Breaking the Cycle of Overthinking

today's talk is really about anxiety but what i really love about it is there are a few dimensions to this anxiety the first is we can see how growing up in a particular environment predisposes your mind to anxiety the second element that we're going to dig into is how using substances can sometimes exacerbate our anxiety or even sort of create particular situations in our mind that feel like anxiety but may actually have a different diagnostic kind of perspective and then the last thing about today's video is sort of how do we deal with anxiety and sort of overcoming some of the hesitations that people have around getting treatment so i really thought that chuck's chuck did a fantastic job um of of like touching on i really loved this discussion about anxiety because we talk about anxiety like it's monolithic right like i have anxiety like you have anxiety we all have anxiety what is the treatment for anxiety like you know in western medicine we you know it's like you have anxiety period and we heard from chuck he's like you know my doctor gives me this medicine and like because i have anxiety and and so it it like our system of medicine we treat anxiety we don't treat people but what i really love about today's talk is it's an exploration of where anxiety starts how your upbringing brings you to anxiety how substances can actually exacerbate things or make things worse and then also how a lot of things that look like anxiety may be a little bit more diagnostically nuanced and then finally about like how getting treatment is important but what are the things that can get in the way of you wanting treatment and so all that kind of stuff is um you know is fantastic so i think this is really what like explorations of anxiety look like where i want you guys to understand that it's not just about a clinical diagnosis and a medication it's about a whole spectrum of like origins of where you how you got to hear thinking about these other influences that have compounded your anxiety over time and how to approach it in a truly multi-disciplinary manner venting that negative energy using meditation taking medication seeking a therapist overcoming your fears that you kind of internally face having to face those fears deal with those fears etcetera really fantastic how's it going good man how are you i kept me for a second oh i'm good i'm good i appreciate you having me on thank you very much for that dude i appreciate you coming on everyone is always so grateful that like we're having them on and i don't think you guys realize like we wouldn't be anywhere without you i think it's more so uh i'm sure there's a lot of people that could you know be sitting here instead of me right now you know what i mean so still got to be grateful yeah that's awesome man it's it's very positive of you and and so are is your name c do uh yeah it's just like an abbreviation of my real name which is charles dolan you know um but yeah you can call me chuck charles c dude it's all good okay chuck chuck yep that works mono syllable and um okay so chuck is there something in particular that you uh you know you were thinking we could talk about today or maybe something that we could help you with um i mean i guess i could uh kind of you know break down what i'm going through i don't like i don't really like talk about this so i'm not really sure like what i should be talking about or what you're interested in or what you can do to help me um but you know basically i've been i've been dealing with like anxiety for a long time and i would say it's gotten progressively worse um it started to like hit me really bad when my wife was pregnant with her first kid i don't know if it was related i feel like subconsciously i guess it would have to be related if that's like when it started getting bad but um basically i'm like it's kind of weird like i'm actually like afraid to have anxiety like i think my my biggest fear is like having a panic attack because like one time i had like a panic attack that lasted like what i would say was like an hour or something and i felt like i i wasn't in control of my body like i felt like i felt like reality became like fake you know what i mean um it's kind of hard to explain so i feel like that's like my biggest fear and like i feel like i'm constantly like overthinking and i just like i just have like um constant like chatter in my head like okay am i gonna have a panic attack okay i'm feeling nervous like like the slightest thing like wow i feel like a tingle like in my body like oh my my heart is like beating faster like you know anything just kind of starts like those thoughts that just don't ever stop if that makes sense like it's just true most of the time i would say it's like an all-day thing but um you know i kind of had like this uh this thing on my stream a few days ago which you know kind of started you know me reaching out and trying to make like small improvements and uh i would say for the most part it's been better like you know significantly better and generally it is better i think i just had a string of like really bad days but um you know even then like when i'm feeling normal like my brain is just so weird i'll be like wow i haven't thought about anxiety in a while oh now i'm going to start thinking about it you know it's like like i noticed myself feeling good and then i start to question oh yeah i'm feeling good your anxiety is like you're not allowed to do that it doesn't stop it doesn't stop yeah wow dude it sounds heavy bro i mean you know um i i don't want to i guess oversell it like i feel like you know i'm probably doing better than some other people that are dealing with this because i do i do do my daily things and you know i i travel i go out and stuff like that but it's definitely sometimes i feel like it's harder to enjoy like living in the moment you know and it kind of makes me sad sometimes so yeah yeah absolutely man how long have you been kind of carrying this around like how long has this anxiety been with you i mean like i said i've had it at a young age i would probably well i don't know how young is young but like maybe like my mid teenage years like 16 or something is like when i you know experienced my first panic attack and then uh it's probably been pretty rough for like three ish years now like you know my son's almost three and it was like while we were pregnant with him so um i would say that's like when it started to get not nearly as manageable like i actually had to get like medicated for it because i was waking up every single day shaking like my my whole day would be me like literally shaking and i i couldn't stop it and it was i couldn't eat and i was you know i was struggling really bad and i tried you know really hard to not do that but like the medication helped me so much that i was like this this just had to be you know the answer because i couldn't live the way i was living absolutely man so i'm glad that you got mental health treatment um because it certainly sounds to me like this is like a clinical case of anxiety and um i'm also kind of noticing so so can do you mind if i ask you a couple of questions just about what kind of treatment you've tried in a little bit of your treatment history sure um yeah go ahead feel free to ask me anything yeah so so in the so let me take a step back and explain why i'm asking so usually we steer clear of clinical topics on stream because this really isn't supposed to be medical advice the reason i want to ask you a little bit about your treatment history is because in my experience as a psychiatrist there are some things that have to do with clinical anxiety and there are actually non-clinical solutions that we can learn around anxiety as well and i basically want to parse out how much of the clinical stuff has been done so that i know how to approach the non-clinical stuff if that makes sense so i've got a couple of like basic questions for you okay you don't have to answer anything because this is for your personal medical history it's going to be like super high level stuff so it sounds like uh you're taking medication now and that the medication helps yeah okay um and it sounds like you started medication around the time that your wife was pregnant okay have you tried psychotherapy or something besides medication no okay so that that's that's that's basically all the questions i need to ask because um that'll sort of help me understand like what to include and what not to include and and kind of how we go from here sure um any particular reason you haven't tried uh psychotherapy honestly um i would feel i would say like until as of like recently um i kind of feel like i just my thought process was like if i just kind of deal with this and like try and forget about it it'll go away like i didn't really like talking about it like this conversation actually is like kind of like making me nervous a little bit but i'm happy to be here and like i i also didn't really like want to go to a like you know i guess a psychologist is that because like i don't know i just i guess i guess it just made me a little bit nervous you know like it sure so let's start let's start because he said that you have trouble being present focused right so let's start in the present so i noticed that when we started the conversation you were doing well and then and then as especially when i asked you a little bit about your treatment history you've started crossing your arms i'm noticing you're feeling more nervous so tell me how you feel right now i mean i guess i i guess i feel a little bit nervous you know i'm okay you know i definitely make it through the conversation but yeah absolutely so so i want to just point out that language because it's so interesting right it's like you're uh you play wow right yes so what i'm hearing is like you've got a couple of dots on you and your hp is it's [ __ ] ticking down but you're like you know i'll make it like i'm still gonna wipe like you know we're still gonna win the raid like we're running out of mana like this boat is sinking but we're gonna make it to shore that's what i'm hearing from you which which is like it's a god-awful way to go through life for sure yeah i don't disagree you know so so i i think that our goal here is not to make it through to some you know it's like let's figure out how we can you know cleanse those dots right because what i want to help you with is like to not have to live this way it's not about overcoming your anxiety to survive like that's just not any way to live life right and i i can see that you've learned how to do that really well actually really awesome and noble like i'm sure that you're you know your kid is grateful your family is grateful that you've learned how to manage that anxiety but it's also like i can see it kind of clawing away at you and you're sort of like keeping it at bay while you're trying to live your life and you're sort of protecting your loved ones from the impact of that anxiety does that make sense to you or resonate at all yeah it does how do you feel right now uh i feel you know the same okay did that do anything to your nervousness as you were listening to that not necessarily i think it's kind of like i think it like kind of plateaus you know i mean okay so the most part tell me what what do you mean by nervousness um what do you experience right now uh i guess like i just kind of like if i feel like weird in my own skin does that make sense like i guess and then um maybe that's kind of it i don't know like i just i guess i like try and just do things like like fiddle my hands and you know move move around a little bit um i don't know and this may sound so i'm gonna you know see your weird statement and raise you in a weirder statement do you think that sometimes when you fiddle and stuff you're trying to find your way back into your own skin i'm not sure i feel like it's a way for me to just like do something and i guess like just keep my hands moving or okay i mean just like a like maybe like a nervous tic or something like tapping your leg or you know like playing with something in your hands just just to move around i guess okay are you having