Dealing with Unchangeable Circumstances ft. Sweet Anita

you know like healthy gamer is new and it's like did was this going to work like how on earth would we think that this would be successful we wouldn't think this would be successful it was done before and yet we did it anyway and that's how we started and that's what we do now like that's where our coaching program comes from i started streaming on twitch and i was like okay this is what needs to we need to try this then people were like dr k help me dr k help me dr chao and i was like oh [ __ ] a lot of people to help can't do them all myself can i train other people so let's try is it going to work we don't know let's try and so that's what we did and then like we started off with mostly individual coaching and then what we realized is that like there are shared issues that people struggle with and these are things like you know people like feeling awkward and lacking purpose and being lonely and like not having someone to share those feelings with and work through those problems with they don't have someone to help and that's where group coaching comes in so then we evolved group coaching and so group coaching is about you know personal coaching i think is really good for people who have like a particular issue that's very specific to them but generally speaking what we find in group coaching is that the issues that you think are super specific to you are actually shared by a whole bunch of other people and let's think about that because if that wasn't true this stream would be nowhere if this if the people that i interviewed did not resonate with all of our audience the stream would be nowhere why do you guys watch because you connect with the person that we talk to and the problems that you share you don't have to fight those battles on your own that's why we started groups groups are tricky they take a while to start people are confused about how to do them but their outcomes are very good and they like groups kind of gain momentum over time right like you don't know like what in what way you need to improve a lot of areas of your life that need to improve and then like other people are gonna be the same way they're like i don't know where to start right like i'm i i'm not in a romantic relationship i don't have a good job i'm not doing well in my classes and then like those people help you and remember that the real value of healthy gamer is that it's easier to see in someone else your problems it's easy to look at them objectively because when you look at someone else with anxiety it's like way easier to understand it because you're not experiencing it in that moment so the real way that growth happens in group is actually by when i share an experience i benefit some from it but then everyone else actually benefits more and then they share their version and then i benefit from that and then like what happens is each person brings one piece of the puzzle to the table and with a dozen of you all or 10 or all or 80 all you'll put you'll put those puzzle pieces together and then it's cool it's great all right you looking good feeling good uh-huh let's get started cool okay don't mind if i do um yeah so anita have you been i've been all right yeah busy busy busy but getting more sleep and taking a little bit more care of myself than i used to so that's great i'm really happy to hear that seriously i i think you deserve to take care of yourself you deserve to be cared for by yourself and um are you wearing a hat that says simp yeah can you tell me about that all right so um i i me and uh stream elements we we designed merch and i was thinking to myself uh what would be really relatable and very appropriate for my chat and this is how the hat happened and i just happen to like it and i just wear it day to day i i i actually really love my sit pad so yeah that's the full story i think it's uh it's a good way um okay so i guess i can share this story hopefully it's not identifiable and if the person that i'm talking to yeah there's no way that people are gonna so i was talking to someone who is yesterday i was working with someone who was a little bit concerned about um their hair uh because they're kind of going bald and the problem is you're going bald yeah i'm losing my hair that's scary yeah uh it's impossible to find out why kids are covered because there are like doctors and everything are really they've got their hands full so i guess i'll find out sometime threw me for a loop there but let me just finish my story real quick and then you know we can talk about that if you want to but um so they were feeling like pretty anxious because they're losing their hair and and what what they said is that you know like they're prominent in like the streaming esports world and so they can't show up one day like even if they wanted to get a piece like a wig like they couldn't get one right and so i what i suggested to them is that they should just show up one day with one and then in the middle of like an interview or something just take it off adjust it and then just put it right back on and just let the whole world know that you wear a wig but anyway we'll see if they ever do that um yeah i feel like owning it takes the power out of it and nobody's committing a crime by losing a little bit of hair as well i think that streaming is about being relatable and being company to people who feel a bit alone and there are probably plenty of people who watch that person who are also losing their hair so i don't think it's gonna work against them and i don't know why they'd be so afraid yeah so i mean it's a good question right why are people afraid and if we think about it so if we well this is gonna get yeah let me know if this moves too fast for you okay anita it's fine go for it so i mean i'm a little bit curious so especially being a woman i can imagine it can feel very distressing if you're losing your hair ah there's always wigs i'll be okay um but the thing is like i know chat latches on to you absolutely anything um so it's not really something i want people to get distracted by and that's really my own concern with it i don't have a partner i don't have anyone around me i'm alone like 99 of my my day so it's not like anyone's going to bother and i don't really look in the mirror much so it's not something that really scares me um so for now i just try to make sure people don't get distracted by it so that we can focus on the content really rather than my body because people try to focus on my body a lot during streaming people take clips of my ass and stuff so like i just try to keep people's attention on the on the topic rather than me um and that's the only reason why i take any measures to really hide it interesting um yeah i think you do a really good job of like owning things and making them more acceptable to people who are ashamed about them uh i think that's actually one of the really awesome things that you bring to twitch into this community i'm curious what does it feel like to have people kind of be focusing on your body and taking clips of your ass and things like that i've experienced it my whole life my whole life has basically been a struggle to make friends with people who were just trying to depth test me and like seeing dying friendships because i see more and more signs that someone's into me and i try to show signs that i'm not interested back and they don't see them because they have a bias because they want something for me and so chat is just making is just another way that i relive that exact same struggle where i'm trying to hold a conversation about everything else and it keeps falling back to their desire to get their willy wet and so i'm so used to navigating it that i just poke humor at it now and use it as content because i can't make it go away i can't control how other people feel how they behave so in any way if i can't control the situation or change it for the better i try to change its effect on me and others and so the way i've been managing it is just to poke humor at it and make it a reason for people to smile and laugh in various ways and that's the only thing i can really think to do about it sounds very mature um you know to approach it that way i'm surprised you say so because poking fun at people for being attracted to me doesn't sound like an initially like a mature premise for any kind of content but yeah i guess i agree with you that poking fun it doesn't sound like that but that's why when we dig into actually what you're doing that does sound mature to me right so like sort of saying hey there's something about the world that i can't change and people are going to be people so i'm going to do my best to kind of focus on what i think is important and steer people in the right direction and if people want to you know focus on something physical i can kind of just poke fun at it and then kind of focus on what's important that sounds pretty mature to me thank you i mean i think surreptitiously i poke fun at it as well to show people who are very inexperienced in talking to people they're attracted to that this doesn't work um i try to use like gamer-based analogies to show people that certain things are not okay or not fun and not cool like pickup lines i describe them as when people think there are cheat codes into women's pants that you can just say a generic sentence and you'll be able to sleep with someone and that's not how people work because they're individuals and stuff and that when you try to use a cheat code to get in someone's pants you're basically saying i'm lonely and i want to [ __ ] it's not about you if it was about you i'd say something specific to you that's to do with you but i'll just say this generic thing and hope that your panties fall off sort of thing and these sort of descriptions help me to describe to people how not to hit on people so that maybe one day they'll successfully connect um so i kind of seen it as an opportunity to help people figure out what doesn't work so that they can lean towards what does i need to is there i thought i detected a note of anger there oh yeah i mean there's a a huge undercurrent of frustration i want to connect with people long term i want to have friends i want to have you know really fun interactions and there's this barrage of lonely dicks between me and all the people that are worth hanging out with the people who aren't trying to [ __ ] me it happens everywhere i go and everything i do like i've gone to social clubs and all sorts trying to make friends because i was desperately lonely and then like two or three men will latch on to me and try to talk to me like interview me for a role in their life i do not [ __ ] want and they just won't leave me alone i'll try to ditch them and go to the bathroom i'll come out there waiting for me and whilst everyone else sees that i'm talking to people they don't feel comfortable talking to me so all the people who don't want to [ __ ] me don't get around to talking to me and i'm just stuck with these people who i know i'm gonna disappoint and there's no friendship there because they're just waiting to see if i'll [ __ ] them and i've tried so hard to make friends with people who are attracted to me and been like oh make a good thing out of this and it doesn't work out because they get more disappointed and uncomfortable and it becomes too painful for them to hang out with me so i have been lonely and frustrated and angry and trying ever since i was young i was isolated and alone and i've been trying so hard my whole life to make long-term friends and these friendships keep [ __ ] dying and i've had female friends thinking you'll be fine and they've all hit on me too so i don't know how to escape it and i feel really frustrated and alone i know there are people out there i'm not egotistical enough to think that it's just that everyone wants me it's just that when other people who do are attracted to me are pushy they kind of barge everyone else out of the way they kind of they kind of inhibit my ability to spend time with people who actually have a genuine friendship with no other intentions and i want to be worth that to someone i don't want to be just something to death depth test i want to be a friend i want to support people i want to see people grow and have kids and get married i want to be with people long term and have a great time with them and not just be sad all the people who come into my life and get disappointed that i don't have more to offer i want my friendship to be a [ __ ] nuff bravo anita i think you've grown since the first time i talked to you really immensely and what makes you say that so you told me some wild stories the first time we talked i don't know if you remember but like i was really confused because you would say like yeah people continuously fall in love with me and it sounds like sort of like a like on the surface much like you know the mature comment it can be kind of confusing but it sort of seems sort of narcissistic to say that right but i don't think it was i think it's genuinely your experience but i can imagine people would judge you that way um and and you know i oh wow and there's so much there so first of all thank you so much for being so authentic i i was so i i you know you're a genius with words by the way i don't know if you like you're like a wordsmith i just ran it i i don't i what what did i say that you said you said this is one of the best sentences i've ever heard or read in my life there's a barrage of dicks between me and a real friendship that's such a great sentence it captures your experience so well first of all i've never heard the phrase barrage of dicks [Laughter] you know it's like it's a new combination in the english language i think it it really does such a good job so i spend my days practicing my words i spend my days so if you think about human experience human experience any human experience that's translated into words loses something right because i can't i can use the word love but like what love feels like in in four letters l-o-v-e there's like a wide chasm between those yeah and what i really respect about what you just said is like that chasm got really really small you know when you kind of talk about how incredibly frustrating it is um that you want something and that there's all this crap getting in the way um and yeah i mean i think it was just very well said and i think it's an experience that i imagine i mean i've talked to a lot of women who i think would resonate with that experience that you know they they keep on getting blamed for friend-zoning people but they're they get girlfriend-zoned all the time immediately um and so yeah i just thought it was well said and i think the reason you've grown is because the first time that i talked to you you were just relentlessly positive and you still i mean you're still a positive person right like you're kind of like i can't change other people so i'm gonna do the best that i can to make a world a better place like that's why anita's awesome and but i almost thought that you were too positive because you didn't give space to yourself to feel negative and to recognize that that's not fair and that that's not okay and that like you deserve to have friends and now i hear you getting frustrated about it which i think is actually a step in the right direction i think it was subsurface anger and now it's surface anger but that's how we let things out and and now it's interesting because i i i feel like sort of embarking on a conversation that i very rarely do which is to change other people so usually we talk about you but i i wonder if there are some things that you could do or we could explore let me just think about how to say this because i get the sense that you do have this like moth drawn to a flame kind of thing going right so you've mentioned to me that there are many people like even female friends of yours that you'll feel close to who sort of wind up kind of falling for you in a romantic way and so there's something that tells me that something about what other people see in you makes them think romance instead of friendship so uh in response i've got two responses to that i hope i remember them both the first is that um i used to go down a very self blaming route with it a long time ago in my early teens because i used to just walk in the street and guys would panhandle