20 Years in PRISON: Making up for Lost Time

okay we're ready to go thanks so much for making time to see me uh i'm a big admirer oh thank you so uh thanks for the kind words anthony um so i understand that your story is uh a little bit different from some people in our community is it okay if i call you anthony yeah that would be preferable thank you okay so can you tell us a little bit about yourself and um how you got to where you are sure so should i lead with the headline uh you know having murdered somebody and got the prison or should i give a little bit of backstory to explain who i am before i before i completely shatter that um what your choice i i think you've led with the headline at this point i don't know i've already shared an app well i mean it's on the title of the stream so it's not a surprise i think so i'm 41 years old now um american obviously um grew up very poor um in a really abusive home no father uh mom was a drug addict pretty bad when i was young she sold me and my brother one time to the drug dealers well pawned us i guess would be a better way to say it uh and then my grandma ended up having to come and pay her debt to get us to bond us out of the drug dealers i only heard that story later excuse me thankfully i have no memory of that so that that's just to give you a little bit of context i never knew that version of my mom thankfully um when i was two or three years old i got ran over uh my mom ran me over with a with a chevy blazer which is a one ton truck i think um on accident um i remember remembering parts of it but i have no memory of it um i know she was in a rage with her boyfriend and uh was going to leave in in the truck and i evidently tried to stop her and she didn't notice and she ran me over so then i spent the next hmm this is pretty emotional just bear with me this is a hard [ __ ] to talk about i've never talked to anybody about this actually um i spent the next several years in hospitals and wheelchairs and crutches trying to walk and uh never playing never getting to play or anything because you know black cast on both legs so it was tough and uh thankfully i can walk that's something you know and uh to this day actually finally as i get older the pain gets worse just every day it gets worse in my legs um the gift that keeps on giving you know so anyways that was my childhood and uh so then i finally got it i finally got through that and uh started going to school and everything never made any friends everybody hated me uh never could figure out why like we moved a lot a lot and i was the common denominator in every scenario where i had no friends uh i was always bullied and picked on and i'm big i was big as a kid i was the biggest in my class so you would think well how do you get bullied it i wonder it's because i was a [ __ ] and i don't think it is i don't think that's what it was i think i just wanted to be liked and i'm very cerebral i'm not usually this emotional i'm very cerebral and so when people would come and attack me it was like i wasn't getting mad i was just like why like i don't get it yeah i mean i wanted to know why i wanted to talk about it and understand the situation and i never could and so probably an easy prey type of thing you know and plus i was big so it looks good you're you're bullying the big guy you know and so that that that i never had any friends really or i would always have like maybe one outcast fellow outcast it was a friend um and that never lasted long i don't know why i drive all my friends away and again i know i'm the common denominator in all of these things so i would like to know what that is and i know you wouldn't have that insight in a two-hour interview but um that's something i've been trying to figure out like go ahead please i was going to say i may not have that insight but you may have that insight i may and that's what i'm hoping you're very good at leading questions you're very very good at that that's your strength and i've never seen a therapist before or anything like that but if they're all like you and that's the method they use i mean that's phenomenal you know you help the person find the answer within and i think that's critical you don't preach to them from without and i think that that's really important so first of all anthony thank you so much for sharing i mean it sounds like um that's a lot bro yeah i was kind of a dump right there um no i mean i i wasn't so much thinking about the dump just as you know it's one thing to dump that but to have all of that to dump you know that that's sort of more of what i mean it's like wow like can you catch a break in any dimension i feel i feel that much of the time to be honest with you um i'm constantly and i see a lot of your your people talk about this that it resonates with me i'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop when something good's happening all right now what now what's the you know where's the lightning it's got to be coming it's got to be coming if you know if my past history is any is anything to go by you know the bad the bad is coming right away okay um anyway i i sort of jumped in for a second but i think you were sharing a little bit about so it seems like you were getting bullied a lot had trouble making friends you kind of called yourself the common denominator because you're moving around and this keeps happening right new set of people new set of kids same patterns yes exactly and so those are my school years um just to give a little insight into myself um i coasted through school with a's and b's and when i say coasted i mean basically did no work uh i would show up listen to the lectures take the take the test and that's it like i i absorb things quite easily except mathematics i struggle with that greatly but otherwise i it in and i've got it right one time and so that's that's a blessing i have that going for me and i'm really appreciative of that um so i really never had to put in effort at school and that's a trend that continues to this day i'm a full-time student in college and while i would really like to be applying myself i don't i i wait till the very last minute i breeze through it and then i get straight a's so there's like no incentive to break that pattern and that's kind of a drag because at some point that's gonna blow up in my face i'm just waiting on that to happen and i i would like to find the there's the other shoe yeah exactly exactly good call exactly yeah um so those are my school years we were pretty poor like i said made me start working a full-time job when i was i think 12 i had to lie about my age to get a job so i had to work full-time and go to school and i had to pay rent and to my mom and buy my own clothes and all that kind of stuff um she had sent my brother away she gave my brother to state when a couple years prior to that so i was the only remaining kid um to kick me out of the house well she had me put in jail she looked she lied about me and had me put in jail when i was 14 i believe 