particular thoughts right now no i feel like for the most part unless like my mind is like running really crazy when i'm like distracted i'm like generally okay um and like i said you know since like that those a few days ago i started like uh trying to eat better and trying to exercise a little bit i'm not doing anything crazy and you know some people recommended like 15 minutes of you know deep breaths before and after you wake up and i've been doing that and i i kind of felt like there was like immediate results like i felt like my my uh my thought process slowed down quite a bit not like in a i can't like function way but like the racing thoughts like definitely almost went away immediately okay um like i had a string of excuse me uh really bad days and uh where i just kind of felt like my whole day i just couldn't like enjoy anything except the fact that like you're not gonna have a panic attack you're not gonna like you're gonna be okay like you know that just you know so that's what the racing thoughts are they're kind of sometimes you know that's definitely i would say like the start of it um you know sometimes it could get worse than that um you know i've always been like yeah what percentage of your anxiety is about being anxious a lot i would say i like i like i told you like my my first panic attack was like um like super like scary to me like to a traumatizing matter like i was you know i thought i was gonna die and i was afraid that um you know i was afraid that uh i would like potentially like i could lose my mind and never like be brought back to sanity and um i wouldn't you know i wouldn't be able to control myself and you know there would be times where i'm driving like what if i have a panic attack right now do i just die like you know like um going on flights and stuff like what if i have a panic attack on the plane you know like what the hell is going to happen like i can't get off like you know chuck have you ever heard of the term agoraphobia uh i'm recently started reading uh panic to power and i think it's been used in there a few times do you have a have they explained in the book or do you remember in the book how they describe agoraphobia so i want to explain this just to educate people okay so um you know this is something that you should consider talking to your your your provider about but just to explain to you kind of how this works so first of all what bro what you're describing is like completely normal in the sense that some people for whatever reason and we can get to that in a second are kind of like when they create their character they get the they get the panic or anxiety trait and and so sometimes what happens is people who have panic attacks will sometimes become agoraphobic and what agoraphobic means is fear of going outside so they stay home and and sometimes in really severe cases they'll be you know stuck in their home for years at a time sounds like you've already you know i don't think that's going to happen to you so because if if it was gonna happen it would have already happened so i think you kind of dodged that bullet but i think the reason that i bring up agoraphobia right now is because i think it illustrates a lot of what you're going through so the reason that people become agoraphobic is out of a fear of having a panic attack and being in an uncontrolled environment when they have a panic attack so it's not like they literally like are afraid of the sun or the sky or other people literally if you talk to people who are agoraphobic and these are people who like you know it's very hard for them to leave the house what they tell you is what if i have a panic attack in those kinds of places and they're so afraid of losing control in the outside like outside of their home that they end up that fear becomes so powerful that they never leave and there's also sort of like this agoraphobia light which is like when people are able to actually leave the home but whenever they leave the home their mind is constantly scanning for like methods of escape like what if i have a panic attack while i'm on a plane like what would i do what if i have a panic attack if i go to a party like how am i gonna escape from that situation if i start to lose control does that do you have those kinds of thoughts i would say it's not like as bad as you're describing it like the plain one is definitely uh you know a fear of mine for sure like i'm not afraid to fly i'm not afraid like the plane is going to crash like you know like it's literally just like i'm afraid i'm gonna get uncomfortable on the plane and um you know i've definitely been in that situation before where i i started to feel panic attack coming on and i've i've gotten this like you know even recently and although it scares the living crap out of me i just tell myself you know shut up and take deep breaths and no one will even notice like you're going to be 100 fine and that's what happens like if i feel like one coming on like i don't know explain it like hits me and i'm like in shock for a second i'm just like and then i feel like a little bit tingly you know i mean like i feel like a little bit tingly and then i'm i'm okay you know like that's just that's just it and um it's weird because i feel like um you know i said about driving and stuff like sometimes i'll think about what happens and i'm just like doesn't matter you got to live your life you know like if it happens you know worse worst case scenario pull over like yep you'll be 100 fine like and it's never happened while driving before and so i'm noticing that there's like a dialogue in your head oh 100 i talk to myself all the time hope that doesn't make me crazy nope doesn't it makes sense um so so uh chuck i'm going to lay out a couple of options okay actually let me make a like one or two observations so um i i think today could be really good in terms of we can like discuss and i can explain how are you feeling by the way i'm all right you know i would say just all right like i mean i could i could say i'm good but obviously like i am i am a little nervous i was a little nervous about uh uh coming on here in general like i said like this isn't something i i've done ever like i i don't talk about this really and i just kind of broke down you know a few days ago and you know i'll talk to my wife and stuff like she obviously knows but this is obviously something i've never done publicly before um sounds like you haven't really done it much privately either no yeah i don't i don't what keeps you what keeps you from talking about it i would honestly say like i felt like my thought process was if i ignored it it'll go away and the more i talk about it the more real it is you know like sure like i don't i i literally don't like talking about it like people would come in my chat and say like what are you going on dr k for and i like don't even want to answer that question even though like i'm the one who did it publicly like and and how does it feel when they ask you that question i don't i don't even like like saying the word anxiety or reading it or anything like it you know because i feel like once i see it then i uh like it doesn't stop in my brain you know i mean like i could be completely fine and i see it and then i'm like oh shoot here we go you know like i just gotta think about it until it goes away yeah so i know this sounds kind of like this is gonna be a weird question um what do you think about thinking that if you ignore it it'll go away um that's kind of like what i i guess like what my philosophy was originally right like yeah why do you think you had that philosophy i guess because in my younger years for the most part it worked does that make sense excellent yeah good so so i'm really happy to hear you say that chuck because a lot of people who are listening may think that that's a bad philosophy to have like if you ignore problems they don't go away but this is the first thing i want you to understand if your mind is doing something there's a damn good reason for it and so oddly enough i do think that ignoring it will make it go away is actually an oddly effective strategy that sort of worked for you because let's remember if we really tunnel down to i know it sounds really weird but if we really tunnel down into it what happens if you open the door to your anxiety it kind of like pours out like it's absolutely right so like ignoring it is your way of keeping the door closed because one thing that we can listen to you and if you really like if you just kind of think about it for a second the anxiety gets out of your control so easily so it's like a bucking bronco that gets like let loose in your house and then it's just like jumping all over this place smashing furniture and so really the only thing that you've learned or not the only the most effective thing that you have learned so far is just to keep it outside of the house and and this is where i don't think that ignoring it is really fair what i'd really say is like not letting it into your mind because what i'm hearing from you is that once it gets into your mind there's racing thoughts there's thought loops you know one thought leads to another leads to another leads to another and then you like start having this dialogue with yourself and then that kind of like fuels your anxiety even further and sometimes you you win but i'd also venture that sometimes when you argue with yourself the anxiety is kind of like a punching bag where the harder you hit it the harder it swings back and so ignoring it is actually it's not really like ignoring it per se when this is where ignoring really means not letting it into your mind because if we think about what is the word ignore mean it means the active process of preventing thoughts about something in your mind right so i think ignoring it is a fantastic tool in your arsenal of dealing with anxiety second thing i want to point out so then there's this dialogue component where sometimes you fight with your anxiety and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose but the problem with fighting with your anxiety is that oftentimes it fuels the tension in your mind right and if we think about it like the low anxiety states are actually states of low energy in the mind would you agree with that statement or does that make statement make sense with you for you um not exactly in terms of making sense okay so like when you're calm your mind is not doing a whole lot and when you're anxious your mind is doing a ton and i would venture that when you fight against your anxiety the total amount of activity in the mind is increasing and i would also venture that when the total amount of activity in the mind increases you get closer to anxiety okay and if you really think about it when you succeed in fighting your anxiety and you stop and you take deep breaths what happens to the energy in your mind i guess it would go down absolutely right so the more energy in your mind it's almost like there's like this portal that is spawning anxious thoughts and the more energy you pump into the mind the more anxious thoughts it spawns and sometimes you actually like attack the portal and you try to like you know overcome it with willpower that can actually make your anxiety worse and what actually works is stopping to fight it's just like zoning out right like you're just like i can definitely agree with that um yeah and and so if we think about it zoning out is also like ignoring like ignoring is not letting not zoning in the first place there's no zoning in there's no aggro and sometimes now what you've learned is like okay like i don't want to zone in and now that like we're aggroed like let's just zone out because sometimes you'll sit there and you'll like you know you get aggro you start tanking you start spamming all your buttons and all your cooldowns and sometimes you win and sometimes you wipe but either way like even while you're fighting that battle life continues going on you know time to feed your kid and put your kid to bed and here you are [ __ ] spamming your cooldowns trying to fight that anxiety like in your head you know no one else is aware but you're like getting wiped in a raid you know and