An Important Conversation...

test test yeah i think i got it this is the first time when people couldn't hear jacksepticeye and everyone rejoiced all right so you go by jack right yeah jack's fine and is there something in particular that you want to talk about today i mean kind of everything that this job sort of entails is fine with me yeah absolutely so you know my staff asked me a couple of questions and i got this question a couple of times they're like do you want to know what's going on with jack and i was like no and then they were like like two or three people asked me they're like do you do you want to know what's going on with him and i'm like no right and is that something we should talk about whatever is going on with you or is it sure no i mean the the roughest part of it is kind of past what happened was that my father passed away like three weeks ago oh my god um yeah he passed away at the end of january so i've been taking time away from youtube and streaming and everything since then i took time away last year to try and like reevaluate who i am and what i want to do and where i fit into the world and i think this is another to hear more about that yeah we can circle back to that for sure it was definitely a very formative time but i think this i was going to take some time off in january anyway but then this sort of like forced me into a sort of break of sorts but i wanted to make sure that i took the time to do it and i feel like i'm in a better place mentally where i don't feel like i have to be always on and give the audience what they need or want constantly and being able to take that time away and just kind of say fu to everybody else and take my time for myself does that require an fu when you take time for yourself no no i'm being a little dramatic and hyperbolic about it um definitely for some people some people need kind of like the harsh like no i'm leaving and you need to be okay with that for a couple of weeks but most people have been extremely supportive about it thank you for sharing that with me i i didn't uh i mean i guess in a sense i did mean to pry but if it if it feels important to you what i'm hearing from you is that you know something really unfortunate happened i'm assuming that you view it as unfortunate and that you've kind of worked through it you feel like you're in a pretty good place and so i'm not hearing a whole lot that needs to be talked about there um probably not i mean we can go into it a little bit i feel like it really happens too often in the online community you don't really hear about this sort of thing happening fairly often and i think sort of to owe it to the legacy of my dad it's nice to kind of remember him in good spirits and kind of talk about him in a way so i talked about him a little bit on my channel before and i've i've never been hugely close with him growing up and there's always kind of been a distance to it but i think having something like this happen it's nice to sort of look back on it fondly it's a thing where you kind of have to tell people that it's happened but at the same time you kind of want to keep it a bit more private because i need to let people know to not go poking when i disappear for three weeks yeah so it's interesting because i'm noticing these two threads kind of weave together because i've worked with a fair number of streamers and one of the things that really shocks me is that many of y'all you know are privileged in many ways but that you guys don't get to do things that normal people get to do right in the second give me an example grieve in private like you have to give people an explanation to like go off and do something on their own for like two weeks yeah it's it's a really strange phenomenon to have to do yeah one of the things that just keeps popping in my mind is like i was talking to someone who was and and i sort of joked that if they post a picture of them eating a taco people will get upset with them for being like anti-hot dog right now i have this feeling a lot and it's it's kind of skirting between am i an [ __ ] or is this like my life now where i go out and you see people look at you and then the first assumption is do they know who i am and then the part of me that kicks in is like well who do you think you are thinking that people should know who you are but then it's kind of something that's happened in such a pattern that it's hard not to kind of fall under that assumption and then when i'm out eating at that moment where i'm getting ready to eat my food i'm like how do i eat food again how do humans eat food normally do i look weird are they gonna like talk about how i ate my food weirdly or what i ordered and things like that and it's such it's a weird sort of circus that goes on in your brain when these things happen yeah i jack it's talking about those kinds of things which is why i love doing what i do because what i'm hearing from you is that like your mind is doing all kinds of stuff that because of your life it's been trained to do which are like not normal things yeah right and i really also really get excited when i hear people sort of talking about like who they are like i i like talking about the stuff i like exploring kind of what the true nature of self is and so yeah me too i i kind of noticed because because of the way that the the examples that you used about oh like am i someone like who am i to be someone like what does that mean to be someone and to not be someone i mean at the end of the day you [ __ ] just the same as everyone else and you know so it's not really like you're a different person but it can sometimes feel like you're a different person and how do you navigate that so we can talk about you know the circus that goes on in your head too you know just a couple of quick things just about grief for you and everyone else i lost my dad about nine years ago and um what i really felt was that i didn't need a whole lot of support when it happened but i found myself like missing him at kind of random moments over the next decade yeah and and it was sort of like there's all this support for the first month and then like what i really needed is that support sort of spaced out over the next decade i've sort of realized that in this sort of business as well especially is that a lot of people are there in the like hyper intense moments and a lot of people will say a lot of things in those moments but i've come to realize that a lot of the people in my personal life and a lot of the people who i consider really close friends you can really tell the merit of their character during times like this because i've had some friends say something immediately and then check in a week later and then check in a week later and that that meant a lot more to me than everybody just rushing to sort of get social points immediately in some regards a lot of people took it upon themselves to make it about them which was a again it's something that i kind of knew already but i've never been through something so intense like this that it became sort of a writing essay for some people to sort of say who could give the best condolences basically and who could be the better person at being sorry for me and then i just become a character and sort of a cast member outside of what their conversation is it was everybody in the middle who were genuine about it that i really appreciated the most what i'm hearing is that you became a sidequest npc for them yeah and i i feel like that's what happens to a lot of streamers you become a character in people's lives rather than a person that's something i've always strived to deal with personally but also let remind people that i am a human underneath everything and i'm not some weird character in your sort of fantasy i'm not an anime for you to watch and fawn overall all the time fawn over [Laughter] i'm trying to increase my lexicon i've been watching a lot of ludwig so let can we actually just go back to you know you said you took some time off last last year to try to figure out who you are and and what you wanted can we talk about that yeah i think for a long time i was i experienced some like really shitty years on my channel and then sort of going through the motions and you you kind of hit this well perceived peak of what you want to do what you want to accomplish and it's all about growth growth growth all the time and satisfying your audience and then you kind of get to a point where that hits its peak and you kind of feel burnt out you're doing the same thing and i i felt like i kind of became a caricature of myself that i i do these things and then people respond to certain aspects of it so i