15 yeah i was 15. um she was very volatile person and by that time i was big enough she couldn't beat me anymore uh just to give you an instance so it wasn't it wasn't just beatings my mom was very physically abusive um i was 10 11. you first start to get your adult teeth and i didn't wear a shirt she picked out from me one day and she took my head and she slammed it into the side of the bathtub repeatedly and she broke that tooth which is still broken to this day and she knocked out that tooth and she broke that tooth and then mom told me you better not tell anybody you better tell them you fell off the monkey bars or something because if you don't i'm going to kill you and nobody's going to care i'm allowed to i'm your mom i'm 10 i'm however old i was and so absolutely i believe that that's gospel truth i said and even if they do and even and she didn't say it in this tone i'm trying to try to make light of it because it's very painful for me and that's how i defuse tension um she said and even if they did care all they would do is put you in a foster home and you'd get molested so you know take your choice and so of course i never said anything to her she didn't have to say that by the way that was my mom i loved her to death i wasn't going to tell on her i mean i didn't think i was being abused it was only later i came to that realization i thought she was being a mom so very volatile but eventually i got big enough to where she couldn't manhandle me like that and uh i remember so keep in mind at this time i'm going to school to high school full-time of course since high school um and i'm working full-time and so i'm getting like five hours of sleep a night um i don't mind it you know that's life you got to learn how to work eventually yeah i mean so it is what it is um what i did mind is that every day she would come home from work and it's this co-worker was such a piece [ __ ] this co-worker had done that she got in a fight with this co-worker for that reason uh you know she's dead now you know bless her soul she dead but she was never happy unless she was in conflict i don't know if you've ever known anybody like that but that's unless there was some kind of conflict she wasn't happy and so uh i [ __ ] up this day she came home and she you know this co-worker blah blah blah and you know i'm working too i'm going to school i'm i'm having hell at school no you know it's bullying only gets worse as you get older believe it or not in school um more violent and now i wasn't the biggest so you know and uh i never said [ __ ] i just went about my life i didn't cry about it i complained to her about it i just did my business but every day i got to listen to her negativity and uh so she tells me she tells me all this and i [ __ ] up i said wow you just sound like you have a hard time getting along with anybody at work oh man she freaked out she pulled a knife out on me she she just she just went [ __ ] ape [ __ ] so nothing really came of that except that she went to her room i went to bed we went to our corners we went back to our corners and the next morning i woke up and i was being arrested by the police and she told him i pulled a knife on her and threatened her life and this and that and the other thing actually that was it that was what she told him was that i pulled a knife on her and threatened her life and she's my mom so they took my they took her word for it no questions asked and an interesting fact when you're a juvenile the only person who can get you out of juvenile hole is your legal guardian which in my case was my mom who had put me in there so she had me hostage in there and i had to agree to whatever she wanted me to agree to to get out and uh i dreamed of going to college that was my escape that was my lifelong dream was that uh that i was gonna go to college but no money none no money so scholarship was what i was hoping for but now i had a criminal record and so i went that dream i thought i didn't know i thought and so i dropped out of school after that cause what's the point there's no end game anymore you know uh and my mom kicked me out of the house i guess i dropped out because she kicked me out of the house uh and so i went to live with my uncle and he he was that he actually turned out to be a violent drunk and so then i went to live home i went to go live on the streets and i i wandered around the country i hitchhiked across the country for a while best time of my life in a way that freedom you know what i mean tuckers are amazing people go ahead i was just saying when you said you know what i mean i was about to say no no i don't can you help me understand maybe yeah yeah it's well number one i'm not living under constant fear anymore of my mom my uncle whoever you know but believe it or not living on a highway is it was less emotionally traumatizing so um unless you i i never had a bad experience and i'm a big guy and i was a big guy at that point i'm over six feet tall and i'm big you know i'm a big guy so it would not be the same i think for a woman hitchhiking across the country but for a man i i've never had a negative experience you know truck drivers would give me a ride they would shoot the ship with me they would give me a little cash to help me on my way and i just met really good people i just met a lot of really good people across the country and uh so to cut to the chase i ended up at one point oh so my brother was 18 by this point he had been released by the state he'd been let she had given him away to the state he was now living on his own so i went to go stay with him my brother always hated me i think i think he always hated me he was he i i can't even give you i don't even want to go into that too deeply because it it doesn't really matter he hated me but i looked up to him he was the only male in the house even though he was only a couple of older years older than i he was like a father figure i suppose in my mind but he always hated me and rejected me and and uh never want to be around i was the annoying little brother you know i was a tag along little brother who had zero social skills of and make friends uh as you know when other people are learning those social i've i've only read this in recent months when i've been wondering what the [ __ ] up with me um i didn't get that socialization at the crucial years you know and so uh you know there's no making up for lost time i think with that so that's something i've gone through my whole life complete lack of social skills um and uh so i went to stay with my brother temporarily he said i could i could stay with him for a couple of months and uh so i wouldn't stay with him and i thought well that'd be cool and it was it was in a way but he lived in a place he lived excuse me he lived in a place you can't even call where he lived in town it was it was nothing it was in nowheresville there was no jobs there was no businesses there was no nothing there was there was it was nothing um he just happened to live there and so there