so there's this really interesting like principle of like energy and anxiety where actually what we want to do is unplug our mind and so this is where breathing exercises can help that's just kind of a point that i wanted to make i'm going to toss out a couple different things and then you tell me what you want to talk about okay next thing that i want to point out is that you know your problem is not the anxiety it is also your response to the anxiety so the anxiety is not something that you control but then you do something like half of your panic is around the fear of future anxiety it's not even like the core anxiety so our mind does this thing where sometimes um you know we have adaptations to circumstances and then sometimes the adaptations actually end up hurting us more like just to give you an example if i'm depressed and i start drinking because it makes the feelings of depression go away then that sort of works but like now i've created a whole new problem so in your case i think there are two area two ways you can move forward one is you can move forward with the root of your anxiety and the second is you can move forward with the response to your anxiety does that make sense um are you going to like kind of go in detail and like uh yeah go ahead yeah so like there's the original panic attack which you sort of can't control and then there's your fear there's almost like the ptsd from the panic attack and what i'm saying is that if we really look at it those are like two separate issues and and so what i mean is that like you can tackle both of those and your anxiety can get better by preventing the original panic attack or working through that original panic attack but also by like re-learning how to deal with that original panic attack does that make sense yes okay and then kind of the last thing or two more things that we can kind of touch on and i know it's kind of scattered when i'm kind of pointing out i'm gonna use the shotgun approach and then you let me know like what you're interested in okay um so is that we can get to the origins so i can ask you like you know what was going on in your teenage years what was your upbringing like what was your first panic attack like what happened when your wife got pregnant and we can kind of you kind of say subconsciously there has to be a connection you're right by the way and so we can kind of dig into that and maybe help you see that connection if you want to a lot of people do that kind of stuff like those are the kinds of conversations that a lot of people benefit from on stream but we don't have to do that and then the last thing that we can talk about is like a little bit about the physiology of anxiety and so almost like a neuroscience perspective like you're you're using these phrases like i don't feel like i'm in my own skin and like what is actually happening in your body what is happening in your brain to create these kinds of sensations of like depersonalization where you feel like you're not in reality anymore and then that begs the question what is reality and what is you so there's sort of like this physiologic neuroscience like weirdly spiritual you know like let's talk about the nature of the universe in existence men so there's like kind of that tact too and i think these are all like useful things to talk about it's kind of like what you were interested in um let's see here um i i kind of i kind of feel like we should go with the first one and it's gonna sound really weird but i feel like that is the one that is gonna like make me like the most anxious to talk about because i like have only talked about it like once or twice like you know like um number one if you wanted to know more about like my childhood i'm more than happy to tell you but like the manner and like how i had a panic attack and stuff like it kind of still scares me to this day um so maybe like getting that out and like having you touch up on it would maybe make me feel better i don't know okay good so so beautiful so now chuck we're gonna be scientists okay we're gonna party up we're gonna we're gonna be scientists so i want you to pay attention notice your fear and wanting to talk about it notice that you're pushing yourself in spite of your fear and what i want you to keep track of because you're the only one that can do this is notice what happens to your various thoughts and emotions as we talk about it so do things get better do they get worse both are possibilities do they feel the same do some things get better and some things feel relieving like all kinds of stuff okay so let's just see if it does help because maybe if it does help maybe you sh you know we can talk a little bit about seeing a therapist more long term okay sure so tell me about your childhood bro um where should i start i don't know what was growing up like um i'm sorry i guess i would um my my parents eventually ended up getting divorced um so i would say that that was not a very good marriage um it was actually like pretty openly bad like i feel like they would actually fight quite a bit um it was my dad was like a little like ocd crazy what does that mean like if if something wasn't like completely straight or not done his way like it was a problem like it was like um maybe like military status like you know you walk in the house she was off at the door if you leave your bedroom it has to be perfect we weren't allowed to sit on our beds unless it was bedtime um so we would literally watch tv in our rooms on the floor um if we were to leave our house we would have to have bedroom checks to like make sure it was straight enough in order for us to be able to leave um there would be times where like we would eat dinner and if i wasn't eating fast enough like if i didn't like finish my food by a certain time i would have to go to bed like my dad would like put a timer on um before i say all this i should probably say i actually have a good relationship with my dad now like i know that you know when he was younger he was kind of like i don't want to say crazy but you know he was a little his methods probably weren't the best for parenting sure sure but you know we're definitely uh we're definitely past that okay but i would say you know my sister and i probably favored my mom like my dad would go away for work and we would always be like pretty happy when he was gone we would stay up late and you know um yeah do you remember what it felt like like when you were eating your food i didn't like it i was i was like there was i actually this thing for a long time where i wouldn't eat the last bite of my food like it was like i don't know why because i feel like i i think one time i like overeat and threw up but like i don't know i there was for a long time i wouldn't eat the last bite of my food because i felt like uh maybe i would throw up or maybe i'd like since i wasn't being forced to i didn't have to i don't know but i just i do remember that was like a part of like a mindset for a while okay so um can i ask you a couple more questions yeah for sure i'm gonna need a second to try to find the right question is that okay what was it like growing up with a dad like that i mean for me it was normal i guess like i didn't i didn't really think much of it at the time um i definitely spent like a lot of time at friends houses like i would almost say like a few of my friends parents like would have like literally adopted me or considered me their kid at the time like i would i would be there all the time i had like a bunch of different friends where i would be there non-stop stay over nonstop almost every single weekend i probably never stayed home wow not even because like i didn't want to be home but because i enjoyed like you know i would say my other friend's house is like way more like more gym yeah what did you enjoy about being there i mean probably spending time with my friends more freedom in general um you know i just felt like we got to do a lot more like my house was like always really strict when my dad was home um and i wouldn't say it was very fun yeah um and i actually remember one time specifically this is probably like a little off topic and completely random but my mom came home with like a video game for computers called mech wars and my dad made her go back to the store and take it back and specifically said computers are not meant for video games and i still i still give them hell for that comment to this day because i'm like that's how i make my living now but yeah you know so sometimes i would go to my friends houses and play computer games and what do you do you remember how you felt when your dad made your mom do that probably pretty sad i was like damn that game looks super awesome and it's funny because i would play video games on my computer all the time but it was just like pinball and stuff like that and this came with the computer and i don't think he knew yeah so it sounds like there were you know and what did they fight about everything i can't remember specific arguments but they just did not get along very well when i was in eighth grade okay when you were 13 yeah just about yeah when was your first panic attack like 16 okay but i i will say and like this is uh this is um you know maybe not relevant but like i experienced my first panic attack when i was smoking weed so it's actually very relevant okay we can talk about that too um so uh i'm gonna just i'm trying to figure out how to goose step around this but i just gonna come out so it sounds like you know you grew up in a household that breeds anxious kids potentially i mean my my mom dealt with uh pretty bad anxiety my sister deals with anxiety depression and uh i deal with anxiety so it's you know possibly pass down as well but yeah so sure there's a hereditary component so there's a really interesting study kind of bizarre so they take kids who are anxious and parents who are anxious and what they actually do is give anxiety medication to the parents and then the kids anxiety goes down interesting gets almost the same therapeutic benefit as medicating the kid and and it's really weird but like anxiety is sort of you know kids are very attuned to their parents and so like when the parent is anxious like imagine you're six years old and like your mom is like freaking out right like what like the kid is gonna be like what's wrong i'm freaking out i don't understand what's going on but i can tell it's bad it's a really fascinating study but what i'm kind of really noticing is that like if we think about anxiety what i think about as of anxiety is like anticipation of danger so if you really think about you know i know it sounds kind of like a weird question but why do human beings get anxious like why like but we have parts of our brain that make us anxious and why does our brain do that and it's because anxiety is actually a protective mechanism so our brain's capacity to anticipate danger actually protects us and what i'm actually noticing is that your house was sort of a dangerous place like if you sit on the bed like you got like you like you know i don't i mean this may be so booked into you but like you know i can't imagine what it's like to live in a house where like if you sit in your bed like what would your dad do it wouldn't like hurt us but we'd probably get yelled at and right to go up on that even more like i know i know everything that i dealt with as a kid was obviously very strange and i'm i'm like pretty close with my wife and her dad and like we kind of like you know we talk about it and laugh about it and like when we're at family dinners like i tell my dad the crazy stuff he did he's like that never happened you know you know we laugh about it but um he says that never happened doesn't bother me because me and my sister know it was true you know we don't we're not making this stuff up um but when we were like living there like we were only allowed to eat at like designated eat times and i mean like there was breakfast lunch and dinner and there was no in between and we would we would literally sneak snacks um and because we'd be hungry and like eventually when my parents got divorced um i lived my dad for the first year and i didn't like it