Becoming a Psychiatrist, Nihachu? How We're Shaped Mentally | Dr. K Interviews

let's say you meet two people i haven't asked you about your sexuality or anything but i'm just gonna assume a heteronormative perspective for a second so let's say you meet two guys and like one of them genuinely cares about you and one of them is an [ __ ] who pretends to care about you and the interesting thing that can happen is that sometimes the genuine caring actually makes you feel so uncomfortable that you pull away from it and you kind of pick the devil that you know welcome hello nice to meet you nice to meet you too and and so people call me all look or dr k can you tell me how you would like to be addressed today uh i'm nikki nikki okay yeah and um welcome nikki thank you so much for gracing us with your presents thank you so much for inviting me i'm as much as i haven't watched too many streams i am a fan i am really really um actually thankful for what you're doing here um so yeah well uh yeah so thank you very much for coming on and and you know i appreciate the gratitude is there something in particular that you want to talk about today or something that we can help you with nikki um i'm not 100 sure um perfect although although i did um start therapy today and we talked a bit of my about my anxiety yeah yeah so yeah started therapy today and came on stream both in one day i know i know it's mental health awareness day month you know yeah wow good for you yeah and have you been in therapy before i have um i've been through therapy all um my adolescence life so like ever since i was a young teenager i went through therapy okay yeah do you mind if i ask you some questions about that no for sure okay um you know just a reminder that if i ask you anything that you don't feel comfortable answering you're welcome to not answer it um but i think a lot of people are curious about you know how to get into therapy what it does for you things like that can you tell us a little bit about what your experience with therapy has been like for sure um so i've been into i was in psych wards that was the first experience i had when i was with with therapy when i was very young i got admitted into a psych ward and that's how i started my first therapy that's where i got diagnosed the first time and how i started to how i started to work with antidepressants and different kinds of therapy um and i actually went through dbt twice um which really helped me yeah um can can you explain to us what dbt is um oh god what is it i'm not quite sure what it is in english because i did it in german but it's basically um like i think it's behavioral therapy it's to um um so it's it's basic it's like impulse control i would say um yeah i think your experience of it is perfect i i don't know that people need like a technical definition but can you just kind of tell us about what it's been like for you and so uh the first time i went through it i i thought it was i i didn't i i didn't quite you know i wasn't ready for it yet um but it's it's basically they taught me how to um i i did self harm when i was younger it's not it's not a secret you can say it um i don't do it anymore um but they taught me how to get that into like how to control that how to um kind of um like kind of learn different things that i can do instead of uh harming my body harming myself and we did a lot of i'm not quite sure what it is in english but we did quite a lot of like meditation and like being aware of your surroundings and of yourself uh which i think really helps and this is really good what is it in german um yeah yeah is there a way to literally translate that like awareness like awareness practice i would say beautiful that's yeah that's that's a that's a beautiful way to describe it describe what it is um and feel free to just use the german word if you can't come up with anywhere okay okay yeah i you know so it's funny because a lot of people um so early on when i was training to become a psychiatrist i had a patient whose english was not their first language and everyone just sort of assumed that that would mean that the therapy wouldn't go well but i actually found that um that was actually like one of my best sort of therapy experiences because uh since we didn't speak the same language like we didn't assume anything so we were like defining terms that like normally you know i would say oh like how was your childhood and someone would say good and then we just moved past it even though it may not have been good or i interpreted things one way and so i actually think working with people who don't speak your language or like you guys just have a little bit of a you know language gap can actually be really really good um because you don't fall into assumptions yeah no i think i think that's a really good way to see it um so yeah because i also love the way that you you translated yeah good job good job thank you thank you um and so so how how does what did they teach you that helped you control your impulses um i think i think for me it was mostly i need it wasn't it wasn't mostly about my impulses it was most mostly about needing like something that i can rely on because growing up i didn't have that much how i have it that much and therapy actually helped me um in a way where it's like hey if you ever need something and you don't know where to go you have the therapy that you can go to if you don't know who to talk to you have your therapist you can talk to um in the psych ward i had people to take care of me i think that was a big thing i'm very bad with like looking for help because i always i'm like i'm so self-aware i know what i'm doing i can do this by myself so even like going to therapy now it's like it's a very big step um but i think i need it where where like i need something to rely on and i need something to fall back on and that's i think that's what therapy was for me and what helped me yeah so sort of like a like a home base or kind of retreat or yeah can you tell me a little bit about what growing up was like for you um i moved a lot ever since i was young i moved every half a year um i also grew up with all the f without a father um my mom i i there is addiction running in my family and my mom sadly suffered from it from for the most part um which i back then didn't understand um and it was sort of like uh i got thrown into new situations and then pulled out of it without me having a saying in it and then and then um not knowing where to go or what to do um and then once i moved out at 17 i had to grow up really early because i had to take care of my mom um so i wow yeah i kind of just i kind of just uh started to be more independent and that really helped me streaming really helped me i was a very insecure kid i was very shy and very very um quiet growing up so yeah streaming helped me a lot moving out by myself helped me a lot because i had that distance from my from my child like childhood from my family and that helped me understand everything that i didn't understand when i was younger and what are some of the things that you gained understanding about like what did you come to understand that was confusing as a kid i for example saw the sight of my mom my mom always struggled with her current boyfriends with her ex-boyfriends with money we didn't have much money growing up um and i sort of started to understand that as my like as much as addiction is and can be seen as an illness it's not her fault she did not mean to treat me the way that she wanted to she maybe just didn't know any better um and i actually really really love my mom now and we're really like like tight and and good with each other so yeah yeah and and why did you move every six months um mostly uh so there's one thing that i can't talk about on the internet which i'm sure which i can't