was nothing for me to do he was at work all day there was nowhere for me to get a job there was nothing for me to do so i was just there bored and then he would go hang out with his friends and i he didn't want me coming along and so i guess i felt rejected by that all right i definitely felt rejected by that but i only realized that now i didn't realize that at the time um funny how hindsight is so useful but foresight would be even better um so he had a good friend so they were like they were in a gang right but the thing is this town like they had two rival gangs but there's no town there's nothing to fight over so i don't understand right to this day i still don't so they were in this game and um one night they uh my brother was out with his friends and then the friends came back and my brother wasn't there and so i asked my brother's friend i said well where's my brother and he said um oh well we got jumped by by these rival gang members and they pulled a gun and so i ran away and your brother's still there and so i said what the what what so we went and got a guy i went got my gun and we were gonna go get my brother and try to rescue him and then he just happened to pull up at that time well that that that is why i tell people i killed that guy okay that scenario the fact that he let my brother have a gun pulled on him and abandoned them and that's true that is that is partially true that is publicly true and that that is true within me as well but that's not the whole story i don't think i think a lot of it was jealousy the relationship he had with my brother that i didn't right the fact that my brother liked him more than me and clearly obviously no no bones about it right and um so i think it was that sort of jealousy that caused me to do that and i've only come to that realization later that perhaps if it were not for that that's if it were not for that jealousy i would not have let that be a reason to shoot him so i just want to make a couple things clear anthony so first of all um you know are i want to make sure i don't know how we're going to make sure of this but um i understand that you spent some time in prison but like is there anything that you could be saying right now that could get you in trouble no i've been convicted of it i was guilty i've already done my prison sentence okay so i i just want to make because i'm not a lawyer it doesn't sound like you're a lawyer um i i you know the last thing that i would want is anything negative to happen to you by no no this is okay this was a case that long long since been adjudicated i've i've fulfilled my sentence for it uh it's it's so so it sounds like the dude that abandoned your brother you ended up killing yes i shot him like at that time or like later later on later on so that that that whole night so when my brother showed up the guy was like oh you're one of us now you proved your loyalty you're you're part of the gang now by getting jumped i guess i don't know my brother was all beat up so they shaved his head uh i guess this was a sereno ritual or whatever i don't i don't know anything about it i i'm speaking it out of ignorance so i just don't know um and so there was a big party that night and um everybody left slowly but surely everybody trickled out and santiago is my victim's name i want to call him by name because he deserves that respect what i did was [ __ ] up and santiago was the last was still there in fact they stayed overnight now santiago was 24 and his girlfriend was 14 and uh yeah that was kind of creepy you know but they were there that night and he was sleeping on the couch and she was sleeping on the floor and my brother was in bed and they went to sleep and so then i went to my room and i went to sleep well the next morning my brother went to work this was six a.m roughly um and so i was up and they were still asleep and so i woke the guy up and i said hey so what's up so you know you're a real [ __ ] right he said what's that i said you're a real [ __ ] he said why is that i said you almost got my brother killed and he had this little 18 inch aluminum crowbar and he picked it up and he said what do you want to have a problem or what and he didn't know i had a pistol right there in my lap and so i said yes i do and i shot him in the face and he died later at the hospital and his girlfriend woke up and said what what what's happening to nothing i don't know what do you mean and uh anyways that's i'm not gonna get into the nitty-gritty of it because that's just gossip and there's no point that's what came of it uh the police came i got arrested i got second degree murder i did i was 16 years old got charges i got charges in adult i got 20 years in adult prison uh the maximum possible sentence i was terrified going into prison because you know people know what prisons like enjoy they think they do i i guess i would say and you know school bullying's bad but prison prison there's nowhere to go there's no home to go to you're there and i knew that i knew that um if you get victimized once it'll never stop in there it will never stop and so truthfully at 16 and 20 felt like a life sentence i see people saying like 20 years is not that bad and things like that but trust me it's in prison it's not 20 years it's it's 20 lifetimes um so i got 20 years but it felt like a life sentence to me so all my give a [ __ ] were gone and i didn't want to be a victim i knew that much going in i didn't want to be a victim if nothing else i knew that and so i kind of just went crazy in there like i didn't care if somebody talk if somebody talked slick it was going down that was the bell immediately you know i mean and i stabbed people and i got new time i got new prison sentences in there i got increased sentences in there for stabbing people and long story short um prison is about what you expect maybe it's real boring i don't really have too much too much to go into about that i don't feel like it gave me anything positive at all i feel like it was only a negative experience i deserved i had coming i deserved it i have zero regrets about going to prison i deserved every bit of it so so i'm not here feeling sorry for myself about that everything else yeah that no i i deserve that 100 percent longer i feel but there's a lot of self-loathing i feel about that and uh what do you mean by about killing that killing santiago and so i've been out are you able to hear me okay because your screen just cut out yeah sorry i'm switching servers again it kind of lagged out for a second i can hear you and so and so uh i've been out five or six years i had to start from square zero all my family cut me off when i went to prison um so i have no fam i had i still have no family my mom tried to make my mom tried to make um try to make a connection when i got out only when i got out but i went to prison when i went when i got arrested she told me she hoped i got the death penalty um i was a monster it's like well thank you creator dr frankenstein i appreciate that