.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: I actually went traveling.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: I went and spent a month doing ayahuasca in Peru and sort of doing a little bit of
25:37
SPEAKER_00: an apprenticeship.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: And that's when I was like, breathwork is the thing for me.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: I had conversations with ayahuasca.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: I was like, should I research ayahuasca?
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, no, bro, you go do breathwork.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: We've got enough ayahuasca research.
25:49
SPEAKER_02: Ayahuasca told you to do breathwork.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: It told you to do it.
25:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: Did you go in there wanting to ask that question?
25:57
SPEAKER_02: Were you intentional about it?
25:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was there for a month.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: I've done a lot of ceremonies and I can't remember exactly if I was like, what should I do?
26:06
SPEAKER_00: It was at a time where I was like, yeah, what should I do?
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Pause from my psychotherapy.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to be a one year pause,
26:12
SPEAKER_00: but then I applied to this other program and did the PhD instead.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: My wife is a therapist.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: My sister-in-law is a therapist.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: My ex-girlfriend is a therapist.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: One of my best friends is a therapist.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: So going against all of that.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: You must be fun at dinners, huh?
26:33
SPEAKER_02: You must be so fun at dinners, bro.
26:35
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
26:38
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
26:38
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: Cisco, you have something?
26:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: How often was the ayahuasca?
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Because you were there for 30 days.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: And then is it every day or is it once a week?
26:50
SPEAKER_00: I think it was about three a week.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it was 12 in a month.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Three a week.
26:56
SPEAKER_02: But wait,
26:56
SPEAKER_02: so when ayahuasca told you do breathwork,
27:00
SPEAKER_02: like you got sober and you're like, that's it?
27:03
SPEAKER_02: Like, I feel it.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: Like, what's that feeling like when you do breathwork?
27:08
SPEAKER_02: It's going to take time to sink in, is my question.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: So I was already trained as a breathworker.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: So I was kind of being like,
27:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to get a psychotherapy master's to give me more credentials and I'll do
27:25
SPEAKER_00: the breathwork as well.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: But then, yeah.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: I kind of realized, no, just research breathwork and then see where we get from there.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like that was a huge risk as well because I really wanted to do it honestly.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of my good friends are breathworkers as well.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: So I'd wake up at night being like,
27:41
SPEAKER_00: oh man, what if I find breathwork doesn't do anything at all?
27:43
SPEAKER_00: I'd ruin everyone's career.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: What if they find the studies, bro?
27:47
SPEAKER_02: Imagine he finds some massive study that says breathwork is bullshit.
27:53
SPEAKER_03: He's like, oh man.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
27:58
SPEAKER_02: Oh man, that's amazing.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: How long is those credentials for breathwork?
28:07
SPEAKER_01: How deep does it go?
28:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of curious.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Is it how long was the training I did?
28:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: I guess to the average person, you never think there's a whole career in it, I guess.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: In breathwork?
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Why?
28:25
SPEAKER_01: That is a skill.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize that's a skill.
28:28
SPEAKER_03: Off method from YouTube.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: I should explain.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: There's quite a few different techniques of breath work.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: There's Wim Hof, which is great.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: It's really cool.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm trained in Soma breath work as well.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: There's functional breathing,
28:43
SPEAKER_00: so it's increasing your tolerance to carbon dioxide,
28:47
SPEAKER_00: making sure your diaphragm is working,
28:49
SPEAKER_00: those types of things,
28:50
SPEAKER_00: which are really great for sort of asthma and panic disorders and chronic
28:56
SPEAKER_00: over breathing disorders.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: But the one I actually did my study on was this one that's like it's like a ceremony.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: You breathe faster than normal.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: You're lying down.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: You go into altered states.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: You have psychedelic like effects.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: You have emotional releases.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: So for that.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: So I'm actually a part of a teacher training school called Breath Guru.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: And I teach some modules on there.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's a nine to 12 month training.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: And there is a real problem that because there's no licensing bodies for breathwork,
29:24
SPEAKER_00: some people are selling online certifications for weekend training
29:28
SPEAKER_00: and they're harming people and people are getting re-traumatized.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's giving the whole breathwork industry a really bad reputation.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah,
29:37
SPEAKER_00: we were all trying to raise the standards,
29:40
SPEAKER_00: but then there's always people who are trying to make a quick buck.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a lot of that going on nowadays on social social media,
29:46
SPEAKER_02: like these gurus, right,
29:48
SPEAKER_02: that are big on Instagram,
29:50
SPEAKER_02: and they do plant ceremonies, and somebody dies that there was some some guy, right?
29:55
SPEAKER_02: Like, it's crazy.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean,
29:58
SPEAKER_00: Wim Hof is the sort of the one that's led to most deaths because Wim Hof includes
30:04
SPEAKER_00: the cold water swimming.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: So people do Wim Hof and then they swim or they dive.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: And what they don't realize is like,
30:13
SPEAKER_00: you know, if you're doing free diving, you don't do Wim Hof.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: You don't hyperventilate.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: You just slow your breathing right down because you need that carbon dioxide
30:20
SPEAKER_00: to trigger your urge to breathe.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: But when you're doing Wim Hof, you blow off all of your CO2.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: So you've got 100% oxygen.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: So there's no, there's no cue to trigger breathing.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: So people stay underwater for too long and then they drown.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: So quite a few people have done that.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: So never do breath work in water is the answer.
30:45
SPEAKER_03: It's not Wim Hof himself that's preaching pseudoscience or anything like that, right?
30:49
SPEAKER_03: It's more...
30:51
SPEAKER_03: It's just their bodies couldn't handle...
30:54
SPEAKER_00: He tells people specifically, do not do this in water as people just... Oh, he does.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay, obviously.
31:00
SPEAKER_03: I misunderstood.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
31:07
SPEAKER_02: Richard, let me ask you something.
31:09
SPEAKER_02: Because you talk a lot about Freud and you talk about Adler,
31:13
SPEAKER_02: which most people are not as familiar.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: But why do you not talk about Carl Jung?
31:21
SPEAKER_02: I do.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: I do.
31:22
SPEAKER_02: He's blowing up the internet.
31:24
SPEAKER_02: Everybody, Young Dis and all kinds of quotes from him.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: What do you think about him?
31:30
SPEAKER_02: Tell me about Carl Jung.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: I do talk about Carl Jung.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: It's just those reels haven't done very well, probably because I didn't present them very well.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I read the red book.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: I did a whole module for my PhD on Jung.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: I like it as a sort of model for curing mental illness.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's the dodo effect.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: It's not really any more effective than any of the other things.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: But what I think is really key and is missing from a lot of CBT
31:58
SPEAKER_00: and standard treatments is like spirituality is really a It's a really strong buffer
32:04
SPEAKER_00: against mental illness.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: And that sense of awe is really important as well.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: So there was this quite cool study they did.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: They compared atheists, spiritual but not religious people, and religious people.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: And they found that religious people were by far the most mentally healthy.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: And then they kind of delved into a little bit deeper.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
32:25
SPEAKER_00: it's not that being religious is a buffer against mental illness,
32:29
SPEAKER_00: it's that practicing Substack rituals in community is so important.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: So you can be spiritual,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: not religious, but you've got to go to your breathwork ceremony every week.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: You've got to meet up with people.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: You've got to do service.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: You've got to do all the things that religion does.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: So that's the sort of key is like people say they're spiritual,
32:48
SPEAKER_00: but they're not really doing anything.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: They're just having those opinions.
32:53
SPEAKER_02: So you think like modern spirituality,
32:56
SPEAKER_02: ungrounded spirituality has this dynamic going on,
32:59
SPEAKER_02: you think,
33:00
SPEAKER_02: where there's no ritual and it's just like,
33:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm aware and whatever, and people aren't doing the rituals, the work almost, right?
33:08
SPEAKER_02: People are not, I don't know, how do you interpret that?
33:12
SPEAKER_00: I think it's sort of, you know, modern spirituality has kind of been co-opted by social media.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: So people are doing performative stuff and that's not really what helps mental illness.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, narcissism and sort of individualism is huge in society.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: So spiritualism has gone into that sort of spirituality has gone into
33:33
SPEAKER_00: that more individualistic thing.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: The spirituality that does teach or preach community,
33:39
SPEAKER_00: giving back,
33:40
SPEAKER_00: volunteering,
33:42
SPEAKER_00: speaking to your friends,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: doing things for other people, prayer,
33:45
SPEAKER_00: meditation,
33:46
SPEAKER_00: regular,
33:47
SPEAKER_00: regular practice,
33:47
SPEAKER_00: whatever it is,
33:48
SPEAKER_00: that's the key,
33:49
SPEAKER_00: the regular practices,
33:51
SPEAKER_00: rather than just once a month I go to someone's house and we talk
33:56
SPEAKER_00: about young people.
33:57
SPEAKER_02: Right, right, right.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: But Richard, I have here, because you're talking about like the meaning vacuum, right?
34:05
SPEAKER_02: And you were talking,
34:06
SPEAKER_02: you said here,
34:07
SPEAKER_02: you've said that religion and even faith in capitalism
34:11
SPEAKER_02: and progress have weakened leaving a vacuum of meaning.
34:15
SPEAKER_02: And into the vacuum come victim culture and the healing journey.
34:20
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about that.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: It's like a hero's arc, you're saying.
34:25
SPEAKER_02: So tell me,
34:26
SPEAKER_02: what you're saying is the whole victim culture,
34:30
SPEAKER_02: the healing journey follows a certain hero's journey.
34:33
SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, walk me through that.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sorry, which video was that from?
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Did I say that?
34:38
SPEAKER_00: In what context was I saying that?
34:41
SPEAKER_00: You were saying, I forget, it was some YouTube video.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: You don't remember saying that?
34:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've done a lot of reels, so it definitely sounds like something I would say, yeah.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: But I'm just trying to think of the wider context.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Normally I add in captions.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: But you're saying there's a meaning vacuum, right?
35:01
SPEAKER_02: There's a meaning vacuum.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: And just the spirituality thing,
35:05
SPEAKER_02: like we're just less religious, we're more secular nowadays, or what else?
35:10
SPEAKER_02: And the individuality you were saying, right?
35:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: So I think,
35:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
35:15
SPEAKER_00: in the past,
35:16
SPEAKER_00: religions gave us meaning,
35:18
SPEAKER_00: whichever religion,
35:19
SPEAKER_00: then capitalism gave people meaning,
35:21
SPEAKER_00: I think, for a long time, but it hasn't worked out for enough people.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people are quite dissatisfied with it.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: It's obviously worked out for a lot of people.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's, you know, we shouldn't be capitalists.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying there's a better system, but certainly A lot of people are dissatisfied with it.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: And hence, there is a meaning crisis as well.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: We had a birth rate collapse.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people get meaning or got meaning from raising their kids.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: And now a lot of people are choosing not to have kids.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: So that's another source of meaning that is going down.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: And I think, yeah, the social justice movements is a great way to find meaning for some people.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: And some people are getting very into that, rightly or wrongly.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and even in one of your videos you were saying that therapists 90% are liberal
36:14
SPEAKER_01: and 6% conservative.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: That was shocking.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: That's filling in the vacuum, basically.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's obviously not a criticism of liberalism or promotion of conservatism.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: These are the people who are promoting diversity as a wholly good.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: Diversity is good no matter what, but then there's no diversity within their own enterprise.
36:46
SPEAKER_02: Intellectually, right?
36:47
SPEAKER_02: Intellectually, right?
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:53
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no.
36:54
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no.
36:56
SPEAKER_02: He's frozen.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh, no.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: You're frozen.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: You're frozen, man.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: Maybe his phone died or something.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: Maybe he got a phone call.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: All right.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: What do you think, Josh?
37:15
SPEAKER_02: What do you think, Josh and Cisco?
37:16
SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
37:18
SPEAKER_03: I have a lot to say, I feel,
37:20
SPEAKER_02: about that.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: Damn, he has to come back up, though.
37:24
SPEAKER_02: Okay, let me see.
37:25
SPEAKER_02: Wait for Richard, bro.
37:27
SPEAKER_02: I feel like you're going to cook.
37:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're going to cook, aren't you?
37:31
SPEAKER_02: I can't wait to see what Josh is going to ask.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: Richard, come on.
37:37
SPEAKER_03: Can I personally describe Samurai?
37:39
SPEAKER_03: What?
37:40
SPEAKER_03: But what did you think he meant by that?
37:42
SPEAKER_03: Like, is it,
37:44
SPEAKER_03: we're searching for, like,
37:46
SPEAKER_03: even the conservatives,
37:46
SPEAKER_03: the liberals, they search for meaning through their message, right?
37:51
SPEAKER_03: And then eventually that wears off.
37:52
SPEAKER_03: Christians, they go to church to seek that, the awe that we were talking about earlier.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: So is that all it is?
38:00
SPEAKER_03: It's like, it's a honeymoon period for religion, for spirituality, for anything.
38:06
SPEAKER_03: I feel like I cut straight to the chase when I tried saying my hedonism was okay.
38:13
SPEAKER_03: Not even hedonism because they want to avoid suffering through no addiction,
38:17
SPEAKER_03: but still using drugs, blah, blah, blah.
38:20
SPEAKER_03: I became like a radical hedonist because I'm like,
38:23
SPEAKER_03: why would I even go to church when that's just a temporary feeling
38:27
SPEAKER_03: when I can be drunk all day and get that same off?
38:32
SPEAKER_03: Basically.
38:33
SPEAKER_03: So I'm just wondering what his thoughts were.
38:36
SPEAKER_03: Like, what is the answer then?
38:38
SPEAKER_03: What do I do?
38:39
SPEAKER_02: Richard, I'm trying to hold and bring you up.
38:41
SPEAKER_02: That's what I want to ask Richard.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: That's a great question, bro.
38:44
SPEAKER_02: That's a great question because we've identified the problem and what's the solution?
38:48
SPEAKER_02: Like, let's talk about solutions, right?
38:50
SPEAKER_02: Like, what can we do here?
38:52
SPEAKER_03: Right?
38:53
SPEAKER_03: But I mean, there has to be, right?
38:55
SPEAKER_03: There has to be.
38:57
SPEAKER_03: There is.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: There is.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: I trust Richard.
38:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're young, bro.
39:01
SPEAKER_03: How old are you, baby?
39:03
SPEAKER_03: I am 22.
39:04
SPEAKER_02: Damn, bro.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: Damn, little baby, bro.
39:08
SPEAKER_02: He's younger than you, Cisco.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm 25.
39:11
SPEAKER_02: He's your older brother, bro.
39:14
SPEAKER_03: Hey, breath.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we have to redo the room.
39:18
SPEAKER_02: Let me cancel an invite, and I'm going to invite you, Richard.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: I invited you.
39:26
SPEAKER_02: We're waiting for the solutions.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: Before Richard,
39:29
SPEAKER_01: I would say I'm kind of struggling too,
39:31
SPEAKER_01: like leaning towards bad habits to run away from discomfort.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to practice boredom because you can't avoid it.
39:43
SPEAKER_01: Life is fucking boring, bro.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: It's not full of awe.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: It's mostly boring.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: But you stumble into
39:50
SPEAKER_02: awe by being bored.
39:51
SPEAKER_02: Richard, I sent
39:51
SPEAKER_02: you an invite, Richard.
39:54
SPEAKER_02: Except, if not, we're gonna have to like restart this room because I don't know, there's a bug.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: Richard is trying to get up.
40:00
SPEAKER_03: I feel like, yeah,
40:01
SPEAKER_03: you can just close the live and then,
40:03
SPEAKER_03: I've watched some live, not many, so I don't know.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if he still says he can't, then yeah, let's restart.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: Hey, leave a comment, Richard.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: Are you not?
40:11
SPEAKER_01: Richard, you hear it?
40:14
SPEAKER_02: But, so my
40:17
SPEAKER_01: version of that, because I can't sit down right now, I'm walking.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: Just no headphones.
40:23
SPEAKER_01: Like you're forcing yourself to be bored.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: And I go like on an hour walk.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: I go somewhere far and come back.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: How long does that discomfort last of like, I need music.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: Like I really like that craving.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: The whole time.
40:37
SPEAKER_03: And you're just supposed to go through that?
40:38
SPEAKER_01: You got a raw dog, bro.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Richard, I'm trying to, okay,
40:43
SPEAKER_03: maybe we have to close the room.
40:45
SPEAKER_02: Guys, I'm going to close the room.
40:47
SPEAKER_02: Dude, we're having such a good conversation though.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: I know, but we need Richard.
40:51
SPEAKER_02: We need Richard.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: Hey guys,
40:54
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to close the room and we're going to come back
40:56
SPEAKER_02: because Richard can't come back up.
40:58
SPEAKER_02: Okay, everybody come back.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: Rejoin everybody.
41:00
SPEAKER_03: All right, we're back, baby.
41:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's go.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: So, Josh, fill in Richard.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: I heard a little bit, but yeah, I agree with the boredom thing.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: I think that is a great strategy.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: Get comfortable with boredom.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: How's that been going for you?
41:24
SPEAKER_01: Sucks, but it's like a necessary,
41:28
SPEAKER_01: because I'm realizing how unconsciously reactive I am to thoughts being generated.
41:33
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm the spotlight that gets to choose its focus on it.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, between stimulus and response, the gap is your freedom that Bruno's taught me.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: But like, I just go instant into every thought.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: And so that has allowed me to,
41:48
SPEAKER_01: and I'm trying my best to focus on my breath,
41:51
SPEAKER_01: but whether it's like a person or like work stuff,
41:55
SPEAKER_01: it just consumes and I navigate it and then I catch myself and I'm like,
42:00
SPEAKER_01: okay, wait, let's kind of detach.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: Let's not label things.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not perfect, but I just have to force myself.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: I think the hypnotic rhythm of walking is a lot easier to...
42:16
SPEAKER_01: Get your focus going because your blood's pumping and then focus on the breath.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: Because sitting down for me just right now is a little,
42:22
SPEAKER_01: you know, maybe I could do five minutes, 10 minutes, but I could do an hour walk.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: I can just look at shit.
42:30
SPEAKER_01: Something close to me, I had one of my dad's good friends.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: He was like,
42:33
SPEAKER_01: when you're on walks just and your brain's all fucking fuzzy,
42:37
SPEAKER_01: he's like, just focus on something close to you.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: Focus something far away and try to find something in the middle and kind
42:44
SPEAKER_01: of
42:44
SPEAKER_01: just keep Balancing your attention.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: So I kind of use that here and there, but breathwork, I'm very amateur.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: I haven't even looked it up, but I just inhale.
42:56
SPEAKER_02: I exhale longer than I inhale.
43:00
SPEAKER_02: That's what I do.
43:01
SPEAKER_02: Why do you do that?
43:03
SPEAKER_01: I just heard that's a way to calm you down.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: Well, we got Mr.
43:08
SPEAKER_02: Breath expert here.
43:09
SPEAKER_02: So let's ask him all the breath questions.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: We can get technical.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: So there's this, you know, the autonomic nervous system is right.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: The automatic nervous system.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: So you can't really control your heart.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: You can't really control your nervous system.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: There are two ways to indirectly control the nervous system.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: One is...
43:29
SPEAKER_00: Contraction and release.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: So like if you've ever done a yoga nidra session,
43:32
SPEAKER_00: they'll tell you like contract your right bicep and release it.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: That is relaxing to the nervous system.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: The other one is breath control.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: So just like, is it Josh?
43:42
SPEAKER_00: Is that your right?
43:43
SPEAKER_00: Is that?
43:44
SPEAKER_02: No, there's Cisco on the top and Josh over here.
43:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: On the bottom.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: Cisco is on the,
43:49
SPEAKER_00: on the bottom for me,
43:50
SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
43:51
SPEAKER_00: Josh and Cisco, um,
43:52
SPEAKER_00: as Josh said,
43:53
SPEAKER_00: controlling the breath,
43:54
SPEAKER_00: slowing it down is one One way to indirectly affect the autonomic nervous system.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's where these sort of two different stems of breath work come.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: So there's the slower than normal breathing.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: That's what calms people down.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: That's the four, seven, eight breath, the box breathing.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: Then you have the faster than normal breathing.