just double down on those because that's what people react to yep and doing that for so long and getting into that cycle i just i kind of got tired of my own [ __ ] i wasn't fulfilled by my audience could tell they were just showing up because it was the same time every day like uh it's like the same reason people watch one piece for so long they're sort of in denial about how long it's going on and how samey it is yeah just going through those motions for a while and then wondering where i kind of fit in with myself and then at this big moment where i thought well can i exist outside of my channel and outside of my numbers and outside of this perception of what people think of me and who even am i beyond jacksepticeye anymore does me as a person as shawn even exist or the two so melded together that i can't differentiate them anymore i took a month off to kind of i i thought i was going to quit i thought i was done with everything because i just i kind of got tired of doing the same stuff over and over again it took a lot of time i got into like stoicism and read up on a lot of books about like marcus aurelius and things like that and how to deal with just yourself and how to deal with other people in a healthier way and it helped me a lot and i started to come to some realizations after reflecting for a while that i i can't exist as both and i just need to take the right amount of time for each and set healthy boundaries for each and now trying to get over kind of the perceptions of what other people think about me versus how i actually act based on that feedback and realizing that i can't live my life for everybody else the feedback they were giving me i realized that i would react to that and then try and do that and correct everything that was going wrong according to them sure um and so i wasn't really living for me anymore something that i've kind of dealt with for a long time is kind of being a people pleaser and trying to get over that do you want help with that sure so how long have you been a people pleaser probably my whole life i think because i'm the the youngest in my family and i've uh two older brothers and two older sisters whenever things got tense i feel like i was sort of the comic relief of the family to try and like break tension yeah and make sure that everybody's okay but i think doing it my whole life i think i started to realize that i i didn't value myself anymore i didn't care about my own opinions i just cared about what other people thought about me and i've gotten a lot better at it over the last year but i think there's still every now and then something will happen and it'll kind of like hit that nerve in me that i need to kind of like get over again i don't know it's it's a bizarre thing yeah so let's learn about that sure what what is the what is the nerve just worrying that i've upset somebody or haven't met somebody's standards or haven't given somebody a good time it's never been about me it's always been about our is somebody else having a good time yeah and getting into this job i think having so many other people to try and please after a certain point you realize that you can't please everybody which is all also cliche and obvious and people say it all the time but it's so hard to actually do so jack are you okay if i like take a cup so first this is fantastic i'm i'm really happy to be having this conversation i i think it makes me so happy when i meet someone who just through personal reflection has like understood so much of like what i spent like time studying it reinforces in my mind that like there is no substitute for personal reflection and that you can read all the books in the world but ultimately all of the knowledge that you need is actually like within you which sounds cliche too and so if it's okay with you i think one of the things i can do to help you on your journey is just to expand your lexicon and kind of button down a few like different kinds of concepts and nuances which i think you already understand but may not have language for and i think it'll help you become more versatile and like dealing with these things and understanding these things let's go so so the first is that in sanskrit there are two words for knowledge one is vidya which gets translated as objective knowledge and is also like information and transmissible okay and then the second is nyan which is subjective knowledge not transmissible and oddly enough in the west we tend to value vidya over nyan we tend to say that unless you know you can prove it to me so science is all about vidya for example so like science is about knowledge that other people can gain from your efforts but yogis um and i would dare say marcus aurelius valued nyan more than vidya and what they realized is that ultimately subjective knowledge is superior to objective knowledge you know when you say like this stuff sounds really cliche but this is where i would call vidya information and nyan understanding and so we can say cliche things and they sound cliche but that's from a vidya perspective but once you understand them from a neon perspective they actually start to shape your actions and shape your thoughts instead of being like a fact that is philosophically or intellectually or logically true it becomes like a reality in your mind which then alters the course of your life and so what i'd really like to explore with you is i think you've gained a lot of nyan over the last year or two but what do you think about those kind that differentiation of of knowledge between these two types i think it makes a lot of sense because i think well maybe i maybe i'm not right in saying this but i feel like the stuff that i've sort of gotten into over the last year year and a half is sort of more on the spiritual side of things um i'm trying to get and trying to get in touch with that stuff because i've always been like a very scientific minded person i'm not like the smartest at it but i always love the sort of machinations of how things work and especially people i love seeing how people take how they work i love observing like body language and how people react the way they react but that's all maybe that's like the objective side of things and i i really like getting into sort of the weeds of how people's brains work and why everybody's different but the same i think i've sort of broadened my mind in the last year to realize that i i can't control everything and the reason i react certain ways to certain things is because of the value systems that i've kind of put on them and then somebody breaches those value systems in my mind so then that's bad and you shouldn't do that but what i've started to get better at is realize that just do whatever the [ __ ] you want i who am i to tell you or to react that way like just go live your life and i live my life and hopefully we we meet somewhere in the middle yeah so i love the way that you talked about value systems and how other i have a feeling we're going to cover a lot of terminology today okay so um so this is also where like buddha buddha talked about something called which is suffering it's the sanskrit word for suffering and what he said is that the root of suffering is actually attachment to expectation and so what i'm hearing from you is that you know someone would do something and then it's the value system that you impose upon it that causes you the suffering and so it's it's a really radical way to look at life because what that sort of posits is that suffering or contentment is like actually yours to control and when you start to step away from those things or notice that your your reactions to the thing is actually what causes you the suffering that's when people start to move towards this concept called enlightenment which is sort of the stepwise process of of eventually getting to the point where like you have essentially no reactions um for as a scientist i'll also kind of differentiate for a moment that dukkha is different from pleasure and pain so you can still experience pleasure and pain both with duke so it's not that you're impervious to pain it's that you're impervious to suffering if you become enlightened but if you imagine if you're enlightened and you give childbirth like you have childbirth you'll still be in a shitload of pain right any thoughts about that concept or how that relates to kind of your self-reflections yeah i think it makes a lot of sense sort of the way i i was a while ago was that and i think this is sort of falls into the parasocial side of things as well that i did things for a certain amount of time and then so many people told me that i was right or i was smart or you do this but