assessment um so we didn't talk for 20 years and i got out and she wanted to reconnect and um i tried i couldn't forgive her i just couldn't forgive her and she later died she had drank herself to death over the years um and i did tell her though i remembered the good things she did for us you know not just the bad but the good the only thing i ever wanted her to acknowledge was it she was young she didn't know how to parent and she did a shitty job oh we were bad kids that's all there was to it we were bad kids nobody ever had bad kids like what she did nobody you're the worst thing that ever happened how do you feel about not being able to forgive her all i wanted was an acknowledgement i guess i've forgiven her i guess i've forgiven her internally but not a hundred percent i don't think because without that acknowledgement [ __ ] that she [ __ ] up i just can't get past there or yeah i guess i can forgive i just can't get over it and uh go ahead i see your i see you're poised on the verge of yeah looks like you know my tells well anthony yeah cause i i was just gonna kind of ask like you say you can't forgive her but like you know whose fault is that fine yeah i mean i can only i can only control my emotions myself i mean so that that's where i know it's kind of weird but like i'm not so sure right so i i would say and i i mean anthony i'd sorry if i'm interrupting and if you want to keep going go for it but no no just to kind of jump in for a second so i think like something weird has happened with forgiveness where we've placed the burden of responsibility on like the person who does the forgiving the victim the victim right right which is sort of weird like i think it's just interesting because i i think that forgiveness is like yours to give or not to give and it's entirely your choice you know just forgiveness earned i think so it's kind of isn't that what they say that you have to earn somebody's forgiveness and so yeah i guess i get where you're i picked up what you're putting down there yeah right so so it's in in this i'm noticing that there's like themes which you know you're sharing a lot with me like i said i don't know that i can figure things out in two hours but you may be able to and and just kind of noticing that like you know what's the common denominator who's to blame you know this idea that if i want to be a good person like i should forgive right because we sort of associate that we say like good people are the ones that are forgiven if i don't forgive what that also means is that like then i'm a bad person and i haven't been you know good enough my heart is not big enough to where i can forgive my mom who's never acknowledged any of the crap that she's done to you and and there's a part of me that says like that's fine right you don't you don't have to actually forgive her like you don't need to forgive and you don't need to forget i think making peace with it is one thing but i think that you can make peace with it without forgiving you can say that i will never forgive this person for what they did you know that can never be repaired and i got the short end of the stick in that relationship and i will be disappointed and hate them as well as love them and that can be like a confusing piece to come to but i don't think you need to forgive her you know especially if she never asked for it right well because she didn't feel like she needed forget there was she had done nothing wrong in her eyes yeah in fact she she and i want to emphasize here the things i described my mom did to me i was the favorite my brother was the she made it very obvious that he was the least favorite he got it so much worse than i did and he kind of lucked out and that she turned him over to the state because he ended up at this boys ranch that he loved and just so he kind of lucked out in a way but also with a horrible mom right yeah and so when i confronted her years later after prison i said well why did you do these things to me i was imagining things she said and i said oh am i imagining broken am i imagining those broken teeth i said you not you slammed my face against the bathtub and you knocked my oh and she broke my i forgot to mention that my jaw got broken in that as well so i had to have my jaw wired shut after that as well and i said so until you broke my jaw and knocked out three of my teeth am i imagining that she said i caught you smoking so it wasn't that she didn't remember what she had at first alleged it was that she thought she had caught me smoking which i guess if that's good enough to abuse your child but that wasn't even the cause it was this shirt so to get over that is very difficult because like without the acknowledgement or the asking of the forgiveness or even the realizing that she needs forgiveness it's very difficult for me to overcome that so i've been out now six years starting from square zero like i said i i i started out with call center jobs and i i've just been pulling myself up by the bootstraps as they say um that's rough yeah that's been rough because the felony is also a gift that keeps on giving a little known fast you can't rent you can't rent a place with a felony on your record uh you can't really get most jobs but yet you also were supposed to work and and live somewhere and live lawfully so i don't understand how that conundrum works for a lot of people but thankfully through sheer dumb luck i guess i've managed to scrape by so far and keep a roof over my head and a job and then the coronavirus thing happened and uh i've been out of work for quite a while now year and a half and uh i think idleness has been causing i know it has i i've i went through i'm gonna assume it was a depression this last year months long like verge of suicide and i'm not exaggerating i mean trying to figure out a reason to live trying to figure out a reason to go to tomorrow and coming up empty too cowardly to kill myself and um i had never experienced believe it or not 20 years in prison never experienced depression never experienced anything like that um it was crippling it was horrible i think it was the idleness and uh so i've just been coasting along trying to figure out what what the [ __ ] am i supposed what am i supposed to do i'm sorry i don't know if you i i'm gonna try to stop cussing because i don't know what how your format is on that um but i gotta figure out what i'm gonna do with myself and you know and i don't know nothing nothing is appealing nothing is appealing um i don't leave my house i'm pretty much a shut-in at this point so eventually i just said you know what you gotta land on something and so i'm going to college full-time for computer programming because like i said i'm pretty intelligent i can pick things up pretty easily and that looks like something where even with a felony you can at least make a reasonable living um and so yeah that's what i'm doing and it's it's going fine it's all right um i i'm 4.0 gpa i'm in my sophomore year i've been 4.0 every semester but again i