44:13
SPEAKER_00: That is actually like excitatory.
44:15
SPEAKER_00: It's actually slightly stressful.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: That's what Wim Hof is doing.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: That's what conscious connected breath work is doing.
44:20
SPEAKER_00: It's an initial hormetic stressor.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: It makes the body have a little bit of acute stress,
44:28
SPEAKER_00: but then the body overreacts in a positive way.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: So by rewarding you with relaxation,
44:34
SPEAKER_00: with dopamine and all those things,
44:36
SPEAKER_00: and that hormesis is the same principle as ice baths,
44:40
SPEAKER_00: exercise, sauna, fasting, all these things, these really good practices.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I wanted to talk to Cisco about the dopamine seesaw.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: This is a concept from the book Dopamine Nations, a really good book.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: But basically,
44:58
SPEAKER_00: you can get dopamine for free and then feel bad afterwards,
45:02
SPEAKER_00: or you can feel bad and get dopamine afterwards.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: So free dopamine is scrolling on TikTok,
45:09
SPEAKER_00: shopping, porn, chocolate, alcohol, all those things give you dopamine.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: But then you feel like shit afterwards.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: If you feel like shit first,
45:17
SPEAKER_00: like doing an ice bath,
45:19
SPEAKER_00: doing a sauna,
45:19
SPEAKER_00: doing a hard workout,
45:22
SPEAKER_00: doing a breath hold, you feel better after and you feel better for much longer.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a really useful principle that I try and live my life by.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: I've been addicted.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: Like I used to have food addiction.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: I would just be manically going for food.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: I'd manically shop.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: I'd manically game.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: And now I know that when I get into that state, it's like, right, don't add more.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: Don't add more chocolate.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: Don't add more ice cream.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: These are my big vices.
45:48
SPEAKER_02: Chocolate and ice cream?
45:50
SPEAKER_02: What kind of ice cream, brother?
45:51
SPEAKER_02: What kind of ice cream?
45:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, I try to be kind of healthy.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing like protein pints.
45:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they're kind of like a healthy ice cream.
45:57
SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm saying during your moment,
45:59
SPEAKER_02: when you were going crazy, what was the thing that you would reach for?
46:02
SPEAKER_00: Ice cream?
46:03
SPEAKER_00: All of them.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: All the ice creams.
46:07
SPEAKER_02: Damn, that's serious.
46:08
SPEAKER_02: You mean like Haagen-Dazs and Ben and Jerry's and all that shit.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: Ice cream is so good, guys.
46:18
SPEAKER_02: Ice cream is so fucking good.
46:20
SPEAKER_02: I can eat a whole pint I can eat in no time.
46:23
SPEAKER_02: Damn.
46:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:24
SPEAKER_03: It's an addiction.
46:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:27
SPEAKER_02: But Josh, so you were going to ask... Oh, I'm sorry, he was addressing this.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: Man, so many topics, man.
46:32
SPEAKER_02: Richard, can you give us any kind of like breathing thing that we can do now?
46:36
SPEAKER_02: A lot of times, you know, we have poets read their poetry.
46:39
SPEAKER_02: We had writers read their thing and showing off their thing.
46:42
SPEAKER_02: Do you have anything for us that we can do now?
46:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I saw Andrew Huberman follows you.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: Do you know him?
46:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:50
SPEAKER_02: I told you he followed me and then I made a video about him today.
46:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I follow him now.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay, nice.
46:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, he follows me as well.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
46:59
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
47:03
SPEAKER_02: He only follows 2,000 people, bro.
47:05
SPEAKER_02: We're in an elite club.
47:07
SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
47:07
SPEAKER_02: 2,000 people.
47:08
SPEAKER_02: He has 7 million followers and we're 2,000.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: Joe Rogan has 6,000 and he follows me.
47:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
47:15
SPEAKER_00: I know.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: Congratulations.
47:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm jealous.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: You too, man.
47:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: So Huberman did a study on breathwork,
47:22
SPEAKER_00: kind of comparing a few different breathwork techniques and meditation techniques
47:28
SPEAKER_00: and what was most effective.
47:29
SPEAKER_00: And what he found was the cyclical sigh was the most effective.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have your eyes closed.
47:41
SPEAKER_00: You can have your eyes closed.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: If you don't want to have them closed, just keep your eyes at 10 and 2 on the clock.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: Keep a soft focus.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: And what you're going to do is you're going to take in a long,
47:52
SPEAKER_00: slow inhale through your nose and then a second inhale at the top of the inhale.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: So it's like this.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: It goes like,
48:01
SPEAKER_00: And so what that's doing is you're breathing in slowly,
48:04
SPEAKER_00: which is signaling to your nervous system,
48:06
SPEAKER_00: well, if we can breathe slow, we can relax.
48:08
SPEAKER_00: But that extra, like,
48:09
SPEAKER_00: at the top pops open the alveoli,
48:11
SPEAKER_00: which, you know, it's kind of sacks in our lungs where the gas exchange happens.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: And then you're going to do a long, slow exhale.
48:18
SPEAKER_00: So it comes back to Josh's point about slowing that exhale down.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: That is another signal to the nervous system that we can relax.
48:25
SPEAKER_00: So let's do it two times.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: Let's take it in.
48:29
SPEAKER_00: Long, slow inhale through the nose.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: And then extra.
48:35
SPEAKER_00: And then long, slow exhale through the nose or the mouth.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Slow down as much as you can.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: And then again, long, slow inhale through the nose.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: Extra inhale at the top.
48:54
SPEAKER_00: Long, slow exhale through the mouth or the nose.
49:02
SPEAKER_03: You have to forgive me, I have asthma.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: I have breath breathing techniques for that as well.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
49:12
SPEAKER_01: What did you think, Cisco?
49:13
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
49:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I feel a little relaxed.
49:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
49:19
SPEAKER_01: It was so hard to do that extra inhale.
49:21
SPEAKER_03: It's hard, right?
49:22
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
49:23
SPEAKER_03: Because I'm at the cat intoxicated.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: So that obviously that's super,
49:30
SPEAKER_00: super short,
49:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
49:32
SPEAKER_00: a conscious connected breathwork session is like 90 minutes,
49:35
SPEAKER_00: you know, The longer you do it, the better.
49:39
SPEAKER_00: That's what I can kind of do.
49:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting on the train or sitting in traffic.
49:43
SPEAKER_00: You can do that one to just chill you out in the moment.
49:47
SPEAKER_02: Nice.
49:48
SPEAKER_02: Guys, hey, Richard, let's talk about your other favorite topic.
49:53
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
49:53
SPEAKER_02: Estrangement.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: You talk a lot about estrangement.
49:58
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about what you think.
49:59
SPEAKER_02: Why do you talk so much about it?
50:01
SPEAKER_02: Because it is very interesting because at first I was watching your videos
50:05
SPEAKER_02: and I'm like, why is this guy talking so much about it?
50:07
SPEAKER_02: But then I understood why and how it's related to internet culture and AI speak
50:13
SPEAKER_02: and these memes are traveling.
50:14
SPEAKER_02: It's so fascinating.
50:15
SPEAKER_02: So why don't you set us up with estrangement and why you're focused on it?
50:19
SPEAKER_02: What do you think is going on with that?
50:22
SPEAKER_00: What do you define estrangement as?
50:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so no contact between a parent and a child.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I've written a book.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: I've written a book.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: It's called Cut Off.
50:33
SPEAKER_00: It's coming out in about eight weeks.
50:35
SPEAKER_02: Buy the book, guys.
50:36
SPEAKER_00: Cut Off.
50:37
SPEAKER_00: Cut Offbook.com.
50:39
SPEAKER_00: You can sign up on the waitlist there.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so...
50:45
SPEAKER_00: So part of this work we do at Ethical Standards for Mental Health,
50:49
SPEAKER_00: this nonprofit,
50:50
SPEAKER_00: is really we're looking at the broader picture of why therapy
50:54
SPEAKER_00: and therapy culture is making people worse rather than better.
50:57
SPEAKER_00: That's the treatment prevalence paradox.
50:59
SPEAKER_00: So this is the only area of medicine where despite more awareness,
51:04
SPEAKER_00: more people in treatment,
51:05
SPEAKER_00: more therapy than any point in history, mental illness keeps getting worse.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: Whereas cancer,
51:10
SPEAKER_00: heart disease, the more people are going to treatment, the more people get better.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: So one of the main side effects of this therapy culture seems to be an increase
51:21
SPEAKER_00: in family estrangement.
51:22
SPEAKER_00: In the past,
51:22
SPEAKER_00: it used to be,
51:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
51:24
SPEAKER_00: dad's gone out for a pack of cigarettes and that was,
51:27
SPEAKER_00: you know, he went for cigarettes in 1982 and he hasn't been back since, right?
51:31
SPEAKER_00: That was a joke.
51:32
SPEAKER_00: Whereas now it's adult children,
51:34
SPEAKER_00: adult children,
51:35
SPEAKER_00: what we call grownups,
51:36
SPEAKER_00: but you know, they're children of their parents cutting off their parents.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to be driven a lot by therapists.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: So my colleague, Peter Anderson, who was actually just on NBC News.
51:47
SPEAKER_00: We've seen news about two hours ago talking about this survey we conducted,
51:52
SPEAKER_00: 7,000 parents,
51:52
SPEAKER_00: at least 30% of them suggested that it was therapy that led to their estrangement.
51:59
SPEAKER_00: And like I said earlier about This ties into the whole victim culture.
52:05
SPEAKER_00: It's like if you don't have a clear explanation for why you are struggling
52:09
SPEAKER_00: in life right now, therapy has already made answer.
52:12
SPEAKER_00: Your parents did do things and if they didn't do things, it was the things they didn't do.
52:17
SPEAKER_00: So it's basically they found a culprit and they'll find a reason
52:20
SPEAKER_00: to blame your parents, even when they weren't necessarily that bad.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
52:25
SPEAKER_00: I have to say,
52:26
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:26
SPEAKER_00: a lot of parents are not a lot,
52:28
SPEAKER_00: but some parents are seriously abusive and violent and neglectful.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about those people.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: But what seems to have happened is abuse and neglect have gone down enormously.
