Conquering SOCIAL ANXIETY ft. Poopernoodle | Dr. K Interviews

hey lou sorry sorry for being late that's all right sorry are we ready um okay okay so thank you for coming on and and you prefer lou is that right um yeah you could call me lou or poo or pooper noodle yes so what's up what's up with that by the way why is your why is your pooper noodle okay i didn't think we'd do this already oh no i mean we don't have to i was sorry is that something i'm not supposed to ask you about no no no i can i can i can say um no it's just kind of like it's an odd name no yes sorry it's a bit weird um basically uh the second time i went to university i was as the title suggests very socially anxious um i i used to i had a sink in my room and i used to i used to pee in the in the sink because i i was avoiding my flatmates um well i mean it started off okay like freshers week was okay but then i didn't i ended up staying in my room on my computer for like a week and then like i hadn't seen them in a week and i was like okay it's been a week like if i see them now that it's gonna be really weird so then it like the weeks tend into months anyway um so i didn't i didn't go into the kitchen ever and i didn't use the bathroom i used to pee in my sink in my room and i used to make food in my room as well occasionally i would make noodles in the sink and in the uk there's this brand called super noodles um anyway uh but um i didn't yeah i one time i one time i i i defecated in the sink by accident um yeah i didn't it wasn't on purpose normally i would um normally i would [ __ ] in like um wait can i swear oh it's too late now um normally i'd [ __ ] in like plastic bags okay um yeah accident yeah yeah um but anyway that's what happened and then the guy i was that who's my boyfriend at the time he made a joke called me poop noodle cause it was the same thing that i made noodles in and rhyme with superman yeah so i mean that's i think that's funny i i also think it's interesting that you you know this is not the kind of thing that people would normally advertise no no not really so help me understand that i i don't i don't know um i i very openly i used to talk about this a lot and like make like sort of raunchy gaudy sort of jokes and stuff and talk about that sort of thing um i i think i felt like sort of wearing it on my sleeve helps is that does that make sense interesting right so let's let's just put a pin in that concept right because i can imagine that if we're dealing with social anxiety you know telling the story that you just did i would i would imagine makes your social anxiety worse um yes yeah yeah does it i don't know i don't think so are they interesting actually no because i'm saying it to you and i can see your face yeah that's hard that's really hard but saying it to like my stream when it's just a bunch of text completely different what makes it hard when you can see my face um i didn't i don't know just like your face oh no that's my face no i don't like it um i just i feel like i i pay a lot of attention to yeah expressions yes and do i i know that i misinterpret expressions a lot as negative and i i don't like looking at people's faces well i don't like looking at your face either okay so we'll talk about that so paying attention to people's expressions right yeah and misinterpreting people's expressions i don't think that you're misinterpreting them by the way technically okay i think what you're able to do is detect dissatisfaction in a face that primarily is satisfied if that makes sense so there's actually research on this so let me let me explain it from the top it's a really interesting study so i'm smiling at you right and then i get okay i'm mad at you like there's a transition so smiling matt and there's like a transition right you does that make sense like this and then this is kind of halfway and then like this yeah yeah yeah so there's there's a transition so if you think about it halfway between smiling and being mad at you my face is displaying 50 happiness 50 anger does that make sense yes i think so so a normal person and i don't mean to say you're abnormal i mean someone who's not as sensitive as you are like literally your brain has a higher processing power here okay so okay so most people they're processing power when they when they see like the half angry half happy face they they're just confused they think i don't know what this person is feeling does that make sense because it's like half smiling half angry it's like what is that person feeling i don't know and even if you think about it when i'm 80 smiling and 20 angry most people will think that i'm happy does that make sense yes but people who have social anxiety or some other it's not even a psychiatric thing but like there's some other diagnoses that are associated with the ability to detect negative affect or negative emotion in someone's face even though it's hidden so you'll be able to detect the 20 anger with the 80 smile and your brain will tell you oh that person is still 20 angry does that make sense so it's not that you that you're like you're detecting false things you're just detecting a small amount of dissatisfaction in spite of the large amount of approval and your brain is clueing you in to that signal but it's not like it's in your head it's literally that your brain is more sophisticated and can detect low negative emotion at very low amounts okay does that make sense yes absolutely the other interesting thing is that people who've experienced trauma especially in childhood develop this skill so if you look at people who like have abusive parents you know if your parents are abusive and they seem like they're in a good mood it becomes a survival mechanism to be able to detect storm clouds oh is my dad really in a good mood or is he like uh happy on the surface and like a volcano underneath and so like their brains literally adapt to detecting like negative emotion underneath positive emotion okay it's almost like they have x-ray vision which is kind of what you want so the thing that you have to be careful about is that your mind will detect 20 dissatisfaction and that's what your mind will zoom in on and it'll ignore the 80 so that's something you have to retrain but your capacity to detect you're literally more sensitive like you can detect things that normal human beings can't people with anxiety and people with histories of trauma are like able to detect things because their brain has like told them hey like this stimulus is actually important so let's pay attention to that what do you think about that it made it sound much much cooler than i thought it what did you think about it i don't um i don't know my i mean my my parents were lovely yeah so i i mean obviously there were some things that happened in my childhood um but i i couldn't pinpoint like a single thing that sort of you know i like i i remember i have memories of like my mum wearing sunglasses a lot and whenever she was wearing these sunglasses i always thought she was angry at me because i couldn't see her face so i always found it quite scary um and so when she wore them i'd always ask her to take them off because i couldn't i couldn't see her face but like i i have fond memories of of my parents i don't yeah i i didn't mean to imply that you know your parents were abused i'm just saying that's what we see yes sometimes there's two camps there's people with social anxiety there's also people who have a history of abuse growing up they both their their brain wires to be sensitive to facial expressions what are you getting from my face um you look a bit bored okay now oh now you look like you're cringing no i'm smiling i'm having a blast okay this is my board face i guess does this look like a board face t wait no it's because i'm i was looking at the other because there's a little bit of a delay wait do the face again wait are you you can't see me on discord um because you're like really really pixelated so i'm looking at your stream because you're not you're not pixley here i'm pixelated that's gotta be tough um oh i can see you now okay fantastic great so just look at me don't watch stream and certainly ignore twitch chat i do my best too okay yeah sorry for the random ass tangent okay no i was i was just gonna say um yeah sorry sorry about that and then so i think there were a couple things that i really thought were really important about your story uh which highlight so like social anxiety so one is like this idea that they haven't seen you in a week so you can't see them yeah right and then two weeks go by and then it's like no now i can't show my face and every week that goes by you ca they can't see you and then every week it gets worse and worse and then you have to become a hermit you have to just like move out of the apartment at three in the morning that's exactly what i did i used to i had this little pile of cushions that i would put like right next to the door so i could sit and listen for long periods of time to work out when they weren't in the corridor and i that sounds absolutely crazy doesn't it yeah um yeah yeah that's that's what happens i mean like what you said about the it's been the weeks and then it's been months thing like i remember one time um oh isn't it quite a long uh uber journey and as i got in the car my seat belt um got stuck in the door so it was like poking out the door so i sit in the car but i didn't want to move over so i was i couldn't i couldn't actually use the seat belt um but it had been about 20 seconds by that point and i felt like oh no if i if i say something about it now to him and i'm just a window yeah like so so i ended up just sat there for the next like 20 minutes thinking that i was gonna die because i wasn't wearing a seatbelt because i felt too nervous to actually say hey can i yeah yeah and then it's like how do you tell them oh like five minutes into the journey like oh by the way i don't have a seatbelt ten minutes into the journey by the way i don't have a seat belt on and then they're like why would why would you wait 10 minutes and then tell me you know it's crazy yeah i remember one time i had been out of school for a little while and then like since i was out of school like i couldn't go back like what would people think yes and then like i had missed classes and then like how can you show up like i've i've just been skipping class because playing video games all day and then it was like halfway through the semester if