for sex they come up to me like hey baby where you headed can i go with you do you know local pub do you want to come with me where'd you live what's your name all these personal details i didn't want to give to a stranger um usually an older stranger and i was like this must be something to do with me i attract these horrible people that i don't want to interrupt my day um i i kind of i want to so i got changed i wore this massive trench coat thinking everyone like when people look at people who've been sexually assaulted they go well what were you wearing and as a kid i thought that meant that if you just wore specific clothes no one would bother you sexually um and i got the wrong idea from those questions that i saw people asking anyone who suffered sexual assault so i was like fine i wear a trench coat people leave me alone nobody can see my body there'd be no reason to hit on me and i was wrong and people still hit on me i tried so many different approaches i tried being rude to people and distant and people still chased me i tried to be friendly and warm and people still chased me i tried everything and every approach i could think of i i put people down harshly i was like i will never [ __ ] you in a million years and that didn't work and i would have i hospitalized boys at school and for being too pushy and aggressive and they'd come out of hospital and ask me out straight away with their cast on like i just couldn't find an approach and i was soft and gentle and they just wouldn't get the message and so like i stopped blaming myself a long time ago for people not paying attention because i wasn't flirting i wasn't you know i don't flirt with these people i pay attention to it and i'm like why are you getting me signals and why when i when i avoid you because you're hitting on me do you not get these signals like i can avoid people and like does she love me i'm like how thinking like this still every time you hit on me i go silent and walk away and you're like i don't know what she wants women are just a mystery i've even said like no just no just not ever and they're like is she playing hard to get what do why don't they just say when they want me i don't understand women are a mystery and i just can't [ __ ] find the right thing to say to someone that's beside with you because they're so preoccupied with what they want and they're thinking with little brain so they don't hear sense and so i i i've asked myself my whole life this question and as well people think i'm conceited if i ever bring it up so i can't ask people for advice so it's like a problem that's making me really lonely and desperate for real friendship it's making me really really struggle to trust people because people say they're not attracted to me and then spring out on me and then break up as a friend the minute they realize it's not going to be anything more like i have so many issues surrounding this i want a fulfilling life and a fulfilling social group and it's destroying it even when i do find long-term friends who like say they're not into me and never hit on me at all right the minute i have more friends they get jealous and angry and it starts to show or like um i'll have friends around me that are nice and aren't hitting on me and people around me will assume that we're together and start socially assassinating them and trying to break up that friendship and a lot of the times it even [ __ ] works like there are so many situations where even if i if even if there's no romance at all people's romances [ __ ] it up and people's attraction to me [ __ ] it up and there are people in chat right now saying i think she's making a big thing about being attractive i don't feel attractive i don't understand this at all and it annoys the hell out of me i'm not boasting this suck this really [ __ ] sucks and i'm sick of it i don't want to have to politely navigate people's intentions and constantly disappoint people i don't want to feel like a disappointment anymore i don't want to feel like my friendship is a [ __ ] consolation prize i want people to just be happy with it and like if i have to acknowledge that people are attracted to me in order to find the route to do so let me do that because i'm not making it up and i'm not boasting about it and it's not a [ __ ] compliment that people don't want to spend time with me unless i [ __ ] them that's the opposite of a compliment why do people think i'd be proud of that that is the ultimate insult i'm gonna think for a second if that's okay okay i didn't get to my second point but i think that's enough no let's hear your second point um this what was this i had it in my brain just for a second it's gone out the window what was it um firstly it's not a compliment and people think i'm conceited and all that stuff stuff but secondly um i'm not oh manipulation i'm not trying to fix anyone um i've i'm done trying to be responsible for other people's lack of growth i'm not going to try and convince people to value me beyond sleeping with me if they can't see past that that's their problem i'm exhausted i used to spend so much of my youth supposedly being so mature for my age and people who have problems gravitating towards me including partners and they put me in charge of their personal growth and they also blamed me whenever they could struggle to be good and they were like well if you were more supportive or if you were more confident in the bedroom maybe i wouldn't have and all this sort of stuff and the minute you start rushing in to help people build on themselves in situations where they're just shallow [ __ ] you end up struggling and crying and being hurt with them taking responsibility for their [ __ ] like i'm so done with that i'm a grown-up i hang out with grown-ups if they can't grow and be mature and think past their woolies that's their problem gonna find people who can think past their willies i'm not going to try and change people not in this respect and to be honest the times that i've changed people the most are when i've never tried to change them at all just by being happy and being myself people see solutions that they've not tried before from the way that i exist and i'm far more happy with that way of helping people than actively trying to meddle with their minds and their lives most often change doesn't really happen unless people want it to so it has to be their idea in the first place and honestly i'm just so done playing therapist i was nice to help people grow i've definitely helped people in the past and really enjoyed it but i'm exhausted now i've spent my whole life caring for my mom and caring for other people and i just want to work on myself and be around people who don't need work from me that just happy you have come a long way anita really happy seriously i'm really i'm thrilled to because seriously like the first time i talked to you it was like other people need to come first like you could go back and watch it it's like other people need to come first and anita gets no space in anita's life and then what i'm hearing you say is i don't exist for you anymore i'm done existing for you i'm done being what you want me to be i'm gonna start existing for myself and there's a lot of hurt around that too because it seems like when you exist for yourself people don't like it because they like you to exist for them i need to change me i need to [ __ ] me i need to do this for me take care of me help me anita be the case for me to fix be broken so that i can feel better about myself and make you feel better about yourself and then [ __ ] me afterwards right yeah and it's not fair and i i hear you you say you've tried it all because early on people treated you a certain way and you're like oh crap i'm being treated because of what i'm wearing or who i am or how i am acting and so you started wearing a trench coat and you changed yourself for the sake of other people their immature behavior suddenly became your responsibility to fix on your end that people are acting this way towards you because of what you wear and you're like [ __ ] that i'm done with that i'm not responsible for their reactions to me which is fair so you tried to change yourself for the sake of other people and you were like [ __ ] that and then what happened is you tried the other extreme which is that you said i'm i'm gonna stop so at first you were like i'm gonna transform myself i'm gonna wear a trench coat and a hat and glasses and then i'm gonna change myself so that people don't interact with me a particular way i'm gonna stop being who i am because when i am who i am barrage of dicks then what happens is you you went the other extreme and you said i'm not going to try to change other people anymore because you tried that for a while too right you tried to rehabilitate people you tried to transform people you try to change people so then it's not about changing yourself it's all about changing the other person help them learn a different way try to teach them that you are more than an object for their lust try to teach them be compassionate be mature be patient and try to change them and you're like [ __ ] that that doesn't work either tried to change yourself didn't work tried to change them didn't work and now you're here and you're frustrated because you've tried it all and you're smart right so like when you say you've tried it all i believe you and i think you also probably came up with pretty creative solutions you know i don't know how many adolescent girls i've ever seen in trench coats but that you know just shows us that you were probably thinking outside the box maybe it was cottman where you were i don't think i've ever seen like a teenage girl in a trench coat yeah i i was pretty much the only one right so you you did a lot of outside of the box thinking you're pretty smart and you've tried everything under the sun and you're frustrated and absolutely so because for a while you didn't put yourself forward first and now you're trying to put yourself first and it's and you gotta let me know if i say this too much okay because i just love the phrase now it's a barrage of dicks right and so now it's kind of like okay so like what do we do about this like what do we do for you anita how can we help you find friendships i think part of is boundaries because i i don't so a lot of the people around me are people who are trying to get in a relationship with me and it's a pattern they'll hit on me a little bit hit on me a little bit and i'll go that's really sweet of you to be so nice um and that i'll try so hard to be accepting but at the same time there's a new thing as he am i allowed to acknowledge that this feels like he's hating on me am i allowed to is that thing i can do because it feels conceited to jump to conclusions so i give them the benefit of the doubt and go maybe this person is just being nice maybe i can still hold hope that people can just be nice for the sake of it but there's a pattern and i'm already recognizing it and people are commenting on it and going i think this person likes you i think this person likes you and just like uh i don't wanna i don't wanna face it i don't wanna because if if this is real if this is what's happening then i'm going to lose a friend and it doesn't matter what situation no matter what angle i take it from i'm going to lose a friend and then ah um it gets to the point where i have to have the discussion thank you for all these things but i just want you to know and don't take this personally um a lot of people do this and it's because they're interested in me and in case you're interested in me i'm not looking for a relationship right now i don't i don't make it impersonal i'm just like i'm not looking to date anyone i'm not interested in anyone right now rather than directing it directly at them i'm not going to like these are all the reasons i'd never [ __ ] you because that's really mean and unnecessary um and usually the response is oh i didn't like you anyway it's not like that i'm just being nice to you okay and then from there they carry on doing it and the most common pattern i get is people pretending they're not hitting on me until it hits until it sticks they're like um no means no until it means yes it's how people take that they still hold out hope unless i crush them and even if i crush them sometimes they hold out hope and so i'm in this horrible position where it's not appropriate to be cruel or direct anyway it's not like i could just explode and go you gave me some stuff and i just want you to know i'd never [ __ ] you in a million years it's not okay to do that but the gentle approach doesn't work and it's really frustrating i'm trapped and they keep pushing and pushing and doing all the stuff i know is love bombing and i don't know how to say stop and it doesn't stop and i just end up really unhappy and uncomfortable all the time it's happened to me with roommates it's happened to me with friends it's happened to me so many people and they push and push and they want to take more and more they want to take more of my time and they guilt trip me if i don't spend time with them if i don't play games with them they're pushing and like they they want to talk all the time they know i'm busy they get angry at me if i don't message back and tell them about my day like they start to want more and more and more and it makes me more and more uncomfortable and i pull back more and more and more because everyone around me knows i'm busy i struggle to keep up with messages and even these people who hit on me know this but they still pressure me and it really it's such a struggle because i don't want to hurt their feelings and i enjoy their friendship and i don't want to have to push them away but they're pulling pulling pulling so much that the only thing i have left to do is push and so this friendship starts to get ruined in increments i start to dislike spending time with them and feel uncomfortable and i feel guilty about it and like i can't say anything because they're being nice to me and then eventually i have to let them down and the first time i let them down they won't accept it ever nobody ever does no matter how i approach it whether i'm direct or soft they don't acknowledge i've said no and they keep pushing and pushing after and they start doing weird [ __ ] this is where the weird territory starts to happen like waiting for me to be really drunk to try and kiss me and things like this you know all this stuff that gets dodgy and this is where things really bad things have started to happen to me as well from people who just don't take no for an answer and the problem with that is that they're usually really nice people usually they're people no one would ever suspect of being weird and creepy but it gets like that and i feel like it's my fault for not just deleting them from my life sooner and i should have done it earlier and earlier and early i knew they were hitting on me i knew they weren't listening to me and it happened so [ __ ] much and it happens with nice guys that everybody likes that are deep in my friendship groups and people i don't feel like i can challenge and it's so hard and awkward and risky and terrifying and i've had like so much happen to me um because i just don't know how to navigate this and set boundaries and i want friends as well i keep holding out hope that maybe they'll just give up and they'll accept my friendship and they never [ __ ] do so the worst case scenario is sexual assault but the best case scenario is the friendship dies because they're disappointed and it hurts too much to hang out with me and there is no middle ground and there is nothing fun about this and i keep getting my heart broken by people that i try to connect with over and over again that sounds terrible it's hard it's awkward it's risky it's terrifying i get the sense oh it's like sort of like this history repeating itself this like inevitability i kind of imagine that like you see you know a bright like a little spot in the distance and it's like the the light of a train and no matter what you do inevitably that light grows and grows and grows and grows and grows until that train is like bearing down on you and that there's there's a lot of just there's a lot of like just fate in what you're saying that like no matter what you do whether you change yourself whether you change people whether you try