tell um but mostly it was because of my mom and her boyfriend she always moved to her boyfriend's because she didn't have money um but my mom is a very pretty woman and so she got to date men that are rich i don't know yeah um so we always moved to them really quickly and it really quickly didn't work out so we had to move away okay yeah um thanks for sharing that there's something that you know we want to steer clear of i'm still not quite sure what to avoid so i may need your guidance i'm not trying to ignore i just don't know what it is that we can't talk about quite yet so apologies if i stumble towards it okay just let me know yeah of course of course and and so you mentioned that you didn't grow up kind of knowing your father is that something that's still the case or it sounds like you've really repaired your relationship with your mom you all become really close you all love each other support each other a lot um do you mind if i just ask quickly like if that oh yeah um i i had a father figure when i was very young um but very quickly that turned that's what i can talk about um yeah and then i found out that he's not my father when i was nine years old um and my real father actually he knows me like he my mom showed him my twitch he knows nia um but i have never known him and he always said that i'm not his daughter until we did a father like a test like that he's my father um but yeah he he's not in my life i don't i don't really mind it either though yeah i i can i can see how you know it's sort of like you know never sort of he was never in your life to begin with so it's not like you lost anything yeah exactly at the same time i can imagine that you know it can it may be hurtful for him to say things like you're not it was at first definitely i i definitely at first was very hurtful um but i got over it very quickly yeah do you mind if i ask how you did that because that does seem remarkable i i i feel like i i don't want to blame it on that but i feel like because i've moved so many times because i've dealt with getting over people losing people getting thrown away like thrown out of the situation um i feel like because of that i've gotten really really good at just getting over people in general like as much as i am hurt for the first few days or for the first for the first time i i quickly move on from that i just yeah um nikki you seem just incredibly resilient thank you and i almost feel a little bit sad saying that because i think it's been rough that you've had to be so resilient you know i sometimes wish that people had lives where they didn't have to be quite as resilient and bounce back quite as much as you had to it sounds kind of rough um it makes me the person i am today i um i actually want to become a psychiatrist um so i feel like because of all the things that i have um that i've been through i don't want to say like oh i've been through so much but like all of the things that i have been through uh because of that yeah i um i learned how to um i have a lot of empathy and i i i know how a lot of people feel and also i am pretty resilient so if someone tells me that i i take it in but it's not like weighing on me so much can you help me understand um you wanting to become a psychiatrist why on earth um save yourself nikki before it's too late i just want to help people um at first i wanted to become a psychiatrist in a children's and adolescence psych ward because that's what i've been through and i think that helped me a lot um but the more i am here as a streamer and content creator i feel like a lot of content creators could really use um some professional help so i would really like to to do something in in this area as a professional mental health professional and um okay look can i just think for a second yeah for sure i'm trying to understand the boundaries of this conversation and and i'm trying to mostly very open i am fine with talking about um mental health about my issues i talk about it a lot on my own stream um if there's anything that i don't want to talk about i will tell you and i won't feel offended or anything so don't worry at all yeah that i figured out the boundaries that i i need a moment to think about are my own oh okay oh okay i'm sorry so there's there's all part you know there i'm having all these thoughts about supporting you in your goal like in terms of you know you know how can we you know what because i love to support you but i i think that that's not really the relationship that we have in terms of of you know if you want to talk to people or want research opportunities or whatever which we just talked about a little bit um you know i know a lot of people in a lot of places and and i think you'd be a wonderful fit just having talked to you for five or ten minutes in in a lot of the clinical settings i've seen and so there's a part of me that very strongly wants to support you in a very like much more like practical way like i want to introduce you to you know are like the person who runs the adolescent um you know i'm going to steer clear of a particular diagnosis but there's a there's a particular uh you know residential unit where people will come and stay for 30 or 60 days most of them are women they teach a lot of dbt there and and i think that that could be like a really wonderful place for you to work clinically if you ever became a psychiatrist so i'm personally just restraining all of that energy to try to support you and your goal um and just thinking about what's appropriate and what isn't to say i see i see it and so like so help me understand a little bit so i mean i hear this a lot from streamers too because you know we work with a lot of streamers here at hg um and so you're a streamer you're a good streamer you're a successful streamer and and how do you how do you think about you know potentially becoming like a licensed mental health professional versus like your streaming career um so i i never intended to become a big streamer um i don't think many people do i don't think many people start and are like oh i'm going to be this big streamer so it has always been my goal and my dream to become a psychiatrist and i will not just throw that away just because i have a different career path now um i feel like as much as streaming is a wonderful job and i would love to do it forever it is not a secure job that that you know you can do forever so i think i will just do streaming for as long as i can for as long as i have fun for as long as it's you know i can pay my rent with it and i can pay my uni and everything with it um but i i feel like at some point everyone just falls off um so or most people so um and like i will i will still work towards my plan a which is psychiatrist um even though i but i will not i don't know i really know how to say it but like i will not give up streaming um but i will still work towards becoming a psychiatrist because you never know i could go live today and have zero viewers so yeah um you know i know this sounds weird but you may be able to become a psychiatrist and a streamer it is actually possible which i didn't i i didn't i didn't realize you know i i don't i don't know how true that was maybe a year or two ago but it appears to be true now yeah yeah you're right so and so it sounds like you're in uni you're doing uh i took this year off because of covet i just couldn't handle it totally but uh after like once everything comes down i will definitely go go back to uni yeah i wasn't here once i just start again and do you nikki do you mind if i ask just estimate of how old you are i'm 19. oh wow okay yeah how long have you been streaming two years oh wow it's been my job for one year now you seem older i hear that a lot yeah how do you how do you interpret that when people say things like that um i agree because i had