i start going to class now i can still pass but can you just like i didn't know like what to think like there are 30 people in the class and then halfway through the semester someone just walks in that you've never seen before yes yes and then they're like what are you doing here and you're like i'm in the class and they're like no you're not where you've been this whole time i couldn't do it so yeah i mean yeah i dropped out of university a few years ago because of i just felt largely because of that yeah oh right so i showed up on the day of my final and then i i put my head down and i i thought i was banking on people not noticing because they would be taking their final yes and then took my final and then walked out do you know what grade i got in the class can you guess i don't how do you grade things oh yes so a b c d and f okay how do you grade things where you are that way but i don't know i just thought it might be different uh a c f wait no did you oh okay that's how you fail at class boys and pulse so you never go and then you show up on the final and then you do your best which is pretty awful and then i went home and i played a lot of diablo too to make my feelings go away that sounds fun thing it was actually a lot of fun it was a blast of semester i really enjoyed it alas okay i did actually have a class that i failed as well because of that but that was at this university uh it was it was um i was studying chinese and i i went i went for like the first couple months and then it dropped off i have this pattern with everything that i do it just it slowly drops off because i miss one thing and then i'm like well i can't go to the next one because yeah i wasn't at the last one and what if they asked me what happened at the last one i wasn't there um so anyway yeah the days turn into a week 10 months i go to the final exam um and i throw up in the room and i get sent home and i failed the exam yeah wow yeah it's hard right like when when the only way that you can show up the next day is to have been perfect the day the day before yes i hadn't thought of it like that yeah that's what do you think about that i don't know i like to be very like prepared because things have to go perfect yeah yeah otherwise i don't go back yep right so so like like lou i think you're living life like these speed runners or like a single mistake and you have to start over yeah so you never make and like that's great when you're playing the same game with the same levels over and over and over and over and over again but it's hard in life where like every day is a little bit different it's like you're trying to speed run a game but you only get to play it once and tomorrow there's a new game yeah it's weird i think i understand that yeah so chase and perfection why do you have to be prepared um should prepare you know for the worst i i've been told i uh catastrophize a lot what is that so like like i don't know how to describe like for example i used to go to these like spin classes with my dad um and suddenly out of nowhere um i would this thought would pop into my head that like i'm gonna spin off the front of the bike and like die and like the bike will like explode or something or something will explode in the room above me um and it happens like every time i go outside like i'm trying to cross the road this car is going to run me over i'm like i'm going to die yeah it's it's weird to have a mind that tells you that kind of stuff right does that make sense i don't i don't i don't know because it's because it is my mind does everyone not have these thoughts sometimes or do you have those thoughts do you not have those thoughts sometimes um i suppose when i'm drunk ah i don't catastrophize okay no okay interesting um and how long have you been catastrophizing like forever okay so you've been doing it your entire life oh it feels that way but maybe not i think so yeah important revelation right let's just think about that so so you just said yeah i have been doing it and then you paused and then you said it feels like it's been my entire life yeah so has it been your entire life no so in the past few years so let's think about that right so something when i asked you the question there's some kind of internal calculation that says yes this has been going on forever like it gave you that answer yeah like but it turns out that that's not actually the case so then if we're being very careful what we have to recognize is that sometimes our mind produces answers for us that are wrong yeah that's yeah all the time can you tell us about that oh oh uh yeah like uh oh like this this like just like last week okay um last year there was a stream i was quite uh like a big fan of had been subbed to him for a few months okay like maybe six months i resubscribe and he's like um pooper noodle yikes and he's just like a bit of a joker like that's just saying whatever he farms they'll w's but um instantly i was like oh my god he hates me i unsubscribed instantly i unfollowed him everywhere i just i was mortified um i avoided watching any videos about this streamer because i couldn't stop thinking about this time that he was like pooper and it all yikes um and like a month ago he said something really nice about me and i realized that it was just all in my head yeah looked completely made up yeah how do you understand that what's up with that i i don't know it made me think of like lots of other incidents where i've just in like instantly i'm like okay this person wants nothing to do with me i'm just gonna remove myself completely okay from all of that so let's talk about that for a second is that cool yeah yeah so this person wants nothing to do with me hold on can i think for a second yes how much of your social anxiety can be captured by that phrase what phrase this person wants nothing to do with me um probably quite a lot of it okay how long have you felt how long has your mind been sometimes randomly telling you that this person wants nothing to do with me um i i mean i've always been like i've always been quite quiet like a child growing up i my brother was very social media outgoing um and he would always make the friends and then i would like play with like little toy cars or something um one of us oh yeah so that was that was that was quite difficult as well because sometimes we would do things like as a family and there would be like maybe another family with like kids there and then he would make their friends first and then he'd be like you know you know don't talk to her she's just quiet and weird and then they would like all go have fun the night but like i i did i liked my own company so it wasn't it wasn't awful um i just wasn't very outgoing and i hadn't been difficult to you know just talk to to kids and stuff um and then i had some pretty bad experiences in in high school with like other girls so then i didn't know how to talk to girls anymore for i still don't i don't really have any friends now that are girls many at all um yeah okay so i asked you about you know sort of like whether this person wants nothing to do with me has oh no oh you asked me something and i went on complete tangent oh i'm so sorry no no don't be sorry i think that's where we learn that's wonderful okay i'm glad you went on a tangent right because you gave us a couple of really important pieces of information one is that while you may have been socially isolated the reasons for your social isolation back then were fundamentally different because i didn't hear this person doesn't want to hang out with me i heard i was just kind of a quiet shy kid and i was okay with my own company so if anything that tells us that like something happened that changed the way that you perceived your interpersonal interactions which is great like it's great that you gave me that piece of information because then we actually know that you haven't always been like this okay does that make sense yes yes okay yeah so so yeah okay yeah go ahead i don't know i just thought that like since i'd been quiet my you know whole life that i'd always had social anxiety but are you telling me that that's not quite the case i could just been quiet and then something happened along the way that made me anxious about social things that's what i would hypothesize okay right because what what i'm hearing this person wants nothing to do with me says nothing about the person it says something about you right yeah it has to do with the way that you perceive your value whereas the girl who's content to play with toy cars has no problem with her value in fact as you put it you used to think the opposite i'm a cool person to hang out with all by myself i'm very good company right if you think about it that's actually the exact opposite you're like hey this person's awesome i don't need any of those [ __ ] i'm gonna hang out with me myself and lou we're gonna play with our toy cars and it's gonna be great yeah and then somewhere somewhere along the way you were like oh like lou's not worth hanging out with that's different something's changed does that make sense that those are those feel very different to me yes i um like i had why i had this amazing family my childhood was a bit difficult because we were moving a lot so i was i was born in thailand in phuket and we lived there for six seven years and then my dad was a teacher and he got a job then as a headmaster in chile in south america so then we lived there for four years so i was learning different languages and then after that we we moved to to england and while i did make friends i was always very different from them and there were there were times where like if my friends wanted to exclude me they would they would talk in their own language so that i couldn't join in um and i mean that happened in all the countries apart from england because i speak english then yeah what was it like to be excluded it wasn't fun um no that there was quite a um poignant moment in high school actually in england where i felt very excluded that i think i don't know how to describe it really shaped the way i felt about myself i think um it's it sounds really materialistic but i was in this group of like maybe seven girls seven or eight girls and we were all like best friends uh but there was a pecking order and i was the bottom of the pecking order but it was fine because like i it meant i didn't have to sit in the toilet at lunchtime if i hung out with them um and basically every every