to set boundaries and you're a dick to people or you're nice to people like there's just this inevitability of like you know the moon coming crashing down onto earth no matter what you do there's an incredible gravity to what you're describing that's what i'm hearing from you that's what i'm feeling from you is that how it feels yeah but i keep trying i keep holding out hope and i think that's what's got me into so many bad situations is that i keep holding out hope that maybe i'm just paranoid or maybe i'm just you know like and then i let it continue for way too long because i'm either telling myself it's not okay to acknowledge it's happening i shouldn't be so full of myself not everyone fancies you anita um or like i try to push them away and it doesn't work yeah that's what i was about to say it's like it seems like you're damned if you do damned if you don't it's like either you're mean to them and then it ruptures the friendship or you're kind to them and they start pushing boundaries and wait until you're drunk so anita i have two options for you okay i'd love to try to help you with this i do think that you can be helped by the way um and and oddly enough the reason that i have hope is because there's a pattern so in my experience where there's a pattern there's room for understanding and once there's understanding then you can change we certainly see a pattern here um so let me start by this i've got two options for you one is the smart option it's the logical option the other is the shot in the dark it's the thing that's more likely to be wrong but may actually be potentially helpful but the chances of that are very low you want to go for the shot in the dark or the more reliable thing let's just talk about both because for me i've tried so many options and failed that you know which one first that's right i'm curious about the shot in the dark okay so there's a lot of negative space in this conversation okay and what i mean by negative space is you're talking a lot about one thing and what we're what i'm i'm hearing a conspicuous absence that actually once i mention it hopefully this makes sense to people and i don't really know that this is where the money is in fact you're pointing really really hard in one direction with where your problem is and what you want and what i'm noticing is that the harder you drive in one direction the more you're moving away from something else that seems like the very opposite of where the answer is so that is this do you want a romantic relationship i don't know i don't know i mean i've been on the odd date here and there that's not worked out um so i think there is a part of me that wants to but i'm also really really really happy on my own and i do so much better in life on my own i'm much happier on my own and so um you know it feels like i'm content where i'm at but if the right person comes along i'm happy to you know bring someone into my life um but unfortunately a lot of the people that are attracted to me are not very healthy or good for me like a lot of these people uh graphic i tend to a lot of people who are very um dark in their behavior tend to gravitate towards me and so yeah i've been on a few dates they didn't work out and that's about as far as it's gone i've been i've been alone for quite a while now okay so i'm gonna repeat back your answer as i heard it and i want you to tell me whether you answered the question so i asked you do you want a relationship and you started off by saying i've been on a few dates it tends to not work out well i'm somewhat content and if the right person comes along i'd think about it but generally speaking the wrong person comes along did you answer my question yeah i think i don't know if the right person comes along then sure is is is an answer i'd say that's the closest thing to the answer right so i think it's interesting because you said i don't know and then you kind of talked about your experiences and i wonder where there's whether there's value so like i'm just going to ask you the question again do you want a relationship no i don't think i do why not i think if you'd asked me this question like a month or two ago i said yeah i want a relationship because i was trying even and i i think i've settled into a mentality very recently where i'm just like this is actually pretty awesome like ah i'm noticing more and more that i'm making room for myself to read to learn to do stuff for my stream to spend time with animals and you know really grow and do all the stuff i've wanted to do and made excuses not to and i feel like i'm discovering what i'm capable of all over again i did that when i started doing animal rescue work and it was really dangerous and scary and i pushed through a lot of fear and did a lot of stuff that made me feel great i was like wow i'm capable of a lot more than i thought and i feel like being alone especially in lockdown and not really seeing anyone i've really enjoyed it just just having some space and time to actually attend to stuff my own needs for once and not think about pleasing anyone and you know all this messy stuff with boundaries and people hitting on me i've enjoyed the respite from it and i don't i don't think i need anyone in my life right now and i think it'd be bad to ha i feel like if you have holes and you're lonely if you should fill it with your own [ __ ] i don't think that you should get with someone because you have needs i think you should get with someone because you're happy and you have some extra time and love to give someone available um rather than it just being like i need someone because i'm bored i'm scared i'm alone i need someone to love me because i don't love my myself i think i'm in a good position to have a partner but because i'm in a good position to have a partner i don't actually need one um once again a lot of wisdom anita a lot of wisdom coming from you today thanks that no i i don't think i want a relationship and and yeah i'm perfectly happy living my own life okay i'm gonna just think about what you said for a second if that's okay so here's what i'd say so i think that i love your answer right so you're you're learning to be with yourself you've prioritized other people over you whether they be your mom the animals that you take care of your bunny your gigantic bunny you have a gigantic bunny still yeah he's been compared to me [Laughter] um you know the random friends that you know lean on you for support and stuff you're learning how to be with yourself i do think it's very like it's like one of these profound you know um statements where you're kind of like i don't need someone and that's why in a sense maybe i'm ready because i i can be with myself yeah i think that there's a lot of merit there i i wonder on some level whether there's something under the surface there too i think it's maybe not worth digging into but there there's still i'm getting an undercurrent of like something left underneath there i don't think we need to get into it but i'm curious whether you know if we end up talking again like a couple months from now or things like that or if you actually do wind up actually i think this becomes relevant if you wind up in a relationship that you want maybe there are other feeling i'm just getting the sense that there are some feelings there that are left unaddressed um and it sort of makes sense and i'm i'm glad that we could move you from an i don't know to a no because i think it's important to kind of like map that out because the implication of everything you've been saying is that you don't want a romantic relationship right you're saying like i want friendships i want people who want me for me i actually don't want to like you've been saying this whole time i don't want a romantic relationship which is why it sounds kind of weird that like maybe i just went out there and asked the question but just to confirm like let's be clear that you don't want one and then the reason why not is that that you're basically working on yourself for now and you're learning to prioritize the things that you've neglected in the pursuit of taking care of other people anita is taking some much needed me time right and that's fantastic i can support that any questions about that or do you want to talk further about this or should we switch gears to the more important part that's good what's the more important part so here's the thing anita let's let's just assume for a second that everything that you said is exactly as you said it okay that you are someone who seems to attract men and women and they sort of continuously fall for you and want everything from sex to love in a deep meaningful soulful relationship so the first question is are you is that different from most people's experiences yes or no what do you think it's not very different from my mom's experiences my mom gets this a lot too and i've watched her struggle with it her whole life from a young age guys used to bump heads trying to kiss her hand at the same time and they get so distracted by her they'd get caught in the bus doors and be dragged by buses and things like uh there were always women who were trying to tear her down and socially sabotage her because they're jealous that their boyfriend fancied her and things like this my mom's always had people stalk her and things like this she had like a herd of stalkers one of them carved her a wooden dildo we now use it as a self-def defense stick if in case of emergency which is hilarious um but there have been yeah my mom's the only person i know in my life cues like this to you but me and her temperament and the way we engage with people is so different my mom is very blunt very noble [ __ ] and after everything she's gone through i don't blame her like i'm a lot more gentle with people um like my mom i confide in her about it i'm like what do i do and she gives me really good advice sometimes because she's experienced so much of it but at the same time she's like i would make this recommendation but you're too much of a nice person like sometimes she's like i the way that i'd approach this you wouldn't do and so i often end up feeling stuck in situations because i know that her approach is a lot more let's say direct and angry sometimes um yeah just kind of d i'm gonna restate my question and i'm going to repeat the answer that i heard is it is it a normal experience or abnormal experience to have people continuously want you fall in love with you etc and you said well it seems similar to my mom's experience right and then you went on to point out some differences between your mom fine so fine so that you and your mom share an experience cool that's actually a really important data point that we'll visit in a second is it a normal or abnormal experience compared to other people uh i mostly hang out with dudes and i don't know any of them who go through this except one i know one dude who goes through this so most of the people i know don't go through this okay so i would say that you know if you talk to women on the internet many of them will say that some of this behavior is common um and and so we've had streams about that but i also have never met anyone who has been unable to find friends or have their friendships including their female friendships continuously wrecked by whatever this is so in this sense i think you're an outlier right so we're going to approach this scientifically and we're going to start by forget about psychology and all that kind of crap and like do you want a relationship oh my god what's going on inside you do you put yourself first you put yourself second like forget about all that let's look at it and look at it scientifically so first thing is like is this are you an outlier right and what would you say yes or no i'm actually unsure i i would want a larger sample of of women's experiences before i could say okay because i know it's uncommon among men and they're the people that i mostly hang out with i have some female friends throughout the past but most of them i lost to this situation as well that i'm in so let me ask you this or is it a common experience for human beings to be unable to make friends yes not just not for this reason it's hard for early adults to make friends but for this reason probably it's unusual maybe i don't know i am actually genuinely unsure that's totally fine so so i'd say you're an outlier so the word like so anita you're a siren you know what a siren is guys remember this [ __ ] i do yeah right so what's your understanding of what a siren is or what what do you she sits on the rocks and she sings beautiful songs and men you know see men get enchanted and they crash their ships on the rocks sound like you i think the difference between me and a siren is intent absolutely completely agree but like like when i see you and i hear your your story it sounds to me like a siren right like there's like something weird you have some musk or there's something going on with you where like people are drawn to you and they start out as like you're you've tried everything in in the books right so like let's think about it scientifically you've tried to be an [ __ ] you've tried to be nice you've tried to set boundaries you've tried to you know be very clear with people and say i'm not interested in this you've tried to just be friends you've tried to fix people you've tried to change yourself and none of it's working which tells me that there's some kind of siren song so then we say like okay so if none of that stuff is working then like why are these people drawn to you because what i'm hearing is that people are drawn to you it's not even like something you're doing right if you think about a siren song sure there's intent and they want to crash and so maybe not a great example but what i'm noticing is like the word it's not that you're doing something you're not luring them they are drawn to you does that make sense like i'm just observing this based on what you're saying [Music] and i think there's an inhibiting factor of like i don't see myself the way that these people do and it's difficult to try and understand it because i don't feel particularly attractive or interesting i don't feel like i'm the kind of person that's worth making this much fuss about like in my situation if i fell for someone and they didn't reciprocate they they didn't want to be with me and they were saying no a lot i wouldn't keep trying i wouldn't go man you're making noises as if you have a choice but you'll like me eventually i can earn it like yours your attention can be a reward if i'm just epic enough you know and i just i just i wouldn't think like that if i have to try to get someone to like me i'll move on to someone who actually likes me effortlessly i don't understand why people think that it's worth being degraded and pushed away and just being rejected over and over for me i'm not neurotypical i'm a pain in the ass like most of my friends have to enjoy the odd slap or a smack or like punch or whatever because of my tics and you know they're very patient and tolerant and i can't see how having to tolerate someone who's not allowed and brash and annoying and embarrassing to be around like the kind of ticks i have like we'll be playing chess in a calf and stuff and i'll be like do you like dick and before they've even answered i'll be like he likes dick and just shouting to everyone else in the in the room like people have to be so patient with me and i can't see any reason why this happens and it feels wrong to ask and go why do you like me why are you willing to go through all this why are you willing to put up with all of this why is it worth putting up with the rejection me not liking you why is it worth putting up with my condition and i'm i feel like a very bland and mediocre woman do you know how many brunettes with brown eyes like small you know there's no i'm a very average looking person here in the uk it doesn't it doesn't feel like i the way that people are nothing that makes sense to me nothing that feels usable or changeable what's their answer the most common one is that there isn't anyone like me what do you think about that that literal [ __ ] one what do i do with that everyone's unique it's the most generic aspect of any living being ever we all have unique experiences we all have unique personalities we're all individuals i literally can't do anything about that [Laughter] it doesn't help me at all how does it make so sure you can't do anything about it how does it make you feel defeated why what's defeated because if they could give me an answer that i could use to change the direction this the shipwreck if we're gonna go with the siren analogy okay it's actually a good one right because it ends up as a shipwreck yeah and it's like i'm not singing because i want the seamen to come and crash on the rocks i'm singing because i'm alone and i want to enjoy something and have fun and be myself i'm singing because i like the song not because i like them they're the ones throwing themselves at me and the only other option is to sit there silently alone and not be myself which would make me miserable and so i i kind of feel like i want to sing my song i want to be myself i just don't want it to be a shipwreck for everyone around me and none of the answers i'm getting are helping me avoid it i'm gonna need to think about that is that cool someone just said wait till you're in your 30s i am in my 30s [Laughter] owned [Laughter] people always like oh it must be so hard people liking you all the time boo hoo and no one empathizes with me but the thing is as well i had this illusion that it was all going to end it's kind of tragic how as well because when i was like 9 or 10 like i would go to like parties and stuff and like people's people who were had wives in the next room were hitting on me in their 40s and i thought and this and it was creepy and uncomfortable and what i learned from it was oh there are a lot of dudes who crave young people like when i'm a young teenager when i've just hit puberty and stuff this is gonna be a problem but when i'm a grown-up people won't even like me even if i get a husband they won't even like me and i'll be free and i watch this go on and on and on for my mom she's now 50 and it's still the same problem and i'm losing hope because i'm 30 and i have more people doing this to me than ever okay man there's just so much here okay hmm so many directions let me try to let me try to tie one thing up just something for you to think about so here's what i see i see like as a scientist i'm making observations and what i see is that your you and your mom seem to be sirens of some sort right so the interesting thing is that the fact that there's something going on here and it's not just the way of the world and there's something either that you were doing or exuding that causes people or influences people to react to you in the way that they do i think the fact that your mom does it or it's happening to your mom makes it more likely that there's something going on here right so either it's genetic or it's like behavioral and because we internalize the mannerisms of our parents right so so like you know my kids do some of the things that i do and it's kind of like it's weird because i'm kind of academic and then you know my kids will sometimes be like academic with me it's kind of bizarre but like we pick things up from our family so i think you've picked something up or there's some sort of genetic pheromone kind of business going on where like we can sort of accept that in a bizarre way in in sort of an outlier way that men and women even so that's the real thing right it's like you can have female friends who will fall in love with you and become sexually attracted to you as well and so there's something going on here so if there's a phenomenon that is an outlier it's my experience as both both a scientist and a clinician that there's a pattern there there's like some kind of like order to that and if we try to look at it we may find something with me so and i'm going to toss out one thing which maybe i've talked to you about before but i think one potential hypothesis because i've seen this in women before so i worked with a few women who are you know the men just seem to be like drawn to them like moths to a flame and what i tend to find actually is that some of these women i think you know this is going to sound kind of weird but i'm going to use some terminology from like the system of like yoga and the hindu tradition because i think it captures it's a way of describing the world that i think we don't really have good words or concepts in the west so in in the tradition of yoga or more specifically tantra tantra they sort of talk about a feminine energy and so that like if you think about the capacity to create life like comes from women it doesn't come from men so the male contribution is generally speaking minimal and that like if you really think about like you know creating a new organism is primarily something that women do men don't do and so they sort of equate this to like this kind of feminine energy which is also like sort of maternal in nature and if we kind of think about like anthropology and sort of the idea of like maternal figure ads like figures and sort of like feminine energy like maternal energy we can even think about it like you know we call earth a mother right so it's like mother earth and so like that which gives life and that which sustains us you can kind of look at it in a literary fashion you can look at it sort of in an energetic fashion which is kind of how the east looks at it my sense is that you have an energy right because it's weird it's like it's not just in your behaviors it's not if we look at it scientifically we can say it's not the way you look because you look average it's not what you wear because you've changed that so you've adjusted all of these variables and despite any of those variables being adjusted it makes no difference therefore those variables are not those are independent of whatever this thing is and the best the best words i can give you is that you've got a particular energy and i've seen this before because sometimes what happens is like you're just this authentic person and that's the answer that you get when you ask people why are you in love with me and they say you're just you right so there's something incredibly pure about like what you give off to other people and so i think that that frankly a lot of men are are so starved for authenticity and acceptance and like you accept them as a pure friend right like you don't think about them in loss in terms of lust you don't think about them in terms of rejecting them for being a romantic partner or accepting them for a romantic partner you treat them for who they are and you want just a pure friendship with nothing else on the line and that kind of like authenticity and almost like maternal acceptance right it's almost like you're like a mom who's like you just be you and i'll accept you for who you are all of your flaws i've tried to fix people and that [ __ ] doesn't work so i'm not gonna do that anymore i'm just gonna take you for who you are and we can hang out from time to time i won't judge you i won't fall in love with you i won't expect you to buy me dinner i won't do any of that i'm just going to be me and you're just going to be you and it's going to be cool and we're going to hang out we're going to have a good time and there's something incredibly refreshing about that because that's not the world we live in right the world that we live in is one of judgment and you're not good enough and i want you to be this and i should be more of this and i should be less of this social media i should be taller i should make more money i'm on tinder and i'm five eight and they're all these profiles that say if you're under six feet no need to apply and along comes anita and anita accepts me for who i am and then this is kind of unfortunate for you but then what happens is like these dudes get confused and what i mean by that is that like uh my gender often times doesn't understand what we feel and we've actually been conditioned to like equate some things like pure acceptance with a romantic relationship because yeah i i agree with you but i found a different path to the same conclusion a while back you see for me i don't really believe in femininity and masculinity i think that if we deny that um men are nurturing and caring then why do we let them be fathers like i think paternity is a thing i think that the differences between the male and female brain are usually socially conditioned because we live in a society that benefits um from financially from diverting 50 of labor to an unpaid group and if you make um nurturing and expectation you get free caring for the elderly and young you get free nurses you get you get to pay them a lower wage yeah this is your job you're a woman you're supposed to take care of people they become the therapists and the cleaners and the people who just maintain [ __ ] in the home if 50 of the workforce is an unpaid or lower paid group and particularly all the fields that women dominate are on a low paid then you know it benefits society i noticed that pattern but then there were loads of studies that reinforced it if you put people in a submissive permission position tell them they're not as good or lower than some sort of way they immediately adopt feminine traits regardless of their gender so they'll start grooming taking care of people sucking up to people it's it's a thing that people put into a group of submission dude not specifically a female thing i've read lots of studies by neuroscientists who are saying like the differences between the male and female brain are being over represented and that you know i don't think it's because women are naturally nurturing i think that it's because we don't tell dudes it's okay to feel from a young age we point them and go big boys don't cry shut up this is beneath you only women do this but you're strong you're better you're a man you don't cry you don't emote and we don't give dudes the permission or the space to explore their feelings and verbalize them from a young age and a lot of people grow up going i don't know how i feel sometimes i feel angry sometimes i feel lust and these are the two most represented male emotions in media they beat up their problems and they [ __ ] all the women and so we give permission to be honey and we give permission to be angry or in control but we don't give permission to be vulnerable we don't give permission to self-assess to talk about feelings and a lot of people there's much more suicide among men than women and when you listen to them they're saying i didn't have room to speak i didn't i felt like people would call me a [ __ ] i didn't have room to be vulnerable i thought i had to be a protector and so when you put men in this position in their friend groups if you talk about your feelings you're a [ __ ] and people are scared to speak up and from that position that's so socially conditioned position um when you make a friend who lets you talk about your feelings when you make a friend who isn't vying for dominance when you make a friend who doesn't expect you to be a man they expect you to be yourself you see it as a form of intimacy and the thing is that's so different to a female friendship because when i'm with girls we talk about our feelings and our dreams we're allowed to be vulnerable nobody cares nobody judges in that environment it's fine and so when women take that level of friendship that they've grown up being used to and do that with a dude they're like i've never had this before this person cares what i have to say they're invested in my feelings they don't judge me and it's a unique kind of friendship and to a woman this looks like friendship into a dude this looks like a form of intimacy they've never experienced before and so it feels like a higher level of closeness than a friendship and i've seen this happen a thousand times even with other people's friendships i've seen that mistake and i know it i know it exists i know that king of the hill without it is such a relief and that friendships where you get to be have a break where you're not judged and you are loved and you do have a space to talk about who you are and discover who you are some people like i didn't know who i was or i didn't know how i felt about things until i met you giving guys space to be themselves unjudged is a really favorite thing of mine tell guys they're beautiful compliment the way they look because they don't hear it enough that sort of thing but i make it clear from the beginning that i do this with all of my friends i do it to other friends in front of them so they know it's not floating i also talk about how it gets misconstrued as flowing so they know that this is a thing and they'll still overestimate the way they feel around me and assume i feel it too even if i start avoiding them when they try to indulge it and so look i've communicated about this aspect i'm not gonna drop the way i'm friends with people i think it's important to show people that they can be supported whether no matter what dangly doodads they got going on in their pants i'm gonna treat a dude the same way i treat a woman and that's fine and i'll let them know it often gets misconstrued and if they still misconstrue it that's [ __ ] on them but i swear to god i make sure they have all the information there and they still do it and like i've literally told every male friend ever that i have to tell guys to stop hitting on me and that if i want to be with someone i'll make it known first and i hate it when people hit on me and they still do it okay so then let me ask you a question so if you make things crystal clear for them what effect do you think that has on all the societal stuff you talked about none i don't try to change that no no but like you're saying they've been conditioned right and so you tell them hey i'm just gonna be like friends with you this is something we discuss things that are emotionally sensitive i do it with all my friends i'm gonna do it with you too because that's who i am and then they discuss their emotions you guys become an intimacy of a different kind and then what do you ex how do you expect them to respond well the thing is i expect them to see it as friendship because i've laid down how i am friends with people and they know this is how i interact with people great right so so i'm going to give you an example that's sort of like a bizarre counter example so sometimes i work with men and women who and unfortunately i think this is harder sometimes on women but you'll they'll have friends with benefits right and then like oftentimes what happens is people will be crystal clear at the beginning and they'll say like hey we're just friends and from time to time we're going to have like sexual relations we're going to be friends with benefits but i don't want to date you i'm going to be super transparent i'm not in love with you and then both people agree and then oftentimes what happens is like one person catches feelings right and then like the other person gets kind of frustrated because they're like hey we talked about this ahead of time like we said this was just friends and benefits we had a conversation about it i was very clear that i'm not interested in a relationship and then the other person is now pushing for a relationship does that scenario make sense to you or i mean i know that you tend to be in the opposite kind of yeah see what i see there is that you don't choose how you feel and that if you put yourself repeatedly in a situation that people do often feel in love that it happens and the the sad thing about emotions is they can escape logic like you can understand how something works and still end up feeling it sure absolutely right so as you said if you put yourself in a situation that people usually feel loved then like logic can kind of go out the window and and you know the emotions can start to take over so if we look at your relationships where you're emotionally intimate with people and you kind of explain to them for the get-go hey this is what this is this is not what this is and then you do something that is they've that men are sort of conditioned to feel a particular way because usually that kind of emotional intimacy comes hand in hand with a relationship then we can kind of see the result right just like you said it's sort of like you you're putting yourself in this situation where or they're putting themselves in a situation where even though you've explained things all that logic which may be on some level they understand can kind of go out the window once they start catching feelings