this other person does this and you're so much better than them for doing it this way that i feel like that sort of worm got in my brain a while back and it was as much as it is praising me and it's it's great at the time and it's a compliment it was putting down the other person and it essentially built me on this platform higher than they were in their brain and i feel like for me after a while of hearing that i couldn't really tell what it was doing to me anymore and i started to realize like both extremes of like the negative and positive spectrum can influence your brain in negative ways i think yeah i i was about to say i i think you may not have known what that worm was doing to you there by the way there's a sanskrit word for that worm too what is it ahamkada okay i'm going to forget all of these that's okay so ahamkara is technically translated as the i feeling so it's the feeling of like i i am dot dot dot oh i thought you said like eyeball i oh no no and and it gets loosely translated the closest word that we have in english is ego right but it's not just ego so like the ahamkada has a couple of like interesting attributes anything that compares you to another person is a humkar okay and and so the other key thing you know if you listen to buddha is that ahamkar even though it makes you feel pleasure is always going to be a source of duke okay what do you think about that yeah that makes sense yep and and i i think that your your nyan is very very clear to me because you used the word worm right and and so this is like it's such a beautiful word for a hum god because it kind of like burrows in and you don't really notice its negative effects and as you pointed out you feel good in the moment right like it's pleasing for your ego and then like but once it like kind of burrows in like it starts like doing this weird kind of damage yeah like you know what i mean well i was gonna say i feel like it happens to a lot of people in this industry um and the self-awareness kind of evaporates after a while and the humility kind of disappears a lot of times through no fault of their own because a lot of people just tell you that you're amazing and when you become successful at doing that and people tell you you're amazing you tend to think that your way is right and then any sort of criticism or any sort of feedback becomes an attack and then i i found myself getting very defensive about things in the past maybe not publicly but definitely when somebody said something about me online it's like well who do they think they are without and then it's like wait wait why am i reacting that way yes it's not a good way of reacting to things so i'm going to tunnel down into that for a moment so a criticism becomes an attack so what i want you to notice there is a criticism is directed at who or what i should say i mean for me it would have been a jacksepticeye and not me as a person sort of exactly right so like like and i think that's the attack part so what i was going to say is that someone can criticize let's say a piece of content that you make right but when the hum car is strong you take that attack on your content and you it turns into an attack on you and that's why they use ahm god as the i feeling so if you think about it you inject yourself into their criticism yeah which is good so it's it's it seems like you've learned how to not do that yeah i mean it crops up every now and then but i think i've gotten a lot better at like ego checking myself um and kind of stopping that trail of thought before it becomes like i remember in the past it would be a lot of like i need to tweet out something and tell everybody because this one person online said something so then i ended up thinking that everybody was saying this about me or if four people said it and it's like well everybody's talking about that now and then you have to like respond to it but i think i've gotten a lot better at just not responding to it and letting it kind of just sit in the ether because it became this weird thing where jacksepticeye became this like being outside of me and outside the audience it was like everybody was watching this other entity that i didn't even have control over anymore because the community kind of took it upon itself to build it into whatever they wanted to and in some ways that was good but i think the feeling of me as a person separate from that kind of um evaporated yeah so this is where uh just to give you once again a little bit of a structure which i you know isn't true it's just for you to consider so one is that ahamkar and self-awareness are at opposite ends of a spectrum okay so the more egotistical you become the less self-aware you become and furthermore that i think the your awareness at one point was completely absorbed in the identity of jacksepticeye and that you felt a lot of suffering at that time and the more that you've been able to externalize jacksepticeye the more you've been able to separate who you are from the character i think the more at peace you'll become yeah for sure about that i think there was a lot of there was a lot of fear in the past of separating them because then a lot of people tend to think that oh well what you're doing is jacksepticeye is fake then because it's a character that you're playing and it essentially it is because it's a persona it's like the best version of me that i want to show the world um and it's me in my zone and it's me going to work and doing what i do and i always worry that if i talked about separating them and setting more boundaries that people wouldn't think of what i was doing as genuine anymore which it obviously is i don't think i could do this for this long and be this excited about what i do if it was all an act and so i know this is going to sound weird but where does that fear come from i don't know so that comes from the ahamkar too because if you think about it what are you afraid of you know you are afraid of what people would think of you right but that thought in and of itself so like the reason you're not separating from jacksepticeye and then there's the real you right and when you were thinking about separating the real you from jacksepticeye something in your mind warned you against it and it said jack don't do that because if you do if you separate the ego from your true self then what will people say about you they will say you are not genuine but that thought in and of itself is coming from the ahamka right so it's sort of like you know an abusive person telling you not to break up with them because you'll always be alone right yeah it's getting kind of weird and abstract but like it's just interesting that you know i think a lot of your thoughts the more that we tunnel down into this i think a lot of what is going to have kept you trapped is going to be that ahamkar like a lot of you're hanging out and stuff i think a lot of the burnout that i felt about my own channel was also feeling burnout against other creators at the same time against the system in a way i think a lot of people show a certain version of themselves but then when it gets down to it it's very it's a very insular sort of thing that's happening on youtube all the time is that everybody's kind of fighting for themselves and if they have a chance to get more views out of something they'll go for that and i for a while it felt like everyone was kind of like climbing over each other of course not everybody's like that there are some very good genuine kind-hearted people there who are just there to have fun and i've tried to sort of vibe with them and magnetize myself towards them more and get surrounded by those types of people but i think it's just something that no one really wants to talk about how everyone's kind of like fighting each other just to get to the top and then it's like you get to the top it's like well what's there like what are you aiming for it feels like this sort of idea of growth is kind of leading people to know her that you get to the top and then what happens you kind of sacrifice friendships or you sacrifice personal health and mental health and your own time away from everything and everybody's so entrapped in their work and always on and working for themselves constantly all the time why do you think that people get trapped by the idea of growth i think just the metrics that were shown all the time kind of do it and the audience kind of reaffirming that like oh you're dropping off well last time you got this many views on something well this time you're getting less or this person did the game and they got x number and you did it and you got y number like they're so much better and then people