to grow up very very quickly so and i have very i have a lot of friends that are in their early mid to late 20s so i don't i don't have many friends that are in like 18 19 18 19 17 18 19. so i think um yeah i think i think that makes sense yeah it's sad that you had to grow up early [Laughter] yeah but it made me the person i am today and i'm actually as much as i still struggle with myself um pretty happy with who i am and who are you um i'm nikki i am here to help people and make people laugh and smile and as long as i can do that i'm happy i did a lot of um volunteering growing up and that's definitely also what i want to do continuing on i couldn't do it during culvert but yeah yeah this may sound like a weird question why is it important to you to make people happy i think because i know what it feels like to be at your lowest and i don't i don't wish that upon anyone not even my enemies i don't have anyways but the people that i don't like i just don't want i just yeah you know i'm really curious who has enemies nowadays i don't know yeah i know right it's like i mean i'm sure they're out there but i'm sure some people do and i you know right i yeah i have people i don't like and people who don't like me but we're not enemies i'm not making anything to to make their life miserable or anything and and you said that you you enjoy making people happy because you know what it's like to be unhappy can you tell us a little bit more about that um i don't know i i just had a lot of bad experiences in my life i would say like i'm not i always whenever i do this um i i'm like oh i'm just i'm just trying to talk about myself and i come off as oh i'm just talking about myself here and making myself feel seem i don't know i don't like talking about myself in that way much i don't like telling people that i've had bad experiences in my life but i definitely did and i definitely um had i don't know just very low points yeah yeah it's time for me to talk about that yeah how do how do you why is it hard for you to talk about that i don't know maybe because i um i am not at a position right now where my life's good i don't have to you know as much as i still have a lot of struggles and especially with myself i am financially stable and i am doing a job that i love and i have many friends and and and out of that that i feel like i am not allowed to talk about the bad times in my life because it's you know it's not like that anymore so why should i talk about it um so i i think i think that's what makes me struggle can i think for a second for sure so nikki i think you know it's it's i really enjoy talking to you i think we're having a very lovely conversation um i think it could help a lot of people to hear your story and at the same time i'm not hearing anything that we're talking about that will actually be helpful to you yeah and and something very sneaky is happening which is that you're you're coming on here and you're helping other people you're sharing your experiences for the sake of educating other people but we're not we're really steering away from anything that could be helpful to you does that make sense yes that makes sense okay so you're you're a sneaky one so let's think a little bit about that for a second okay we can we can respect that boundary right if you don't want to talk about things that could help you and i think by the way there's a theme running here which is that you don't like reaching out for help you don't like showing people and now everything's better there's that right yeah yeah so so but we can we can actually choose to respect that right like we can just acknowledge that that thing is there that you don't want you don't want us to throw you a pity party right yeah you don't want us to like think like oh like nikki's had like such a hard time exactly like you're happy sharing your your story of triumph like yeah it was really hard but you can do it too like you're happy saying that you're having an inspiration if it helps other people but yeah you don't want us to be worried about you exactly 100 yeah right which is fine if we decide that so i'm i see you're getting emotional i've maybe taught you a little bit sorry but you are so you are so incredibly self-aware nikki you understand yourself so well you've grown so much so i'm just i'm putting it out there normally i'd like skirt around it i won't you know i wouldn't like pin you like i feel like i've trapped you so that's all right so how what do you think about that like um no i i do agree um i do agree with that especially the oh i don't we don't want to throw you a pity party because um i do get babied on the internet a lot um where it's like oh poor nikki and oh she's she's she's doing this and but for her well um well i'm sitting here and i'm like yeah but it's all right like you know i i'm fine so i feel like i feel like if i if i would talk about how right now i struggle with a lot of anxiety which is true i feel like people would then again be like oh poor her i hope she's okay which is fair enough but i i don't want that like i want to be here for my chat and i want to make my chat laugh they don't have to be there for me because i am just their source of entertainment can i think for a second yes i'm gonna need a long second maybe like a minute that's okay i'm so sorry no no no it's it's not i i think so i need to think more when people are more insightful because usually like if people are slow with how how they progress it gives me plenty of time i mean not like people are slow but like the more insightful you are the more i have to like take a step back and you know just hold on okay okay subtle there's a lot going on here that's okay i'm okay i'm i'm here okay so the first thing is that i think i i want to kind of toss something out to you maybe you can help me think through it so one is that people baby you right i think that can be insulting and demeaning but i would suspect that when you get babied there's a when there's a subtle difference between people babying you and caring about you and i i think that you probably dislike both yeah probably and one of those is fair right because we don't want a baby we don't want to we don't want to like say like oh like oh nikki does it like poor thing she's so hurt she's so incapable of no because you're very capable yeah exactly financially independent at the age of 19 in university have career aspirations you you spawned in a really really bad location when you were born on this earth and with a lot of challenges and despite this the fact that you had like a crappy spawn you have managed to accomplish at the age of 19 just a ridiculous amount and we're just getting started so i think that babying you is not fair yeah i agree at the same time i think that you don't it makes you uncomfortable when people choose to care about you i agree what's up with that um maybe maybe i'm just not used to i don't want to again oh you're just not used to people caring about me there's that voice you see that voice yeah i know um but yeah i i have an example for example an example for example um i i'm in this group in this friend group and um they are streamers they're all streamers all content creators and they talk over me a lot and it's a thing it's it's a thing um and i've recently gotten into this into like i talked to like two of the people or three other people and then they they suddenly let me talk and as much as i was always like oh i wish i could talk i wish i could say my mind oh you know um once i actually could i didn't know what to say because i was so used to being talked over and not finishing my sentences not being heard that once i actually got heard once people actually listened to me i did not know what to say and i think that is the same thing with people caring about me where it's like as