52:40
SPEAKER_00: Even since 1990, it's gone down 53% and 60%.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: But then more and more people are claiming abuse.
52:47
SPEAKER_00: So it used to be abuse was defunding.
52:49
SPEAKER_00: We find as the extreme end,
52:51
SPEAKER_00: the ceiling,
52:52
SPEAKER_00: persistent violent abuse, persistent sexual abuse, persistent emotional abuse.
52:58
SPEAKER_00: But the floor now has dropped to my dad slapped me in 1995.
53:02
SPEAKER_00: My mum gave me a slap bottom when I was 11 years old.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: That was a violent abuse.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: Therefore abuse means you cut off your parents.
53:11
SPEAKER_00: So crime is no longer fitting the punishment.
53:14
SPEAKER_00: I've written a whole book on this.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: I could go into many, many different directions, but that's just one.
53:19
SPEAKER_02: Richard,
53:20
SPEAKER_02: the thing though that you have to help me understand is like,
53:24
SPEAKER_02: but where is that line, right?
53:26
SPEAKER_02: Like, where is that line?
53:27
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of things that you talk about, I agree with, right?
53:31
SPEAKER_02: But I'm just like, but there's a line.
53:33
SPEAKER_02: There's a line.
53:34
SPEAKER_02: When you say it, I agree with you.
53:36
SPEAKER_02: The violence stuff, very obvious.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: But let me give you a friend of mine that was...
53:43
SPEAKER_02: So I'll leave out different details, but basically her parents, she's 49.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: Right.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: And she's been living like what she considers hell for all this time where
53:55
SPEAKER_02: the parents are really like they love her so much.
53:58
SPEAKER_02: They're smothering her.
53:59
SPEAKER_02: They're suffocating her.
54:00
SPEAKER_02: They want her to call them like literally five times a day, you know, checking in and that.
54:06
SPEAKER_02: And they show up to her workplace where she if she travels for work,
54:10
SPEAKER_02: they show up to the hotel unannounced.
54:12
SPEAKER_02: Right.
54:14
SPEAKER_02: And just things like that.
54:15
SPEAKER_02: And you can just tell that she's suffering, right?
54:18
SPEAKER_02: She's 49 years old and she was coming to me and she has no boundaries, right?
54:24
SPEAKER_02: So she can't even tell them or she has told them, but they don't listen right now.
54:28
SPEAKER_02: Stop, stop it.
54:29
SPEAKER_02: I can just call you once a day, not five times a day, right?
54:33
SPEAKER_02: And so you could see obvious pain and suffering And she even said
54:38
SPEAKER_02: to like she is very spiritual, right?
54:42
SPEAKER_02: Very spiritual.
54:43
SPEAKER_02: She's done all the courses.
54:44
SPEAKER_02: She's read all the books and she thought certain things might be working,
54:48
SPEAKER_02: but then it relapses again.
54:50
SPEAKER_02: Right.
54:51
SPEAKER_02: And there's no real change.
54:53
SPEAKER_02: And so what is that in your name?
54:56
SPEAKER_02: Like where's the line there?
54:58
SPEAKER_02: Is that basis for estrangement and putting strong boundaries on?
55:03
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe go on a strange,
55:04
SPEAKER_02: don't leave them, but really put the boundaries on, which is what I advised her.
55:09
SPEAKER_02: Like you should do little boundaries.
55:11
SPEAKER_02: So they're doing a lot of different things,
55:12
SPEAKER_02: but just choose one thing,
55:14
SPEAKER_02: build that muscle,
55:15
SPEAKER_02: build that evidence that you can hold the boundary and nothing's gonna,
55:19
SPEAKER_02: because we're predicting, they're predicting catastrophe, right?
55:23
SPEAKER_02: You talk about this a lot too.
55:25
SPEAKER_02: And so you need to build evidence to say you put up some kind of boundary
55:29
SPEAKER_02: and nothing bad happened, right?
55:31
SPEAKER_02: Like, and the problem is the mother,
55:33
SPEAKER_02: Is always like making believe like she has some cancer if you don't get back to her.
55:39
SPEAKER_02: So what do you do in that situation, Richard?
55:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: So was it Dostoyevsky said every happy family is happy in the same way.
55:49
SPEAKER_00: Every unhappy family is unhappy for a different reason.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: So this is why it becomes quite difficult to talk about individual cases.
55:57
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm a researcher and I don't work one to one with people because
56:02
SPEAKER_00: It's very complicated, but yeah, that certainly sounds like a really difficult situation.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: What I would refer to is Murray Bowen, who wrote a lot about attachment theory.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think he came up with attachment theory,
56:14
SPEAKER_00: but he was like,
56:16
SPEAKER_00: the person who cuts off Their parents doesn't become free from that pattern.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: They just redo that pattern with someone else.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: The key is to grow within the relationship.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: The key is to learn to tolerate and manage that relationship rather
56:29
SPEAKER_00: than cut them off and then just have the same thing happen with someone else.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
56:33
SPEAKER_02: But what about in that case for like putting that borders, my advice to her about placing them?
56:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, completely reasonable.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: Boundaries are very, very reasonable.
56:43
SPEAKER_00: What I, um, What I talk about is the misuse of boundaries.
56:47
SPEAKER_00: Boundaries is there to protect vulnerable people from people taking advantage of them.
56:54
SPEAKER_00: Now it's become a thing for smart and cunning people to use it to get what they want
56:59
SPEAKER_00: or to not have to do things they don't want to do.
57:02
SPEAKER_00: That's dark
57:04
SPEAKER_02: psychology right there, right?
57:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well,
57:08
SPEAKER_00: if you look at the research on who does the most cutoffs,
57:12
SPEAKER_00: they actually score the highest in the dark tetrad.
57:14
SPEAKER_00: So psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism and sadism.
57:19
SPEAKER_00: So especially like people who have like 10 or more cutoffs.
57:22
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of Oh my gosh, that's so crazy.
57:23
SPEAKER_00: That's so crazy.
57:52
SPEAKER_02: But my original video,
57:55
SPEAKER_02: Access Denied,
57:56
SPEAKER_02: I was really talking about the reason why I made
57:58
SPEAKER_02: the family edition was people were asking me, what do I do?
58:01
SPEAKER_02: Because I was saying, in today's world, I like blocking
58:06
SPEAKER_03: people very quickly.
58:07
SPEAKER_02: I don't have a lot of tolerance for bullshit.
58:10
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I'm 51 and I know what's going on.
58:13
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's advice for a younger person.
58:15
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
58:16
SPEAKER_02: But I feel like I can tell and I'm like access denied.
58:20
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, like I just see some sign and I feel like I feel the sign you got issues.
58:26
SPEAKER_02: Access denied.
58:27
SPEAKER_02: What do you think about that?
58:28
SPEAKER_02: Or is that also?
58:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: I would say on social media, it's perfectly reasonable to block people.
58:34
SPEAKER_00: But family is one of the strongest buffers against mental health.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: So poor family relationships are as bad as smoking for your health.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: They're real health events.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: But then I also love that saying,
58:44
SPEAKER_00: if everywhere you go, you think people are dickheads, you're probably the dickhead.
58:54
SPEAKER_03: So do you believe that blood is thicker than water?
58:57
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
58:58
SPEAKER_00: I do.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, of course it goes back to the line.
59:02
SPEAKER_00: Where is that line?
59:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where to draw that line.
59:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that therapists are the ones who should be drawing the line
59:09
SPEAKER_00: because they only have one side of the story.
59:11
SPEAKER_00: They're very ideologically captured.
59:13
SPEAKER_00: And they see anything as abuse.
59:15
SPEAKER_00: We also know that from research that 97% of people report lying to their therapists.
59:20
SPEAKER_00: So therapists are giving these verdicts like you should cut off your parents
59:25
SPEAKER_00: and it's based on half truths or complete fabrications.
59:28
SPEAKER_00: And then it comes with that clinical authority.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: It's like, wow, someone with a license says my mum's a narcissist.
59:34
SPEAKER_00: Of course I have to cut her off,
59:35
SPEAKER_00: but they don't actually realize that the stories are being exaggerated.
59:42
SPEAKER_02: Richard,
59:43
SPEAKER_02: moving on to social media and therapy speak,
59:48
SPEAKER_02: you had a great video where you noticed a lot of adult children
59:55
SPEAKER_02: in different countries using the exact same language.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_02: Toxic, gaslighting, protecting my peace, this is my boundary.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_02: But it's very interesting,
1:00:08
SPEAKER_02: Richard, because I've talked to so many people and they're like, Oh, wow.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_02: After watching videos, you know, this video of like some thing, right?
1:00:18
SPEAKER_02: Attachment style or I'm a people pleaser.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I finally have words for that.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_02: Other people are going through that as well.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_02: So I feel like that's good, right?
1:00:28
SPEAKER_02: Like you're, it's a positive thing that you're, I don't know.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you're shaking your head.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_02: What do you think about that?
1:00:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, one attachment theory doesn't really hold up
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: because it's not like you are just avoidant with one person.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_00: It's like, I'm avoidant with this person.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm secure with this person.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm ambivalent with that person.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_00: We change our attachment style.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not just like...
1:00:48
SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_02: You've been reading a book.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_01: Tell them about the book that you've been reading.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, I thought, yeah, I kind of came to an anxious attachment conclusion.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: But like you're saying, I feel like I'm avoiding with other people.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of like...
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: Damn, you got the whole thing, bro.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I don't know.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is confusing.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I would just say like mental health, you, sorry,
1:01:11
SPEAKER_00: social media use,
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: especially over two hours a day is clearly associated
1:01:16
SPEAKER_00: with worse mental health outcomes.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_00: So is it really good to understand, you know, 10, 10 signs, your mother's a narcissist.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_00: Great.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_00: I understand my mother's a narcissist.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_00: Am I happier?
1:01:26
SPEAKER_00: No, I created more, more reasons to cut off my parents.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
1:01:31
SPEAKER_02: Because you said therapy too.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_02: It actually makes things worse, right?
1:01:36
SPEAKER_02: Like in terms of the reminding you of the past and things like that, you were saying, right?