because my mom and my sister weren't there so i ended up living my mom and eventually my dad found like all these hidden like snack wrappers and trash in my closet because if we threw him in the trash you would see him like legit and i remember going to bed hungry and i would have to like tell my mom like i'm hungry and she would have to sneak me food like she would literally sneak me like ham and cheese and stuff like in my bed just so i wouldn't go to bed hungry do you remember how you felt when you were hungry and she was doing that no like i said i didn't i just thought my dad was super strict and you know my mom wasn't strict like that was my thought process it wasn't like my dad is a horrible human being and people are probably thinking that and i don't really want them to think that you know looking back at it he was definitely kind of a dick but i don't know if it's how he was you know raised and whatnot my grandpa was like the nicest guy on earth by the way so i don't know i don't know if that's where he got it from but yeah so um i want to just say a couple of things so first is that you know sometimes when people come on stream and they share like things from their upbringing like they can paint their parents to be in a really bad light and that's not really what we're here for oh yeah and and so i think it's like especially as children you know i'm sure your dad did all kinds of awesome stuff too we're just not talking about it it actually sounds like or maybe not maybe i mean he used to play baseball with me and take me to my games and stuff like that but yeah i mean there was probably some there's probably some you know awesome stuff in there all right so let's just let's you know we're not we're not here to bash your dad and at the same time i think it's really important to not let protecting a parent get in the way of your authentic experience of growing right yeah right um but i mean i i this is gonna sound kind of weird chuck but like you know you kind of grew up in a [ __ ] up household bro i've i've gotten that before right and and so i think the the important thing there is that like i could imagine like i could just imagine like when i put myself in your shoes like having you know it sounds like and i i don't i know this is gonna make your dad sound like in a bad light but it actually like reminds me like i've worked with some people who are like holocaust survivors and like they're like you know they're being snuck food like living in like they're like in a closet and someone has to like sneak them food you know like being snuck food is like it's just not a common experience yeah as as a father i couldn't imagine like my kid you know saying he's hungry and i'm like no go to bed like it's not time to eat like it's like absolutely right and and so the other interesting thing is like what i'm hearing from you chuck is that the anxiety is like baked into you possibly yeah and the interesting thing is if you really think about it like what would happen if your dad caught your mom sneaking you ham and cheese i don't know if i yelled her right so in that and so the tricky thing here is that i'm asking you how you felt but i think it was so normalized to be anxious and then just let's not even talk let's separate the emotion from it for a second it was such a normal part of your thought process to anticipate danger and to be in danger what do you think about that it's just like it's just how the household worked right it's like now i'm home dad can't see me playing ping pong gotta gotta be not anxious i gotta anticipate that danger dad can't see me sit on my bed oh crap i threw my book on my bed i better clean it up before dad sees the impression of the weight of the book on my bed if i eat too fast i'm gonna puke if i eat too slow i'm not gonna get to eat there's like danger anticipation like everywhere you look in the household possibly created like a lot of my overthinking potentially like i wouldn't say that i had like anxious thoughts back then but it's maybe uh helped like form the way that i think today and if that makes sense absolutely i think it makes a lot of sense i think the way that you think today is a survival adaptation from how you grew up what do you think about that it's very possible yeah right so like your anxiety isn't an enemy it's just like when i'm you know so this is how our mind works it's kind of like cement so like the early changes in our mind mind solidify later in time it's like why if you think about like learning how to walk do you know how to walk i think so yeah how solidly do you know how to walk some people say not very well since i walk on my toes but i get i get from a to b yeah right so so when we think about it like so much fundamental programming is laid down like our capacity for language our capacity to understand what what do you do with your face right now what is that what do we call that i think i'm just smiling yeah but what is that how did you how did you learn how to do that i think it's just programmed yeah right it's so baked in yeah and so what i'm noticing is that early on because here's the thing those are just the things that you remember and it sounds like your dad has gotten better over time yeah he's all right now right so like i don't even know like what he did when you you know pooped your pants when you were one honestly he comes over and he sees my kids and like i'm convinced he didn't have kids because this guy is you know like i love my dad but he doesn't know how to talk to him he doesn't know how to hold him he doesn't know how to like it's just like hey you guys are my grandkids you're awesome but it's like you know yeah so it looks like he has no idea what's going on i'm gonna assume that my mom took care of everything so chuck i'm gonna ask you a question what would it be like you have a son i have two sons actually oh oh so you have two sons what would it be like for them if they never interacted with their dad or their dad never took care of them i think they would be pretty sad i'm pretty awesome you certainly love that i don't i don't think they would be sad because they wouldn't know oh right well i feel like now you're throwing shade at me no i'm just kidding no no but i'm saying i'm saying like like so so this is i think for you there were a lot of things that i think you missed out on that you don't even realize you missed out on because but you certainly miss out like it would be it they wouldn't be sad it would be sad for them right does that make sense yeah and like um like i said my my wife's dad comes here a lot um and we talk about stories of like what they did with as like kids and what he did for them and i'm like they'd be like yeah you never do this and i'm like no you know so definitely i'm very aware you know the childhood i had right it's kind of weird because it's not even like you you sort of know intellectually you missed out but like you didn't miss out kind of emotionally because it was just normal for you but i am noticing that there's a you know there's a lot of evidence that your mind learned how to anticipate danger and that you were kind of like a home base your place of safety required a lot of vigilance so here's another term that i'm going to toss out which i think describes your anxiety very well hyper vigilance what do you think so vigilance means you know to be watchful and hyper is to be like constantly watchful constantly on guard do you think that describes what happens in your mind uh possibly possibly i still kind of feel like i mean i guess i'm constantly on guard of like my own emotions per se like you know not necessarily like my environment and stuff like i'm generally pretty easygoing like i would say like my wife is like way more like you know what's going on around me you know what's this what's that i'm just constantly on guard like okay i don't want to have a panic attack right now like you know yeah that's like so i'm noticing that the guard is internal instead of external like you're manning the walls of your own mind to make sure that the bucking bronco doesn't get in [Music] um how did it feel to talk about your upbringing honestly it doesn't it doesn't really bother me too much like that wasn't the thing that i was actually too nervous about because i i've talked about it before like you know even on stream maybe not too often you know i've talked about like my friends obviously you know knew me and kind of knew my dad was a little crazy and my wife and every i actually just think it's funny at this point you know okay okay um so i would i would say things didn't necessarily get better but they also didn't get worse you know okay okay so it sounds like and what's your understanding of why you're smiling right now because i i just think it's funny like okay yeah this is yeah i guess you either laugh or cry and uh yep yeah i just i don't know i've told these stories a thousand times like at this point like i i really do think they're kind of funny have you cried about them maybe i if if i did i couldn't remember okay i doubt i did but yeah and so it sounds like you were very nervous about sharing something else can you help us understand what that is we don't necessarily have to share it i'm just curious what we're doing i'm okay to share it um but like the way i like experience my first panic attack and stuff like it's just it's scary it's you know i i remember it so so vividly and uh you know exactly what was going on in my brain and just like it was just a lot it's a lot i think like that's like my my fear to like get back to that place i guess are you afraid that if we talk about it you'll let the bucking bronco back into your mind not necessarily because i feel like um i i have talked about it before um but i was like definitely in a better mind state and if that makes sense like so this is this is the series of events that happen like my sister growing up like kind of i think she dealt with our our childhood differently like she kind of like you know did smoke and did drink at a younger age and stuff like that and i saw that and i didn't really like want to be a part of that and um you know like my friends smoked and stuff and i i just didn't care like my friends would drink i didn't want to my friends would smoke and i didn't want to and one day one of my friends convinced me to smoke and we smoked it was chill and then he convinced me again and i had like that really terrible experience which i can get to into into more detail and you know i just kind of chalked it up as like wow like that was bad they're like yeah you know you had a tough time you know it's whatever but it didn't really affect me you know i mean it didn't affect me and then i tried smoking again it was fine and i tried smoking again and then that's when that's when the problems occurred it was the fourth time and i remember what happened was like i started experiencing like what i experienced the first time and i was in someone's house and i went outside and i sat there in the freezing cold shivering like you know for like an hour like and it didn't take control of me like it did the first time but like it kept feeling like it was and but i remember during that time having the thought process what is this what if this never goes away and as soon as that thought went into my mind i've had to deal with it forever and i remember like you know the next few days going out like like just being in random people's car things that i never would have thought about before like what if i have a panic attack right now you know and then um for like a week it went away like completely and i mean like not even it wasn't even thought in my mind and i remember you know i don't i don't know what caused it but i just remember that morning like i would i was over at my friend's house we stayed up all morning we were playing basketball in the morning and later that night we went to a movie theater and someone in the movie theater came up to me they're like you're cedu and i lost it completely lost it like i i felt all those feelings coming back i don't know if i was in shock or what i i i ran out of the movie theater and i was crying i had to get my sister picked me