much as i always wanted it and as much as i always wanted to feel safe and feel secure and have people care about me now that i have people care about me i just don't know what to do with it yeah beautifully said and what i'm hearing from you is that it's sad but you sort of didn't learn how to be cared for and and so i think what i'm hearing from you is that you've really like adapted to surviving on your own you know because like you don't need other people to take care of you because that voice in your head doesn't yeah it's always [ __ ] up yeah it really is yeah interesting huh can you tell us about that voice in your head oh that voice it does not like me it does not want me to succeed um and i think it helps me to be more self-aware but at the same time it just makes me sound hypocritical a lot of the times yeah so what kinds of things does it say to you um i think it started i had an eating disorder throughout my entire life my mom's a model so she kind of put that down on me and that voice started when i was very young and at first it was just the thing it repeated the things that people in school told me that my mom showed me um it it repeated my own insecurities and the older i got the more it just repeated um it kind of just made me feel like i don't deserve good things happening to me you know yep so let me ask you a weird question does the voice help your success or hinder your success that's the question i don't know and certain things i would say definitely it hinders it on the surface i would say it hinders it but on the other hand i think i i need to i need that voice to tell myself i can overcome it i think i think i just constantly need that challenge of something else working against me and working against what i want so i yeah if that makes sense makes a lot of sense and now i'm gonna because this is the thing nikki you make too much sense right so i asked you the hard question which usually it takes us an hour and a half to get to oh actually the voice isn't all bad but you get there right away so i i need to i feel like it's a therapy um a little bit i know the normal one so like you know i feel like i'm i'm like in an anime where like we've caught up with the manga and now i need to make filler and right it's quite a sneak to pause for a second because this is gonna be a filler i'm sorry no no no it's it's on the contrary so um man you understand so much thank you okay how would you feel if chat cared about you i would feel at one point at one hand i would feel um like thankful and i would be like that's very sweet that's very nice and on the other hand i would feel like that's not your place to be and then on the other hand i would probably feel like please don't okay so we're gonna pay attention to on one hand and on the other hand okay any time you say that or anytime you think that so for example the voice in your head does it help your success or hinder your success on the one hand it's toxic and on the other hand it's a challenge that drives me forward yeah right so yeah so and when we go back to chat and when we ask like you know do they how would you feel about them caring about you like there's a part of you that can feel gratitude there's a part of you that says no no it works the other way around and yeah what's that third part of you um like it's not their place to be like they have their own things to care about i guess maybe yeah so whose place is it to care about you um my friends and my family that's a good answer is that actually how you feel yeah i think i mean i guess chad that's a very hard question i i do feel thankful that chad cares about me of course i do i i love my audience my audience is the sweetest audience yeah yeah um but maybe maybe they should care about me in a different way than my friends and family should care about me because we we didn't establish the word care what is the word care what does the word care say and intel i think it's like chat should care about me in a way of oh is nikki happy doing the work that she does is nikki have been happy providing us with the content that she that she does is she safe and happy no no safe and healthy like those things but they can't actually change much about it as like like i said i'm very happy with my audience and that is because they act the way that they do and i think i think if they care about me in a way of i want to make this community safe because i care about my streamer then i'm very happy and i think that's what they should do but they should not care about me on a personal level where they will reach out to me on my business email and ask me if i am okay and if i want to talk to them because that is not their place to be yeah so that sounds like very good boundaries so now i'm gonna ask you do you sometimes find yourself um well said no i'm gonna have to pause this is gonna be the stream that we call the battle of pauses and i think you're winning right now the score is like eight to one okay so how how do you feel about yourself when you're making your chat happy i feel good about myself i if when when i have a good stream where i see that my chat is having fun i call that a successful stream and a good stream okay seems like give me a second that's totally fine i'm so sorry i feel so bad why because you keep having to pause so what's why do you feel bad about that i'm not sure i don't know what would make you feel good that's a hard question um i don't know i'm i'm happy to be here i feel good to be here i'm very thankful that i got invited to this i i am too i'm i'm i'm doing well right now are you concerned that i'm not doing well yeah yeah and so when you get concerned that i'm not doing well how does that make you feel not not well yeah right because you're not maybe you're not making me happy and when you don't make me happy how do you how do you feel unhappy like like guys like i didn't succeed yeah what does it feel like to not succeed like that voice that told me i won't will will be louder yeah absolutely and remind me of that so the voice is telling you oh you shouldn't be this difficult you should be simpler exactly and you should let dr k work you to a revelation and that everybody can watch the revelation and then you can have you can cry and you can have learned something new about yourself and that it's going to be exactly what it's supposed to be everyone will be happy exactly but the voice telling you no no don't don't disrupt the boat right so so i think i'm gonna stop asking you some questions and i'm just gonna tell you okay so like but so nikki that's a problem right because you've got to be really really careful about oh i don't even know how to say this um do you see how that's a problem i do see how that's help us out um i have learned especially in the last year and a half that that is a problem because i have met certain people that told me one thing and i would believe that thing and i would adapt to that thing and then they would act a different way and i would try to act that way and adapt to that way but in the end i could not because i couldn't steer the boat and the die in the correct direction um because i didn't get any directions um and because i constantly need to um from from my end i need to succeed i need to be i don't know i i don't know how to explain it but i feel like i feel like i see myself as something that everyone can fall back on i will adapt myself to everyone and everything around me whether or not it's beneficial or good for me um and because i get these different directions and no directions at all i feel very very lost a lot of the times yeah so now we're going to come back to another question or a question that we've asked before so who are you wow um um i am [Music] i'm still nicki you're damn right you are i i still am a person with ambitions and um