1:01:40
SPEAKER_02: So in effect, it's the same effect of seeing the same social media thing.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's me.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's me.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_02: Top five signs that your mother's, oh, that's me.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_02: And so that's bad because it keeps reminding you of the past,
1:01:51
SPEAKER_02: not the Adler look forward kind of thing.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, partly.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it kind of goes into...
1:01:59
SPEAKER_00: This ready-made clause in therapy is like,
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: well, if you can't find an immediate issue, we'll blame your parents.
1:02:05
SPEAKER_00: When you look at twin studies,
1:02:08
SPEAKER_00: if you look at twin studies on mental health and personality,
1:02:12
SPEAKER_00: twins who are raised,
1:02:14
SPEAKER_00: Adopted end up more like their biological parents than the people who adopted them.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_00: Similarly,
1:02:20
SPEAKER_00: when you look at parenting styles,
1:02:22
SPEAKER_00: they recently did a big meta-analysis of 49 studies looking
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: at over-parenting versus under-parenting.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_00: And which one is better?
1:02:29
SPEAKER_00: But basically the real finding was it doesn't really matter.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_00: It was only like a 4% difference.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_00: The effect size was tiny.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_00: And this similar thing of like,
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: oh, you need to cut off your parents to protect your mental health.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_00: When they looked at the mental health of people who had done cut off,
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: there was one study that found it didn't make any difference to their mental health.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_00: There was another study that found they'd actually made their mental health worse.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_00: So this kind of trope that the reason for your struggles with mental health are your parents.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_00: It's just really, really weak.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_03: What he's kind of saying?
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: I think he's got a point because I am adopted since birth.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_03: And my mom was a crack addict.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_03: I was going through withdrawal once I was born from cocaine, crack, all of these things.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_03: If they tried to touch me, I'd jolt and everything.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_03: It was fucked up.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_03: But I kind of wanted to back that up because my parents were completely sober.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_03: No alcohol, no drugs, no nothing.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_03: I became an alcoholic, just like she was.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_03: And I have cut off my parents.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_03: And that has resulted in more depression.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_03: I'm cutting off everyone saying, I don't need anybody.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to be an adult.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_03: I'm 22.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_03: I can hold for myself.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_03: And it's resulted,
1:03:50
SPEAKER_03: like you said,
1:03:51
SPEAKER_03: in more depression, more isolation, taking drugs that nobody's ever even heard of.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_03: Like, I have to kind of agree with that as sucky as it sounds.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_03: I don't want to agree because my rebellious nature, but he's right.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_00: He's right.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_00: Humble of you.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh,
1:04:16
SPEAKER_03: I feel like I probably shouldn't have alienated them as quick.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_03: But again, going back to that, what's the line?
1:04:22
SPEAKER_03: If I feel physically uncomfortable around these people, is it wrong for me to estrange them?
1:04:31
SPEAKER_03: Especially if,
1:04:32
SPEAKER_02: for example,
1:04:33
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to trauma dump too much,
1:04:34
SPEAKER_02: but I went through sexual abuse and hid it for 18 years, then told my mother.
1:04:40
SPEAKER_03: And she said nothing about it.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_03: She was like, I didn't know.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_03: I didn't know.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_03: And then moved on immediately.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_03: So like, to me, that's enough.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot more shit, but to me, that's enough.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_03: You're going to reduce what I went through as a child, a young child under your protection.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_03: To me, that's enough.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_03: You know,
1:05:02
SPEAKER_03: like it seems like my main thing is that I don't mean to insult you at all,
1:05:08
SPEAKER_03: but it's kind of to me seeming like estrangement is a bad thing.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_03: To me, it's almost taking control of myself, taking control of my surroundings, right?
1:05:21
SPEAKER_03: So that's all I had to say.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_03: To me, it seems more like taking back control that I never had as a child.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah,
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: obviously,
1:05:33
SPEAKER_00: it sounds like certainly that line we were discussing was crossed,
1:05:35
SPEAKER_00: as we said, you know, persistent sexual abuse.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_00: What I would also say is age 22 is a really difficult time.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_00: That's probably when I struggled most in my life.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_00: And you're going through that time of hierarchy where the parents,
1:05:49
SPEAKER_00: you know, are responsible for you, like you said, protection.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_00: And now you're going sort of transversing into an equal relationship.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:05:58
SPEAKER_00: relationship at the same time,
1:06:00
SPEAKER_00: your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until you're 25.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_00: And this is when mental illnesses come on most strongly.
1:06:07
SPEAKER_00: That's when they came on most strongly to me.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you've got a right to be angry.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_00: What happened to you and how you weren't protected from those things.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_00: What I would just say is family is worth fighting for.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be forever.
1:06:21
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be a permanent solution.
1:06:23
SPEAKER_00: And it's usually worth fighting for and working on when the time's right for you.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_03: May I say just one more thing?
1:06:33
SPEAKER_03: The fact is,
1:06:34
SPEAKER_03: I forgot to mention this,
1:06:35
SPEAKER_03: that I was removed from my house for weed usage and nicotine usage.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_03: And I kind of wish that my mom and dad,
1:06:44
SPEAKER_03: even though they were going through a divorce at 17,
1:06:47
SPEAKER_03: which is the age I was removed,
1:06:49
SPEAKER_03: that they would have done more to try to ask,
1:06:51
SPEAKER_03: why are you using substances instead of just saying, you're gone.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_03: Like it's this, my way or the highway.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
1:07:00
SPEAKER_03: So it's, it's just like, why would I pursue when they didn't pursue me?
1:07:07
SPEAKER_03: I don't mean to sound like that victim complex you were talking about, but
1:07:15
SPEAKER_03: I want to add my personal experience.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_03: I want to know what's going through their minds.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_03: Narcissism is what I've been learning about recently through you, Vibe.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_03: I didn't talk about narcissism.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_03: What are you talking about?
1:07:34
SPEAKER_03: I think it was Richard.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_03: No.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_03: I've been scrolling.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_03: Like you said, I've been scrolling just all day, every day.
1:07:39
SPEAKER_03: Narcissistic parents.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_03: Ten signs.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_03: You're a parent.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_02: No, I did not make that video, bro.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_02: I didn't go that low.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_02: I didn't go that low, bro.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_02: I didn't go that low, bro.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_02: I've done some low content.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_03: I didn't go that low.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_03: I confuse a bunch.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_03: See, that's just it.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_03: Instagram is just, it's an amalgamation.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_03: You just, you don't even remember shit.
1:07:58
SPEAKER_03: But yeah,
1:07:59
SPEAKER_03: that was,
1:07:59
SPEAKER_03: I've been seeing that,
1:08:00
SPEAKER_03: like, 10 signs your parents are narcissistic, blah, blah, blah.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_03: And I've learned is that my dad might have been.
1:08:06
SPEAKER_03: That's why he removed me.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_03: He was like, I ain't paying for you.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_02: If you smoke weed, you do this, you do that.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_02: Be gone.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_03: And I wasn't doing it in his house.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_03: Mind you that I was doing it outside.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_03: But then again, it's his rules.
1:08:19
SPEAKER_03: It's his like,
1:08:20
SPEAKER_03: if I'm going out to parties and getting high and he doesn't like that,
1:08:23
SPEAKER_03: he's allowed to remove me.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_03: And I respect that.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_03: But I just wish that they would have my mom,
1:08:29
SPEAKER_03: you know, they would have been there more for me when circles back to my point.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_03: Why should I try to make a relationship with them when they wouldn't make
1:08:37
SPEAKER_03: a relationship with me?
1:08:38
SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
1:08:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've just become a parent and it's...
1:08:46
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:08:49
SPEAKER_00: It does sort of reframe the things that, you know, you're giving one...
1:08:53
SPEAKER_00: One difficult period of time,
1:08:55
SPEAKER_00: the divorce and the weed usage and there was probably 17 years of grace
1:09:03
SPEAKER_00: that your parents gave you for when you were learning and making mistakes
1:09:06
SPEAKER_00: and things like that.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_00: Parents make mistakes and they're not perfect and I understand why you were hurt.
1:09:17
SPEAKER_00: I think forgiveness when you're ready is a great thing.
1:09:22
SPEAKER_00: They say holding grudges is like drinking the poison, hoping the other person dies.
1:09:25
SPEAKER_00: It's not helpful for you to hold those grudges.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_00: It's harmful for you to be careful.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_02: The grudge.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_03: Very good.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_03: I like that.
1:09:37
SPEAKER_02: Because you said for Josh that at 22 you were going through stuff.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_02: I know on some YouTube
1:09:46
SPEAKER_02: Thing that I watched,
1:09:47
SPEAKER_02: you talked,
1:09:48
SPEAKER_02: whatever you are able to share in terms of your journey and how you got out
1:09:54
SPEAKER_02: of your stuff, I think is very interesting.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's going to be a great thing for Josh and Cisco to hear and all
1:10:02
SPEAKER_02: the people listening.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:10:05
SPEAKER_00: So I would say it was sort of triggered around age 10, 11.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_00: My parents sort of started divorcing as a long, long process.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah,
1:10:15
SPEAKER_00: Deaths of grandparents and just sort of cumulative stress plus a big predisposition
1:10:21
SPEAKER_00: to depression, lots of family members with depression.
1:10:24
SPEAKER_00: So, like I said, I have to work much harder to be an even keel than your average person.
1:10:30
SPEAKER_00: Then developed anxiety,
1:10:32
SPEAKER_00: then got into fitness modeling and developed an eating disorder,
1:10:37
SPEAKER_00: binge eating, bulimia, a couple of suicide attempts.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_00: And that was sort of rock bottom, hospitalized.
1:10:45
SPEAKER_00: My shoelace privileges and belt privileges were taken away
1:10:48
SPEAKER_00: because I couldn't be trusted not to use them to hang myself.
1:10:53
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that was when I got the help I needed.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_00: I started to go to therapy and
1:11:02
SPEAKER_00: So when
1:11:05
SPEAKER_02: you went to get therapy, did they all work or was that a process?
1:11:08
SPEAKER_02: Because we just said this whole thing was about the whole therapy industry.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_02: Walk us through that.
1:11:19
SPEAKER_00: I was very fortunate in that I could afford or my parents could afford to send me
1:11:23
SPEAKER_00: to different therapists.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_00: They sent me to a therapist when I was 15.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_00: It did nothing.