birthday because for our 18th it was his 18th birthday so every birthday everyone would pitch in 20 pounds and then like the week before everyone would would go out and choose a like a special charm bracelet with a charm for them and then like a cake and then a little surprise party and that sort of thing anyway uh you can probably tell where this story is going but like four birthdays happen everyone pitches in i pitch in it gets to my birthday uh nothing really happens on the day that's fine i'm people busy i wait a couple of weeks um one of the girls invites me around to hers [Laughter] sorry um when i walked in there was like half a box of donuts and some deodorant that they were like spraying around i don't know if that was like a joke like i smell bad or something that's probably in my head as well um but uh these yeah these don't episode already started eating um they sang happy birthday i was waiting for this bracelet um which yeah that makes me sound really spoiled but uh it didn't happen uh i found out afterwards that between the sort of seven of them they only managed to get together about five ten pounds um so well that made me feel pretty [ __ ] um yeah what does that mean feel pretty [ __ ] what are you feeling um i felt like like these these people were my friends and they like even though i'd joined in all the other i joined in all the birthdays afterwards as well um even though i joined in all this stuff they didn't they didn't want to do the same for me and it i just made me feel quite uh excluded like they want nothing to do with you that's the one yeah there it is so i want to point something else out to you lou that's interesting because you call yourself materialistic when you tell that story yeah why do you do that because it is it's quite quite expensive bracelet everyone pitches in 20 pounds but to me it wasn't really about the bracelet it was about i don't think it's about to bracelet to anyone who's listening to that story okay right but i want you to notice what your mind does even when you're sharing something that is authentic vulnerable and that maybe you deserve compassion for what do you do to try to the kind the what do you preemptively do to our compassionate response um to try to like uh squash it yes yeah right interesting huh you see how you're doing that you're actually devaluing yourself in the story you're like look at me i'm a materialistic little [ __ ] and then you tell the story which is not about i don't think anyone thinks that that's materialistic i think it's about fairness and justice sounds bizarre but like you know i think it's about value it's about being valued about being appreciated it's not a story about material things right yeah yeah i and yet your mind generates this thought which is like oh i'm so it sounds kind of materialistic thought we were going to talk about like you know everyone had a louis vuitton bag and like i didn't have one or something like that even then that's okay i guess but you know that sounds to me like they they really i mean you were yeah i mean i it doesn't sound to me like they were your friends oh yeah but i don't talk to them anymore it kept more things kept happening and then i realized this just making me sad actually um they used to sort of say that i always make myself a victim um which made well the rest of my life really hard because whenever anything happened to me uh i would be like uh i'm just making myself a victim here you know am i overreacting there it is so so do you see that if you're if you're just making yourself a victim what are you doing to yourself you're devaluing yourself right you take the oomph out of whatever complaint you have blaming the victim and calling someone a victim is the last refuge of [ __ ] because because if if you're just being a victim all the time then like i'm perfect the problem's you right it's a very very very easy way to dodge any kind of personal responsibility to blame the victim or say that you know lou what's wrong with you you're a vic like you're so victim complex like we got you deodorant and donuts and the rest of us got charm bracelets and cakes on our birthday by the way or near our birthday not as an afterthought like why are you whining why are you making me feel bad for being an [ __ ] and treating you like [ __ ] it's your fault yeah that's that sounds like what they would say yeah yeah and then you started adopting the victim mentality which has to do with so like if we think about it like if if you start blaming yourself for being a victim you devalue your own experience does that make sense yes and so when you devalue yourself like your worth is a human being and your mind decreases does that make sense yeah and if your worth as a human being is really low why would anyone want to hang out with you that's true i don't know why anyone would so so i i think i mean it's kind of weird but like this idea of this person wants nothing to do with me to me feels very connected to this ah yeah i think the the value uh thing is interesting because i don't know if this is related at all but um i used to get my nails done um quite frequently before locked down um and they always turned out okay but there was this one lady one week who just felt like she just like got a saw and just chopping my fingers off like they were just they were bleeding and i was sat there like tears streaming like and she was like oh oh i'm sorry i hope it hurt but i didn't want i didn't want her to feel bad that she was doing a bad job so i was sat there like oh no they're fine and then for the following few weeks every time i went to shower they would sting in the shower my nails snapped off i had to wear plasters on them and i was i was beating myself up over it like you know you're such a [ __ ] you should have just you should have said you know mate can you cool off my nails a bit um but i didn't do that and yeah i just i kept yeah i get myself into these situations a lot so how do you think that's related you started that off with like i'm not sure if this is related but this thing happened to me so you tell me how it's related why does your mind go there because my thing the pain i was in was worth less than whether or not she thought she was doing a good job beautifully put right and then what do you do to yourself so like that's true but then what happens in the shower what do you do to yourself every time you're in pain what does your mind tell you what why you such a [ __ ] idiot like yeah yeah right so like this is kind of weird lou but like you're setting up you're playing a rigged game and it's a game where lou doesn't get to complain and it's always lou's fault yeah how fun is that game to play um a lot of fun though yeah sounds quite shitty i'm thinking but also giving you space to speak okay i okay i don't i don't quite know what to say i don't know either so can i think for a second yeah yeah go ahead so now that we've potentially made this discovery now i'm like okay great now what that's what i'm thinking okay what do we do with this right so let me let me just give you a second to try to figure out where we go from here okay okay that's fine what are you what are you thinking right now um it's just a lot of painful memories just just came back about tell me about those girls and tell me tell me something um so i just there was it's the same group of same group of girls there's one time it was the first time that i'd ever this is really embarrassing to say it was the first time i've ever been like naked in front of someone we went to get a spray tan together um i i was 18 and it was for it was for like the the prom at the at the end of like i guess that's what you have called it was called the levers ball or something um but we went to get a spray tan together i didn't actually know you're supposed to like get get naked for a spray tan so uh that was a surprise um but i did she had hers done and then i went to get mine done straight afterwards and then i went back into the changing room to put my stuff back on my clothes back on and she she said to me um what the [ __ ] is wrong with your nipples they look blue i don't i mean i don't think i have blue nipples um but she said that and then she said um when you have sex with a guy don't take off your top because he's not going to want to [ __ ] you um and at the time i was just trying my hardest not to look upset by this because i knew that she'd call me sensitive so i was i was just like okay laughs and like joked along and and then when i got home i couldn't stop thinking about it and it meant that the rest of my relationships i i used to just keep my shares on crap what do you think about that story now i think that my nipples aren't [ __ ] blue so there's there's something important there i mean there's a lot that's important there but i just want to point something out to you yeah you look like you're processing still yeah i'm gonna give you a second you let me know when you're ready okay i'm ready so if someone says something like that about you yeah there's a there's like if someone says something mean about you there's like this counterpoint right there's like a no my nipples are normal or whatever but the point is when someone puts you down there's a voice within you that says no that isn't true and what did you do to that voice squashed it yep and so then what becomes true for you what's left what they what they said to me yeah and so if we think about it like when we think about at the very beginning of this conversation i sort of mentioned to you that like your mind generates these thoughts right and like where do those thoughts come from they come from like the mind generates thoughts that it thinks are true but the truth like the the thought generating machines in your mind i think were formed by experiences like this because they were allowed to become true certain opinions about you as a person stood unopposed in fact if anything and be careful because i'm not blaming you for this because but it could seem like an indictment i could make it sound like it's your fault so be careful okay because watch out if the victim complex comes up but you basically stabbed yourself in the back right because instead of fighting against that thought and i'm not saying that this is your fault so be careful victim complex don't derise or if it does arise you let me know but basically what happened is for a long time it sounded like you have some real [ __ ] people in your