have a fear of they have a fear if they don't stay on this treadmill constantly that they're just going to fall off and they can never get back onto it again and that everyone's going to forget about them i've tried to like i've had a bunch of friends especially after i took that break who came to me and talked about it i was like no it's the best thing you can do like no one's gonna leave you if some people will and that's fine you're gonna have to just deal with that but i feel like the people who are actually genuinely there to just have fun and watch your content are the people who kind of stick around and for me that was kind of a hard hurdle to get over as well because i used to do two videos every single day for like five years and i never missed an upload time it was always the same time every day and i was so proud of it but then i became the guy who was uploading at the exact same time and i was just so consistent and i worked so hard then i realized that i didn't really want to be that guy and just work for the sake of having that title um and there was more important things outside of that how did you realize what was important i don't know i think i just physically and mentally got exhausted first and then started questioning things and then being in like a really healthy relationship now that kind of gives me the support and really wanting to spend time in that and swim around in that relationship and enjoy it and have fun with it and just kind of like hang out and do things together meant a lot more to me because i when i started off my channel it was like trying to find that sort of family or that sort of relationship so i dealt i dove head first into that parasocial aspect of it where i i craved that sort of attention from people because it was like finally like-minded people who hang out with me and we all do the same sort of thing we can all it kind of felt like a bunch of friends were showing up each and every day and then realizing that that sort of feeling and that sort of happiness was never going to come from an external source and the other people that i had to sort of find it within me and i watched a really nice video about like buddhism on like a ted talk where they talked about like well why are you happy i was like well this happened today and you realize well that thing made you happy and that's not a consistent source of happiness that you can't have that same thing every single day so you need to find a better way of having consistent internal happiness to try and like i i'm butchering it but it was that idea of finding more inner peace and i think a lot of people sort of rolled their eyes at that but that was like fascinating to me why did you say they're butchering it because i feel like they just had such a magical way with words and i feel like synopsizing it didn't do it justice because it had such a profound impact on me when i heard it that i would like people to hear it the same way and potentially have the same reaction so this is where we get subtle so that's a really wonderful thing and at the same time what are you doing to the words that you say devaluing them yep and you're comparing them to the ted talk right there it is again you see how good they are at explaining buddhism and how bad i am there's the aham god so jack if you really want people to hear it i can guarantee you that what you said was like beautifully explained and the only thing that got in the way because you know this right like why do you think that the person giving the ted talk understands it better than you do true and so the only thing that's getting in the way is your own ego right so if you've learned something and you have something to share with the world then just [ __ ] share it and for the people that are in the frame of mind to hear it and are ready to hear it they'll hear it true and for the people that aren't ready to hear they won't hear it but that like you can't control that right all you can control is what you put out there yeah now if you want to if you want to get like psychological and all that kind of stuff then we've got to talk about this whole like craving attention and family and parasocial relationships but that's good let's go baby okay it's gonna be a different tone okay i'm gonna ask you like personal questions about feelings and [ __ ] like that it's gonna be more of what people you know come here to see sure okay so tell me about your family growing up it's a we had a pretty big family so there was seven of us total my my dad was an older man he was in his 80s when he passed so he would have been 85 this year so he was he was much much older than i was so there was always this sort of generational gap to things and i think my brothers and my especially my older sister they i feel like they had a stronger relationship with him growing up because he was just more present he was there he he was in sort of like his prime years so to speak so they always had some sort of connection whether it be negative or positive there was there was at least some sort of like emotional attachment there that sounds kind of sad yeah i i've often told people that neither of my parents have never verbalized that they love me in a way and it's the thing that i can tell that they did and my dad has always talked about how he was proud of the stuff that i'm doing especially now and i could tell that he always like worked for his family and he was he he definitely deeply cared it's just he's an older irishman from a different generation so he just can't he can't verbalize things can't verbalize his thoughts his dreams his goals and i feel like that was sort of the legacy that i wanted to bring with me to sort of like be that person for him in a way while also learning from that experience what do you mean by that because i i wonder about like his goals and his aspirations and his dreams and if he saw enough of the world and if he met enough people or if he i don't know i just hope that he had fulfilling experiences in his life and i feel like for me having seen stuff like that and somebody who just works all the time and works really hard and for a good purpose i want to make sure that i'm just not working all the time i want to make sure that i take the time to let people know that i love them and to share my feelings and to openly talk about things and keep up with my family and make sure that i'm seeing parts of the world that i want you instead of putting it on the back burner and realizing oh there'll be time for that later i want to make sure that i'm not just working myself to the bone doing what i do here for the sake of what other people expect me to do and that hey i might take a month off every now and then and go do whatever the hell i want to do it sounds like you've become acutely aware of the value of time yeah probably through some through some unfortunate circumstances and having to go through kind of a marathon emotionally to get there but i feel like i feel like the sort of emotional strength i've come away with has definitely been worth it and i've definitely matured emotionally a lot over the last like year or so yeah you seem like an absolute beast man i was watching i don't know about that i i was watching you play bloodborne and one shot things with the whirly gig saw and that's what i think you're doing today you're just like one shot of [ __ ] like left and right bro well i'll take that any day of the week so how old was your dad when you were born late 50s okay and how much older are your siblings uh my oldest sister is mid-40s um and my other brothers are in their 40s i think one of them is about to hit 40. or is 40. i'm bad at my family's age that still means that your dad it sounds like was 40 when he had his first child yeah okay and how old is your ballpark how old is your mom like about the same age or no she's she's 20 years younger than him so there's a massive age difference between them as well and what do you remember about kind of like growing up i remember that my dad had retired when i was at a young age it's like one of the earlier memories i have of him retiring and they gave him a lamp for retiring like here's years of servitude here's a [ __ ] lamp um and i remember the party for that and i was taking pictures of it on like pre-digital photographs and i remember i remember it was the first time i ever got to have like a camera in my hand and i got to take pictures of things and i took about 40 pictures of this [ __ ] lamp that were all pointless and useless and really badly shot i would love to say that i had like spielberg's eye at a young age but i didn't but i i remember that vividly i don't