goals in life and who is independent by themselves um i just maybe sometimes um try to adapt myself too much to other people well set so now we get into a tricky situation because as as you give the right answers and i said as i say things like well said that may calm down the voice do you see that yeah yeah because now you're being vulnerable enough like oh like that's a hard question like oh dr k yeah and then and like so the more that you like struggle like the more the voice is like good job nikki you're being what they want you to be right and so this is tricky because like like you said you know you adapt yourself a little bit too much you're very good you're a chameleon you can be what people need you to be and and this is the tricky thing is that like you know when you're like i think that there's a lot of genuineness but there's like a lot of um dialectic actually so so the the d and dbt stands for dialectical and and what dialectical means i think you understand it very well i mean it's clear so the dialectic is like the two sides of the argument so on the one hand i'm nikki and on the other hand i actually am a little bit confused about who i am at times and and or maybe another way to put it i think as you have started to learn who you are is i give up who i am for what people want me to be and and so like i think that that's challenging um any thoughts i agree yeah i think i think that sounds very accurate yeah so so i i this is going to sound kind of weird but you know the voice in your head when other people tell you the same thing that the voice in your head tells you how do you respond to that yeah you're right i um i have learned oh sorry um i have learned growing up and going through therapy i've learned how to take compliments i we had a whole therapy session group session about how to take compliments so whenever someone gives me a compliment i say thank you i yeah that's really nice of you um but it it is only when someone says something negative about me that i actually take it in and i i process it and it actually reaches me i think that's that's why it's very hard to be a streamer because i do see a lot of negative things yeah so so i and i think this is where maybe you know maybe we can try to like i'd like to help you swim in the water of like why you do that right so like you've got this negative voice in you part of it you know feels like it's like hurts you because it does hurt you and at the same time it also like helps you succeed right and and so then there are times where you know i think that like you have to be careful i mean we haven't talked about your romantic relationships but i think sometimes people for whom negativity resonates with them can open themselves up to abusive relationships or abusive dynamics and we can kind of hear this a little bit because you had that group of friends that always talked over you and you're like resenting it on the one hand but it feels right on the other and then you've got like these two or three people who actually give you the space to speak and that's what you've always wanted and you're really uncomfortable and this is the dialectic it's like i want to speak but boy does it feel good when i get talked over because then your voice is like you see that he's you don't have anything good to say anyway exactly you don't know how to talk anyways yeah yeah so it's kind of tricky and so then the question becomes like what what makes you like and then when people compliment you i think this is tricky so i know you had a therapy session where you learned how to act how to accept a compliment you practice acting you don't actually accept it what gets in the way i probably that voice not wanting me to succeed not wanting me to feel good about myself and feel good about things that people compliment me on yeah and and what's your understanding of why your voice doesn't want you to feel good what is it doing there why is it doing that it's trying to keep me in the place where i have been for the majority of my life because that's comforting because that is the safety net that i that i have i um i fall and like when we talk about romantic relationships i fall in love with people who make me feel safe um and that might be me trying to get out of that place that the voice is keeping me in that safety net um but that also like you said opens me up to a lot of abusive relationships because that is then the safety net that i try to fall back on um and a lot of the times it doesn't work out um so i think i think that is what the voice is doing it's trying to keep me in that place where i have been my entire life where it is easy to stay because i don't have to work to get out of it well said so so here's here's what i kind of heard so i think i know it sounds weird but i think the voice is protecting you right and this is is actually like devastating but it happens to be true that you have survived abuse and neglect and like there's a very interesting adaptation to like surviving abuse and neglect which is like this idea that you don't deserve any better because then at least it makes sense right if i'm like fundamentally oh you want to finish yeah like human beings try to make sense of everything everything we need to we need to make sense of it so i totally agree i've heard that a lot of times i've learned that while i did psychology myself i know that that is the thing i i need to make sense of it why did i get abused why did i get neglected what what made me like what made people want to do that to me and the thing that that voice tells me it's because you deserve it because whatever you did you deserve it and i say okay right that makes sense i deserve it um yeah yeah so i'm gonna point something out i think we're gonna skirt close to the area that we're not going to talk about so you don't have to talk about it but i'm just going to illustrate something right so if we go back to like early on and if you can share something i think it could be illustrative but it's enough for you to just think it you don't actually have to answer my question i forgot what i was going to say with that oh no okay so so when you're growing up and you're moving around a lot and things are bad right your mind comes up with like some kind of way to help you survive that right and you so you come up with like this adaptation and then the interesting thing is that like that adaptation makes sense like it's sort of like your mind comes up with this idea and there's interesting stuff about cognitive development stuff that we can talk about but essentially your mind like comes up with a formula for the way that the world works you have to make sense of the way the world works and to grow up the way that you did the only logical conclusion that a smart insightful person like yourself can come to is that you don't deserve to be treated well because clearly you know you had lots of data to suggest that you don't deserve to be treated well and then something really important happens which is that voice in your head says that you know what as long as you don't deserve to be treated well and we're all on the same page as long as we know the final boss that we're dealing with we can win we can survive you're completely okay if you don't rely on anyone else if no one cares about you i can take care of you i will protect you i will make you succeed i will help you become a psychiatrist that transforms and enriches the lives of many many people and it's going to be a shell that you show the rest of the world and i'm going to be with you on the inside and we're not going to let anyone else in [Music] and so it can become terrifying because that's it's a safety net i think you used a beautiful phrase there and now things get really really dangerous because if people start to care about you and you let