because that's what we're talking about right is that they become really really irrational with the way that they start relating to you and so i think that there's something to be understood here now i'm not saying that you need to change the way that you interact with your friends because you're allowed to be you but i i can sort of see like i think if there's a pattern here there's there's got to be a reason for it yeah right and and now we get to to what you said earlier which is sort of like i don't know what to do about it right because you're not willing to compromise some things and this gets back to the idea of like self blame for attraction and responsibility for attraction and things like that and and this is where i i think you have to be really really careful anita because i think there's something going on here which i don't even think we've touched on and i'm not sure what it is there's some part of me that honestly thinks that given your upbringing there is some part of you so when you when you have a child whose needs are not met right and what i mean by that is that like it's not that anyone was abusive towards you or anything like that but that literally like there was someone in your household who demanded a lot of your attention and you had to become a mother very early right and so when you have a situation like that i'm not sure if any of this actually applies to you because i i can't actually detect it i'm just letting you know oftentimes what i see is that like there's a there's a starving for affection or there's a starving for love or there's a starving for something that that child carries with them and i suspect that the thing that we may be missing here is that in some way you were starved for what the people are giving you because i think the really crazy thing is that anytime i see a behavior in someone that seems really really harmful and maladaptive there's usually a damn good reason for it well here's the thing my response to that though is that i think i've already taken that part of the journey because when i was a kid first up we had a we had like my mom had boyfriends who'd come in and out of my life i had like a father figure for a while but he would snap he would turn from he was in our lives for nine years i i was glad we pushed my like we were pushed away from my dad i was happy with that decision i was surprised they stayed alone together as long as they did i saw his impact on other people that he ended up raising i'm really glad that we stepped away from him i do not crave a father figure i did not crave a father figure i was glad of the space i've been escaping people my whole life usually people were very dangerous i used to go and break out of my house in childhood and just go walking in the graveyard at like 3am just to be away further away no one was bothering me just to be further away from humans i was very comfortable even though i was lonely being away from people and pretty much seeing them as a threat and then i did feel very lonely for a while and agrophobic and scared and sad and alone and i got in a chain of relationships one for a year one for six years another for six years and so i coped by putting all of my needs on one person and it was very codependent and unhealthy in a multitude of ways and it made me put up with a lot of abuse that i didn't and shouldn't have needed to um i came out of that developing a sense of self proving to myself what i'm capable of and looking for just friends and in this whenever i make friends with people i don't crave attention i'm not the kind of person who immediately reacts to dms and needs to know what they say now i'm not the kind of person who chases people i never chase after people i'm kind of really lazy friend when it comes to arranging things and seeing people i cannot see someone in months and still feel good that i know them and so i don't pursue people and i don't feel particularly desperate for attention um and so from that perspective i don't feel like these people fulfill a need i the only need i have now is i want platonic friendships i i kind of feel like i don't need the attention and i feel very very comfortable without it i spend a lot of time alone and i don't get bored of it or desperate for affection or attention but i do think that i did go through a time where i had that need and i used to seek it in relationships i saw unhealthy how unhealthy it was i worked through it i got over there i got out of that situation but with me i kind of feel as well um i don't think that these people do fulfill a need i feel endlessly like they don't fulfill a need because they are looking to [ __ ] me and it feels too conceited to recognize what's going on early so i go through this place where i they keep pushing my boundaries anita let me ask you a question so so this is really helpful do you think that's being someone who continuously needs to be [ __ ] and and being really frustrated does that feeling of who you are fulfill any kind of need what you mean what it's a weird ass question yeah absolutely so not their behavior okay but their behavior makes you feel like a particular kind of person right so you feel a particular way when they treat you a certain way right and that way that way feels painful yeah right i know it sounds really weird really really weird i'll give you an example in a second does feeling that way feel comfortable or right to you in some way it feels familiar and i know that people tend to do this awful dance with things that feel familiar and if it's not really what they want yep it's called a life trap people get trapped in a pattern of behavior where they don't want it but they've known it their whole lives and don't know how to be anything else and this is why people who were sexually abused as children are more likely to end up becoming sex workers even if it's a very painful thing for them and they don't really want to be there it's so familiar that it ends up being a life trap and this is one example of many people who relive something freud recognized it as repetition compulsion and it's one of the few things that he threw out there and it actually stuck um he was wrong about a lot of things but repetition compulsion is still something that therapists recognize and work around and you know point out in people to this day and i knew about this from a young age i read about it when i was like nine or ten after going through some pretty horrendous things myself this is why i felt like i avoided that sort of life trap where i'd end up in a lot of the positions that people with [ __ ] up lives do because i knew that there'd be a risk factor for it and the familiarity with it and so i know exactly what you're trying to point out here am i purposely unwittingly putting myself in positions where that are familiar as a trap almost like a repetition compulsion that's literally what i was thinking about because i've already explored this and what's your sense um so i think this was the reason why i tried so many different approaches at interacting with people and to loads of different people i thought if i hung out with people who were generally very nice that maybe mean people wouldn't hang out with me and you know i wouldn't on all sorts no no but that's why you tried to do what you do what do you think about it though do i think that i'm in a situation of repetition compulsion yes i think i would have to be able to accurately assess why people like me to be able to introduce it purposely i feel like it's difficult to pin i where i went with that is like can i pinpoint a time where i try to make people attracted to me where i've hit on them or done things that might seem seductive and then looked back on it and blamed myself and been like yeah my bad or whatever i can't find anything i need to suggest okay you're so so here's the thing so so first of all it may not be repetition compulsion but sure as hell sounds like it okay so let me let me explain to people because [ __ ] a you were really smart i mean i'm very impressed so here's here's so this is why i'm going to just lay it out for you okay so a lot of times i have to like like lead people to it or try to catch him with it or something like that but it's great so i was absolutely leaning towards the repetition convulsive compulsion so let's talk about it so the first thing is that you have a pattern in your social interactions right you're an outlier your mom is an outlier so what does that tell us so either you have something either you know there's either there's a cognitive bias where you're not really an outlier or there's something going on that is causing people to treat you a particular way and then what happens is that you say like okay if if i'm the issue then i'm gonna change myself and you tried that because you're a scientist at heart right so you tried wearing a trench coat you tried doing this you tried doing that you tried doing this you tried to change yourself and then you're like [ __ ] this i'm gonna stop blaming myself for people being attracted to me it's not on me it's on them then you went the route of let me try to change them because that's where the problem is and that didn't work either right and so then you're like okay well now i don't know what to do because no matter what i do i find myself in the situation if i change myself it doesn't work if i change them it doesn't work i'm screwed no matter which way i do it it's incredibly frustrating i'm incredibly angry and then you say okay fine so if this is the repetition compulsion what i need to do is look at people that i'm attracted to whereas i think that's actually this is where hopefully i can help you i don't think that's the case that you need to look at in fact i think it's the exact opposite of the case that you need to look at what i would suspect okay and this is by suspect i don't necessarily think this is true i mean this is a hypothesis that needs to be tested okay so i'm going to put it to you plainly i want you to find a case where you do have a friend where you really have a friend because what you're telling me is that the the relationship evolves over time right at the beginning so sure there's the barrage of dicks but the real tragedy sure people dehumanize you all they want to do is get their willy wet whatever you want to call it there's that camp of people but the real tragedy anita really what the place where my heart goes out to you is that there are some people who don't start out in that camp and then suddenly they transform on you and that's what sounds like it real sucks a bag of dicks right that's what's really awful is that you have people who are your friends and then like this beast comes out of them where they like turn into everyone else the explanation i've heard is that they had the intentions from the start they just didn't feel comfortable expressing them and so yeah i wonder how many are people that grew an attraction and how many people were just playing the long game because i've had people throw tantrums you know the nice guys who are like i listened to your problems i hung out with you i believe one time yeah and they're like i'd like to cash in i'd like to cash in all of those things now yeah turning in my tickets yeah absolutely exactly and you know you get a lot of people who um this is why i always get scared about talking about demisexuality it took me i made a video about it explaining what it was it took demo sexuality i'm not attracted to people at all i i am unreceptive to visual stimuli i thought i was asexual for so [ __ ] long and it turns out that i need a long-standing emotional connection and a sense of familiarity to see people through a sexual lens i can't feel attracted to strangers i've never had a crush on a celebrity nothing it just does not work lady boner does not happen to porn nothing turns out that there is a group of people like this there are people most people are capable of crushing we're not i have never felt attracted to anyone i didn't know and it's usually people i've only known for a few years that i've ever been able to see in a sexual way or be attracted to ever and so this is called demisexuality so that people can connect with people who are like this too because it kind of feels alien in a society where tinder exists and you look at people's face and you swipe and you know whether or not you want to sleep with them based on that one trait alone from the start and so a lot of people a lot of people are lacking that and i just am lacking it it's dead i don't know what happened i was just born without the ability to just be attracted to strangers just can't um and you wouldn't think that was a unusual thing plenty of people oh i prefer a connection too but you can watch porn and you can like have a celebrity crush and [ __ ] like you are capable of a superficial attraction i'm just not and um it comes with trials and tribulations but i'm so scared about talking about it because it makes people play the long game so like i when i make new friends with guys and stuff i don't say it i don't talk about it and you know people ask me what i look for in a man all the time in chat and i'm just like why would it tell you what to pretend to be to get close to me like i'm so wary about it but um yeah i do have to wonder like it's so hard i know where you're trying to lead me here and i've thought about it too um where am i trying to lead you well you're trying to lead me down the well what makes people suddenly be attracted to me during a friendship and it's so hard to collate the data on whether that's actually the problem or if a lot of people disguise their attraction to me and wait because they know it takes a long time for me to know whether i'm attracted to anybody in the first place um and so it's very very difficult for me to assess reliably at all whether or not it's true that friends fall in love with me or people just play the long game so i think i think that's that's actually like a great answer because that tells us i think where the darkness and potentially where the answer is right so like you're saying it's hard for you to assess and i think that's exactly why you're in this situation because i one of the hypotheses so there's a number of hypotheses right and and i would say that given everything about your history this reeks of something like repetition compulsion or something like pheromones and i tend to put more stock in the former than the latter and what i'm really really curious about i would love to see if there are interactions that you have with people who are potentially friends which you unwittingly push into a weird space right and that may be something as simple as someone who is actually could be a friend of yours you or like it could be like a weird kind of selection bias where you say you're not really good at keeping up with friends and so there may be like let's say that there are 10 people that you encounter and you're not good at keeping up with friends so the ones that would actually end up being friends you sort of don't keep up with and who's left are the people who are secretly obsessed yeah that that is something that has been running a theory of mine for a while right so that's why um yeah because um yeah people who wake up every day and ask how you're doing in the morning and say good night at night like most of my friends aren't like that but the people who are interested in me will try to talk to me every single day even if they don't always cry yeah so so so i mean there are a lot of things going on here which i think like like whether wittingly or unwittingly like their influences and this is kind of what i was saying where i'm not saying that you should blame yourself for like being in this situation sort of it's not really about blame it's about recognizing that if there's a pattern in your life thinking about it critically looking at it critically which clearly you've done a shitload of and i think that's why i mean it's amazing anita how far you've come given the hand that you were dealt and and that's what actually frankly is so gratifying to me about having this conversation is because i've seen people who are at every stage of where you are but i've never actually seen someone at this stage i've seen people who are in the six-year codependent relationship because their mother was sick when they were growing up and they