don't i don't apply myself i'm unable to apply myself to this it's like i can do the bare minimum to coast wow okay if i got anything less than an a i would actually apply myself i have to be honest i'm pretty egotistical about my grades but the fact that i'm able to coast along and just get that i feel like sort of is handicapping me in a way um for the future or maybe not i i i'm kind of torn between that or are my motors going to kick in when they need to kick in and right now i can idle and so i'm just idling you know and i i don't know the answer that's some things i'm hoping you can help me figure out am i lazy am i unmotivated uh i don't know i'm very lazy i'll tell you that right now tell me about that i would love to tell you about that because that's something i would like to talk about um small things that require no intelligence or no thought or no no present no challenge i i i till the till the dishes are piled up in the sink and i'm out of clean clothes those things aren't getting done until the floors look disgusting they're not getting swept and mopped so the table is covered in dust i'm not gonna dust it i hate that kind of thing i i don't hate it i and the interesting thing is i don't hate it when i'm doing it i dread it when i'm planning it when i'm doing it it's sort of a zen thing you get into where you just turn your brain off and you go and yet i dre i dread it right so i don't know but on the other hand if a pro if something comes up and it seems really really challenging and difficult and oh god it's going to be brutal let's go i'm on it and i will work maniacally until in done and so so is that a bit i would say that would be a benefit if i would feel the fill that other time was something productive but i don't i feel it with watching youtube and playing video games and just time wasting reddit and just time wasting do you do you have fun playing video games and watching youtube watching youtube know i feel like i'm actually addicted to uh youtube to be honest with you i it's addictive man it pulls you in you're going to watch one thing and then the next thing you know you're just blindly clicking videos that sound mildly interesting trying to find something a video that you can actually make it through to the end that's in and it's like a vicious cycle and i will keep you up till three in the morning sometimes when i have to be in bed at 10. um that's something i struggle with a lot my video game at the love hate relationship i play world of tanks i'm terrible at it but what are you gonna do one of us if you say that a video game is a is a love-hate relationship that means you're one of us right absolutely if you don't hate at least half eight your video game you're not doing it right hmm so anthony what can i help you with well i guess just like how do how do i okay another thing i guess i'm not done okay um i have not been with a woman since i've been out i've not really seen any that i've been attracted to to be honest with you that aren't in a relationship or whatever the case may be but also i just don't seem to feel a sex drive that other people feel like ever well i mean i i masturbate i stop every month or so once a month or so but that's quite low i know i i see the urges that other people have and i've never really felt those i've never felt very very uh i guess that a very cerebral i've never felt very very sexually uh driven and uh oh but a lot of people ask me what are you gonna hook up with a woman man and i would like to i'm not saying i wouldn't like to very much like to but i just don't have that impulse to go out and get it i'm waiting on her to knock on my door i suppose you mentioned that there's damage to your legs and you feel pain is that right yeah yeah i learned pretty bad how are you i know it's kind of like a weird question do you know if you have like any atrophy of the of the quadriceps muscles so i don't have a calf muscle at all i don't know let me see if you can see what we're working with here i don't know may i don't know what the quadricep is so i don't know thighs are your thighs atrophied so no but my calf muscle is okay um and my feet are deformed i have horrible sciatica uh back pain um just like and it's getting worse like i've been to doctors and they pretty much tell me i'm imagining things or that there's nothing they can do about it basically is what it boils down to um but then they don't look either they don't they never touch you they won't actually cut your back and i don't know if that's how you examine a back but i would think that touching the back as a professional would be a good place to start they won't even lay a finger on you they won't even touch you they ask you questions they send you in for an mri that's about that big you get that much of them to look out of your back oh no we don't see anything sorry try these exercises try these stretches those don't work oh then we're out of ideas and so that's very frustrating like a straight leg test where they lift up your heel do they do this i don't know i don't i think maybe a physical therapist did i'm a [ __ ] psychiatrist you're supposed to do that okay so i would like to learn okay why am i so lonely and alone can that be changed and if not how do i make peace with that and um how do i find a purpose in life like i don't like computer programming is just for it's just something to do i feel no passion for it whatsoever it's just it's interesting i'll give it that it's interesting and it's challenging but it's not something i'm like ah this is something i'm really driven to do and i used to feel that way about things and i i still do about some things you know politics but i probably shouldn't honestly i i got involved in prison politics pretty heavily as a white person and i'm a pretty virulent anti-semite um and i feel very strongly about that i'm not a racist but i'm very anti-semitic um and so that's not something that's really socially acceptable in 2021 and uh is what it is i don't care i believe what i believe and i i know what i know and so it is what it is it's not up for debate or negotiation um but i want to know what to do with my life i want to know how do i find passion about something anything i used to believe in in religion well i was the first thing to go you know although interestingly the more i study quantum physics in the beginning of the universe the more that just sounds like god so i don't know maybe the more i learn the more the more religious i become interestingly um so i guess i'm just more questioning on a religious aspect but that really doesn't that institution doesn't have the the faith for me it once had the government has lost all credibility with me long since probably just as i got older um maybe that's natural you see you know how the sausage is being made and that's an ugly process in general um and so politics has lost all of its that institution has lost all its credibility for me the media has lost so like what do i believe in i guess that's what i'm