them in what does that say about you that i'm vulnerable sure that i i think i think that is also like a big thing i have tried to let people in and then that trust that i've gave given that people got abused so then the voice gets louder um and tells me to see see that's that's why you shouldn't trust people that's why we are in here you and me but everyone else is out there um yeah so now i'm going to say something this may not make a whole lot of sense i think the thing you've got to be really careful about nikki is i think that voice knows how to pick the right people to let them in and convince you that i i was right all along i agree 100 my mom has the same issue well yeah my mom and i actually talked about that a lot i agree can you can you help us understand that a little bit because i know we know what we're talking about i'm not sure that everyone can follow um so i think it is so people in your life as a person that has met many people in their lives uh growing up and moving a lot um have certain patterns of how to get to know you how to talk to you what their hobbies are the way they approach other people and i think i don't do it consciously but subconsciously i see those patterns and i take the toxic patterns and i blend them out they're not there for me but subconsciously i know that these are toxic patterns and these patterns will hurt me um but i will still i because i don't see them consciously i will let these people in and then once i get hurt by them on one hand i'm surprised and i tell myself why did i deserve that and on the other hand i tell myself yeah but these you you you knew that you you knew that that was that was what you wanted that that was what you what you needed i guess yeah it's it's tricky right because i i think there's a part of it because like nikki you are very you will be a very good psychiatrist if you'd be thank you so i think you're really good at reading people and i think you're really good at like knowing what they are and what they're going to give you and i think there's a part of you that now we're really getting into hypothetical territory but i'd say that there's a part of you that sees all of the stuff on the surface that you want from those people and also detects like everything underneath the surface and it also reassures you because it says hey look at all this beautiful stuff on the surface this person is going to be the right person for you and then underneath they know that that person is going to make you feel about yourself the way that you sometimes do when you listen to that voice yeah definitely it's hard so now we get to yeah so let me just let me think for a second do you do you have a sense of how to change this um i mean like i said trying to let people in as much as i will i know i will get hurt in the future um trying to let people in trying to let people understand me and my vulnerabilities um yeah i'm not sure yeah so so i think that's that's a good that's a good strategy i think it could be bumpy mm-hmm um so what as everything is as as every recovery process is well said also very resilient of you so but you know nikki i i'd actually prefer if it's okay with you to try to like lead you down a path now that's a little bit different yeah for sure and the thing is uh trying stuff i don't think is actually your strong suit i i think you're very insightful and so what i'd love to do is actually try to leverage your ability to understand your capacity for awareness and actually it has nothing to do with anything outside of you it has everything to do with what goes on inside you so the first thing is that recognize that the voice in your head is what his is your survivor right like you've you've you are a survivor and and i think the really terrifying thing is that like you have concluded that you're not like a good person on the inside now i know that you don't there are parts of you that has come to realize that that's not true and stuff like that so totally fine but this goes back to like if someone compliments you you're like you know it bounces right off or you learn how to pretend to take it in and then if someone's like really nasty to you they're like you know it kind of sinks in and you're like yes that's correct so that's what we're talking about okay and and the only way that the world can make sense if you grow up with the history that you have which once again we don't need to go into is it okay that i just reference it like that yeah yeah okay so like you know i and if you feel like i think it could be illustrated but you don't have to if you can feel your if you can share your experience of like a particular memory you don't have to tell us what happened but just how you learn to believe that about yourself you know something like that not not quite yet but let me just keep going but i think it could be helpful so so the world makes sense because you don't deserve to be cared for and and then what happens is like something in there as you're navigating those protective mechanisms we see a lot of these coping mechanisms like eating disorders um you know self-injurious behavior substance use we see all these different things and if you really look at those i i you know i i'd bet money and you can answer this if you want to that when you were engaging in self-injurious behavior it would shut up the voice in your head and this is the really interesting thing about self-injurious behavior is that a lot of times it's not any intention to harm yourself it's actually a very powerful almost meditative technique that brings your awareness to the present and all of the voices in your head shut up because there is something incredibly painful that demands a hundred percent of your attention yeah hence why dbt absolutely right so what what dbt does is it trains you to replace that injurious behavior with another meditative technique or awareness technique or grounding technique that causes your mind to like let go of those thoughts and focus on one thing and so i think the real challenge is going to be and i feel like i want to build up to this better is that if you are worth caring for it rewrites your history because that means that like everything that happened to you really shouldn't have happened to you yeah wow um that's just wrong that's just yeah i just realized that that's way that's crazy um because i always tell myself yeah no it's okay that it happened because it made me the first name today but if you say it like that you're right oh god oh god yeah right it's it's hard because here's the thing nikki it's not okay that i think that stuff happened to you but that you know [Laughter] damn it nikki so you know what is that we can just take a second oh god wow i've never i've never looked at it that way actually it was always like oh i'm so strong for getting over it and telling myself it's okay that it happened but in reality i i know that it shouldn't have happened so what is it like to have that thought i still wanna i still just wanna do good with it like as much as it shouldn't have happened it i can i learn from it and i can take so much experience from it that i can use to help people and i think i think if i can manage to either and and do this for someone else like that it doesn't happen for someone else or help someone else to to deal with it and and to cope with what happened i think as long as i can do that it's gonna be worth it i know i'm just like projecting it on other people again but i feel like that's all i can do so so here's sure so i i think you're it the voice in your head is struggling now okay which is good but you're saying like if i can turn some turn it into something good then it makes it worth it nikki no it doesn't nothing is gonna make it work nothing isn't gonna make it okay right that like and i i don't mean to