1:11:27
SPEAKER_00: I went to a college counselor when I was 19, 20, did nothing.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, well, therapy doesn't work clearly because it's not helping me at all.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_00: Then I went to like intensive,
1:11:37
SPEAKER_00: intensive therapy where I was doing therapy every day for like two weeks in
1:11:42
SPEAKER_00: a private hospital.
1:11:44
SPEAKER_00: And that sort of gave me some hope.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_00: So this is one of the things,
1:11:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:11:50
SPEAKER_00: there's a study from Manchester University that found that 90% of the men who died
1:11:54
SPEAKER_00: by suicide in the UK had been in behavioral services.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_00: So there's this kind of myth about men.
1:12:00
SPEAKER_00: It's like just men just need to open up and they'll be fine.
1:12:02
SPEAKER_00: It's like by suicide.
1:12:06
SPEAKER_00: Opened up, saw counselors, and it didn't do anything.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_00: Luckily for me, I found a really amazing counselor.
1:12:14
SPEAKER_00: Someone who went to Cambridge,
1:12:16
SPEAKER_00: super smart guy, and he was able to get through to me and turn my life around.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_00: It was a long, long, slow process.
1:12:23
SPEAKER_00: That was from about age 24 till I'd say 32 when I got over the addiction fully.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_02: And he was there with you the whole time?
1:12:31
SPEAKER_02: Eight years?
1:12:32
SPEAKER_00: He was with me for about five years.
1:12:34
SPEAKER_00: And then that's when I discovered breathwork, ayahuasca and things like that too.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_00: And that really, you know, got me back to feeling great.
1:12:45
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:12:46
SPEAKER_02: Hey, so what do you think it was that he got through you?
1:12:49
SPEAKER_02: Like, what was it?
1:12:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, I did see one therapist or someone meme say therapy only works if
1:12:55
SPEAKER_00: the therapist is smarter than you.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_00: And so...
1:13:01
SPEAKER_02: We got a genius here.
1:13:03
SPEAKER_02: The other therapist was dumber than him, bro.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_02: There was only one Cambridge guy.
1:13:08
SPEAKER_02: That was the key word.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_02: He said Cambridge guy.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_00: So yeah,
1:13:13
SPEAKER_00: I would just find these therapists,
1:13:15
SPEAKER_00: I just sort of like,
1:13:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, walk around them and they just couldn't get through to me.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't get through my defenses until I met this guy who was more experienced,
1:13:24
SPEAKER_00: wiser, smarter than me.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, he got through to me.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: And that is another big problem with therapy is that they'd gotten rid of the oral exam.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_00: We lowered the standards to become a therapist,
1:13:35
SPEAKER_00: whereas now almost anyone with average intelligence can become a therapist.
1:13:40
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, they're not given that greater service.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:13:43
SPEAKER_02: But I'm super curious, though.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_02: Like, so this guy, like, how did he get through to you?
1:13:48
SPEAKER_02: Because you're a smart guy.
1:13:49
SPEAKER_02: So was he using logic?
1:13:51
SPEAKER_02: Did he just say to you, bro, you're talking bullshit?
1:13:53
SPEAKER_02: He like took the direct thing and said, let me slap you around.
1:13:56
SPEAKER_02: You don't know what you're talking about because he's older.
1:13:59
SPEAKER_02: He's Cambridge guy.
1:13:59
SPEAKER_02: Like what approach did he take to get through to you?
1:14:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well,
1:14:04
SPEAKER_00: built up rapport,
1:14:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:14:05
SPEAKER_00: that's the number one predictor of whether therapy works or not,
1:14:08
SPEAKER_00: is the rapport between the therapist and the client.
1:14:11
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it takes time to build up that rapport.
1:14:14
SPEAKER_00: So I can remember, like,
1:14:16
SPEAKER_00: reflecting after a few years, I was like, What did you think when I first came in?
1:14:20
SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, clearly he said, clearly this guy's really vulnerable.
1:14:23
SPEAKER_00: I have to go very slow with him.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_00: He's just come out of a hospital.
1:14:27
SPEAKER_00: His life is a complete mess.
1:14:29
SPEAKER_00: His family is a complete mess.
1:14:32
SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
1:14:33
SPEAKER_00: he went very slow with me before he could say,
1:14:35
SPEAKER_00: Richard, this is where you're screwing up.
1:14:37
SPEAKER_00: Richard, don't do this.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_00: Richard, get your act together in this regard.
1:14:41
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:14:44
SPEAKER_02: So he like...
1:14:45
SPEAKER_02: Didn't do all that.
1:14:46
SPEAKER_02: He was just like totally empathetic and understanding in the beginning
1:14:50
SPEAKER_02: and just vibing with you basically.
1:14:52
SPEAKER_00: This was quite a long time ago, about 15 years ago.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_00: So I'm struggling to remember the exact way,
1:14:57
SPEAKER_00: but I could just remember that he's quite, I don't know, I guess I respected him.
1:15:01
SPEAKER_00: He was a big guy, a successful guy, leader of like these groups and things.
1:15:05
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, this guy must know what he's talking about.
1:15:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm a complete mess.
1:15:11
SPEAKER_00: I can't function.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_00: I should probably listen to someone who's got it together.
1:15:15
SPEAKER_02: Bro, so what do you think about that masculine presence then?
1:15:19
SPEAKER_02: He was the masculine presence for you.
1:15:21
SPEAKER_02: Like, that's interesting what you just said, right?
1:15:23
SPEAKER_02: Like, obviously he's a smart guy,
1:15:25
SPEAKER_02: but there's just something about him that he had his shit together.
1:15:28
SPEAKER_02: He's a man and, you know, wow.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_02: And so that opens you up.
1:15:32
SPEAKER_02: That is crazy, right?
1:15:33
SPEAKER_02: Like, because there's a lot of discussion about masculinity,
1:15:36
SPEAKER_02: toxic masculinity, the Andrew Tates.
1:15:38
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
1:15:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was around the time my dad died.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_00: So he kind of stepped in to fill that role.
1:15:45
SPEAKER_00: So I guess unconsciously of like, this dude doesn't have a dad anymore.
1:15:49
SPEAKER_00: He's adjusting to that.
1:15:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be a dad.
1:15:52
SPEAKER_00: This guy has five kids as well.
1:15:54
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, knows how to be a dad for real.
1:16:02
SPEAKER_02: Damn.
1:16:02
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
1:16:02
SPEAKER_02: So you believe then that there's some,
1:16:04
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess it just depends on the therapist then is what you're saying.
1:16:09
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the things I've kind of,
1:16:10
SPEAKER_00: you know, the trap I fell into is I was a hyper responder to therapy.
1:16:15
SPEAKER_00: I did really well on therapy once I found the right therapist.
1:16:18
SPEAKER_00: So that's why it was so hard for me to believe the poor results that I was reading
1:16:22
SPEAKER_00: in these meta-analyses.
1:16:23
SPEAKER_00: That's why it took me a whole like two years before I quit because I was like,
1:16:27
SPEAKER_00: no, it works for me.
1:16:29
SPEAKER_00: It must work for everyone.
1:16:31
SPEAKER_00: And when people would say to me, oh, it didn't work for me.
1:16:32
SPEAKER_00: I tried it.
1:16:33
SPEAKER_00: I'd be like, yes, because you're not trying hard enough or you're stupid.
1:16:37
SPEAKER_00: I'd find reasons to blame them instead of being like,
1:16:41
SPEAKER_00: well, actually the treatment's not right for them.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
1:16:45
SPEAKER_02: And so when did you, this hyper responder, I didn't even know that was a thing.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_02: Some people just.
1:16:51
SPEAKER_00: Some people just do really well with therapy and they get better.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_00: Some people don't, or the majority of people don't, or the slight majority.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_00: Wow, interesting, yeah.
1:17:03
SPEAKER_00: So that's why, yeah.
1:17:05
SPEAKER_00: That's why, like, my wife is a therapist and my friend's a therapist.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_00: It's not like I do not believe therapy works.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_00: I just believe it's making some mistakes that can be fixed.
1:17:15
SPEAKER_01: How should people then balance...
1:17:18
SPEAKER_01: So are you still advocating for therapy?
1:17:21
SPEAKER_01: It's just finding the right counselor, I guess you call them.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_01: But then how would you balance?
1:17:26
SPEAKER_01: Because then you went into breathwork, like you deviated.
1:17:30
SPEAKER_01: So it's like for you personally, are you just breathworking only?
1:17:34
SPEAKER_01: No more therapy?
1:17:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've completed therapy.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I completed it, got the medal, got the trophy, got the certificate.
1:17:42
SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
1:17:45
SPEAKER_00: I do.
1:17:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like altered states for healing.
1:17:48
SPEAKER_00: They tend to get me deeper.
1:17:51
SPEAKER_00: Now that I have a PhD in psychology,
1:17:54
SPEAKER_00: I need like There's very few therapists out there who I actually trust.
1:18:00
SPEAKER_00: So for me to find someone who knows more about this stuff for me is harder
1:18:05
SPEAKER_00: than it was before I had a PhD.
1:18:07
SPEAKER_00: And also I'm well, I'm happy.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_00: My life is going well.
1:18:11
SPEAKER_00: I see therapy as medicine.
1:18:12
SPEAKER_00: I see breathwork as medicine.
1:18:14
SPEAKER_00: You don't take medicine if you're not sick.
1:18:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sick anymore, so I don't have the call
1:18:18
SPEAKER_02: to do it.
1:18:18
SPEAKER_02: Damn, love that.
1:18:20
SPEAKER_02: Just a good segue to...
1:18:22
SPEAKER_02: Richard,
1:18:23
SPEAKER_02: so then what do you think about,
1:18:24
SPEAKER_02: you said you got a PhD in psychology,
1:18:27
SPEAKER_02: so there's very few people that you can talk to,
1:18:30
SPEAKER_02: but what about the smartest thing on planet Earth, AI?
1:18:34
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's very smart and is very useful for research and things like that.
1:18:43
SPEAKER_00: What it doesn't seem to be so useful for is relationships
1:18:46
SPEAKER_00: because it tells you exactly what you want to hear.