life that were laying the foundation of the way that you viewed yourself and so like go ahead sorry i i will say quite nasty things about myself to other people because then it hurts less hearing them you own it right yeah why do you call yourself pooper noodle again cause because i shot in a sink and if you call yourself pooper noodle what does that let you do um i don't own it and then it hurts less yeah we're gonna just sit quietly for a moment okay if you need me to say something please let me know okay i'm feeling emotions too okay i have tears welling up in my eyes that's that's very nice um okay yeah what are you feeling right now um i don't i don't know i am this there's something else that i do as well as say nasty things about myself and i don't know how to explain this i don't know why i do it um but i will actively go out sometimes but on a really good day sometimes i will actively go out online search my name and look for the really nasty comments about me and i would i would do it to myself and i will look for the nasty things i don't know if it's to like uh prepare myself or i don't i don't know uh but yeah i do that quite often that makes a lot of sense to me can i have a moment to figure out how to explain it yes you can i think it comes down to well i'm just going to toss out a random kind of story is that okay yeah go ahead sometimes people torture themselves on social media before they go to bed it took me a while to like figure out why they do this but i don't know how else to describe it but like you know sometimes when it's like late at night and you may be feeling good about yourself you may be feeling bad about yourself but then what you do is you hop on social media and you look at all of the wonderful things that other people are doing and it just makes you feel like [ __ ] but you just sign up for that torture like you log on and you gravitate towards seeing all of these happy people and each person that you see makes you feel worse and worse but you just keep looking and you know you do it to yourself and you do it to yourself and sometimes you're feeling good and sometimes you're feeling bad sometimes it's sort of like confirming what you already suspect and sometimes it's like knocking you down a peg because you don't deserve to feel good about yourself yeah and in your case i think hope is a dangerous thing because if hope yep i think hope is a dangerous thing because you've been at the bottom of the pecking quarter you know you can survive that right like it's familiar territory you know how to play this game you've played this game before you're actually really good at speed running this game when lose at the bottom of the totem pole you spend you spend so much time knocking yourself down you know exactly what it looks like you can survive that you're actually quite strong and you know you're strong you know if people think you're [ __ ] you'll survive that because you've survived it for a long time i was about to say your entire life but that's not true what's dangerous is if you're not at the bottom of the tone pole because being at the bottom you're used to falling to the bottom that hurts so much more yeah it's the possibility that you may not be at the bottom which is absolutely terrifying what do you think about that um i yeah that's very well put hadn't thought of it like that um yeah i don't know if it's related but i've always been told i'm quite pushover um as well um so so so so when i am you know assertive it's a huge victory for me just just a small thing like telling a sexy driver that my seat belt is stuck in the door um but the the totem pole thing i um yeah i don't i yeah sorry i'm thinking and trying to speak at the same time it's not working i [ __ ] that up on the on a daily basis i should use your line um it's a good one um normally like yeah normally before like uh doing something like this i would i'll drink or like like because in the past like at a university and stuff i've always been really boring sober and then when i drink the next day people would be like oh you you're so much fun when you drink you stream more often you should you come out oh you're so funny last night um so then i start to think that i'm like i can't be funny without without alcohol i don't drink very often because i don't socialize very often maybe like once a month um but when i do i drink excessively because i feel like i have to catch up to everyone else's social level of of being you know a social person um so yeah and then it always backfires because i can't tell you how many people that i've tried to make friends with at university but um i [ __ ] it up the first night because they invited me out for drinks and then i drank too much and i they had to take me home from the club and i threw up in the taxi and then they never spoke to me again um that's happened quite a lot i've ruined it for myself really with the alcohol um yeah quite good at ruining things for yourself yeah yeah pro you know one of the hardest things about substances so i don't know how many people know this but in my day job i'm actually an addiction psychiatrist so i work primarily with addictions oh you know you know what the hardest addiction is to crack it's when people tell me that when i use the substance i feel the way that other people look i feel normal yeah yeah because it's it's easy to give up something but it's hard to give up that which makes you normal it's a big ask yeah that's what it is right you get to be normal you get to be funny you get to have people like you you get to not think those things about yourself that sober you likes to think yeah but then the next day i do absolutely right so here's the thing about drinking the good point you're not actually normal when you drink you're just taking a loan you're gonna have to pay that back right because all of the self-judgmental thoughts are gonna come roaring back and you're actually going to sabotage your relationships but man is it really sweet like it's just like a loan it's like when i get like a loan from a bank and i'm sitting on like ten thousand dollars of cash like that's awesome i get to buy whatever the [ __ ] i want yeah pay it back i hadn't thought of it like that right so then and the thing is usually when it comes substances as i'm sure you've learned you pay it back with interest because then those people don't call you again in that situation i think it's fair to say i mean so don't get me wrong i want to be compassionate and empathetic but if you hang out with people for the first time and you vomit in a taxi like i wouldn't expect those people to call you again right you're kind of [ __ ] up there like yeah they had to pay flippy quid yeah like don't get me wrong i i don't i mean i i blame you for it and i forgive you for it because we're allowed to make mistakes right that's part of life but let's like be clear and like it it's a mistake yeah drinking too much vomiting in a taxi and alienating people generally speaking in the grand scheme of life is a mistake yeah now when someone tells you that your nipples look strange and you laughing it off and believing that about yourself and being self-conscious that's not a mistake that really isn't fair for you to think about yourself and and it's really mean that she said that and i the same part of me that you know i guess holds you to the standard of making a mistake for bombing the taxi also says that you don't deserve that sure like you deserve the taxi vomit 50 quid fine but like this the rest of the stuff that you do to yourself you don't deserve you also don't deserve to believe and i'm not blaming you for believing this that you're not a delightful person without alcohol because you seem delightful to me are you drunk right now no okay no because that would really torpedo my argument real fast wouldn't it yeah i think uh it's interesting that you keep using the word deserve um something so something happened to me last year um and i wrote about it online and for the whole world to see um and a lot of people said uh you know how how did she not see the red flags what [ __ ] idiot um like you know she deserved this to happen to her sort of thing and i i i do i do um sort of believe that you do believe what that um i just deserved this bad thing to happen to me because i was [ __ ] stupid i think about that for a second yes do you mind if i um and i want you to think about this question before you answer it okay do you mind if i add some or ask you some just basic questions about context remember we talked about this yes are we going to offer more context are we going to skip past the context whichever one you want to do um i let's get past okay yeah okay yeah does that feel like the right move to you um uh [Music] yes okay okay you feeling good about that we good you're judging yourself again what's going on your face is changing i see it what are you doing what are you telling yourself uh the i'm gonna think about this a lot later that's okay you're allowed to think about it what else you're doing that lip biting thing that you do when you're judging yourself uh i i feel bad that i didn't want to give context nope and i am worried that i made your show bad by not doing that there it is okay so just notice what happened right so there come the thoughts again and you believe them to be true they're telling you they're true you see that they feel true to you yeah are they true i don't know okay okay good i'll take and i don't know but just acknowledge that they feel true that's totally cool they feel true to you it turns out i don't think you [ __ ] anything up that's my opinion okay okay but i'm maybe your mind sort of tells you oh he's just saying that and he would be almost like i do this for a living so lou it's it's totally fine man i think i think we can you don't have to go into context you're not like a weak person like oh my god she'd be so much stronger if she spoke out because that's what you're supposed to do right it's it's you do you man so be careful because don't there you like it it's there again too because you have an impulse which is like this is what lou wants to do lou's nipples aren't weird and what do you do to that impulse right so so now i want you to really notice that that's just your reflex of devaluing the way that you feel you're putting you're knocking lou down to the bottom of the totem pole for the sake of the show if i don't give a [ __ ] about the show you certainly