bludgeon you i feel like no yeah no i'm not gonna let you sneak away right because you're doing like your mind's trying to do it like oh then it'll be okay if i can if i can protect a hundred people's pain by sacrificing myself then that makes the sacrifice worth it and this is what i'm telling you this is why i think you're not going to be able to let people care about you until you recognize that fixing no amount of people's lives makes it okay what happened to you there's no amount of self-sacrifice that like i'm not going to let you do that saving a thousand lives doesn't make it okay right like worth it that's what you've got to get rid of because that's once again like that's you putting other people ahead of yourself i tend to do that yes you do and so if you really want to be able to let people care about you you have to let yourself come first sometimes and i think you're learning that you know and i think you're right that chat there are boundaries that are important but when it comes to your friends and your family and when it comes to other people like wanting to listen to your opinion like you actually have it and here's a crazy thing so you think that your value is determined on the number of people that you help like i believe you have value no matter what you accomplish like that core thing there's nothing there's nothing you can do that just like that counteracts that voice in sight like that's like you see what i'm saying there's like there's like the like you don't have to do [ __ ] you have intrinsic value nikki has intrinsic value she doesn't have to prove anything she doesn't have to make it and like what happened to her was bad there's nothing that will make it worth it i'll have to think about like days after penny for your thoughts what are you thinking right now [Laughter] i think also insightful that i i encourage you to continue to think about those things but i think maybe we're short-circuited for the day wow yeah so i don't know what to do now so yeah um questions do you have any you don't have to have anything in your mind because i think this is sort of what we go for right i think it's fine to process this maybe talk to your therapist next week about it whatever um no i don't think i have any questions about that now but um like i said i i really like what you do like what you work do you want to tell me or i know a lot of my viewers are in chat right now do you want to tell us like more about your work and what you do [Laughter] yes we can we can we can certainly go to safe ground and the safety net of telling people about what we do because i i i don't think i can talk much about myself anymore i think we're done i think it's it's a gigi uh so yeah sure i'm i'm happy to do that so my name is ola i'm a i'm a psychiatrist that practices in boston i spent about seven years studying to become a monk and then met my wife and fell in love and then she wanted to be married to a doctor and so i went to medical school she wanted to be married to a neurosurgeon but i decided that wasn't for me so i picked the next best thing which is psychiatry and then what i really found is that there are a lot of uh you know mental health the child the mental health challenges that people face nowadays are are expanding changing very rapidly and that some of these perspectives that psychiatry has are like missing something so and i think nikki actually you illustrate this really well where man you are incredibly resilient incredibly insightful i'm sure you'd be a wonderful clinician um you have a very high eq which is emotional quotient so i think your ability to read other people and understand what they need is like really high and at the same time despite all of the therapy despite all of the intelligence there's a perspective here about what is the self that i think is missing from kind of like psychiatric treatment because at the end of the day like we can you know you could do therapy and you can make these uncoveries in therapy but sort of really grappling with this like of who am i and do i have worth as a human being and being taught that i don't have worth as a human being overcoming that being resilient and being positive and sacrificing yourself for the rest of the world is noble and wonderful and makes the world a better place and is also unfair to you right so these kinds of perspectives is what we try to help people with is that there's definitely a mental health or mental treatment component i think seeing a therapist is a wonderful thing and and i think you're just a really fantastic example of someone who's really internalized i think it is amazing that you know you're saying that you don't really engage in self-injurious behavior anymore we haven't really talked about it but it sounds like some of your eating behaviors are probably better under control things like that and so i think you're a wonderful example of what we try to balance in people which is that there's like a mental health comp or like mental treatment component right which is like the clinical psychiatry and then there's almost like a more spiritual component understanding yourself component finding your purpose in life trying to figure out you know what is the root of these patterns of who you engage in relationships with how can we understand those things uh so that's really what we try to do and we started in the gaming community because i'm a degenerate gamer and um what i really found is that a lot of people in this community like need help and need support and the other really interesting thing is that i found that the standard psychiatry stuff part of the reason it doesn't work ideally is because we actually don't play to the gamer's strengths and in your case nikki like i think playing directly to the strength of your insight like going out and trying stuff like you don't need to do that you can actually figure most of it out up here and i think that's what you've managed to do your entire life right like you've learned how to survive and adapt like all in here and so that's kind of the approach that we take i like that now i'm curious whenever i i say you're insightful like do you does that sink in or do you swat it uh no it doesn't get i i i i take i appreciate that a lot yeah like hearing that from especially you as you know a psychiatrist a trained professional i do appreciate that actually a lot yeah you're you're sneaky enough to be a good psychiatrist thank you um yeah so that's what we do you know we can wrap up now if you want to we can talk about meditation a little bit um if i think this is going to be old news to you but i was thinking about maybe taking a moment to explain a couple of things we haven't talked much about diagnosis and and stuff like that i'm purposely not asking you that question because i don't want to but if people are curious you know i can share some information that may or may not relate to nikki but i think is just useful information to know does that feel safe to you yeah for sure okay so the first thing is that you know what we're hearing from nikki and this happens to a lot of people is that when we grow up in situations where um sometimes we deal with things like abuse and neglect we have to learn like almost as a survival mechanism like how to read other people so there's a lot of evidence that shows there's a really interesting study on people who have borderline disorder which is um a diagnosis that relates to early childhood trauma where if someone's smiling if i'm smiling and then i get mad if you look at that like if if we were to like pause or like take a recording of that video and watch that transition like i'm smiling and then maybe this is like halfway and then i'm mad you know if we look at that transition and we break it up into a hundred still photos where photo number one