what am i to believe in maybe that's what i'm trying to get to what am i to believe in do you feel lonely yes and no i love solitude but at the same time i feel so lonely sometimes i see being with other people looks like fun from the outside being with other people is a trying chore for me tell me about that it's nothing not bad it just it feels tiring i i at the end of it i want the whole time i want to go home i don't say that but i'm just like i'm just like i'd rather be home doing my thing anyway i'm out what what what is it that's trying about being with other people what drains you they're trying to be interest facade perhaps putting on a facade um because in reality so i displayed a little bit of personality here you know i can make a little joke now and then but in reality everybody that is a facade if it were just me being me i'm probably the most boring monotone person you've ever met in your life until i get interested in a topic and then i will just spew this wall of knowledge at you about that subject you know more than you ever wanted to know about this subject probably you never wanted to know anything about it but i knew it right and i want to share it with you and that's the only thing i ever get excited about is things that i know learning knowledge um i love learning i love i love knowing things and i love learning and if there were a way to monetize that that would be fantastic but like being a professional student yes that would be amazing okay hmm i'm gonna need like a minute to think yeah yeah process i'm ready for you so you know anthony my first reaction is that i would expect to feel emotionally worse listening to your story like it sounds like you've been so you know once again we don't diagnose things on stream but there's one diagnosis that comes to mind which is a diagnosis that one of um so there was a nurse who worked in the emergency room where i trained or did most of my emergency shifts and so she was like awesome is awesome i presume i'm sure she's still working there so she was like older wiser you know i think a lot of times we think about doctors as experts but in my experience like wisdom comes from nurses more often than not and and so i think that um she had an interesting diagnosis so sometimes we'd see these people honestly like yourself to be completely honest like 16 years old usually adolescents uh a list of different diagnoses um a list of like you know you look at their like chart and it's like they were in this foster home went to juvie for a year like we'd get these like 17 year old kids really nasty to talk to you know like you go into the room and they're they're like you know kind of acidic not pleasant um and so her diagnosis was [ __ ] life syndrome so it's not any of the fancy stuff that's in the chart it's not depression it's not bipolar it's not substance use it's not trauma like they have all of those things but the real diagnosis is [ __ ] life syndrome and it was one of the most like eye-opening um kind of like teaching points for me that like we can put all kinds of labels on you right but like i don't think that any of those labels actually capture who you are um you know convicted felon um you know chad with a 4.0 gpa without studying computer science you know like there are all kinds of labels like trauma victim like absolutely like all those labels check out you know i i don't think cerebral is another example i don't think they're all bad um someone who can't forgive which i think is fair enough i don't think you should try very much harder to be honest but i don't think any of those are who you are and so oddly enough like what i see is like a dude who's basically had some like really really bad luck have you made some bad choices sure but i don't know that you were ever taught what a good choice is um you know should you be held responsible for shooting someone absolutely and yet should you also should we also like i don't know how else to say this i don't think we should overreact to that data point in determining who you are right it's an action like is it a bad action is it a horrific action is it an action that you may never get forgiveness for sure i think all of those things are correct i'm not implying otherwise and at the same time it's still an action is it a catastrophic one absolutely but i don't think it determines who you are and this is where like you know i draw a little bit on on kind of eastern philosophy and i think a big part of that is that the human ego identifies with actions you cannot be a failure that's not a thing you can fail but you can't be a failure but the human brain and especially our ego our hamkar identifies with our actions right so even if you like look at me and you say like i'm a doctor like that's not a real thing like very s precisely how do you know that someone is a doctor well i have like a piece of paper that has a medical degree but i would be the first to say the moment i got that medical degree is not the moment i became a doctor it happened like six months later but i i like know when it but it's not anything that you can measure i mean you can in because there's a societal you know agreement that i'm a doctor um but i as and so i think that like a lot of this is like there's a lot of stuff here for sure and a lot of it's bad for sure have you been through a lot absolutely has that screwed you over in some very fundamental ways like absolutely so like did you miss core developmental milestones that help you understand like how to engage with other people yes oddly enough i find myself not being hopeless so i think that just hearing you and listening to you and like just like seeing the way that you relate like are you what i'm sort of getting the sense of is that your how can i say this i think ninety percent of what holds you back is what you've had to learn to survive and so the good news is that like i think you can unlearn that stuff and you can i'm not i'm not kidding anthony when i say you could on your 50th birthday be married have a stable job be paying a mortgage and like live in the burbs like i don't think that that's an unreasonable thing for you to have nine years from now right like is it is it a long road sure is it gonna be tough absolutely have you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps it sounds like you're in the process are there a lot of like oh i own my own house right now okay out in the mountains uh i got a beautiful house like honestly it's my dream house it's it it was it's still a crap hole but it's i built this office myself like everybody that's coming along so that's i'm making significant progress but i just i feel like that other person to share with is a vital missing component but it also fills me with dread the thought of having to go out and obtain that and and and put myself out there and and share my life with somebody else you know what i mean that sounds very trying yeah so what what fills you with dread about finding someone so every girl every girl