1:18:50
SPEAKER_00: And there was a study that I did a little reel on recently that found
1:18:54
SPEAKER_00: that people are having relationships Putting their arguments into ChatGBT
1:18:59
SPEAKER_00: and they're basically being told what they want to hear.
1:19:01
SPEAKER_00: And then they go out into the real world and it's not just like, oh, that was ChatGBT.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_00: That told me what they want to hear.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_00: They're now holding other people to those standards.
1:19:10
SPEAKER_00: Be like, well, ChatGBT speaks to me like this and you're speaking to me like this.
1:19:14
SPEAKER_00: So therefore you must be wrong.
1:19:16
SPEAKER_00: So it's making people,
1:19:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:19:18
SPEAKER_00: raising the bar of what a normal relationship is to an impossible standard that only
1:19:22
SPEAKER_00: a computer can match.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_02: But the thing is,
1:19:27
SPEAKER_02: Richard,
1:19:27
SPEAKER_02: is that I feel like I saw that study,
1:19:30
SPEAKER_02: I saw the reel that you posted about this, so I read the study.
1:19:35
SPEAKER_02: But like for me,
1:19:37
SPEAKER_02: the woman who led the study,
1:19:40
SPEAKER_02: her conclusion was don't use AI for therapy, I think, right?
1:19:44
SPEAKER_02: But I'm like,
1:19:45
SPEAKER_02: I've used it for my own personal therapy
1:19:48
SPEAKER_02: and I do some coaching calls called breakthrough calls as well, right?
1:19:51
SPEAKER_02: So I use it for that after having a conversation with the client and analyzing the situation.
1:19:57
SPEAKER_02: I talk about what happened.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_02: I feel like there's a way to prompt and talk to AI.
1:20:05
SPEAKER_02: See, the problem is the people who participated in the study, they can't handle the truth.
1:20:11
SPEAKER_02: They're like they need a defense lawyer or prosecutor.
1:20:14
SPEAKER_02: They need a lawyer to back up what they're feeling, right?
1:20:18
SPEAKER_02: So I feel like it depends on the person.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I can use it.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_02: And say, or sometimes I use the third person instead of something about me.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_02: I say, hey, I have this friend of mine.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_02: He's going through this stuff.
1:20:31
SPEAKER_02: You got to use any, you know, the best advice you can give.
1:20:36
SPEAKER_02: And then I copy and paste that to different models to just to check.
1:20:39
SPEAKER_02: And it works well, like there's no less of this sycophantic bias thing.
1:20:45
SPEAKER_02: So you don't feel like you can kind of hack the system and to give you helpful answers.
1:20:52
SPEAKER_00: No, I agree with everything you said.
1:20:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, yes,
1:20:54
SPEAKER_00: if you sort of stress test your ideas,
1:20:57
SPEAKER_00: stress test your takes is probably quite useful.
1:20:59
SPEAKER_00: But it's the same problem with therapy is what they found in
1:21:02
SPEAKER_00: the estrangement research is when People who had cut off their parents,
1:21:07
SPEAKER_00: they said, oh,
1:21:08
SPEAKER_00: I found it helpful when my therapist validated me and made,
1:21:11
SPEAKER_00: you know, acknowledge what I felt.
1:21:13
SPEAKER_00: And then they said, well, you know, what was unhelpful?
1:21:15
SPEAKER_00: And they're like,
1:21:16
SPEAKER_00: people who challenged my take,
1:21:17
SPEAKER_00: people who said I was overreacting,
1:21:18
SPEAKER_00: people who said this wasn't what actually happened and you've misinterpreted things.
1:21:23
SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing.
1:21:23
SPEAKER_00: People just want it to be validated and a therapist will do that.
1:21:27
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, someone will leave and they'll lose a paying client.
1:21:30
SPEAKER_00: And ChatGBT will do the same as well.
1:21:33
SPEAKER_02: Mm, mm.
1:21:35
SPEAKER_02: So it is possible to use it well.
1:21:38
SPEAKER_01: I love Richard.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_01: He's so reasonable.
1:21:42
SPEAKER_01: Man, data driven.
1:21:44
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
1:21:45
SPEAKER_01: Richard, are you using AI though?
1:21:46
SPEAKER_01: Do you have any interesting AI takes?
1:21:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_01: Any interesting AI takes?
1:21:50
SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
1:21:51
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
1:21:55
SPEAKER_00: I am using it, yes.
1:21:57
SPEAKER_00: I have noticed,
1:21:59
SPEAKER_00: I have a conflict at the moment,
1:22:01
SPEAKER_00: a professional conflict,
1:22:02
SPEAKER_00: and I can see my colleague is using AI and it's making everything worse
1:22:08
SPEAKER_00: because they're like, they're just so...
1:22:09
SPEAKER_00: So it's when someone basically,
1:22:11
SPEAKER_00: parents get this as well with children who have this dysfunction
1:22:24
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, they'll say, I love you.
1:22:26
SPEAKER_00: And the child will be like, oh, why are you sending me I love you?
1:22:28
SPEAKER_00: Like, don't say that.
1:22:29
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, they have a bias to seeing loving things as hostile.
1:22:35
SPEAKER_00: And I can see that these people I'm working with seem
1:22:38
SPEAKER_00: to be having this hostile attribution bias.
1:22:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's causing all sorts of problems.
1:22:45
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
1:22:46
SPEAKER_02: Richard, we're approaching the end of the vibe sesh.
1:22:50
SPEAKER_02: This has been amazing, but I got two more, like...
1:22:54
SPEAKER_02: Topics that I wanted to talk to you about.
1:22:56
SPEAKER_02: So let's kind of like second,
1:23:00
SPEAKER_02: one chapter before the ending,
1:23:01
SPEAKER_02: I got another question I wanted to ask you, but tell us now.
1:23:04
SPEAKER_02: So we talked a lot about the problems.
1:23:06
SPEAKER_02: We identified what's going on and it's been such an amazing mind-opening experience.
1:23:11
SPEAKER_02: So what do you think we can do to live a better life, to have meaning, to get more awe?
1:23:17
SPEAKER_02: You talked about breath work and, but like, Tell us more details.
1:23:20
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I don't see enough with that about like the solutions part or whatever,
1:23:26
SPEAKER_02: like how we should live.
1:23:27
SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
1:23:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:23:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, that is because Instagram favors negativity.
1:23:32
SPEAKER_00: You have to put something negative.
1:23:33
SPEAKER_00: Like I saw a real someone being like,
1:23:36
SPEAKER_00: I posted this real being like, moms, check out these five diapers.
1:23:41
SPEAKER_00: And then it didn't do very well.
1:23:42
SPEAKER_00: Then I put something in saying, Don't let mums see these top five diapers.
1:23:50
SPEAKER_00: So you have to put something negative, otherwise people won't watch it.
1:23:55
SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of my problem.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_00: If you want to go viral on Instagram, you have to do negative stuff.
1:24:00
SPEAKER_00: And then when I put in stuff like new breathwork study reduces anxiety,
1:24:04
SPEAKER_00: it's like, you know, a thousand views.
1:24:08
SPEAKER_02: Terrible, the algorithms are.
1:24:10
SPEAKER_02: We want to talk about that kind of stuff.
1:24:12
SPEAKER_02: That's poor Richard, man.
1:24:13
SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize it.
1:24:14
SPEAKER_02: I was like, wait, why aren't you talking about the solutions?
1:24:18
SPEAKER_02: Because you're like catering to the algorithms.
1:24:23
SPEAKER_02: That is hysterical.
1:24:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:24:26
SPEAKER_00: So I do that more in my newsletter because,
1:24:28
SPEAKER_00: you know, newsletters are middle of fun or people who are sort of more bought in.
1:24:32
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, check out my newsletter, richardlblank.com.
1:24:35
SPEAKER_00: You can sign up there and that's where I give more tips and things like that.
1:24:39
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
1:24:40
SPEAKER_00: I think that that quiz I did is kind of another way to help people figure out
1:24:44
SPEAKER_00: because it's, again, it's like, you know, you've got a 76 score on your quiz.
1:24:49
SPEAKER_00: Someone else might have like a 90% score, but it's that 10% that's messing them up.
1:24:54
SPEAKER_00: It's because they're completely...
1:24:56
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:24:57
SPEAKER_00: deficient in vitamin B12 and therefore,
1:24:59
SPEAKER_00: you know, they can't make the right neurotransmitters and things like that.
1:25:03
SPEAKER_00: So I think sort of seeing that puzzle of being like, oh, okay,
1:25:05
SPEAKER_00: well, I'm not doing enough exercise, but I am doing plenty of community service.
1:25:09
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to work with, you know, start a new training plan.
1:25:20
SPEAKER_02: Anything else though, Richard?
1:25:21
SPEAKER_02: So it's like you got the supplements and the breath work.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_00: Oh God.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's like 26 different things in that quiz.
1:25:27
SPEAKER_00: Supplements,
1:25:28
SPEAKER_00: breath work,
1:25:29
SPEAKER_00: exercise, fresh air, sunlight, red light, vitamin D, magnesium, creatine, saffron.
1:25:36
SPEAKER_00: That's something really interesting.
1:25:37
SPEAKER_00: Saffron?
1:25:37
SPEAKER_00: Damn, I'm missing the saffron.
1:25:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:25:39
SPEAKER_00: So saffron, there's a new study came out this week.
1:25:42
SPEAKER_00: Again, like...
1:25:43
SPEAKER_00: It's a replication of another study basically showing it's pretty helpful for depression.
1:25:48
SPEAKER_00: So saffron, I like these Organifi gummies.
1:25:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm not an affiliate with them.
1:25:51
SPEAKER_00: I should be, I will be.
1:25:53
SPEAKER_00: But saffron gummies from Organifi taste really damn good as well.
1:25:58
SPEAKER_00: They've got lemon balm in them as well.
1:26:00
SPEAKER_00: I take those because as I say- Bro,
1:26:02
SPEAKER_02: they need to sponsor Richard here.
1:26:05
SPEAKER_02: Come on, guys.
1:26:06
SPEAKER_02: Anybody has contacts, let's get Richard sponsored here.
1:26:09
SPEAKER_02: He's a freaking amazing advocate here.