learned how to be like a mother at a young age i've seen that right i've seen it right so you've been all of those things and now you're in this really weird kind of situation where unfortunately one of the real challenges in life is that when we solve the as we solve problems they start to get more and more subtle right so you've done a lot of personal growth you've developed a lot of confidence you've tried to change yourself for other people you've tried to change other people you figured out know that stuff works so now we're getting to this yoga talks a lot about this that like the most difficult problems to solve are the subtlest and i think what we're really dealing with is like really really small stuff probably in the early stages of your potential friendships where either there's a selection bias or you steer things a certain way or there are like unconscious reactions that you have that cause you to deviate towards the familiar right and then there's also like really really simple epidemiologic stuff which is like you're a twitch streamer so you're gonna attract a certain kind of person but what i'm hearing from you is that doesn't seem to be that big of a deal because it sounds like you have a lot of interactions outside of twitch and stuff like that and you should run into normal people but and the last thing is that you do use the word friend so it sounds like you actually have friends which has been confusing me for a while so i have my editor i've known him for 10 years he's amazing he's never hit on me ever um he's always gone for a different kind of person which has been oddly comforting to me um we've done a lot of rescue work together but we don't have a close friendship and a behavior well we do in some ways but not most so what i consider a close friendship is someone i spend a lot of time with and i find it really really difficult to do that with people one of the reasons why i'm under invested in friendships is because if i feel like i spend too much time with someone that it can fall apart like you give more room for mistakes for misunderstandings for bitterness this sort of stuff so if you hang out with someone once every couple of months you play a few games with them here and there they are at the right distance where they can't get over invested in the friendship and start hitting on you but you can't you also don't actively annoy them and if you are mildly annoying like once or twice you won't happen loads and loads in a week and you lose them so i do hope people ask that distance yeah but i mean that's what i'm [ __ ] talking about that like that's that's like this is what i'm talking about like you know this [ __ ] right and you're like why don't i have friends and you're like it's because i hold people at a distance because i'm afraid if they get too close then then they're gonna fall in love with me i have a few i have a handful of friends that i've known for years and i love them deeply and i feel like it's partly because i've kept them at just the right distance i feel like i get to hang out with them really love those days i spend with them do you want to spend more time with them no because then awful things might happen okay so see that's where so so you do this thing a lot where i sometimes ask you what you want and instead of answering what you want you talk about what's gonna happen true but that those are there is what you want and there is what's gonna happen absolutely but i'm just saying it's important for you to not conflate the two i'm not disputing that that's what's going to happen because that's been your experience but i suspect that something around this realm of stuff right like if you have a pattern that repeats in your life are you responsible for it like should you blame yourself if men are attracted to you and change what you wear and stuff like that like i don't want to go down that road but at the same time i do feel that as a human being you have some degree of agency and control over your life and in fact here your story i think exemplifies that principle that you were a particular way and you started to make changes in the way that you treated yourself you started to make changes in the kinds of people that you hung out with and you're no longer in codependent relationships with arguably abusive people and the next step i think is one of subtlety where you found that okay you keep people at arm's length and they're kind of friends for a while and if you're too emotionally intimate with them too quickly they tend to fall in love with you and some of them play the long game and what not and what not and what not all that i think is perfect but i think you just keep on moving in that direction keep on paying attention to yourself and try to accelerate a friendship a little bit more and be careful because i suspect that sometimes so there's there's old pattern territory which is like emotionally intimate friendships and then there's new safe friendships which are kind of temporally distant or geographically distant or emotionally distant in like drips and drops at regular intervals that doesn't cross the line into the old familiar territory but i think the closer you get to that border and the more you pay attention to yourself there's no [ __ ] way anita that if you don't explore this more you're not going to learn something valuable i just don't buy that the one thing that i have absolute confidence in is that if you understood the repetition compulsion at the age of nine and you grew up with your mom and then you had a toxic amount of positivity and self-deprecation and putting other people first and then you show up a few months later pissed at the whole world that's an immense amount of growth i think if you just keep yeah i don't know i think it's hard from this session to really understand what is a jump and what's not i i kind of feel like so i do think that my generosity is real i do think that my urge to connect with others and be beneficial to others is real i don't think it's an issue i don't think that just because i grew up a carer that altruism isn't [ __ ] real i don't think that it's a flaw with me i don't think that i'm deranged i don't think that i donated a thousand pounds to you because i'm hot potatoing other people's generosity i think that there's something intrinsic in all of us that feels good when we do good and it doesn't have to benefit us directly i think that's real in people that have suffered just as much as people you haven't i think it's real in me even though i had a [ __ ] up childhood i don't think it's a symptom i think it's an aspect and a positive aspect of me and i think that the more that you i i know it's very easy there is this risk when you're a therapist that you draw false correlations sometimes because you're so used to this pattern and i do it myself even though i'm not being a therapist to others but one of the common things is like a lot of therapists who receive children who've been put into foster care or have been you know have lost both their parents they they tend to think that people who've lost both their parents tend to be criminals or have issues or people who know about when it is people who've been abused in childhood they think that it unanimously makes people abuses because most of the people who come to them are people who have negative results from that childhood experience but the people who grow up to be healthy the people who grow up to be great and the people who have grow up without issues and you know get past it never show up at a therapist door so they never see them and so there's this idea that a higher percentage of people who have childhood trauma have issues than actually do because believe it or not sometimes people go through hard [ __ ] and you know what are you hearing me say i'm hearing you say that this is somehow my fault that this is a psychological phenomenon that my generosity is the result of being a carer and b have not having my needs met and that the reason why people fall in love with me is because i'm just repeating some traumatic cycle but at some point i've got to stop taking responsibility for other people's problems and i'm definitely not the only [ __ ] woman who gets hit on and says no one doesn't get hurt because a dude's thinking more about his dicks than his dick than the way he's affecting the people that he's attracted to i definitely think that is something that i've experienced and it's part of it too but also i think that if i keep on switching my behavior i'm constantly adjusting myself so i don't trigger you know the weak wills of some people male or female that i won't have any room to be my [ __ ] self because i'm so preoccupied with how people are reacting to me and how what they might or might not do that i won't be able to just enjoy connecting with people and being myself so i think there has to be room for the idea that maybe not all of it is me because other people do experience this too there is a problem with men respecting boundaries and thinking the friend zone is a zone and not just no like people call it cute zones so they can be all creepy and go i don't have to listen to this i can make you like me because it's just a cute little zone i'm in and i can step out of it not consent or anything i'm not a weirdo ignoring your consent i'm so sorry these conversations i'm seeing in chat and i'm just kind of exploding a little bit because everyone's like you just don't understand biology dudes can't be friends with women or you you need to change this about you you're just whining about being attractive oh boo hoo i don't sympathize [ __ ] you and i'm so tired of being hated and i'm blamed when people hit on me when people [ __ ] try to feel me up when i'm drunk and [ __ ] i'm so tired of being blamed when other people do this stuff because they ignore what i'm saying and i'm so tired of adjusting myself being this being that being cold being soft being warm being friendly [ __ ] punching people in the face i'm tired of wearing this wearing that i'm tired of being held responsible for the way that people behave when the truth of the matter is that my no is not a zone that you get out of it's a [ __ ] no so let me clarify so you're saying that i'm saying that this is your fault and that you create this because of some psychological thing that happened in your childhood that your altruism is a reaction to some sort of psychological trauma that's what you're you're hearing me say it is sometimes i feel like you're directing me to a sense of responsibility for other people's actions when we don't control them and it's not always because i'm attracting people i am thinking the roots that you've you're taking me i've spoken to therapists in the past and i've talked about how i interact with people i've talked about why i've talked about why with people that i've stopped being friends with i've had very sober cold conversations with people who turned into [ __ ] creeps and gone why did this happen i don't want it to happen again and and i have also talked to therapists about why and what i hear from you sometimes is that you're diagnosing not just my altruism but other people's disrespect of my boundaries which i'm far too accommodating of i let it go on for too long and that's on me i know it is but i do give clear signs that people should listen to along the way and i do think that it's not just me i do think that there are things that other people have to take responsibility for too and it's something it took me a long time to recognize yeah so uh just curious so thank you for clarifying that and i i apologize for conveying that sentiment so i just want to make sure i want to apologize appropriately so i want to make sure i understand what am i diagnosing you with so you see it as a repetition compulsion that there's some aspect of my behavior that traps me specifically in this loop that this there is an active aspect of my behavior that makes people behave in a way that they shouldn't okay so i actually i agree with some of that so let me try to clarify and then you let me know if an apology is appropriate i'm happy to because i i this conversation just took a turn that was really not where i was intending to go and if i made a mistake i'm more than happy to apologize for it i just really want to understand what that mistake is so the reason i brought up the repetition compulsion with you is so let me walk you through my reasoning and then you let me know whether an apology is appropriate or not so generally speaking human beings tend to encounter common situations in life right like we run into the same problems over and over and over again and here's what i heard you say so i heard you say that you run into this problem over and over and over again and it's hard for you to make friends because they don't respect your boundaries and sometimes you're overly accommodating and things like that fine i accept that i accept that you're in the situation that you're in i accept that it's very difficult for you to make friends i accept that people start with friendship and then ask for more i accept that you have tried to change yourself to accommodate them right you've tried to transform yourself to control their behavior and that's not fair to you and that's not the right answer which i agree completely you've also tried to change them which isn't your [ __ ] responsibility because it's their job to change themselves you're not responsible for changing some someone else i completely agree with that and so then we end up with this reality right because that's what you're telling me anita is that irrespective of you trying to change yourself and irrespective of you trying to change other people you're [ __ ] stuck and people don't respect you they don't respect your boundaries either they're just looking to get their wheelie wet or they're playing the long game or at the end of the day they start out as friends and then something happens and then even though you've been crystal clear you wind up in this situation we on the same page there is there anything about that that you think i have done wrong or unfair or that i should apologize for so far no not in that aspect of the parts that i think issue with were the parts where you start using words like at some point you have to take responsibility for you know this pattern and those sorts of words where it's still my fault that some people can't respect boundaries because this is amount to stuff that's very very serious that most people know is wrong regardless of my behavior i could cartwheel down the street naked and i still don't deserve to be assaulted and stoked yeah so so let me let me try to add some nuance to that and if that still feels like it's wrong to you please let me know okay so here's here's the challenge so i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place because as a human being i accept that you are who you are and i think you should accept yourself for yours yourself i also accept that i don't control other people's behavior and i'm not responsible for other people's behavior and so then the question becomes what is my role in life what do i control what is the part of my life that i have agency over and what i find is that the more that people accept that you do have some influence in it right like at the end of the day if i find myself in a situation over and over and over again i would hope and part of what i absolutely try to do is to help people understand that you have some power to change this because anita if there's one [ __ ] thing that you've demonstrated to me it's that you have the power to change your life think about where you grew up think about the co-dependent relationships you have think about where you are now think about all the way you've come what do you think you think other people did that you did that right the person that you were started to shine through and you helped her out i don't think that i think your altruism is absolutely genuine i think it's part of what makes you amazing i think you're incredibly authentic and i think it confuses the [ __ ] out of some people who have been societally conditioned in a bad way i don't think that's your fault i don't think you should change who you are and at the same time i have to acknowledge and i really do believe that you have some agency over your situation i don't think that woe is me