up and you know ever since then like it was always a thought in my mind like almost i would say almost every single day like there was a thought in my mind that i might have a panic attack like since that that day what when you said the feelings came up what what does that mean how do i explain it it feels like it almost feels like i'm like i'm like looking at things through my mind not my eyes like i i i'm experiencing things around me like it just it feels like everything stops and i could explain to you like what happens like what happened in my first panic attack but um when i feel like i'm having a panic attack it feels like everything stops like and in my original panic attack i froze like and i felt like you know it wasn't reality but so i remember very specifically my first panic attack i was eating bacon cheddar cheese fries they were one of my favorite meals and i remember swallowing one and my mind envisioned it going down my throat like i could see it today like you know i mean things that don't even make sense and i remember sitting up and i said oh my god i'm gonna die and my friend my friend immediately like reacted to that like what what what don't say that don't say that like and that scared me even more and i remember like freaking out saying like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die and i had bunk beds and i started punching my bunk beds as hard as i could because i i didn't feel like you know i wanted to feel something and then i remember like literally like standing up like hovered over like this and i don't know why but this was my thought process i was i was on trial for life and death and i remember being on a stage and having a full audience around me and i had to plea my case why i shouldn't die today and i was literally pleading like you know what like there's a school girl i really like in school like i never talked to her i swear i'm gonna talk to her like and i was trying to beg to not die like that was my that was my first panic attack and you know i just i can still like remember everything around me and like clearly um yeah it was it was pretty bad it was pretty bad and then um you know eventually i kind of like snapped out of it i would say and i like took a cold shower and i remember like some of the feelings coming back on in the shower where like you know it felt like i was kind of like getting like sucked in again almost and then i would just be like nope i'm fine like you're gonna be good but that was my first panic attack and it was uh that's what i'm afraid of i guess is like losing full control to where like i felt like i couldn't move like i don't like i swear i felt like i was stoned like i couldn't move like i was just stuck in place have you talked to you the person who prescribes your medication about this no i don't know if i necessarily like that guy i told him like my anxieties about anxiety he's like no it's not i'm like okay you just don't really want to listen you just want to prescribe medicine like wait when he said your anxiety is about anxiety and he said no it's not yeah it didn't yeah like you know i'm i'm not i don't really think he's like the person for me to talk to okay i mean okay i think he just prescribes medicine and you know he's like no no it's not like there's there's there's a different route and i'm like you know i think about this stuff a lot and i kind of feel like i know what the route is but what's the route i kind of feel like that was the route right there i feel like that was damn right it is yeah i feel like that was the day that like you know like i always tell myself i wish i never smoked weed and you know but i feel like eventually i would have dealt with this problem anyway because it's it's happened before without smoking you know not not to that extent but can i think for a second yeah take your time so um chuck i i want to just acknowledge something for a second so i think that like what i'm about to say is it's still sort of for educational purposes but it's gonna use a lot of diagnostic language and i would really hesitate to say this for a couple of reasons the main reason that i'm i'm gonna offer to share something in a moment is because you do have a provider and i think that ultimately our goal here on stream is to try to like help you right so i want to share sort of a different perspective based on some of the attributes that you're sharing which i definitely think you should follow up with a medical professional think about it and follow up with a medical professional and and because you know we don't really diagnose or treat things on stream but i feel like i have an ethical responsibility to share with you another perspective for looking at your anxiety um is that okay yeah so what you're describing to me because you were smoking marijuana so like sometimes when people so now we're gonna go real general okay and i want you to just kind of think about this and figure out whether this is you know applies to you or not you know in a different scenario if you were actually my patient i would tunnel down into this more and i think it's a useful thing for you to tunnel down with a provider unfortunately i can't do it that with you but i feel like i would be honestly doing you an ethical disservice if i at least didn't float this idea and give you the opportunity to talk to a licensed professional about it is that okay yeah yeah definitely so when we smoke marijuana marijuana actually has two kind of components one is sort of a pro-psychotic component and one is an antipsychotic component and there's a there's a version of marijuana called k2 which is synthetic marijuana and the problem with synthetic marijuana is that if normal marijuana has like thc and cbd and has a bunch of other compounds but basically depending on the blend of thc and cbd it has a certain propensity to like because you know like pot makes people paranoid right so some of that paranoia is kind of like more in line with psychosis and and so it when people use synthetic k2 the problem with k2 it like makes people like really freaking psychotic and they get you know brought to the er really steer clear of k2 and in general marijuana as well um but what i'm really hearing from you doesn't sound like a panic attack it sounds like sort of like more like a bad trip does that make sense yes and so sometimes what happens with people who have bad trips is not that they have anxiety so we call it anxiety but what i'm almost hearing is like a traumatic experience from a bad trip and really what i'm hearing sounds to me like i think you need a far more thorough kind of diagnostic with someone who listens so like what we're dealing with may be an anxiety disorder not really our place to determine here but could also be ptsd from a bad trip and this is where sometimes from a treatment perspective it's really important to have a clinician who listens to you because the treatments are actually quite different and and i don't know that you're ever like like approaching it as an anxiety disorder and approaching it as ptsd from a bad trip are gonna like help you approach it in different ways and may actually help you and if you're not getting better and this is also just general principles now okay so if you're working with a psychiatric provider and you're not getting better to your satisfaction i strongly encourage everyone out there to bring up your dissatisfaction with the psychiatric provider because a lot of times this is you know not really specific to you really at this point but a lot of times like you know as a psychiatric provider i ask you how's the medication working and most people like it's working some you know it's not perfect but it seems to be doing a good job and then as a clinician i don't know if that's just like your anxiety is so severe and we're kind of like okay with this or if what i should do as a clinician is sit down and rethink your diagnosis that may be a different kind of like why are we wiping on the raid you know is it like is it that you know we're we're hitting the dps or are we messing up at the dps race or is it that our comp is messed up or like there are all kinds of differential diagnoses for why the rate is not succeeding and sometimes that involves like just further anxiety treatment but if we start to treat your anxiety double down on anxiety treatment when what you really have is ptsd related to like uh like a psychotic hallucinatory experience those are different things and they can both look like anxiety but this is where you know out of everyone that i've ever talked to on stream i would encourage you the most to go and really get like re-evaluated or have a really good in-depth conversation with a licensed mental health professional about your situation and i would share this stuff with them because in a sense it's not their fault it you know you can't hold them accountable if you're not sharing information so i would really go and share this experience and then kind of like you know find someone that you like and you trust and then really kind of get a good like thorough diagnostic evaluation which sometimes can take hours so can happen over the course of weeks and things like that but what i'm hearing right now just really makes me concerned that you know what we're talking about is like you know this intense moment where you were like in this courtroom like that's like divorced from reality right like that wasn't actually happening and this is what's kind of interesting is when people have like hallucinations and stuff when they use substances it feels real and the impact on your brain even if it's not real your brain experiences it does that make sense definitely yeah and so the effects on your neurochemistry in the way that your brain wires are as if it's real and this also gets into a whole other thing about like what is the nature of reality and dreams and all this kind of crap we had a good conversation with ludwig about it that if you want to go back and watch like it may give you some insight into this but at this point i just want to check in with you what do you think about what we're talking about chuck in regards to what like just like this conversation like how do you feel about where we are i mean i guess i feel okay i wouldn't i wouldn't say i i feel like any type of way about it um i would say like i was definitely a little nervous to share like what i went through i'm not really sure why but um you know didn't it didn't really like you know because i i thought i've been thinking about this for like the whole week like you know is he gonna ask me like how i experienced my first panic attack and stuff like that and then you know my brain kind of goes down the road of like you know thinking about him like oh crap i don't really want to think about this you know but um i don't know and i definitely um i definitely kind of agree with you i i do think to a certain extent i do have anxiety because um i just kind of do feel like i deal with every everyday stress and stuff and i do think the medication is helping me um but in the same sense i do think that like i do have that like trauma of like that's not where i want to get back to like that's yeah that's there's a living crap out of me yeah so so just so you understand like you know this hyper vigilance that i referenced earlier is really a feature of ptsd so like what happens if you think about a traumatic event like you know if i've been sexually assaulted in a parking lot like i'm going to steer like i never want to be in a parking lot at night again like i will come hell or high water i will avoid that situation at all costs and what i'm really like so early on when i mentioned agoraphobia to you remember like agoraphobia is about avoidance it's all about avoidance and what i'm hearing when we talk about the bucking bronco and ignoring your thoughts it's about avoidance avoidance avoidance so could this be an anxiety disorder absolutely could this be uh like you know hallucinator like a marijuana-induced ptsd absolutely and that's something where i think really like you deserve to have someone a licensed mental health professional sit down with you and really talk through that um do