know why i think it was just a turning point and kind of realizing how much older my dad was than everybody else and i remember then the when he was retired he would always he was like the stay-at-home dad then i i would go to school and when i come home he would always cook me my dinner and he was always the person who was there it was just me and him in the house for like a couple of hours after school every day and i think that those were a lot more formative for me than i realized at the time so having him cook me dinner every day was always something that i i now greatly appreciated realizing kind of like all the hard work he did growing up and when he was retired he was like still taking care of me and then 10 years or so ago when we moved and it was just kind of like us to cut a long story short i lived in a log cabin in the middle of the woods for like four years and my parents lived in one as well so i would cook them dinner every day sort of like the cycle kind of like continued at that point and i kind of took care of them what are you feeling right now good it's nice to remember the good things that happened with my dad and kind of recalling all of these memories that i didn't realize were kind of like in my brain and then when something like this happens and you're i want to reminisce and i want to remember and think about him fondly it was like oh yeah these were all great times and uh we had some good years yeah what would he cook you for dinner he would cook me like potato waffles i don't know if many people outside of like uk ireland or whatever would have those and like fish fingers which you guys would call fish sticks and he would cook me that every day and i would just have a big blob of ketchup on the side of the plate i would always say that i went to my friend's house at one point and they his mother cooked [ __ ] fish fingers i was like no my dad's the best at cooking them you don't you don't know what you're doing and what would what would you make for them when you all lived in the log cabin a main favorite was like lasagna i would always cook a mean lasagna and they loved that but then when i was trying to like get healthier and like bulk up and work out and all that kind of stuff in my early 20s i would cook them like just really healthy like stir fries and like try and cut out as much fat and try and take care of them as much as possible because i feel like they were just very indulgent because it's just it's easy to do that how did they feel about that i don't think my mother liked it too much because to her it was taking out a lot of the flavor but i think my dad liked it that's wonderful i am i find myself curious though how does you know how do you wind up in a log cabin with your parents for four years or it sounds like you guys had separate log cabins yeah it was weird we we sold our house and then we moved because my mother wanted to get closer to her mother so we moved in like next door because she was in her later years as well so we moved like log cabins at the time sounded like fancy and it sounded like a nice dream sort of getaway sort of thing everyone thinks that they want to live in a log cabin in the woods that [ __ ] is cold you do not want to live in one of those yeah oh i'm with you i guess a lot of texans can relate right now is that my pipes would freeze every winter and then ice would like come up to the insides of the walls so we had to get like a stronger heater for the cabin to kind of like make sure i didn't get a hypothermia i think that's where i kind of i realized that i didn't want to like i didn't want that to be my life and that's kind of where i started my youtube channel maybe out of spite of that sort of living arrangement can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to start making content on youtube i watched a lot of youtube back in the day i was playing battlefield 3 a lot back then and i just got a gaming pc for the first time when i was like 21 and i was fascinated by i was like how are people so good at this and how are they so quick and i can't even like figure out how to move the mouse without taking it off the thing and i felt like such an old man and then i i have an upon a channel called levelcap gaming who still makes content i was watching him a lot and then one time he mentioned that he did it as a job that kind of blew my mind open i never like intended to start doing it as a job it was never my goal but i thought man people do this like full time that's so cool i was like i wonder what that's like to do and i kind of got into it and i was like well i'm playing games all day anyway it would be cool to learn how to edit and talk over them and i've always kind of been i've always been fascinated by like acting and showmanship and things like that and maybe being the baby at the family i i loved being the center of attention at one point in my life yeah but i you keep i kind of got into it that way you keep mentioning being the baby of the family can you tell me a little bit about what that was like for you um i i don't know quite what that means but you kind of you know you'll attribute many things that you say to being the baby of the family right i think it was just something i was told a lot growing up because i was i was always like a miniature version of other members of my family rather than being my own person i mean me and my brother closest to me were really really alike when i was growing up so i was always called the younger version of him and i think being the baby of the family my voice kind of got drowned out a lot when family gatherings would happen so i kind of like fought to have my place at the table i think that's why i've always been good at sort of talking and like why a lot of my humor is very quick and and things like that was trying to like if i said something loud and quick and clever then i would be heard more than everybody else and that feeling of like cutting the room with laughter was always something really fun when i was a kid it sounds like you learned how to be a character at quite a young age i guess i am and that you had to be a character to be noticed oh now we're getting into some [ __ ] aren't we i warned you oh no i guess so i never thought about it like that right i mean but that's what i mean it's fascinating yeah that's what i'm hearing from myself now not that i say it yep what do you think i think it's again it's fascinating this is the stuff that i love like figuring out and realizing oh that's where certain things come from and i didn't realize i was doing that back then yeah that that absolutely makes a lot of sense now yeah i think you were jack's jacksepticeye long before you created a youtube account no probably most likely yeah he's buried somewhere yeah well i don't know about buried sounds to me like he's i was out in the open from a young age true [Laughter] you know kind of like you said you know things are getting serious like why did you feel like that was a serious comment i think it's just because it sounds so psychological to put a pin in it that way it's like oh okay it's like it's like those psychologists like sort of like twist that you see in movies all the time where it's like i i used to always make that joke people would say i had a dream last night that i ate marshmallows for eight hours i'm like what does that say about you and your father a lot and i would always just make that joke so hearing it that way is kind of it's very profound and i kind of like that sort of stuff sure so that's a moment of neon okay does that make sense absolutely yeah yeah so that's what we shoot for is because that's understanding and then that's going to like you know it's not just a bit of information that's the light bulb going off something landing because here's the concern that i have is if we sort of say that you had to be funny to be noticed sure what that also sort of means is that you kind of weren't you had to like kind of elbow your way in you know and and so what that could imply is that like people didn't give you an opportunity to speak because generally speaking you think about the lower you are on the totem pole like the more support you need from loving people to you know get a seat at the table do you feel like we're being judgmental or anything are you kind of getting that kind of flip side of the argument no i mean i can see why it's perceived judgment but if if anything it's bettering me as a person and it's helping me understand more about why i am the way i am and i i kind of like that and it also reaffirms a lot of stuff that even these days if i'm talking in a group and people don't hear me it's not