shouldn't give a [ __ ] about the show oh all right something changed right so so how did we do that like how are you feeling right now uh uh exposed okay and how does it feel to feel exposed um i'm worrying about what's gonna happen later okay okay i think you're allowed to do that but but what i'm hearing is something this so let's just track through what happened through your mind right so i asked you should we ask more context or uh provide more context or not and then yeah you didn't want to which is totally fine right because i think it's actually not that important we can get a lot out of this okay and and then you started to judge yourself and then you were thinking like this lou is bad in the moment she's [ __ ] things up now and then we've sort of noticed that that you're like beating yourself up again that you're devaluing yourself remember the show is more important than your feelings like you did it again yeah that same program it's like a bot that's just like auto run stuff for you and then we noticed it and that and now you started worrying about the future which i think is a different bot but it's not the same bot does that make sense yes yeah you weren't like devaluing yourself you were like just maybe now you're catastrophizing or something like that yeah yeah but beating yourself up and devaluing yourself is not the same as catastrophizing agreed yes no yeah oh no i forgot what's gonna say it's okay what i'm talking about is quite abstract and hard to hold on to i also get the sense that you're doing by the way you're doing really well i think it's hard for people to learn so many different things that are new all at the same time and are able to keep up yeah i feel like maybe like 20 of it is going in that's why i'm yeah i think it's probably closer to 80 but that's you doing it again you see it but you're gonna take 80 and you're going to turn it into 20 in your mind yes do you see how like it's automatic man how do you notice it so well i don't notice it at all yeah well i mean now we're gonna get to red flags so the reason i notice it well are two reasons one is i'm on the outside uh-huh right the second thing is i practice so you can learn to notice it too because you can notice it if i point it out to you so all you have to do is you have certain programming that has taught you to take opinions about yourself and knock them down in the same way you can start to program being able to notice opinions about yourself and recognize that these are not actually fair opinions this is just your programming you have internalized the opinions of that group of girls does that make sense um yeah sorry i'm bouncing around a lot you can also internalize what i am telling you it just takes practice so you can learn how to know this too it's really cool you have to forgive me i'm an academic so when i sometimes i could say things simply and then instead i make them complicated and hard to understand it's so it's all right um it's the way we feel good about ourselves because then we feel smarter than everyone else when we say something and the rest of the world doesn't understand it just means we're brilliant and they're idiots and then we're like oh when actually we're the ones who are stupid because if we're teachers our job is to help people understand do you think i'm understanding i think you're understanding a lot more than you give yourself credit for okay i'm not making it easy on you by the way no this is this is great this is very uh informative should we get back to it okay yeah go on how are you feeling right now real quick uh oh what did i say that i felt exposed yeah yeah yeah i'm worried about later um what um okay um um no um you know what i'm i'm not gonna skip past it um see look no she just did yeah last year i um i was uh i was assaulted by someone and um i wrote about my experience online and a lot of people reach out to me afterwards about it uh people that i hoped i would never hear from again for example there those those girls from high school read um [ __ ] nice my stuff and reached out to me but exes that i hoped i'd never speak to again reached out to me um it was it was it was weird it was really weird some guy that i went to school with who i only spoke to like maybe two times sent me a message on facebook saying oh hey i read your twitter longer um if you ever need someone to talk to i'm here like i don't i mean i know these people they mean well um but i think that's why i feel exposed right now because i'm i'm thinking about later like what's happening yeah like who's gonna reach out to me and be like hey i saw i saw your interview you know oh hope you're doing okay if you need someone to talk like but there's people that i don't want to hear from that's yeah that sounds really ungrateful um but oh no i just did it again didn't i ah how did you learn how to do that because you made a face you had like well i've [ __ ] faced this all the time okay just a random pile of faces you really can't blame me for that or credit me for that i think that's you learning that's what learning is like because i make okay [ __ ] i'm making a face right now like what does this mean no one knows yeah i can't tell yes my face is about as rng as you can get okay so let's let's try to put some i'm gonna try to organize our discussion a little bit is that okay yes do you want some time to think nope i'm good do you want some time to think no i'm great okay yeah so i i see a fork in the road we can either talk about like you know what you're experiencing now about like what is it that makes you not want to hear from people what is it that makes you worried about the consequences of this conversation or we can go back to this idea of not seeing the red flags feeling stupid feeling like on some level you may have deserved it which direction do you want to go down um the the the deserving one okay so let's start with red flags can i tell you story yes one of my favorite stories so when i was an intern i just finished medical school and i was an intern so like when you're an intern i'm a psychiatrist but when you're an intern you do all kinds of like physical medicine so i was working in the icu and things like that learning how to treat heart attacks and strokes and pneumonia and all that kind of stuff so i one time had this patient that was an elderly woman who um had pneumonia and like what happens is you start your shift at like seven in the morning and it ends at seven at night so you're in the hospital for 12 hours so you're in in the hospital 12 hours a day six days a week so um you know we're taking care of the woman and she starts to do a little bit worse her breathing gets a little bit worse like you know she starts to have her white count which is like the her cells that fight infection kind of jump up a couple things are happening we're kind of monitoring very closely throughout the day because she seems to be moving in the wrong direction so then when shift change happens around 7 pm my my colleague shows up at 6 30 and then i start telling my colleague about all the patients that they're gonna have to watch overnight including my patients so you kind of tell them about all the patients and so i tell her tell him about this woman i said hey you know she's we've been watching her we're like she may need to go to the icu at some point she's not doing as well and then he kind of takes a look at her like data and stuff and he's like listening to the story and she's like and he starts freaking out he's like dude she needs to like she needed to be in the icu hours ago like look at this man like she's not breathing well her white count is up she's like like like just look at her o2 levels her oxygen levels and he starts like freaking out and then i start to feel like really really bad because like as he's repeating this stuff back to me like it sort of like makes perfect sense because he's like listing the data that everything that i literally just told him and when he like packages it and gives it back to me i'm like oh [ __ ] this lady needs to be in the icu and then and then he starts like really panicking and then he kind of like riles me up and then i feel terrible because i and i kind of tell him that you know when you're an intern you have two supervising doctors so i kind of tell them hey like you know i talked it through with like the two supervising doctors and like they felt like we just talked about this lady like two hours ago we went and saw her two hours ago we decided that we didn't think icu transfer was appropriate and he's like well that's just idiotic like she absolutely needs to be in the icu she starts paging a bunch of people and like people show up and they like take her to the icu and stuff and like i feel like a complete dumb ass cause i'm like how did i miss this it's so obvious and so then later i went to one of these like older doctors in the hospital like these super wise guy you with me by the way have i lost you yeah okay no no and then i i kind of tell them like one day after like we have this conference and then at the end of the conference i kind of tell them hey like i think i kind of screwed up and he's like this nice guy that you go to when you have problems and i said like i don't know how i missed this it happened right in front of my eyes and what the the doctor said next blew my mind and he says well that's why you didn't see it he's like the hardest things to see are those that happen right in front of you right when you're inside something every step of the way you don't see the big picture you just see like one step at a time and you're stuck in it and that's how you you miss it like if you think about things like abusive relationships or grooming or stuff like that each step of the way feels okay it's when you zoom out that everyone's like how can this person be so stupid and like literally if you if i put this in front of my eyes like i can't see any right the closer you are to something the harder it is to notice even if we think about your thought process when your thoughts when you're really fused in your mind they feel true to you and they're not opinions they're facts they're not thoughts they're not emotions they're not feelings they're facts you tell yourself lou just isn't that good of a person it feels like a fact when you gain distance from it when you learn to see it from the outside is when it becomes a red flag when it becomes a problem when it's no longer true yes so the