is 100 smile in photo number two i mean photo number hundred is a hundred percent angry most of us have to cross the halfway point before we can tell that someone isn't smiling anymore we have to be at like 70 percent towards anger people with bpd can detect anger when people are like 80 smiling so something happens in our brains when we grow up in environments that are traumatic where when everyone else is smiling we are actually able to pick out like negative things and so it changes the way that we think it's absolutely adaptive mechanism there's an interview that we did with coco b a couple maybe about almost a year ago now where you know he grew up in an abusive house household and i asked him like how many seconds did it take from when your dad walked into the door whether you knew like you know today is a bad day or today is a good day and he's like less than two less than three like you know right away so your brain is actually wiring to detect negative sentiment from other people and that can be really really challenging because like even people who like you eighty percent of the way there all you're gonna see is the 20 frustration that they have and that can be very hard for you to like interact with other people because even though most of the people are happy all you're seeing is people being angry and so you know i think that's something that we see a lot with trauma the other interesting thing is that when people you know go through traumatic experiences you develop this voice in your head that kind of talks about how you're a bad person that voice gets reinforced by seeing the 20 frustration in every person you meet because it's like you see i told you so i told you so sometimes we also get into weird patterns and we didn't talk too much about this but i'll leave this for you for later but that let's say you meet two people i haven't asked you about your sexuality or anything but i'm just gonna assume a heteronormative perspective for a second so let's say you meet two guys and like one of them genuinely cares about you and one of them is an [ __ ] who pretends to care about you and the interesting thing that can happen is that sometimes the genuine caring actually makes you feel so uncomfortable that you pull away from it and you kind of pick the devil that you know and so this is where like that awareness of that discomfort it becomes really really important and and sort of not giving in to that discomfort or at least noticing okay am i giving into this like why do i not like this guy like what is my mind telling me which voice in my head is the one telling me that this is not the right guy and what what is it that like why am i so enamored with this person oh they're so caring they're willing to drop everything for me you know they met me three days ago and they're gonna move across the country to be with me and it can you can feel so loved but the problem is like that same guy six months later is gonna move across the country for someone else and then the voice in your head is like see i told you so i told you you were unlovable he just got to know you and you couldn't keep up the act for so so long oh you got it [Laughter] see that stuff about you know you being unlovable great because that's what we're talking about is that sometimes that voice tells you that you're fundamentally unlovable because if you are lovable it changes everything and so a lot of times when we deal with those voices we also get into you know our bodies our minds our brains have to cope they have to survive they have to adapt so the voice itself is one adaptation and then we also find i i basically have seen three things consistently one is substance use one is self-harm and third is eating disorder eating disorder is the way that we get control over our life i'm not in control i don't get to choose i'm moving every six months i don't get to choose who my mom hangs out with but i get to control what i put into my body and even when there are lots of signals from your body that are telling you you should eat something you are going to say no despite how hard things get oddly enough the harder things get the more out of control your world is the more empowered you feel by taking control of like all of these sensations from your body you are gonna win at least in this temple that is my body i get to decide what happens and so we see this really interesting like correlation between the eating disorder gets worse when your circumstances get worse and it's like you trying to internally balance stuff self-injurious behavior we talked about a little bit sometimes self-injurious behavior can be the result of like you actually like wanting to hurt yourself but for some people for a lot of people it actually seems to be almost like a meditative technique when i hear people talk about it when i ask them like how do you feel before you do it how do you feel when you do it how do you feel after you do it sounds to me like meditating because you enter this no mind state where your mind is fully focused on the cutting or the burning or the whatever right and then substance use is sort of the easy oblivion this is one that we do gaming to i'm just gonna load up this particular game and i'm gonna forget about all my problems yeah so so kind of like wrapping things up you know here's what i'd say um if anyone is struggling with either substance use eating disorder behaviors or self-harm you guys should really do yourself the benefit i think nikki is the nikki that we're seeing today who's incredibly adaptive and has managed to be like really successful at the age of 19 and all that good stuff i think that she's accomplished through like doing a lot of hard work on your own but also having some expert guidance so i encourage anyone to go see a licensed mental health professional if you guys are dealing with any of that stuff um and also to try to understand like the fundamentals of sort of like who you are you know and and at some point nikki i know it's terrifying but at some point no i'm you're gonna push that back let me think about this i was about to say at some point i hope you realize that you are worth caring for intrinsically and and i know that there's a part of you that can get on board with that but there's a part of you that may be pushed that way so i'm going to say something else which is going to be a little bit more terrifying and a little bit more defiant i'm going to choose to care about you whether you like it or not now you think the baseball bat again i'm gonna just care you can go [ __ ] yourself i don't well that doesn't mean that you care about me though huh that doesn't mean you care about me though yeah it's a little bit of a joke i know i'm gonna choose to care about you no matter what you do whether you become a psychiatrist and you save thousands of lives good for you and if you choose not to do that i still think you're a worthwhile person who deserves a place on this earth and deserves happiness sinking in somewhere everyone how much you're swatting yeah enough for today i would say so i think normally i would offer to teach you meditation but i think today is a day where we're not going to do that i think we're going to just let you i've learned a lot about medica meditation that's the other thing and and and maybe what i would yeah so i think we're just going to let you go now okay thank you so much for coming on thank you so much for having me i appreciate that a lot yeah dude you've been awesome thank you thank you good luck to you thank you all right bye oh man chat she is pog dude incredibly strong

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 218,975

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist

Id: PDTPg_qKvn8

Length: 78min 47sec (4727 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021