that i i feel like i'm important listen to what i'm saying it's just i don't like that feeling of being talked over which i imagine a lot of people don't i know it hits upon a lot of things that i think are very relevant to me as a person even today that i'm trying to like i'm trying to undo or trying to come to terms with and be better about and form healthier habits with and i feel like you can't do that unless you get into the weeds of it all how does it feel to be talked over awful well in in this day and age it's like buffering issues and internet issues and all that kind of thing you get talked over anyway just because the sound kind of cuts out and what not in conference calls but it's i think that's where i'm like people talk over you it's [ __ ] stop doing it i i feel like that's where my devaluing of my own opinions come from because when i get talked over then i just kind of like shut down and then i stop giving my opinion on things okay so do you remember times growing up where people didn't respect your opinion and talked over you not that i can vividly recall there's nothing that's like really stands out to me i feel like maybe i like said a joke and no one heard it and that kind of was like oh man i thought that was a good one but nothing where i had anything of like profoundness to say and then somebody talked over and they kind of like defeated me now at least nothing comes to mind right now sure sure sure that makes sense i think the real tricky thing there is that you know if you were devalued then in retrospect you may not think it was profound probably yeah right it's kind of weird i think that's a very irish way of speaking that if you're not heard everyone says well it wasn't important then yeah oh interesting yeah so let's uh what was it like having a dad who was like significantly older did you kind of feel like because it sounds like you noticed that things were different compared to your friends and stuff like that yeah i think i just hearing my friends talk about their dads being at work i couldn't really relate to that at the time and also you get a slight bit of ridiculing growing up i wouldn't say i was like bullied about it or anything but definitely when people hear it it's like oh it's always like a point of conversation it's always something that people feel like they have to like yeah they have to like poke further into to try and understand because it's so foreign to them for that but for me that was my normality but hearing that it wasn't normal was like well what what's wrong with me what's wrong with my family why why is everyone reacting to that do you remember how old you were when you started being concerned about your opinion not being taken seriously and being talked over um i think it was more in my teenage years probably because i think those are very formative years for anybody and trying to figure out who you are in the world and trying to put your stamp on it which i mean nobody ever does when they're a teenager it's like a a weird fallacy that everybody talks about because you're i saw that in school like you need to know who you are going into college you need to know like the rest of your life is being set up right now what are you going to be what are you going to do like i don't [ __ ] know i just want to play metal gear solid and collect yu-gi-oh cards about exactly who you were going to be when you grew up you know i was just thinking it was kind of ironic because you're like i don't know who i am and that's actually exactly who you were you knew exactly who you were well yes you did realize you could be that yeah that's against the norm at the time at the time it's like when you grow up you work in a factory you and in ireland especially it's like you you work to get drunk at the weekend and that's it i mean i shouldn't generalize but a lot of them are kind of stuck in the same sort of jobs and stuck in the same cycles as their parents and i think i was always determined to not do that especially being in the world of video games i always saw so much more of the world like oh there's japanese game devs and like what are they doing and like oh american game releases are like earlier than hours like what's that about that sort of like knowledge door was opened at a very young age and i feel like because ireland is very heavily religious i remember being 12 years old and like rejecting that and it was always sort of this sort of defiance against culture i mean you might not know this but when i started off my channel i i didn't talk in my regular voice i had like a weird sort of americanization pronunciation of everything because that was how i spoke clearly and to try and speak clearly i changed my accent because i thought well if i sound different then everyone's going to notice that sounds like you've been on a long journey to become yourself oh yeah that's right anybody watching this right now if you're in your 20s and everyone's like time to figure out who you are in college it's you're not going to figure that out that quick but i'm curious what happened when you told people that you were not interested in going to church i don't know my mother didn't like it and she was like don't tell your grandmother because my grandmother was hyper religious and i i never had any sort of like animosity towards anybody who did believe i'm like that's fine even at a young age i was like that's fine you can still believe that if you want if i'm wrong i'm wrong it's just not for me so it sounds like overall people sort of were pretty accepting of that i think so yeah weirdly yeah because you're what i'm really hearing is that your mom wasn't concerned that you're you know your soul would wind up in eternal hellfire she was more concerned that your grandmother would find out which is just actually sort of a tacit acceptance of your beliefs right right i was i i was kind of fishing around a little bit there because i'm gonna be sniffing around for you know moments where you felt devalued and talked over sort of coming out as being agnostic or atheistic in a in a catholic uh household would be you know kind of prime time for being disrespected and undervalued but i'm not really hearing that at all yeah so right now i have a pretty clear intention just in my head and i want to share that with you and you let me know if that's good or not which is that i'm going to try to help you understand a little bit about this devaluing business and being talked over and in order to do that i think what we need to do is access that emotion like a little bit more rawley if you can't think of any time during your teenage years when you really felt like you were talked over people didn't listen then that's okay then what i'm gonna ask you is there a time recently that you sort of really felt that way and it bothered you i think just doing because i've been doing a lot more like larger multiplayer sessions with people and i feel like just the nature of like i said the way the internet buffering and everything is sometimes what you say can get lost and i think sometimes it kind of like it kind of triggers that sort of response in me but i think nowadays it's not sort of a malicious like how dare they not listen to me it's more of like a ah they probably just didn't hear it and that's fine yeah so so that's actually a really good nuance which i want to point out which is that your reaction to them not hearing you is somewhat automatic and then a different part of your mind has to kind of calm that pissed off part down do you see that yep and so still what happens though is that programming activates in those moments sure and so the question is like so let's move a little bit further back has there been a time that you can think of where that programming sort of activated before ideally we want to find something before like a year ago because i think that's really when you started to gain a lot of self-awareness and the more self-awareness you have the less that that programming is going to control you i was going to say maybe some scenarios again with like other creators where were were at like a business thing or something or maybe we're trying to get like feedback on something and i say something and then i get talked over by them and then their opinion matters more in the eye of the eyes of the people who are asking i think that sort of like just shuts me down a little because i i guess it's sort of like imposter syndrome that i feel like a lot of why i am who i am now and where i got to is a lot of like circumstance and look definitely hard work put in but getting to this point now like being told a lot that like oh you got a pewdiepie shout