is like like absolutely woe is you but if anyone has the capacity to navigate this tricky [ __ ] it's you and i do believe that you have some power here that you have some control here and i think when i say that what either consciously or unconsciously i'm signaling or what you're receiving is that it's your fault and that's a really tricky place to be in right because like if we accept that we have power to change something then it becomes in a sense our fault so i think that your interpretation of my words is sort of inappropriate it's just not meant to be blame it's just like you can't have agency without responsibility the two come hand in hand and and the emotional response that i got from you which i've seen emotions come which i think is completely authentic and and now i'm not trying to like oh you emotionally responded therefore you're wrong so like don't take it that way but i think there's something really important there right i don't know what it is and what i'm really trying to say is that there's a road forward i have to hope like so when any time i sit with someone anita i don't part of what i try really hard to do part of what i try to have agency and control over in myself is to hope that your situation can get better and in what ways can your situation get better like how like and that's why i talk about the [ __ ] psychological [ __ ] because i think you already understand this stuff and i think that you're a human too and what i see is that you've exhausted a lot of really good options you try to change the way that you dress you try to fix other people and neither of them worked so i think there's something in the middle there right that that and we kind of see it in your patterns of friendship that either people get overly invested in your friendship or you keep them at arm's length and that makes me sad because that's not what you want you want something between those two things right and so then the question is what i'm encouraging you to do and what i'm really saying that you should do is over here is safety but emotional distance and over here is intimacy and people misconstruing what you say there's something there in the middle and as you move towards something in the middle i want you to really understand and if this is something that you take issue with please let me know as you navigate that tightrope in the middle i absolutely believe you have some control over how that turns out yeah someone in chat is saying something really interesting about this and i don't normally talk i don't normally bring it up but someone's saying i think the disconnection here is partially as a result of the implied dynamic default dynamic associated with therapy therapists specialize in individual problems but what anita seems to be struggling with is more of a societal problem that being that men are rarely discouraged from overstepping their boundaries i don't think dr k is going to uh i don't know zooming too fast he's going to going out of his way to downplay that factor in this conversation but is his profession and i do think there is an intersection here between the fact that this is not something that is entirely controllable or influenced uh easy to influence because there is a societal aspect at play and it is impossible for it to be consistent as well because the overstepping of boundaries can vary so much this is why i was looking for patterns so i could interrupt the path absolutely so so i think that person is spot on and this is frankly why the deck is stacked against you and this is why i think that you haven't figured it out already right because it there is like finding that balance is really hard because there is this societal conditioning and that's what i was like the whole maternal shakti thing that i was kind of talking about is like this idea that i think you are giving someone an authentic version of yourself and they've been conditioned to interpret that a different way which is not your fault and i don't think you should change who you are i think who you are is awesome and what i'm saying is that in the middle there it behooves you to think about this psychological [ __ ] like the repetition compulsion because one of two things is gonna happen on the one hand shirt maybe i'm judging you and i'm saying oh this is the repetition component blah blah blah freud blah blah blah blah blah blah blah this is what's going on with you anita i have it all figured out i don't give a [ __ ] about that i don't give a [ __ ] about figuring it out what i'm saying is if there's any mileage to be picked up there to get you in the direction that you want to go if there's even one percent of the repetition compulsion that lets you walk that tightrope [ __ ] look at it and rather than me analyzing it you're the one who used the phrase repetition compulsion so i'm like damn right anita see if that's what's going on i can't give you answers anita i can't give you conclusions the most i can do is give you hypotheses yeah and there's something here where i think that you should be authentic you should be who you are and you've got the deck stacked against you in terms of societal conditioning and i choose to hope that you don't have to be trapped in this situation together and that you can move one step closer to that midpoint and i think doing so is going to involve looking at not the drastic sets of your behavior but really studying how you interact with people because i think any relationship is a two-way street i i i also know that first-person perspective it's very easy to miss things that the person perspective would get far more easily um it's like my aim is terrible when i'm first person but when i'm third person in a shooter i can suddenly actually connect with the with the headshots and click heads and so i think i i've asked my closest friends who are with me when things have happened and gone did i do anything to make him think that i'm attracted to him did i do anything to make him think that this was okay and so far the resounding aspects that i i i don't miss this i see it but i don't know how to avoid it it's like they were saying well he pushed boundaries here and here and here and normally i'd have gotten pissed off punched him kicked him away you know kicked him to the curb and you were forgiving like you did yeah see that's that's one of the things that really really frustrates me because i think like that the problem there is that i don't if you're a forgiving person like i think that's a good thing right i'm looking for option c which is not for you to be less forgiving or for him to not put like i i i want you to continue to be who you are and find some road through this and i completely agree with you with the first person third-person stuff so i think actually what you've got to figure out anita is why this happens to your mom yeah well well when i look at my mom because i thought about that too and i look at my mom and she's very very capable so like everything about her is just genuinely admirable and awesome and there are aspects of it that don't apply to me for example pretty much most of her boyfriends have been gay like completely gay like never had a girlfriend before or after her um and the thing is like she has her own life chaps and things like that and she's helped me learn to escape a lot of bad things um just by learning from the lessons of her life i'm grateful for her failings as much as her like positives just because it's helped me to grow in many ways and navigate the world um but like so i'm not gonna fault her for them i can understand how she ends up in some of the situations she's in but i also think that she's just generally a brilliant woman she really is she's very impressive in many many different ways she looks young for age she's very beautiful um she's like really unique she's like this goth and she has like really great makeup and really great personality and she's interested in all these cool things she's a fantastic artist she's a scientist she's a photographer she was a dancer and she aced all of those things and she has a myriad of she was a kickboxer and she competed against men and won things because she was very very good at it everything she tries her hand at she's amazing at and to this day she's really crippled by a very very debilitating illness and she still finds ways to create beautiful things and do very impressive things she's just very very amazing in every respect and a lot of guys don't just look at her and think i like her they think i want to be her this is why so many gay guys like her as well because they don't just like her they want to be her she is the if they could be a woman they would be her sort of thing and so there's a lot of admiration involved and i've noticed that because i see it on twitch chat a lot um a lot of guys don't have to be attractive they can be very average and be huge on this platform they don't have to be attractive um and the thing is when guys are young they're not taught to relate to women nobody dresses up as princess leia when they're kids no dudes are allowed to dress as women it has a stigma attached to it and so when people aspire to be us they're usually women other women and not a lot of dudes actually relate to us as if what they want to aspire to be like us because there's some sort of mental block there where admiration equals attraction and so usually with me people don't usually relate to me they aspire to be with me when they see positive traits about me they confuse it with attraction rather than just relating to you or taking inspiration from another human being it's a trap that a lot of female streamers fall into but we get heavily policed for behavior that big male streamers don't men can be toxic and it can be fun to watch but when women are toxic nobody wants to be with a woman who is toxic so it's not as entertaining because it puts you off them whereas if you found us generally relatable if you were trying to relate to us rather than possess us these things wouldn't get an entirely different reaction from the audience and so i see it manifest a lot in twitch i see it as a very very big thing and so a lot of people don't just a confusion with admiration and attraction i see and so and so a lot of guys conflate admiration with attraction if the person they admire happens to ha have female genitalia it's very very difficult to separate the two and so when it's the opposite sex or the sex that you're attracted to and so a lot of people admire my mother and so they conflate that with attraction it becomes attraction because that's how men are comfortable admiring women they're not encouraged from a young age to admire women from an aspirational perspective and my mom is very very admirable in every sense of the word are you she's i don't know i don't admire me but my mom's just like different let's just think about what you're saying right like so what i'm like if i put so i'm going to create a constellation out of the stars that you laid so this could be my interpretation so you let me know if this is fair or unfair okay so i'm interpreting something here so people can conflate admiration with attraction so you're saying that your mom is very admirable i asked you why why does this happen to your mom and then you went on on this thing about admiration and attraction fine okay cool let's accept that so therefore the reason that people you know bump heads when they try to kiss your mom's hand is because they're conflating admiration with attraction and now what's happening is you're talking about twitch and then you segue to twitch and you segue to you know double standards between female streamers and male streamers totally get that and so that now what what i'm if i kind of put that consolation together because those are parts of the same conversation which started from the question of why are people attracted to your mom and what i would piece together is that part of the reason that people are attracted to you is because they admire certain qualities about you and then they conflate those with attraction i don't i don't know if that's true i i don't i don't really see myself as a very admirable person right so so like let's think about that right so like i don't know okay so i'm gonna try to be okay so i asked you a question why are people attracted to your mom and you said they conflate admiration with attraction and then you talked about twitch and then you were like you know like people anyway so i think there are a lot of qualities about you that are very admirable and if you're confused about why people are attracted to you and why this keeps happening like my point is that this confusion can be understood right like your confusion about why this pattern happens i believe as a scientist generally speaking if you look into patterns you can find answers that is also a fault of my profession because my profession is filled with unfalsifiable hypotheses right so i can dig into like whatever kind of theory i want to and you can say whatever you want to and i can still convince myself that i'm right and you're wrong that you're just in denial that's that's the trump card of the therapist my patient is in denial right so i have to watch out about that cognitive bias which is why i'm laying it out to you and i'm trusting you and you because you [ __ ] come this far you haven't done this [ __ ] with my help the best i can do is give you hypotheses and then like the person that you are that has gone from where you were when you were a kid to the person that you are now i have faith that person can figure that [ __ ] out if i can help him out a little bit great so here's the last thing i'll leave you with okay maybe the reason that it's confusing that people are attracted to you is because you don't see what they find admirable you don't see yourself as admirable which whereas they find you is very admirable maybe you're actually a really admirable person right maybe maybe you can talk about your mom and how she creates art and this kind of stuff and you have some kind of standard in your mind whatever but that if i were to tell you and and i was gonna sound weird but like let's just lay this out right you're an authentic person you genuinely care about people you go out of your way to try to help people you care about animals you oftentimes put other people ahead of yourself you're intelligent you think about societal problems you're self-reflective you're a streamer on twitch you're charismatic when people attack you with toxicity you respond with humor you wear a hat on your head that says simp you joke about being bald and then normalize that experience for other people you take something that is one of the most shame inducing things in the world for men let alone women if you want to talk about double standards there talk about baldness and then you scratch your head when people think you're admirable well thank you i don't think there's a lot of women room for women to see themselves as admirable i think it's very very difficult because there are songs about how the most attractive thing about a woman is when she doesn't know she's attractive there are bits in tv shows and sitcoms find a girl with low self-esteem because they'll do more in the bedroom people don't like women who have good self-esteem the minute you ever try to like yourself people try to rip it from you constantly and call it narcissistic and conceited we'll chisel and carve a beautiful statue of a woman and we'll call it beautiful but if we put a mirror in our hand we'll call it narcissism we'll call it vanity that same statue because she's admiring the same view everybody else is it's so difficult to build any self-esteem in this environment and i think a lot of guys are very heavily intimidated by the idea that someone might know their worth because a lot of people are insecure and they think if you like yourself you'll realize that you deserve better than me and i've seen that and i've had men say it to me i've had my i've battled with my self-esteem my whole life and it's very very difficult to even look for long enough to come to any conclusions because it feels dangerous everyone will hate me if i ever admire myself this is a scary line of thought i don't know how to compliment myself i don't know how for it how it can be okay i don't know if this is a safe thing to talk about let's change the