you what was it like to actually share that experience it was all right i mean i've shared it before to people uh who are close to me obviously like you know i was with my friend at the time you know during it um but i mean yeah well i guess it wasn't as bad as i thought it was gonna be like i feel like i'm kind of relaxed right now for the most part what do you mean by relaxed do you mean your baseline level of anxiety or do you mean relaxed i guess in these days it's kind of hard to tell a difference because i kind of feel like it's always there yeah i understand that so like i want to just point something out to you you've never used the word relaxed today so like i think that that's the right word i think you actually are somewhat relaxed and the reason that i think you should see a therapist is because this is how therapy works right right so like when you share the thoughts that you have inside you know remember how we talked about and this isn't not there are many ways to do this but i want to just explain this principle of the mind which is remember we were talking about when you add energy to the mind the anxiety gets worse so one of the ways that we can vent energy from the mind is through things like therapy but essentially what you're doing is letting that excess energy out so like their thoughts and i don't know if this makes sense this is really more like a yogic perspective so you can journal for example or you could do therapy or you could share it with a friend the point is that you want to vent because right now what happens when you have thoughts is they just bounce around in your head and they have nowhere to go does that make sense yep and so what you need to do it doesn't matter whether it's actually therapy or not but like you just need some way to vent the energy in the mind and as you vent the energy in the mind whether through journaling through therapy through talking through a friend doesn't you can talk to your dog if you want to like it doesn't really matter like it's not about who's on the other end it's about venting it from your mind and then you're gonna feel more relaxed because it's no longer bouncing around now the reason to do therapy is because the person on the other end of the table unlike a dog is gonna be trained at helping you vent right what are you thinking now you started smiling uh my dogs are definitely not trained in anything so [Laughter] they definitely they're definitely not gonna be helping me out with anything yeah how many dogs do you have i have four okay wow that's a lot man it's a lot of dogs yep four dogs two kids two cats oh and cats wow so that's busy it is very busy and married to boot what's up i said and married on top of that sir yep yep yeah wow wow it sounds like you have quite a full life chuck i do and i actually like it quite a bit you know i i really do like my life i'm i'm very you know lucky to be able to do what i do and you know uh afford to even have you know this many things relying on me um but yeah it's just uh this is this is i guess the one the one little area in which i struggle with them yeah can can we talk about when your wife was pregnant sure so what happened then i mean it's hard for me to say i guess like maybe i'm not like the greatest at like um i'm not the greatest at uh i guess picking up on my emotions but i definitely just i started to notice like those feelings like of anxiety like hitting me like randomly like you know and almost like it was like building up like like i was playing in like hockey leagues and i just remember like playing hockey and be like feeling kind of anxious right now like this is abnormal like you know like you know it wasn't just like the thoughts like oh i don't have like i was kind of feeling it like almost like a panic attack was coming on and like i said i'm pretty good at like deterring those now just because like as afraid as i am of them happening i'm also like fully aware of like when they're happening and i and i like you know understand like you know the more you feed in the worst it's going to be just got to take deep breaths and just you know do what you got to do um and i just it's almost like it's almost like weird how it happened but um you know i don't i also don't talk about this very often but i'm religious and i go to church and stuff and i was just sitting in church one day um you know with my wife and my my dad and his wife his new wife and it just hit me and i didn't have a panic attack it didn't hit me like that it just hit me like a wrecking ball of nervousness where i'm just like you know i couldn't stop shaking i couldn't stop thinking and it's like it was like a completely different experience of what i experienced as my panic attack does that make sense yeah so tell me what was your experience of being hit what did you get hit by it just it just felt like constant overthinking constant nervousness like i i couldn't even tell you what i was thinking at the time but like that was like the the day that i kind of felt like you know broke the broke the camel's back or you know stroller broke the back and i just remember going home that night and just being like unbelievably nervous and i couldn't stop over thinking and um um you know i i have taken like you know small dosages of xanax before because you know i've had like this issue for a long time it's been prescribed i really don't take it almost ever like literally almost ever and i had like you know half of like a small dose of one just kind of calm me down a little bit and i just kind of thought like um i guess just like random stuff like this this is completely like maybe irrelevant but like one of the thoughts in my mind was like the lead singer of linkin park or maybe not the lead singer but he like recently committed suicide and i'm like is this why is it is this what he was dealing with like that that thought has crossed my mind before too where it's like is this what people you know decide to say like they can't take it anymore and like that obviously really scared me and um yeah it's just you know that day it never like really got better like that was the day where for months i couldn't live my life like literally every single day i would wake up first thing on my mind i would i sleep like a rock so i would go to sleep and i wake up shaking and the first thing on my mind is like okay i'm anxious okay like i'm gonna have panic attack today like even even like even today like the first thing when i open my mind the first word on my in my my head is anxiety every single day like and it wasn't always like that you know sometimes i could wake up and i wouldn't think about it for a few hours but it is literally the default thought process in my brain right now is just that word like anxiety sounds angry it sucks i i just don't like it you know it bothers me i don't want it to be there you know i wake up in the morning with my kids or my dogs or whatever reasons the first thing i think about you know it's what i got to think about before i go to sleep and you know it's like i just don't like most of the time i will say it's definitely better as of recently i don't have what i want to call it my peace of mind i don't have my mind just resting thinking about useless stuff you know it's just it's just always lasered in on this subject most of the time sometimes i do and sometimes i'll literally like get a break and i'll be like wow i was thinking about random stuff well now that i'm thinking about this now it's time to think about anxiety like it literally like circles back like oh wow i had a break i can't believe i had a break now i'm not gonna have a break because i'm overthinking it like uh chuck is there a part of you that's afraid that like something fundamentally broke that day and will never be fixed maybe essentially like i do think like you know maybe i'll never have like what was my normal um i think like maybe that's kind of like why sometimes i i'm actually afraid to get help because what if it doesn't help you know what if all the stuff that is supposed to help me doesn't help so what i'm hearing is that you know if you get help if you as long as you're not getting help you're delaying final doom potentially uh um you know a good reason to avoid help yeah i just yeah i'm just stuck in a loophole it feels like that just doesn't end i'm sorry bro yeah i appreciate it can i offer a couple of thoughts absolutely so i don't think you are broken i think what you have can be fixed um i think that the mind has an amazing reparative quality um the body has an amazing reparative quality i think that um somehow what what you're doing is you're doing like end game content at level 52 that's what it feels like to me i actually feel like you're doing remarkably well given how much you've handicapped yourself i think it's really amazing that you've uh you know managed to continue to build a life and not let what sounds like truly crippling levels of anxiety and and by crippling what i mean is like not that they're crippling in their intensity but they're like you sound to be like a dude who's been you know raiding for the last three years in one encounter like you've just been like it's a marathon man like i'm hearing a marathon of just never ending and like somehow you know you're still like you haven't wiped yet and and it's it's kind of like what i'm hearing from you in terms of you know getting treatment is that there's a lot of like resistance and that resistance comes from first of all the fear that like what if this doesn't help because then you're like truly sol like like it's it's kind of interesting but sometimes the reason that we don't shoot our shot is because if we fail then we've got nothing you know i see this oddly enough in the weirdest places like people who like have a crush and like as long as i don't get rejected there's always the chance that something will happen but if i shoot my shot and they say no it's like then i'm truly finished right and and so i sort of get where you're coming from because i think that there is that too is like by the way a product of your mind it's not like it's not like you know you're incorrect i imagine that there have been experiences in your life where you've like put yourself out there like and this could be like really small kind of insignificant things but like where you told your dad dad i'm hungry and he's like no way you're getting food it didn't exactly happen like that but yeah right and so like your mind learned early on that like and then maybe even like your mom would have said oh well like now that you asked your dad i can't sneak it for you but in limbo there's like there's some kind of you know in limbo we can actually benefit um so so i sort of get that you're kind of feeling like fatalistic about it um i think that a lot of your fears are also kind of coming in there where like there's this like you know this mention this thing about linkin park and it's sort of like if i try to get help and it doesn't work what i see you kind of being afraid of is then you wind up where that guy was i'm very afraid of that yeah right so so this is where like you know i can understand that you're afraid of it but that's actually what gives me hope because that crap we can deal with like you know deal like like chuck the reason i'm hopeful for you is because i think you actually haven't you're i mean there you are in the level 60 raid being level 52 and you're like i don't know if i can win and what i see is like bro you can level you can gain eight levels there's still a lot of things that you can try it sounds like you haven't tried psychotherapy you know it sounds like maybe a reformulation of your diagnosis it sounds like like continuing to learn like different kinds of breathing practices learning meditation doing some of this exploratory work potentially journaling or other things there's a lot of stuff that you can still do so oddly enough even though you feel like a little bit hopeless or really what i'm getting from you is that you don't want to roll the dice and wind up hopeless yeah um but what i'm really seeing is that there's like you're kind of like i'm opening up your character and like i'm seeing