1:26:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and breathwork,
1:26:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:26:16
SPEAKER_00: I would just say, yeah,
1:26:16
SPEAKER_00: breathwork,
1:26:17
SPEAKER_00: try breathwork,
1:26:17
SPEAKER_00: try Conscious Connected,
1:26:18
SPEAKER_00: breathwork,
1:26:19
SPEAKER_00: go to a local ceremony group,
1:26:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:26:21
SPEAKER_00: work with a one-to-one practitioner who is certified because a lot of people just,
1:26:25
SPEAKER_00: they,
1:26:26
SPEAKER_00: so my first breathwork session was with
1:26:29
SPEAKER_00: a yoga instructor slash actor slash personal trainer and he had been to
1:26:34
SPEAKER_00: a breathwork ceremony and he decided to do a group and it was an absolute nightmare.
1:26:38
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:26:44
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, make sure that someone is certified.
1:26:47
SPEAKER_02: No, but Richard, I forget where I saw this, but you said something about the Misogi Challenge.
1:26:52
SPEAKER_02: What's that?
1:26:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Misogi.
1:26:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the Comfort Crisis.
1:26:55
SPEAKER_00: Michael Easter and the Comfort Crisis.
1:26:57
SPEAKER_00: Great book.
1:26:57
SPEAKER_00: But basically, it also kind of goes back to Universe 51.
1:27:02
SPEAKER_00: So it's basically this experiment where they created this perfect rat universe,
1:27:07
SPEAKER_00: like this rat park.
1:27:08
SPEAKER_00: And basically, they gave them everything they need, the food, like a beautiful environment.
1:27:13
SPEAKER_00: And the rats just went mad and they just started fighting
1:27:16
SPEAKER_00: and they started like just stealing stuff from each other.
1:27:19
SPEAKER_00: They had everything they needed.
1:27:21
SPEAKER_00: And when you take away any struggle, basically they just started fighting.
1:27:24
SPEAKER_00: I think that's kind of, you know, kind of true for where we're at in real life right now.
1:27:28
SPEAKER_00: All of our basic needs are met.
1:27:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have most people living above the poverty line.
1:27:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, live better than medieval kings and queens.
1:27:36
SPEAKER_00: And so now we don't have any discomfort and we need that discomfort.
1:27:40
SPEAKER_00: So that's why Breath of the Wild is so good.
1:27:43
SPEAKER_00: And then a Misogi is basically a Japanese concept of where you do a challenge
1:27:48
SPEAKER_00: that It's more than likely that you'll fail.
1:27:50
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a big hill near your house and there's a big rock and you're going
1:27:55
SPEAKER_00: to try and carry it up to the top of that hill.
1:27:58
SPEAKER_00: Whereas it's a very good chance that you will fail.
1:28:01
SPEAKER_00: And doing that type of thing sort of, yeah, recalibrates you.
1:28:04
SPEAKER_00: It's no trophies for 13th place.
1:28:07
SPEAKER_00: It's no dodo effect.
1:28:08
SPEAKER_00: And it kind of gets you to recalibrate your.
1:28:11
SPEAKER_02: So you're saying you never succeed.
1:28:13
SPEAKER_02: You're just doing it to failure.
1:28:14
SPEAKER_02: You're always doing something and you know you're going to fail.
1:28:17
SPEAKER_02: That's the idea?
1:28:18
SPEAKER_02: The Misogi challenge?
1:28:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, no.
1:28:22
SPEAKER_01: No.
1:28:24
SPEAKER_02: Damn it.
1:28:25
SPEAKER_02: I had the last question.
1:28:28
SPEAKER_02: Damn.
1:28:29
SPEAKER_02: We're going to do the eternal loop question.
1:28:31
SPEAKER_02: No.
1:28:31
SPEAKER_02: No.
1:28:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to have to restart just to get the eternal loop, bro.
1:28:36
SPEAKER_01: Bro.
1:28:37
SPEAKER_01: Oh, no.
1:28:38
SPEAKER_02: You got to give us the eternal loop.
1:28:39
SPEAKER_03: Some of them.
1:28:43
SPEAKER_02: That was an amazing guest, bro.
1:28:45
SPEAKER_02: Ah!
1:28:46
SPEAKER_02: You're back!
1:28:47
SPEAKER_02: You're back!
1:28:48
SPEAKER_02: Can you hear us?
1:28:49
SPEAKER_02: Can you hear us?
1:28:51
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, this is another...
1:28:52
SPEAKER_00: So this is the brick.
1:28:53
SPEAKER_00: I just got bricked out.
1:28:54
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard the brick?
1:28:56
SPEAKER_02: No, what's that?
1:28:57
SPEAKER_02: What's bricked out?
1:28:59
SPEAKER_00: So it turns off my Instagram at 8.30 and I can't get back in unless I go and find
1:29:04
SPEAKER_00: the brick and touch it to the phone.
1:29:06
SPEAKER_00: It's actually a really good thing to stop me getting addicted to my phone.
1:29:11
SPEAKER_02: That's a thing called a brick.
1:29:14
SPEAKER_02: I might have to buy that shit, but I'm a content creator.
1:29:17
SPEAKER_02: I gotta be on Instagram the whole time.
1:29:20
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
1:29:22
SPEAKER_02: Hey Richard, thank you so much.
1:29:23
SPEAKER_02: We have one last question that we ask all our guests and they're all so interesting.
1:29:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:29:30
SPEAKER_02: So I want your answer.
1:29:31
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of Carl Jungian.
1:29:34
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:29:35
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you've even heard about it.
1:29:36
SPEAKER_02: It's called the eternal loop question.
1:29:39
SPEAKER_02: You know that one?
1:29:40
SPEAKER_02: No.
1:29:41
SPEAKER_02: No, good.
1:29:42
SPEAKER_02: So here's the question, Richard.
1:29:44
SPEAKER_02: So if you have to relive one experience or moment over and over again for eternity,
1:29:54
SPEAKER_02: and here's the two assumptions that you're going to genuinely be happy
1:29:58
SPEAKER_02: about this experience and you're never going to get tired of it.
1:30:01
SPEAKER_02: And you won't even know what the time,
1:30:03
SPEAKER_02: there's no sense of time because you're so in that moment.
1:30:07
SPEAKER_02: And so it's not like, oh, I'm going to get bored of the loop.
1:30:09
SPEAKER_02: No, that's not an option.
1:30:10
SPEAKER_02: What moment experience do you choose?
1:30:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh, just this vibe session.
1:30:15
SPEAKER_00: Can we just do this for instance?
1:30:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that was the best ending.
1:30:22
SPEAKER_03: Best answer, best ending.
1:30:24
SPEAKER_02: And you know what's so funny, Richard?
1:30:25
SPEAKER_02: That's my loop.
1:30:26
SPEAKER_02: When people ask me nowadays, this right here is my loop.
1:30:29
SPEAKER_02: I am in the loop right now,
1:30:32
SPEAKER_02: just exploring together and laughing and agreeing,
1:30:37
SPEAKER_02: disagreeing and sharing and going.
1:30:39
SPEAKER_02: Man, that was a roller coaster, guys.
1:30:42
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
1:30:42
SPEAKER_02: That was awesome.
1:30:44
SPEAKER_02: Awesome, guys.
1:30:46
SPEAKER_02: That's all right there.
1:30:47
SPEAKER_02: Damn, Richard.
1:30:49
SPEAKER_02: Not only is this guy handsome, he's a PhD, and he's a fucking beast.
1:30:56
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
1:30:58
SPEAKER_02: Siskar, I need to say you're speechless right now.
1:31:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm speechless.
1:31:02
SPEAKER_01: No, this was a great conversation.
1:31:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm definitely going to look into breathwork.
1:31:06
SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
1:31:07
SPEAKER_01: I haven't,
1:31:08
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:31:10
SPEAKER_01: and to hear your story of like,
1:31:13
SPEAKER_01: like battle testing therapy and just, Like trying to really believe it too.
1:31:20
SPEAKER_01: Like you're giving it a fucking chance.
1:31:23
SPEAKER_01: And the data just was like disproving yourself and you didn't go into the sunk cost.
1:31:28
SPEAKER_01: You're like, all right.
1:31:32
SPEAKER_02: That is great.
1:31:32
SPEAKER_02: That is a great Vibe Samurai co-host Cisco.
1:31:36
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
1:31:37
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:31:38
SPEAKER_02: That's what I was saying before.
1:31:39
SPEAKER_02: How did you feel?
1:31:40
SPEAKER_02: Because it was your identity.
1:31:41
SPEAKER_02: And then, but he was able to.
1:31:43
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I could do that, you know, like get out of that.
1:31:46
SPEAKER_01: That's wow.
1:31:47
SPEAKER_02: Impressive.
1:31:48
SPEAKER_01: Go on.
1:31:51
SPEAKER_01: No, I think I can land the plane there.
1:31:53
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate your time and thank you for sharing everything.
1:31:56
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of wisdom tonight.
1:31:58
SPEAKER_02: Josh, you got any other words for Richard before Richard closes us off?
1:32:03
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate his perspective.
1:32:05
SPEAKER_03: I unfortunately don't follow you.
1:32:07
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to immediately after this.
1:32:08
SPEAKER_02: Everybody follow this guy, buy his book.
1:32:11
SPEAKER_03: He's a good man.
1:32:12
SPEAKER_03: Good mom.
1:32:13
SPEAKER_03: I got to learn more.
1:32:14
SPEAKER_03: I'm young, impressionable.
1:32:17
SPEAKER_03: I got to learn.
1:32:18
SPEAKER_03: This is the guy to follow.
1:32:20
SPEAKER_03: All men here, right here.
1:32:21
SPEAKER_03: This is healthy masculinity right here, guys.
1:32:24
SPEAKER_03: No toxic masculinity.
1:32:26
SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
1:32:28
SPEAKER_02: Richard, love meeting you.
1:32:29
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for spending the time.
1:32:31
SPEAKER_02: That was mind-blowing.
1:32:32
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
1:32:33
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for having me.
1:32:35
SPEAKER_00: It's great to meet you all.
1:32:36
SPEAKER_02: All right.
1:32:37
SPEAKER_02: Good night, guys.
1:32:38
SPEAKER_02: See you next time.