out that's why you're popular it's like i i was never allowed to enjoy the merits of my own success for what they were absolutely that had a contributing factor to it but then always feeling like the lesser of greater people i think that that's where it kind of kicks in do you feel like you were the youngest child in the household of youtube probably yeah i feel like because i came on the i came on a tail end of a lot of things where like bigger youtubers like a pewdiepie or a markiplier would have been in the same space and for a long time the three of us were associated incredibly heavily together but i was always considered like i just kind of like came along that i didn't pioneer anything that i didn't like set the ground for anything and i felt like a lot of times i'm like well i feel like i deserve a little bit of recognition in like certain aspects of what i did but just hearing over and over again that you're you're not good enough to be considered on the same level as people like that i think it's always been this sort of like comparison in my brain to other creators of that stature and then it was something that i didn't like for a while because i'm like well these guys are my friends i don't want to compare myself too much to them because then it becomes me versus them and the youtube system rather than real realizing like oh no we're just friends that like we shouldn't be against each other yeah so what i'm hearing jack is that in some ways you've always been sort of standing in the shadows of giants yeah it kind of feels like that is there a part of you that thinks that you're standing in the shadows of giants part of me definitely i feel like there's a there's like an expectation to know exactly what you're doing at this level to have every move planned out and you are like 10 steps ahead and you're like a business mogul and like you got to the top and like you're the greatest of what you do when in actuality a lot of the people doing this i feel like a lot of people i talk to have no idea what they're doing and we're kind of just taking it day by day and i'd like to see it perceived more like that and i'm kind of just trying to have fun in the moment rather than creating 10 businesses a year out from now and things like that i feel like i want to try and like normalize that aspect more normalize the sort of like breaking down of the pedestals of sort of the the idolization of things because i feel like that's that's where a lot of the the stan culture comes from which i feel like the what culture oh am i gonna have to explain something to you please you don't know what stan culture is no so you have fans of something and then standing something is like the next level of that standing is like really really obsessive like idolization of something where it like consumes your life and you're like hyper into it and everything about your day is part of it but i feel like that leads to a lot of negative things i feel like it leads to a lot of because people talk about haters a lot and like ignore the haters and like don't listen to them like sometimes they have a little bit of good things to say sometimes you kind of need a little bit of that because sometimes you're not right about everything but on the other scale of things you have the stands and i feel like those are also not there to help you in most regards but they're to build you up they're there to make you um a team to fight on in a show a tribe yeah like that a lot of people who are charging onto the field of battle with their banners that have jacksepticeye and that tribalization happens and then everyone fights for you on your behalf and from an outside perspective it can look cool but i feel like it's just not helping me i just don't want people talking for me i don't want people to feel like they know who i am 100 where they feel like they're like my best friend online and then they go start attacking other people in my stead when i'm a 31 year old man i can fight my own fights if i'm ignoring something it's probably for a very good reason you can speak for yourself exactly i mean not always i i definitely didn't speak up when i should have but i feel like these days absolutely i i'm allowed to speak for myself and it's i feel like a lot of people have a hard time tackling that because it feels like you're attacking your fans when that's not at all what i'm trying to do i'm trying to let people know that hey some of you go a little bit too far thankfully a humorous manner when you point that i used to i used to i think these days i've gotten a lot better at like setting the boundary and just cutting things off when they need to so jack i've got a couple questions but i'm noticing like a bizarrely common theme here and i don't know if it's just because i'm you know looking to make constellations out of stars here okay but i'm hearing these same themes of like speaking up and being heard and other people talking interestingly enough i don't know if they're talking over you here but they're talking for you and then it's our we have to sort of decide as scientists whether we want to do the mental gymnastics of saying that those two things are connected is it talking over you or is it simply that like because what i'm really hearing is a common theme of you really having to carve out your voice yeah i feel like that's fair and and so then the question becomes you said that in the past you didn't speak up for yourself what do you mean by that like now you've gotten better about it i feel like if i saw something in my community that was getting out of hand i would kind of brush it aside and hope that it would just go away and kind of like funnel in something else to kind of drown it out crack a joke yeah or like if i saw something on twitter getting out of hand i would just ignore it and then move on and then hope that everyone just reacts to the next thing that i do so jack um i i'm going to share with you a couple of thoughts these are going to be like pretty half formed but i want to leave you with something you know if if it strikes a chord with you and and you want to talk about it you're you know we're more than welcome to yeah i'm just going to toss it out because i think you're an incredibly self-reflective person and i think that even though it makes for a little bit of unsatisfying television i want to give you something to turn over in your mind and and maybe it'll help okay and then if something triggers and and there's an experience that you can think of or it really resonates with the way that you feel like we can certainly talk more about it so i i think this is going to sound kind of weird but i think a lot of this actually comes back so we were kind of hunting around for this idea that there may have been moments in your life where you had something to say and people spoke over you and the funny thing is that you know that really sounds like it's the thing but when i ask you about that you're like ah nothing really jumps out we sort of went down the dead end of the religious thing because that sounds like oh man like that was like oh he was like religion he liked practicing religious freedom and he was oppressed oh my god that's when he lost his voice it's perfect oppression great but that this was sort of a dead end too right yeah so so i think what what i'd like to toss out then if that's a dead end like let's just let it be a dead end like that's okay and oddly enough i think some of this may have to come from your perception that you're standing in the shoulder in the shadows of giants and what i mean by that is like so what i'm hearing you say is that you have to you know you have to elbow your way to the table you have to really like go out of your way to be noticed and so if we really think about it like you know the things that bother us like when people talk over you or don't listen to your opinion that could be sort of traumatic in its origin in the sense that something happened to you at some point like you know sometimes we'll see this kind of thing with people who grew up in abusive households where they're like tried to tell people and like people wouldn't listen and so sometimes that's where that kind of comes from i'm not really getting any of that from you so the other option is that it's not actually that you were ever truly spoken over but that you felt like you didn't belong and so anything that exposes that resonates with that genuine fear that you have about yourself is what like really kind of triggers you so it's sort of like this idea that you know it's not that other people didn't let you speak it's that you kind of feel like you're playing in a game