first thing is that other people can see red flags from the outside but like that's because they're from the outside the hardest mistakes to see are the ones that we make not the ones that other people make i mean take any [ __ ] person on the street they can tell you a thousand things that you're doing wrong ask them what are they doing wrong they've got no answers so the first thing is are you stupid i don't think so what do you think you're allowed to say yes i think i'm [ __ ] stupid what makes you feel like you're [ __ ] stupid you're allowed to believe that um i i i well and i feel stupid like like just your story i i i missed a lot of seemingly quite obvious things but i i didn't want to to believe that this person was bad i i wanted to believe that they were a good person it was harder for me to believe that they were capable of doing something bad okay so what i'm it's gonna sound silly lou that doesn't sound stupid to me let's just listen to your words i wanted to believe that this person was better than they were that doesn't sound like idiocy that sounds like faith in humanity and maybe you can say that faith in humanity is stupid but like literally lou what makes me good at my job is believing exactly what you believe anytime someone walks into my office i want to believe that they can be better than what they're suggesting yeah i want to believe that you are worth more than you tell me your worth does that make me stupid whether i'm stupid or not i'm i choose to believe it anyway people can call me stupid for having faith that you have value as a human being i know it sounds a weird sentence but you know like like i don't think i don't think you wanting to believe that someone was better than what you what they could have been i don't think that makes you stupid i just don't or if it does i think stupidity is a good quality and i do think that like i mentioned earlier it's like you get lost and stuff because it's in front of your face yeah i mean generally speaking i haven't seen any evidence that suggests that like you know victims of sexual violence like it's not about iq it's about emotions power dynamics kind of like predatory behavior like victims aren't stupid they're victims you know i it doesn't i just don't accept that i mean you may be stupid like maybe you're stupid but that has nothing to do with you being a victim it's just like those are different things what do you think um i i feel like i um uh i feel like i'm not allowed to be happy because i i mean i've had i've had people message me or say things before like you know this girl looks way too happy here she's obviously lying about about the whole thing so i feel like i'm not allowed to be happy because then um people would um believe me and you want people to believe you more than i want to be happy that's interesting so let's think about that for a second right so i thought that was very a very authentic representation so what do you think about someone who wants to be believed more than they want to be happy that they're stupid probably i can see why you would come to that conclusion i i i i think though so what that tells me lou is that i i don't think it's stupid at all i think that um i laughed because it's i sort of walked into that one in terms of your response because like of course like why wouldn't people choose happiness but i think it tells us a lot about you right so i think this goes back to like you being seen and accepted for what you are and and your entire life you've been sort of like trying to be you and people have been swatting you down and now with something so important you want them you don't want to swat yourself down like you want people to believe you like you want to say like you know take your pick like six donuts is not okay you know my i was about to make a comment about your nipples but that's just gonna get taken out of context but like you know take whatever whatever uh you know context like whatever story like there have been lots of times where you've taken what you are on the inside and you've said i defer to the rest of the world what i am gets second place compared to like what y'all think but what i'm hearing you do is like put your foot down draw your line in the sand and say when it comes to this i'm not going to compromise and i need to be believed and this did happen and if happiness is the sacrifice that it takes to be like authentic and accepted then so be it yeah that doesn't sound stupid to me at all what do you think i feel um i i put a lot of pressure on myself because i i worry that if that if i if i heal and i am happy and someone is like she looks way too happy to clout chase and [ __ ] clearly lies about the whole thing then what if they discredit other people's stories as well because because it seems like i am lying and then suddenly i i think i'm catastrophizing sort of sure see there you did it again look at that yeah what are you starting to do you're gaining distance from your thoughts because you were like about to like you were boarding that train and it was like the seat belt isn't on it's starting to chug away and you're like hey hold on a second can you pull over i need to put the seat belt on that's what you just did yeah you just did it yeah yeah i did yeah interesting what happened to that that train of thoughts once you're like oh i'm catastrophizing again i can't remember what i was talking about there you go pull the plug on it so if anyone here is watching this is the way you pull the plug on anxiety like i can't even remember like just imagine if i could give you a pill that would make you literally forget your anxieties because that's what we just saw happen you literally forgot your anxiety like that's what you can't even remember what you were talking about now yeah oh no i just remembered see it takes work though doesn't it yeah okay good because the more you remember the more you can practice forgetting and when you get really good at forgetting when you get really good at noticing then you'll be in control but keep going you want to finish your thought no okay so if i if i notice these things what happens like i notice it and then what did it still happen yes except every time you notice it you gain a little bit of control over it right so if i notice my facial expressions if i pay attention to them i can control them right and if i'm not aware of what i'm doing then i don't control it so awareness precedes control if you've ever had dental work done and you've had your mouth numb you can't control anything in there because you can't feel it you're not aware of it you don't even know where your tongue is and so once you become aware of something then you can do something about it okay does that how do i how do i do that with social anxiety same way it's just it can be harder right so you're like so i'm helping you do it and your mind is in a very aware state right now and you're going to be exhausted after this i'm going to be exhausted too yeah and and then what happens is like you're going to do it again and you're going to do it again and you may have someone to help you like therapists may be a good idea in your case if you don't have one already and then you're going to practice this and then what's going to happen is like maybe when it comes to [Music] you know but i think in social anxiety it's the same like you're going to notice yourself catastrophizing you're going to notice yourself like you're you're like someone's going to invite you over and then you're going to have that thought pop in your head oh they don't actually want to see you they just want your 20 quid and then you're going to notice that thought you're going to be like no actually that's not true they do want to see me yeah so it's the same thing sometimes the stakes can feel higher and so it can be harder to overcome there certainly is like level one level two level three level four in terms of difficulty but it's the same i yeah so something happened like a couple weeks ago where um i like um everyone at the moment playing this game among us right and a couple weeks ago uh i'm in all these lobbies and i tried to join this this random one and there were the streamers in there who i i thought i was friends with so i felt comfortable going in there i was only in it for like like maybe three three games um but i just i had this really embarrassing moment where i went into this school and like in my head this was a disaster but in the call it i i couldn't imagine anyone in there probably doesn't remember this at all um but there was this one guy who was calling everyone by their names and then he was calling me by my color instead of my name kept calling me orange instead of poop noodle and it really upset me and um eventually i was like hey my name is pooper noodle and then it's like it looks like a little bit of a lull it went a little bit quiet and then everyone just carried on um but after that i i couldn't say again i just i closed closed the game left core i didn't want to make a scene i was like i gotta go uh and and then i i just i spent like the rest of the day just crying about it about about just getting called orange uh and it's it was pathetic okay so i i'm guessing that the reason you brought that up is because we're gonna use this as a case for understanding is that okay let's analyze it okay is that that's what i'm seeing is the clearest relevance to me is that okay yes i think it's a great example i think it's a beautiful example i think it ties together everything we've been talking about today so what would you rather have than happiness we were talking about this right because you felt stupid because you wanted i wouldn't want it to be believed yeah right so this goes back to this idea that there's like two kinds of blues there's the real lou and then there's the loo that everyone else sees there's a part of you that yearns to be seen and accepted and you're willing to sacrifice that part for the most most of the time but there are some things that you're not willing to compromise on does that make sense yeah this is like this is like the real you that's like fighting to say i don't have blue nipples i am a good person i'm worth more than six donuts and deodorant you know yeah i'm a cool person like it's not about popularity or anything like that but like i'm a good person and i deserve to be seen i deserve to be treated and judged for who i am as opposed to who people think i am that's why that