i've ever expressed any interest in only likes me as a friend or boy that she sure likes me like a brother you know i get that a lot friends um okay so you really are one of us right and this is going to come off as judgmental but that's only because i am judgmental and as shitty as that is that's who i am as a person and they try to hook me up with anybody it's usually a bridge troll to be honest and it's like is that how little you think of me that this is somebody you think i would be sexually attracted to right i see your disgust on your face and and like i said i'm a judgmental person unfortunately you see disgust on my face oh maybe i'm misreading maybe i'm misreading what are you reading i'm curious just when i when i when i said the thing about the bridge troll you look like a disapproving look perhaps perhaps i misinterpreted um but nevertheless um those are my feelings and uh i must be true to myself um i know i'm not that attractive but i want okay so i put myself at about a three maybe but i'm looking for like an eight and so i have not and but i also don't work out i also don't go anywhere to where i can meet anybody i also don't uh i also don't actually talk to any women other than when they engage the conversation like in a professional level or whatever the case may be or men i'm it's not just women don't get me wrong i i don't have any friends i i i'm pretty much a hermit shut-in i leave when i need to leave to go do something i come back as soon as i can and other than that i i'm content in my house um uh probably a lot of social anxiety i i'm not even gonna say that because i'm not gonna self-diagnose i don't know anything about it sure so i would like to i would like i would like to like i said come to terms with that aspect of myself or figure out a way to overcome it um i would like to know who i am as a person i know that's a lot to ask for but um what makes it a lot to ask for i'll tell ya the question i always dread in a rat in an interview tell me about yourself i i don't know what's i don't have anything i come up empty i come up empty i have no likes i have no dip i have not many dislikes i have a couple's pretty specific ones but not many dislikes um i'm pretty indifferent about everything i'm just like i can take it or leave it you want to go here let's go i don't care i have no opinion on the matter right um so i almost have no i'm all i feel like i almost lack a personality in a way because if you were to ask me to list 10 things i'm interested in physical things not subjects that i can learn about because i could list you 100 of those why why but why do you discount subjects from like things that you're interested in what i mean is okay so if you ask me 10 things i wanted to go out and do actually do in the world i would struggle with that okay i would struggle with that in general yeah i just i don't know who i am and i don't i don't know how to start learning what i like in the world and what i don't like in the world because 16 36 i was incarcerated okay those are the years where you go to college those are the years where you're in your 20s and you're out and whatever people in their 20s do i've only seen sitcoms about it so i don't know um jail stunted him yes but form poker butt farm poker that's exactly right um jail stunted me um i missed out on a lot of the the um the the the experiences that people that people have and so okay can you possibly know anything about the world yes yes let me just let me think okay let me just compose my thoughts so let's think about what are the issues here because there's a lot okay thank you builder or give me a second yes please take all the time you need so i don't know where to put this okay okay uh okay so let's i'm just gonna think out loud all right so you let me know so you've given me a lot of pieces i'm gonna try to assemble them in some way feel free to jump in if you feel like there's a piece that doesn't fit properly so the first thing is you got born into [ __ ] life syndrome okay that's gonna screw you in a lot of ways so like let's think about the impacts of like so we get conditioned by our upbringing and we get all this super basic conditioning like how to relate to other people um even like how to understand what we feel uh even like discovering what we discovering what we like and who we are so who we are comes from external conditioning actually so like this is something so let's just like take a step back and understand what's going on okay so when you're like a three-year-old kid your brain is absorbing all kinds of stuff it's like understanding like how does gravity work like what's the purpose of smiling like who am i so identity in its most original form is actually formed by the reflections of people around us so i don't know like if i'm a if i'm a six month old like i don't know who i am i don't know what i'm feeling all i know is that something is unpleasant so it is the way that people relate to me that help me understand oh this unpleasantness is something called hunger and if i you know get some food or drink some milk like then i will feel better maybe this unpleasantness is like i need a diaper change so like the way that we make sense of the world and how we understand the world works is all like taught to us in our early upbringing okay so you're screwed there so far we'll get to that okay you're not screwed forever but i think you know in terms of how do i form relationships how do i love someone like i don't know that you know how to love someone um and we'll get to that in a second expand before you move on yeah sure so i try to get love by buying people things i try to keep friendships by buying people things with money or extravagant gestures and it never works i found that all my friendships end the first time i say no to some outrageous favor that i don't want to do they fall off the face of the earth and so that's how i relate to love please carry on yeah so that's case in point right so like that's what i'm saying is like i i don't think you were ever taught like how to form a healthy relationship and so you're gonna enter into these self-fulfilling prophecies of like enter into a relationship and so cerebrally like this is hard because essentially what you're doing is your intellect is like carrying you upstream against like a tide of like empathic blindness so you don't know like normal humans and i don't mean to be denigrating when i say that but i i genuinely do think that you've like missed some mate like regular opportunities and when i when i said i think it's important to acknowledge that because a lot of us like take this for granted right like i grew up with two loving parents so like it wasn't hard for me to learn how to love my kids because i was taught like i know how to interact with a two-year-old because i've been on the receiving end of it right i'm not trying to make a comparison i'm just saying that i've come to appreciate so many advantages that i had that like other people don't have