with the big boys and that you're the small you're the youngest kid in the room and so as you carry that fear within you you're kind of very sensitive to anything which like may rub up against it so if someone says something you know it's sort of like if i'm insecure about my appearance and someone doesn't give me a job and then i'm like oh it's because the other person was prettier than i am it's not because that's not true at all maybe it's true i mean i don't know but our own insecurities are the things that cause us suffering because our brain is sort of scanning for a confirmation bias to make us feel like devalued yeah so the interesting thing is like maybe we can approach it from sort of a traumatic angle where you were really not listened to but the other thing is that you you genuinely there's a part of you and so i kind of asked you this earlier do you feel like you're kind of like there's a part of you and this is the tricky thing is that as the awareness grows outside of jacksepticeye this other part of you is going to get kind of packaged and set aside and there are going to be moments where you're more aware where that thing isn't really going to have any power over you but your own awareness outside of jacksepticeye is going to fluctuate and in periods of time when your own awareness is low that kind of devaluing insecurity the idea that you're the small kid in the room full of big kids that you're the kid whose dad is retired and there's like there's like everyone else and then there's you and and as if that's really the case then like i think that the sensitivity to you know other people speaking over you may come from your own insecurity that you don't deserve to speak yeah what do you think about that i mean it feels like you're hitting a lot of the right points is that it feels like that's kind of yeah i feel like that's kind of the avenue that i'm in because i i have always wondered that like where where is it coming from why do i feel this way and why do why do i react a certain way and trying to get over it but never really fully understanding where it comes from to begin with yeah so it's always been a tricky thing to grapple with so then the question becomes when did you start to feel that you were kind of last place in a particular group of people oh that's school for sure like even from the earliest ages had a lot of friends who were who were very very smart and who were very good at like maths or some were good at xyz subject and i always felt like i kind of lagged behind and i didn't get like bad grades but my friends were always getting great grades and they were always doing so much better than me and i remember just not being out like certain things didn't click with me but i never really had the hunger to make them click with me but the dissatisfaction of not feeling like i kept up with them was still present and i feel like are we talking about your school friends or pewdiepie and markiplier no school friends school friends um they i feel like when i was in college as well i went to college twice and the first time i went for like music production um in my when i was like 18 19. and i i remember leaving that course because even though i passed all my exams year two i didn't go back for the third year because i felt like i just didn't get it i other people were like sailing ahead they had so much hunger for it they understood everything all the time and i i just couldn't get it it didn't click with me so instead of asking for help and admitting that i looked dumb i felt like i had to just like leave that i i'm not smart enough to keep up with these people so this just isn't the place for me i need to like get out of here that fear of looking dumb has always been sort of something that's persisted in my life for a very long time and i feel like doing this sort of job as well it's it's very easy for people to just say that to you and it's it's like it's not like one of those like super biting like slurs or anything like that it's just something so childish and benign sounding but it's always like struck a chord with me so i'm like damn it's like i really do suck at this don't i and i always can like shoot myself down as a result of that so let me ask you something when you feel like someone is talking over you does it feel to you like you have to rebel against that part because like like here's what i'm envisioning okay this is gonna get man this is gonna fall apart real quick so you know it's my fault really not yours if i can't explain this but here's what i'm envisioning and it's going to happen lightning quick okay you're not a failure you've never thought of yourself as a failure because you always passed your exams like you actually you know finished your two years but everyone else is just so much better and you carry that thought with you that everyone else is so much better but then there's another part of your mind that's like [ __ ] we can't think that way about ourselves and so like if someone else even remotely like suggests that they are better than you you're like that part of you comes rushing to your rescue and they're like no jack's opinion is just as good as yours how dare you guys treat him that way i deserve to speak and i'm not stupid yeah is that what happens yeah i don't think in as much of an aggressive way but definitely that sort of like tide starts rolling in pretty quick right but but the tide is a response to that initial insecurity what do you think about that and it's it's going to be quick and it could be hard to notice and i could be wrong yeah no absolutely yeah so now if you want to unravel this you've actually got two or three options okay one is that you can notice that protective part of you and that protective part of you like if you i know it sounds weird but if you disarm that that's going to be the same thing as like looking at yourself and asking for help does that make sense like both of those are protective mechanisms yeah and so if you dismantle that with your awareness or if you notice it this will start to dwindle away because it's hard to describe but like if you stop the over compensation then you can actually fix the problem but as long as you're applying band-aids like you're never gonna get to the root of it and then the other thing that you can do is actually explore and this is the kind of thing that you know you can do with a therapist which is that that initial idea of like why did you start devaluing yourself right and you gotta talk and this is where you've got a lot of stories and so this is where like you have to talk through and sort of sit with and reflect on all these instances and they're going to be tiny tiny instances where you didn't fail but you felt like other people were better right and like as you settle each of those moments down then you'll be free of this okay thoughts questions responses you're very good at explaining things so i think you kind of hit the nail on the head and it's kind of it's things that i've kind of known for a while especially again a lot of the reflecting over the last year i've gotten better at like when these things happen to kind of like stop and take a pause and think about it objectively and realize like what they're saying is not the truth and kind of has no bearing on me and i shouldn't take it so much to heart i've definitely gotten better at it but i still i still think i'm on that journey yeah so so let me try to help you just a little bit of tweaking that the first step is to say i shouldn't take it to heart the second step is why do i take that to heart in the first place because you could take all kinds of stuff to heart does that make sense you're halfway there so the next step is why does this thing resonate with you so much right and as you explore that then you'll get to the real root of it yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense cool i feel like we're at a decent stopping point i mean i feel like if we keep talking we have to open up something else yeah and we'll probably be here for another three hours so so i also find that when i'm working with someone i think it's important from a memory consolidation point to kind of like pause and let you kind of process this digest this express skepticism with yourself etc and you can always like revisit things later but like this is what i kind of want to leave you with especially given your own capacity for self-reflection i think it's like pretty good well i hope so

Channel: jacksepticeye

Views: 1,038,028

Rating: 4.9764838 out of 5

Keywords: jacksepticeye

Id: sz2yQ9Txbmg

Length: 64min 1sec (3841 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021