person isn't gonna take orange from anyone you're not gonna you're not gonna be orange do you want them to see who you are yeah so i think it's that same part of you and it speaks up it says damn you i'm pooper noodle and i would like you to address me as such right and then something really funny happens like so when you do that and you stand up for yourself when you tell the driver to pull over because your seat belt isn't on then it runs very contrary to all of this programming which is like you've been telling yourself you've practiced really really hard you've leveled up a lot in terms of devaluing yourself but there's this part of you that's like is trying to break through this like hard soil and like start to bloom which is like who you really are and then sometimes it pops its head up and then you enter this period of intense conflict because it runs against all of the programming that you've been doing which is no no no they get to call you whatever they want lou why are you inconveniencing them with your name yeah yeah how dare you how dare you inconvenience them and so it's like like there's a this part of you that wants to come up and then there's this part of you and then then you're crying all day because like then it like then you're just kind of conflicted and that takes time to sort of work through right and that too comes with distance with sort of taking taking a step back and recognizing what's going on recognizing that for a long time this part of you that knocked yourself down also i know this sounds really bizarre also protected you because if you knock yourself down and you hurt yourself no one can do can out do you and if you're the one knocking yourself down at least you're in control and what you want more than anything else is control yeah stacked up pillows against the door and listening what are you doing you're trying to get control you're trying to control the circumstances so this is the hard thing about anxiety you gotta let go of control you gotta let people judge you and it's terrifying yeah i care a lot about other people's opinions like like way too much so let me ask you a crazy question what's harder knowing that everyone doesn't like you or not knowing if everyone doesn't like you not knowing right no it's weird yeah anxiety is a strange beast in that way you're looking for certainty even you'll take you'll take a certain bad thing over an uncertain bad thing yeah which is like then how the [ __ ] like no wonder you feel the way that you do because it's like i give you two choices 100 chance of failure 50 chance of failure which one do you pick you pick for 100 yeah and then it's like no wonder you're where you are yeah but it takes courage to take the 50. people look at that and they say you're stupid for picking 100 chance of failure no they just don't understand that's not how psychology works you're not stupid it's that the other way to think about it is control versus not control and are you stupid for picking control right yeah yes i don't know what the answer was yeah i don't know sorry this this is where i get too abstract some people follow me some people can't it's not a big deal it's more on me than it is on you okay but does that make sense where you you sort of at least when you beat yourself up you control the pain yeah and you can survive that you're used to that yes so i think the orange story is a great one because i think it's sort of like you know you kind of fight against yourself and then like that thing comes roaring back and so the next time i would say the next time you stand up for yourself be aware that the part of you that has made yourself a pushover so that other people will like you will be very upset there's one part of you that's like i'm going to let other people do whatever the [ __ ] they want to me because then they'll like me and then there's another part of you that's like nah because you were upset that everything went quiet yeah oh my god i inconvenienced them i'm sorry lady who's doing my nails that you're putting me into physical pain did i inconvenience you by telling you that you're physically hurting me and my nails are bleeding i'm so sorry yeah yeah um that's exactly what goes on yep and if you if you would have told her then what would you do to yourself afterward what do you think would happen if you told her to stop i had i'd been thinking about like how awkward it was that i had to tell her just to stop and then i'd be like analyzing her face like was she sad about it was she upset that she was doing her nails my nails badly i'm terrified of like uh confrontation [Music] and you'd be torturing yourself yeah you see so anytime lou tries to break out of the surface there comes anxiety it's like how dare you how dare you be a person lou how dare you have feelings how dare you have value thoughts questions okay no nothing's going on right now yep at all i think we're close to being done for the day okay how does that feel to you um i'm tired yep i can't already for bed yeah wait do i look tired there it is no i i can tell you that you're cognitively spent okay i'm cognitively spent too how do you feel about me saying that bad yeah see that's okay is that not a bad thing do you normally get cognitively spent yes okay i'm out of mana you're out of mana we've been casting spells for a while that doesn't make us bad people it doesn't make us weak it doesn't make us stupid it just means we're out of mana we've been doing this [ __ ] for like an hour and a half now oh wow yeah yeah straining your wealth your cognitive straining your brain for an hour and a half is gonna make you um yeah do you want to learn how to meditate um oh okay well then what was that ooh um i've tried to do it meditation before um but two things i'm very lazy and also um i i find that it doesn't maybe i've not been doing it for long enough but it doesn't it doesn't quite turn down my my thoughts i've i'm terrified of being alone with them yeah okay i think that's reasonable can i think for a second yes i may need longer than a second i may need a minute or two oh okay do you do you want to do if you don't want to learn how to meditate we don't have to do anything first okay okay what do you think what's the second thing is if you do want to learn something then i'll try to teach you something i'm wondering if if you're going to take the out for both of us because i'm not sure what to teach you but i'll figure something i have an idea i oh i i i just i i feel like i'm doing it wrong because it's supposed to help isn't it and it just makes things worse is it am i doing it i've thought maybe no you're you're not doing it wrong you're being taught the wrong kind of meditation okay okay right it's kind of like if i walk into the shoe store and i put on a pair of shoes that's my size the problem isn't that my feet are or like let's say i put on a pair of shoes it's too big the problem isn't that my feet are too small it's that the shoe isn't the right size right you have to do meditation that fits for your mind so i'm just trying to think about what have you tried do you like what kind of meditation doesn't help let's start there um mindfulness yep mindfulness is going to be terrible for you oh like mindfully eating and like looking at a little grape so let me okay um so so let's let's think about why mindfulness is not gonna i mean we can do a mindfulness practice if you want but mindfulness tends to be sitting back and observing there are two kinds of meditation there's a focusing meditation and an observing meditation one is where you watch what your mind does and then the second is when you tell your mind to do something so in your case if you're feeling like pretty anxious i think there are a couple of breathing techniques that could help you but i sort of feel like breathing techniques isn't the right fit bizarrely i want to teach you something like a mindfulness practice but i want to teach you a very structured one okay even though i don't think it's really great for you but we're going to try something because i think you actually have a talent for it in a particular way we try something a little bit unusual yeah okay um i reserve the right for this to not work and then i want to be able to try to teach you something else okay that okay yeah i want you to close your eyes okay okay so today lou we've been talking about the different programs in your mind right so like there's like the lou that wants to come forward and like wants to be believed wants to be seen wants to be heard and there's the lou that tries to swap her down yeah so what i'm gonna do is i want you to watch carefully now i'm to make a statement and i want you to eyes nope okay how do i pay attention listen good point like i said i deserve to [ __ ] this one up i mean i i reserve the right to [ __ ] this one up okay um so i want you to listen carefully to what i say and i want you to watch your mind and watch your mind's response okay and just notice for a second i'm just gonna speak words but that those words they're just words it's like you know my name is red i like balloons words are words they have no meaning but i want you to see how the words that i speak are going to evoke responses in your mind okay and tell me what the responses are ready yeah you are a wonderful person do i do i tell you yeah tell me what happens in your mind when i say that um just trying to be nice that you are trying to be nice what happens eyes closed oh sorry okay uh whoever saying that just trying to be nice to me okay so so you notice how your mind responded to that right yeah you swatted it down yeah okay now number two you are a terrible person what does your mind do in response to that um [Music] true okay so that's kind of interesting right you see how your mind responds differentially to those statements yeah so now what i want you to do is try to figure out where do those thoughts come from uh you're not going to be able to so just give me what you got when i tell you to figure out where they come from what happens what how can you look for where they come from i don't know they just come from from me okay so where from you good um i i don't know okay good would it okay so good so you're doing it right i know it sounds weird so now i want you to think about so when i say you're a wonderful person try to find wonderfulness within you okay do you have wonderfulness anywhere in you um yeah where um [Music] i really like dogs okay and now so