that you have a sword and shield equipped but you don't you don't even have a helmet on and like you don't even have boots on and it's like there's a lot you can do because then then what it's almost like you're going into a raid and you're like okay i can wipe and at least i have an excuse for wiping because i don't even have the right gear but if i gear up properly and then i wipe well then like then i can't clear it right like i have nothing nothing left no excuses does that make sense or is that just is my analogy just getting worse and worse and worse i but i understand so so those are the things that actually make me really hopeful for you that i think if you like you know if you put on if you fill up every gear slot don't even worry about like enchanting and putting in gems and crap like that because you have all that too i mean we're talking about basics we're not even talking about i mean there are some people who will come in and we'll have like five years of therapy under their belt and i'm still hopeful because they haven't tried this other kind of therapy and so there's a lot of like enchanting and like you know gem kind of work and like other kinds of set bonuses like we haven't even gotten there we're talking about the basics we're talking about finding a therapist and like talking to them about something like that how do you feel about that now anyway i guess i i guess i can try and find a therapist like i said you know i kind of for a while felt like if i went to a therapist it could like i i don't know i it's something i didn't necessarily want to do i guess like my my thought process was like you know does this make me crazy like or something like that yeah i mean how do you feel about that i mean i definitely can see uh positive benefits of talking about it in general you know i mean like in just i'll tell you right now like generally speaking twitch chat is not all these you know in some sections it's not the place to be vulnerable and like me me like having that experience on stream and like getting like such a positive uh benefit out of it when i was like my most vulnerable like you know it definitely means that talking about it has got to be good because it made things better you know so yeah so chuck i i think first of all i think that we all do this where i think we aren't entirely fair to twitch at because i find that twitch chat is almost like a kid where like the the standard that you hold them up to is the standard that they're going to live up to fair enough and and so sometimes you know parents will come to me with problematic kids so like i once had this kid who was you know having a lot of behavioral problems and my treatment for him was to hook him up he was a high school kid to set him up with an internship at harvard medical school and i was like this kid's problem is that like people are not treating they're treating him too lowly and that's what i found with with twitch chat is when you when you act like twitch chat is a bunch of degenerate noobs they'll live up to your expectations and when you act like twitch chat can save the world they won't let you down whatever your expectations are twitch chat will arise to meet them i want to just talk about one thing that you said that if you see a therapist that kind of makes you crazy so this is going to sound kind of weird that was like my thought process in a sense yes it's a completely reasonable thought process so so i don't think that people are crazy like makes me crazy so i definitely think that you know some of the experiences you're describing i think like crazy sort of fits right but like i i think this is important to understand i i'm not trying to be judgmental but i want you to understand that like the experiences that you had are quite drastic and outside of the realm of normal experience and at the same time that doesn't say anything about you as a person and and i'm sorry if this you know is offensive but i want everyone to understand that our mind has crazy experiences it's just what our mind does and and i don't think you're crazy you actually sound shocked to me to be incredibly sane and like i said even some of these things like if i ignore my anxiety and it'll go away a lot of people will hear that and think that it's stupid i think it's actually brilliant because i think it's what you have learned that actually works and one of the biggest things that i try to explain to people is that the mind oftentimes doesn't malfunction the mind functions the best way it knows how to and when we stop us when we start when we stop assuming that the mind is broken is when we truly get power over it that's when we truly understand it that everything that your mind does usually and not everything but a lot of what your mind does is for a reason and the more that we understand even your resistance to therapy is completely logical right there's a lot of stuff riding on that like you know you're kind of like because your strategy is to ignore it and it'll go away going to therapy is like the opposite of your winning strategy so of course you're going to be resistant to it and it's not it's not dumb to be resistant to therapy it makes a lot of sense but now this is where i would ask you you know how is your experience today talking about it been it's been fine like obviously i was like a little nervous about being on here and stuff but i'd you know i i feel like uh i've benefited being on here today and i knew i would well number one i feel like uh i'm kind of like getting over fears of sharing um and i feel like that was something that i i definitely didn't do especially with strangers um number two you know you kind of are uh making me feel like a little less bad about myself saying like some of the strategies and stuff that you know i've been doing is okay and like i'm having like normal thought processes and stuff like that so um i don't know it's just like reassuring i guess yeah why are you smiling now i guess i like to be right i answered your question right i i i don't know i mean you're you're the one who tell i asked you how it's it's your answer i don't know the right answer you have the right answer chuck um but yeah i mean i i think you've done a really good job today i think it's you know i do not envy you i think you you come across as an incredibly i think you're incredibly strong chuck like when i hear about the fullness of your life like i understand that you're grateful and stuff which is all awesome but it doesn't sound easy bro it's not you know to wake up with anxiety every day it just doesn't sound easy for sure yeah man and so what i'm really hoping i i think you'd you don't need to i mean i i don't think you deserve to be fight you know running that marathon and this epic never-ending struggle against anxiety and my hope is that some of these like really simple principles like um you know venting some of that energy from your mind because you know when you say that you wake up and anxiety is the first thing there it's because it's like a gas that's trapped you've like farted into a bottle and you've closed the stopper and so like in that bottle is methane and it smells bad and what you've really got to do is just pop that cork and let that bad boy rip you know and and so there's a lot of negativity in there there's a lot of fear in there i understand that you carry it every day with like you carry it right that's the best word that i have i think it's an encumbrance problem more than anything else and and so i really hope that you can you know i'd strongly ask you to consider you know really seeing a therapist i definitely will look into it for sure i guess um i just got to try and find someone with good reviews because i don't you know i don't want to get someone that isn't right for me i suppose sure so i think that good reviews go a long way but fit goes a long way too so a couple of rules of thumb and you know if you need a little bit of support i think we've got like a you know quick guide or something we can send your way about finding a good therapist we do have a creator coaching program which normally at this point in the interview i would recommend to some people i think you should actually see a therapist though you're welcome to sign up for our coaching program like they work with things like you know they're more specialized in things like burnout and imposter syndrome and and those kinds of things so they work with we have a contract with twitch so twitch is actually sponsoring it um but i think in your case i would go see a therapist i think that's really um and you could try out coaching if you want to but but i really think that you know mental health treatment is appropriate for you um does that sound judgmental to you no okay do you have any questions for me how long no i know i sort of feel like we're at a decent stopping point but at the same time you know there are a lot of other things that we could talk about like i'm still you know i think another thing that is worth digging into is the sort of whatever happened subconsciously when your wife became pregnant and and you know how that i think that may be a conversation for another day um because i don't know how short that's going to be but i sort of feel like this is a decent stopping point because i've shared a lot with you and i'd love it if you could kind of digest that and i don't wanna how can i say this sometimes i reach a point in a conversation where i i feel if we keep talking we may start to overwrite what we've covered so far and my real desire to potentially pause is because i don't think that anything we're going to talk about now will outweigh the value of what we've talked about already if that makes sense does that sound okay to you yeah absolutely do you have any questions i i don't i'm not i'm not a question guy really i just can't okay i'm intrigued by what what does that mean to not be a question guy but so be it i'll just let that curiosity ride but go ahead i just i uh i just generally people always ask when you're done do you have any questions and i always i'm the one that looks at my wife like because i'm good to go okay okay so and then um are you interested in learning meditation um possibly i suppose um i didn't really like so honestly i had like this fear of kind of like being alone with my thoughts um but like since i do the deep breathing like i kind of close my eyes and it's gonna sound like the craziest thing ever but when i do my deep breathing i would say maybe just briefly for a second if that there's no negativity there's no anxiety you know i mean like it's just completely it's like all these like random thoughts that make absolutely no sense just kind of like pop into my brain like like it was my normal you know what i mean and um i would say that i was like really afraid of that for a long time and then doing that for the first night i was like holy crap like i guess this works you know so i guess uh i guess i could be interested in learning meditation but like i was that was something that i would have been opposed to for a long time until i started trying that breathing technique okay so a couple of other reassuring points so there's something cool about meditation so when you do your deep breathing you're back to normal and when you stop doing your deep breathing normal ends right for the most part yeah but it's like it's just kind of like me being weird like did that help like yeah you know is this going to help like so this is what studies on meditation show that generally speaking when we meditate it creates temporary changes to our mind and the longer that we meditate if you meditate for at least 20 minutes a day three days a week that's the bare minimum the cool thing about meditation is that the longer you meditate and the better you get at it the more the longer the buff lasts so it's sort of like when you start meditating the buff lasts simply for the duration of the channeling so i'm going to channel meditation and that's when i'm going to regain mana right it's like what's that mage spell that education yeah so like for evocation i only gain mana as long as i'm channeling but something really magical happens with meditation