subject because everyone compliments you but nobody wants you to believe it and people get offended and take it back if you ever do if you ever want proof of this there are whole compilations of women accepting compliments on the internet where guys like oh i didn't know you were full of yourself i take it back you know and so i i don't know if it's something that i am ever not gonna find confusing because i don't live in a world and a space where it's safe for me to ever admire myself i don't think it's comfortable to sit and think about myself positively i'm really i feel panicked when i do um you know like when you're in a in a stealth game and slowly you get more and more noticed like you're off in the distance and the npcs can't quite see you yet but there's like a rumple pack letting you know that you're about to be seen and you need to hide and if you stand still long enough um everyone panics and knows you're there and starts attacking you i feel that little rumble pack warning emotionally anytime i try to think about anything positive about myself and i know where it comes from and i see it in other women and i don't think it could be remedied i don't think i'm in a position to ever not find this confusing because it's not safe for me to be okay with myself to have any self-esteem let alone compliment myself and i know that's an issue which makes it really hard to assess what you're putting towards me you're asking me to see and assess any positive attributes of myself and i'm saying that emotionally in society society i'm not in a position to do so if this is the answer it's going to be the hardest hurdle of my life to ever clear because i have to accurately and comfortably see positives in myself and it's just really [ __ ] scary and hard so anita you've put me in an interesting position you've put me in a position where having faith in you burdens you right because my instinctual answer is i'm glad you understand it my instinctual answer is if i have faith that you can do it is it going to be hard absolutely is society running against you absolutely are you do you live in a world where you're not allowed to do that absolutely i won't disagree with any of those things and now we get to the the bias of an individual person a psychiatrist versus a sociologist so the person in your chat was spot on so my experience has been that if you want to change the world this is just mine i'm not saying it's the only way to do it my way of trying to change the conditioning of the world has been through self-reflection walk this journey yourself and then just let other people watch and there's a part of me that says it's scary it's hard it's insensitive of me to say just try anyway because if it's too hard it's too hard if you're never going to be able to do it then that's cool that's fine i accept that if you choose that you don't want to try i accept that too what i don't accept is that it's going to be impossible for you because anita if there's one thing you've demonstrated to me it's that you've defied the impossible you've done a lot of things that i've talked to a lot of women who say this is impossible i've talked to a lot of women in abusive unhealthy codependent relationships and literally you know why they don't leave because it's impossible to leave yeah people feel trapped absolutely and so who am i gonna who am i gonna put my money i'm gonna put my money on [ __ ] you because you felt trapped before and you've come out of it again and again and again and trying to ask your question yeah go home go for it how do you balance self-esteem because this is something that i think a lot of people would benefit a lot of people that are watching us right now are going to be the demographic for twitch is american dudes in i.t most of them are people that you know are not going to relate to the issue of me having too many people fall in love with me but what they are going to relate to i think this benefits everyone listening to you right now is how do you reliably have self-esteem because people don't buy [ __ ] unless they feel [ __ ] the whole world has a whole economy based on making us feel inferior and insecure because it makes you buy [ __ ] to fix it and solve problems that aren't really there we're all told from a young age we should feel insecure and i have the additional aspect of like everyone's like your whole value is to be attractive and you should try to be attractive but if you feel attractive will hate you and that's unattractive so you have to be attractive and you have to be awesome and perfect and have a great personality be fun like computer games like me and do this and do that right and eat loads of food but simultaneously stay really slim i love a lot girl who eats so long as she's like anorexic um so like there are loads of double standards that are so hard to live up to it's so hard to feel like you're on the right track because people criticize you every step of the way how do you have good self-esteem and then if you do manage to like something about yourself you hold on to it in a world that just hates you if you ever acknowledge it it's a very good question it's the right question which is more important because i think that applies to everyone here i don't i barely know anyone who genuinely is like [ __ ] yeah i'm awesome can i think about that for a second it's a hard question answer okay anita so i don't know if i can answer the question generally but i think i can answer it for you so the first thing is that i think you're actually well on your way you are walking the path that in my experience leads to self-esteem which is in the first phase denial right like oh i'm not angry other people are more better than i am things like that i'm i'm using psychological terms that can be judgmental but just a if you go back and watch our first interview it was like i'm not worth it right and now you're saying something else which is that i do deserve this and it's frustrating that i'm not getting it and and to me you feel very different today than the first time we talked because you are so much more transparently angry right which i think is actually great and i i think that i actually i i don't know how to say this i think you're going to find your way there because you're saying all of the things that i think people need to do because you're saying that i've been alone and i feel it's fantastic i get to be with myself i get to prioritize myself you're building self-esteem with each one of those steps you're saying i'm going to do what i want to do you're learning how to not give in to other people's boundary violations because they're not right for you right because you used to let people trample you and now you're like frustrated because you tell them to go [ __ ] themselves and you end up with you know terminating the relationship and then you feel really sad and frustrated but at least you're drawing that boundary right you can't draw that boundary unless you have some esteem for yourself because you used to put them ahead of you and you just let them cross all over it but you stopped doing that so i think that the bizarre thing is you say how do i have self-esteem i don't have it and this is the part of me where now i get to be real arrogant i think you have more more self-esteem than you realize it's just so [ __ ] foreign to you you don't know what it looks like true it's not consistent yet there are still people who cross my boundaries and i still flounder a bit it's not it's fully there yet i'm still struggling but i am i have an idea of like that this is unacceptable and that's new so what i said is that you're on the path right and i think if you keep doing what you're doing you'll get there right because i i have faith in the person who has brought you this far because she's in your corner and she's caring about you she learned how to care about herself she learned how to put herself above other people right and that person also willingly puts other people ahead of her it's not like a good thing or a bad thing like you can be genuinely altruistic it's totally fine and i i think that as you learn to continue to navigate yourself as you start to look at your relationships more closely as you start to navigate what agency you do have in relationships i think that self-esteem will grow and you you still accept what i say about you as a compliment you say thank you the question is do you believe i'm right i have a mental block there like i keep trying to access the thought and it shuts down okay right so that's what we need to work on yeah we'll work on it we'll work on it it takes time it takes time and if you can't accept it as true like sure i mean you know that i accept that you don't accept it and i'm going to continue thinking that about you and i'm going to continue feeling that way about you even if you don't accept it for yourself well thank you right because you don't get to control my feelings i get to feel about you the way that i want to and you get to respond to that however you want to you get to say i'm never going to talk to you again because it makes me uncomfortable and you get to do that that's your line in the sand to draw well thanks well at the very least you've identified the bits because usually these mental blocks where every time i try to access the thought it doesn't let me i've had that before you start having with anger things like that um or i'm telling you yeah go ahead i'm sorry no tell me dude you feeling angry is like i'm so happy for you and even i'm telling it's it's coming out you got to clean out that trash right you got to take it out of the trash can and it'll come out and you you're entitled to that anger because you've had to deal with this [ __ ] for so long and let you know just let like feel that baby just feel it and let yourself be wronged because that's what's happened right but you can't know that you're being wronged unless you on some level know that you deserve the right and so that seed of self-esteem is already there a lot of people blame women in abusive relationships why didn't you leave and it's like if if people are raised to never know that they can expect respect or what respect looks like how do they even know they're being wronged a lot of people in abusive relationships don't know that it's wrong and so yeah so i think yeah you're right there and i i think yeah it's a hard place place to be this is really difficult to do live there are lots of people who get like a tiny snippet of the conversation and let them buy it fill in the rest they like arrive for like two minutes and they judge there are lots of armed chairs psychologists who come up with [ __ ] lots of sexist [ __ ] about men like men just can't be friends with women and women are this and men can't be that too like i believe in men men can be decent people and friends and yeah no i i don't have this awful stereotype that men can't be friends with women and [ __ ] i i wouldn't be friends with men if i thought that it was a thing that they were just too primal to do so like i think i have a little bit more faith in men than twitch chat does but i'm still being called lots of awful things like a man hater right now which is very odd it's so difficult to have these sorts of conversations live i'm getting so much judgment and it's so funny like it'll bounce between she's so wrong she doesn't understand basic biology and there'll be people going could you fart for me between it all it takes a lot of practice to be very calm and kind of um indifferent to all of the weird weirdness of twitch jet so any of the last thing i'll leave you with is that i want i commend you for having this conversation right it's an important conversation that the haters are gonna hate whatever but i think that there are a lot of people out there who are really listening and hearing something that they need to hear second thing is i want you to cut yourself some slack if those people get to you right because it is hard to deal with and you deserve to not be perfect you deserve to feel judged you deserve to feel weak you deserve to feel all of those things even if they aren't true i don't think they're true but social media and the internet does that to us they make us feel small and i think one of the biggest problems that we run into is that we judge ourselves for being weak when we're allowed to be weak and so we beat ourselves up for letting them affect us and then suddenly we're on the same team with them they're beating us up and we're beating ourselves up so don't be on that team and if you are on that team that's okay that's just how we're conditioned yeah good luck to you thank you i feel like we didn't get enough time to answer people's questions i'm sorry yeah i know i i i'm i know we didn't get enough time and i'm so glad because i i think that this conversation i don't know how other people are what other people are going to think about it but i think your your growth has been really remarkable and and i mean you may not see it you may not feel it i know that you're feeling potentially more negative emotion than the first time we met but like it's just part of the journey right because now you know you're angry because you deserve more than what people are giving you and that like that's the [ __ ] essence of self-esteem when you know what you're worth anger is a hopeful emotion it's when you don't stand for how things are and you hope that they can be better i mean anger would be useless but anger if it wasn't that anger is why women have the right to vote anger is why so many slaves were freed like anger is when we don't like how things are and we want it to change i understand that it's a positive thing when used maturely i i was writing off everything every bit of anger as immature and i yeah i do think that oh oddly anger is something people deserve to feel not in a malicious way i don't feel like you deserve to be angry fool i mean you know yeah like the way you said it i think you said it's beautiful people deserve to feel vulnerable and angry and all those things they have the right you made me cringe a little bit i hope you let yourself be angry in an immature way too [Laughter] don't be a perfect version of yourself true true yeah okay i'm glad you called that one yeah just it's you gotta be careful yeah yeah you get to be inappropriately angry you get to just have a bad day because people are mistreating you and take it out on other people you should apologize afterward but you get to feel that way i'll try not to either yeah try not to try not to but don't beat yourself up if you slip up from time to time because it's a process it's a journey cool yeah definitely i'm sorry if i did that with you i mean i'm under a lot of pressure right now there are thousands of people blaming me for the situation i'm in right now so it felt like a little bit much but i hope you didn't feel disrespected during this conversation because i have a lot of respect for you no i didn't feel disrespected in fact i'm really really glad that you shared that with me because anita telling me that i did something that was not fair or judgmental is not disrespectful this is my whole point you get to say i'm disrespectful if i'm disrespectful and i have to listen to that right it's not like i can't [ __ ] up like you get to say that you get to say dr k you're being an [ __ ] you're being judgmental and then we sit down and we look at like what's going on there like you get to say that man woman sorry yes all right anyway i really enjoyed this good luck to you good luck on your journey thank you and thanks a lot and you know haters are going to hate i don't know what to say there are a lot of us out there who are also rooting for you so thank you send the haters our way we try to talk to them and see where they're coming from thank you cool good luck take care you too you

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 245,701

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, platonic friendship, relationship psychology, double standards, setting boundaries in relationships, repetition compulsion, sweet_anita, sweet_anita twitch, sweet_anita ticks, sweet anita among us, sweet anita sidemen, sweet anita banana, twitch streamer, twitch sweet anita, sweet anita streamer, anita twitch

Id: RV2rOI0ewhc

Length: 133min 59sec (8039 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020