so where do you feel that right is that a is it a thought or a feeling first of all that's a feeling and what does that feel like wonderful and where does it where do you how how can you know that you're feeling wonderfulness what is your experience of wonderful um is there a right answer sort of not really i've i have no idea okay good okay now i'm going to tell you something else are you starting to feel self-conscious yeah because my eyes are closed good notice that self-consciousness where is that feeling where is that feeling everywhere good what does it feel like tell me um like like i'm like i'm gonna fall off a building or something yep so so there's a sensation right of like something terrible is about to happen notice the lack of safety with your eyes being closed yeah it's like what are people thinking what is he doing what's his face doing oh my god what do they think i don't even know where the computer is am i sitting in the right place yeah so you're so notice that the though all of those thoughts actually come from the feeling not the other way around i want you to notice the vulnerability is generating thoughts in your mind does that make sense it's almost like a fountain that's just generating all these [ __ ] random thoughts like is my camera still on am i sitting in the right place what are they thinking what are they saying like you see how it's like it's like a fountain it's just spewing out these random ass thoughts yeah like but somewhere there's a feeling within you notice that vulnerability you may feel it somewhere in your body what do you feel in your body um but what can can can you can you repeat the question yeah what do you feel in your body right now what does vulnerability feel like in your body uh i'm sweating okay good what else um pay attention to your throat your chest heart stomach um i feel a bit dizzy okay so now i want you to in a moment i'm going to ask you to open your eyes but before i do that i want you to take a snapshot of the way take a screenshot of the way that you feel and then we're going to open your eyes and we're going to see how you feel afterward open okay what's happening oh my god that's so weird where am i what's weird tell me i can see uh everything's much smaller than i imagined it okay so by smaller you mean your fears right i mean the room okay cool things are smaller okay yeah awesome that means you're doing it right so okay what about your fears that yeah that too so interesting so now we're gonna do it again i know we're at both oom but raid boss is at 10 we're going to keep going you ready yeah close your eyes again okay what comes up um i can't see again there we go good so notice that you can't see again so things are getting bigger yeah your fears are magnifying the room is getting bigger just notice that all of that stuff for a moment right notice how bad it feels and now open your eyes and now what's happening it's gone away what's gone away the scariness okay so guess what you just learned how to do was was that meditation nope yeah sure you just learned to make the scariness go away in meditation technique that's what we're going to call it okay but i i want you to really pay attention so you can try this i think this is actually a good technique for you so i want you to just this is going to be your technique i don't know that's going to work for anyone else but what i want you to notice and you got to tell me if i'm wrong okay lou you can't please just don't tell me what i want to hear what i want you to notice is that the size of your fears grows and shrinks depending on what your eyes being open or closed yeah how vulnerable i am [ __ ] dumb your eyes being opened and closed has nothing to do with the fears in the world has to do with your feelings has to do with your sense of vulnerability but the fear is the fear the fear the actual probability that something bad happens is not going to change it's not going to alter wildly in the span of 90 seconds whether you're doing this or doing this does that make sense yeah but how does it feel it feels like the fears become bigger even the roof becomes bigger the microphone is like in your face right like everything is like pressing in on you with your eyes closed and so what you're doing is like the world is like coming in and then you open them and it zooms out everything feels smaller bigger smaller bigger smaller and so if you do this practice so you start by doing it by yourself and then if there's someone that you trust do it with them in the room and it's going to make it way harder and then go and do it in the public place oh no right but here's the here's the crazy thing blue like stay with me now okay try really hard you with me do your best yay all you're doing is opening and closing your [ __ ] eyes the world doesn't change that rapidly do you see how your fears will literally grow or shrink depending whether on whether your eyes are open or closed but what if i get hit by a car well i mean okay so let's work let's not worry about the public place yet let's just focus on in the room and with one person you trust okay okay i mean what if you get hit by a car i i'm not saying you do it while you're driving okay i'm saying like like if you have a balcony like go out onto the balcony or something like that okay but what what i really i don't know if you're getting this or not which is fine because i know you're um and i'm out of um so i'm asking a lot of you but what i want you to notice is that literally your fears can grow or shrink depending on what your eyelids are doing and do you see how like that's just not literally like how the world works like my chances of getting hit by a car don't inc well maybe they do increase or decrease if my eyes are closed but bad example or a good example on your part real five-head player but generally speaking you know the fear or your value as a human being or all of these other things that you're worried about shouldn't change over the span of 60 seconds if you open or close your eyes does that make sense yeah but the feeling changes rapidly and so if you do this practice literally what you're going to gain is control over your fear you're gonna learn the process of shrinking your fears or growing them and you're gonna see how the mind shrinks fears and grows them and as you learn that you're gonna get literally you're gonna get control over your fear because you'll learn cognitively how to shrink it it's like a shrink-a-matic for your fears i like that so and even if what i'm saying to you right now doesn't make sense that's okay it doesn't need to make sense right now just do the practice do it a couple times a week just like go and like close your eyes and just notice like it's like closing your eyes is like opening the doors to your fears and then opening them is like putting them all away yeah and yet it's still you still have within you the capacity of putting them all away yeah questions i really like that no that's that's that sounds much better than what i was doing before um yeah yeah yeah you i think i'm glad it worked i don't i guess i don't have to come up with a backup then oh i'm sorry no because i just i didn't know because it's it's a it's it's actually like a high level meditation technique it's not like a novice meditation oh yeah does that make me an expert in meditation what does that thought evoke in you if i were to tell you lou you were an expert at meditation what happens um i don't know it'd be pretty cool yes so the short answer is yes yeah let me explain it to you this way you spend so much time in your head so you're actually going to be pretty good at meditation yeah right because from a very young age when other people were interacting with the outside world who were you interacting with me so you started leveling up meditation very young you've leveled up a skill you just haven't found the right gear until today okay oh and so practice it okay any closing thoughts or questions before we wrap up for the day um um how do i not care about what other people think of me you do care about what other people think about you you don't not care you just let yourself care caring is fine what i want you to learn lou is not to not care what other people think it's to gain distance from the caring okay right you're allowed to care what other people think but it doesn't have to control who you are okay you're perfect the way you are you don't need to change you just need perspective on who you are now it's a weird concept okay do you feel like he's just saying that uh i don't know just it was just quite nice and yeah now i'm crying i don't know why so that's pretty so you know what's cool about that is i just called you perfect and your mind didn't respond with he's just saying that you were able to feel it it was able to sink in and i'm not saying it to be nice i think it's genuinely true i think you're amazing exactly how you are and that your life has been a confluence of circumstances to make you into a perfect and unique human being and that just because you have flaws doesn't mean that you aren't perfect and that's part of life it's part of the journey of growth and i wish you all the best thank you thank you very much do the practice three times a week for two to three minutes okay okay yeah okay thanks for coming on blue okay thank you so thank you so much for having me yeah do i do i leave now is that sure okay all right okay bye okay do you want to just tell us about your channel before you go no no god no bye [ __ ] okay so i guess don't check her out

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 387,665

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, poopernodle, methodjosh, social anxiety, catastrophizing, social isolation, avoiding roommates, how to stop thinking the worst of people, devaluing yourself, substance abuse, using alcohol for social anxiety, sexual assault, the cost of happiness, letting go of control, meditation, meditation for social anxiety

Id: 5n6lDNacfk0

Length: 120min 24sec (7224 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ddwsff]

I just watched first 10 min and looking at her i had no idea she have that much extreme social anxiety disorder but then revealing embarrassing stuff about her nickname in public that made me skeptical about the video dont want to judge but it made me disinterested how someone would able to do that with SAD. If someone watched it full let me know if it really worth watching.