which is that it reaches a point where it starts to rewire your brain and you actually like have a magnetic post channeling and this idea of like long-term meditators who throughout their entire day they're happier and their anxiety is lower on a baseline level and that's because like as we literally rewire our brain there your neurons so thoughts are generated by neurons and so as you train your brain to have senseless thoughts instead of anxious thoughts those patterns of neurons will start to like wire together and then they'll activate and then you'll be back to your normal thinking um i have worked with people and taught them so people who have had anxiety disorders like diagnose anxiety disorders on medication for a decade and after about a year or two of medication they will be in what we call in psychiatry's sustained remission because we don't use the word cure because who knows so what sustained remission is is like people who don't have anxiety and are off of medication and you know i'm thinking about a particular person it took like two years but you know i think that it that is possible um so now i've got two options for you one is that i've got a technique that is a little bit of a high risk high reward technique so what i mean by that is that it's it's a technique that's really going to work on a physiologic level and so when you have anxiety and like kind of panic stuff i want you to understand that you know how it like hits you out of the blue right so the mental process is not the start the start is actually physiology so you have a physiologic change which then triggers particular thoughts does that make sense um yes okay so there's a particular technique that i think will work on your physiology but may actually oddly enough induce a little bit of anxiety if we do it now if you're calm but the idea behind this technique is that we're going to create anxiety and then teach you how to get out of it and so if you're already anxious it won't make it worse but you'll kind of practice it getting out of it that's sort of what i what i feel like teaching you today but i just want to be a little bit cautious um and then i have a more sort of stable normal technique which is going to be like easy peasy lemon squeezy it's like do you want an elite mob or do you want a regular mob like what do you want to grind on today i feel like would you judge me if i just say the regular one not at all okay because i feel like generally speaking like i feel like my anxiety is always kind of at a base level you know for the most part and i feel like i do like a pretty decent job kind of like keeping myself calm and i guess like having that potentially be raised like i don't know that scares me a little bit that's totally fine that's so so i you know the reason that i i don't judge you at all and the reason i give you the choice is because i acknowledge that that could be a concern right so it's not like oh like you're not going to go and they like you you're like i don't want to wipe on the elite mob and then run back you know it's just i ain't nobody got time for that i can get elite mob is worth 20 more xp but like grinding on regular mobs is normally how you play wow right so totally fine okay so i'm going to teach you something called um alternate nostril breathing okay tends to be my go-to technique but is really good from a physiologic perspective as well but won't make anything worse okay so can you do so take your right hand stick out your thumb and then can you lift these two fingers good so what i'm gonna do you have a deviated septum by the way i don't think so okay so what i'm gonna do and do it with me is block my right nostril breathe in through my left [Laughter] [Music] and then with a chest full of air i'm going to block the other nostril with the other two fingers and then breathe out breathe in through the same nostril without switching switch and breathe out in switch out in switch out good now close your eyes and go at your own pace remember that you want to switch on a full breath good and then exhale and inhale again through the same nostril and then switch we'll practice for about two minutes so cool let your eyes remain closed go ahead and finish the breath that you're on [Music] and relax just sit with yourself if you want to continue deep breathing you can but we'll just sort of sit in silent meditation for about a minute fish now i want you to breathe in for three seconds and out for three and now in for three and out for five and then in for three and out for seven as you're ready to breathe in again slowly open your eyes supposed to say anything if you want to i wasn't sure if you're waiting on me yeah not really it's kind of awkward for people they don't really know what they're supposed to do i would definitely say this is a little bit you know i would say that this is probably not a very good public practice i feel like people probably watching the stream are probably like you know okay we'll just sit here and wait for him to finish his breathing you know yeah well ideally what happens is people are meditating with us oh okay that makes sense that definitely that definitely makes a lot more sense i guess i should have instructed people but i hope i'm noticing now that you were anxious about that no not necessarily i just thought it was kind of funny okay hmm yeah what was that like for you chuck it was good i mean um you know like i said i i enjoy my deep breathing quite a bit i feel like it just kind of takes my my mind to a nice rested place of relaxation and i like it quite a bit like i i almost like i don't want to say i look forward to it because maybe that sounds dreadful that like i look forward to you know my 15 minutes before bed um in my 15 minutes waking up but uh yeah it's it's just nice like it's just it's nice to have that nice like relaxation before you sleep and like when you wake up although i must say like i have a little bit of a different schedule where like um my wife wakes up with a kid so i wake up a little earlier to feed the dogs or else they go crazy so i wake up and then i don't do my breathing then i feed them and i kind of chill for like 20 minutes while they're outside then i go back upstairs and then i go to sleep and then i wake up for real and then i do my breathing so maybe there's like a little bit of a disconnect there i'm not really sure but yeah yeah i mean i don't think it sounds bad at all it sounds like you essentially you're meditating um when you're doing deep breathing and yeah and yeah i don't think it sounds crazy at all to look forward to meditating um you know just a couple things so first thing is that do whatever practice works for you sometimes people find that so this practice works a little bit more physiologically than just plain deep breathing but the most important common element chuck is the length of your exhalation correlates with the slowness of your mind so the longer you exhale the slower your mind will be um the question so you were instructing three seconds of inhale uh with longer exhales is that something that you would recommend for deep breathing too because generally i do like as big as i can and then let out as big as i can and i definitely notice like when i let out like i try and like fully deflate because i feel like that that always feels like really good so so not really so what i'm telling you is the most important thing is the full deflation okay so what i uh the reason to yeah so like that last bit is really about coming out of the meditative state and kind of like re-anchoring us into the world um but the length of the exhalation is the most important thing so the reason that this meditative the one nostril breathing practice is that it just slows your breathing down because you're using half your nostrils to let the air in and let the air out there are also some other kind of weird physiologic things like it sort of balances it deactivates your parasympathetic nervous system which is what releases like adrenaline and stuff like that so it'll slow down it'll work in a physiologic way to like reduce your pro-anxiety hormonal state but deep breathing can do it too so i'd say ultimately do what works for you this uh technique arguably is a little bit it will be like statistically slightly more successful for people with anxiety okay so would you recommend doing this in place of like the deep breathing uh before or after sleep so so i would i would recommend that you follow what works for you but a good place to start would be you figure out which one you want to do first but i would start probably with this one for about five to ten minutes and then do your normal deep breathing for about 10 minutes with a goal of about 20 minutes of practice okay that's uh that's completely reasonable um and then so just other questions like how long because you were kind of instructing me this time like how long would you say like do the nostrils and then like like uh switch into the uh the regular breathing or whatever like i guess with both nostrils is what i'm saying yeah so so i would say do the alternate nostril breathing for five to ten minutes and then do whatever deep breathing practice you have been doing for about 10 minutes so uh i mean like literally like continue to swap the nostrils for the full 10 minutes is that what you're saying no yeah for five to ten minutes yeah so okay okay gotcha okay okay um and then after that do your own deep breathing practice where you know you're doing whatever um another question is does it matter like how i'm doing it like generally i kind of do my deep breathing laying down like kind of preparing for bed like would it be prefer to uh sit up or good question so the most important thing is that your spine and your neck are straight so laying down works fine sitting up works standing up works okay but your mind your back needs to be straight okay i i would say though if you're gonna do this alternate nostril breathing practice i would do that sitting up and then lay down and then do your your regular deep breathing okay i can do that okay excellent questions look at who has questions now [ __ ] all right sorry i need to i didn't need to attack on the [ __ ] at the end but that's okay you know not a fan oh interesting right because like great questions really fantastic questions chuck love them any any other questions now i may have embarrassed you or tanked it but no i i i actually don't think i have any other questions okay great excellent questions so good luck to you you know um you know let me know how things go if you if you kind of like i think we have like a quick guide that will send people post stream um i hope i'm not shooting myself in the foot but i'm pretty sure we do this where you know a lot of people uh you know have like more private questions or things like that about how to find a therapist and stuff so i think we've got a you know so we can sort of help you with with that a little bit um you know if you and so just take advantage of that if you want to um and then you know i think if you if you want to i think there's still other stuff we could still talk about so we can i don't know exactly how scheduling works but if you ever you know want to come back i think um definitely we can focus a little bit more on on what's happened over the last three years um but that's also something that you you know i you don't need to do with us you can definitely do with your therapist but it just feels to me like something that was pretty significant that we kind of didn't have time for which is fine but you know i would encourage you to continue exploring that with someone for sure sound good yeah absolutely all right good luck to you man thank you so much for coming on yeah thank you for having me i appreciate it take care man bye yeah you too so who are you rating chat okay we're going to raid garglon deeznutz and joe mama sagandis

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 272,453

Rating: 4.9795327 out of 5

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, excessive thinking, how to stop overthinking

Id: lUxU6KnjNNs

Length: 107min 18sec (6438 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021