and if we want to fix a problem we have to start by understanding like where it comes from so i think you missed a lot of different milestones so there's like concrete work that you need to do about learning how to behave in a relationship um you know how to understand even what you feel um discovering like who you are so i want you to imagine that you know when you've got a six-year-old who goes to like t-ball practice and hits a home run then like the way that people respond to that six-year-old helps that six-year-old like understand who he is right so like that six-year-old benz is like oh i'm a champion cool and then the six-year-old goes around and tells people i'm a champion i'm a champion i'm a champion and if he has poor parents they will encourage him to think that he is a champion and better than all other human beings and he will become a spoiled brat if he has parents that are a little bit better or other people like or other kids who are like hey you're not a champion i'm a champion then you know like he'll learn over time that okay i can be a champion but like other people can be champions too there's just so much like subconscious programming that goes on with like healthy human relationships and our brain is sort of wired to like absorb this stuff like a sponge and i think that unfortunately like your brain absorbed a lot of bad things or like unfortunate lessons right like like in terms of how you establish relationships how you deal with dissatisfaction within relationships right so like it's yelling at people blaming others i think that you have some of that programming baked in but through virtue of your cerebral nature and self-reflection and like a lot of for lack of a better term spiritual work i think you've learned how to not be those things but i would not be surprised if under periods of stress some of those behaviors activate so you're not instantly instantly tell me instantly go to anger when i like under stress i either shut down yep is the best i can describe it almost like when it burst into tears as weird as that sounds like a child like just helplessly like ah or anger you know i was backing out of a spot at mcdonald's and the car behind me honked you know i stopped my car i put it in the park i got out i went up to the car and i started screaming at that car what are you honking about and only when the window rolled down and i realized it was a woman with a little girl in there did i say oh i apologize and i got back in my car and i went about my business and that's not me generally that very much surprised me i have to be honest and i didn't even feel like i was under a particularly lot of stress um but you know i also find myself binge eating late at night um i'm a chronic heavy drug user right now of marijuana from the time i wake up to the time i go to sleep i'm high um and so i'm like am i binge eating or do i have the munchies because because what's funny is maybe you can help me answer this because i'll get up and i'll find myself in the fridge binge eating and i look at the clock and it's always about 1103 1104 at night like 11 o'clock comes and all my restraints fall and if i'm still watching youtube at that time i ain't going to sleep till like three in the morning it's not like is that a thing where after a certain time you're a straight out yes it's absolutely a thing so if let's just talk about binge eating for a second so i'm the same way by the way 10 to 11 is my time too and and so this is where if we so our brain has impulses and as our brain gets fatigued especially our frontal lobes our ability to restrain impulses goes down so if you look at for example like i don't know how to say this but you know it's easier to go to bed at 10 sometimes than it is at like 12 or 1 because like at 10 even though you're less tired you have enough like frontal lobe function that you can restrain your ability to stay up and then once you cross into like midnight and then your brain is fatigued you can't pull yourself away from things as powerfully right right we absolutely see an increase in impulsive behavior and binge eating because your brain is just tired and you can't control yourself anymore right like you're fatigued um but yeah so like i said i think that you know as you get under periods of stress like that programming is kind of baked in it's very like subconscious in terms of how your neurons have been wired and like you know when i feel mad when i feel frustrated or when i feel frightened because i can imagine that actually your physiologic response is one of a startling in fear and then adrenaline pops through your system and then like your brain is like kind of goes into fight or flight mode and since you spent 20 years in prison where flight is an option you've adapted to fight with when you have an adrenaline response right so now i'm kind of getting ahead of myself because i want to start with like let's start with let's say [ __ ] life syndrome which you're going to have a lot of it's an uphill battle bro i'm sorry to say like it's just an uphill battle that's just the truth of it the second thing is that i think that what's happened is you've adapted to your circumstances so you've learned how to survive right and like learning how to survive involves a second layer of programming which is you know how do i deal with conflict well like you know you shift someone because like that's what you got to do in prison and and so you know in that moment like this is like it's not in a sense it's kind of not your fault because your brain has been wired a particular way i still think you're responsible but you know if you think about the instinctual reaction of like fight or flight and how you respond to that if we think about you know like a veteran who was in a war who's got ptsd and then a door slams and they like they think they're under attack our brain is wired and responds a particular way so i think half of what we're dealing with the shitlife syndrome half of what we're dealing with is the adaptations to shitlife syndrome and this is where i think actually there's a lot of stuff that you can work on so um you know you i think that in some ways uh anthony you're very cerebral but i also think it sounds like you're incredibly rigid you don't sound open-minded to me so i think that this is where so like like i think in some directions you're willing to learn but once your mind gets made up so like when you talk about anti-semitism for example when you talk about other things or like when you talk about the bridge trolls you know so so it's interesting because you're open-minded like except for some issues in which case i'm a three and i deserve an eight and like there's a lot there you know i i wasn't responding with no deserve hope to get but no you're absolutely right about the rigidity thank you and your and the way you put it was perfect once my mind is made up because i don't make up my mind easily in fact that's something i have a very hard time doing but once i make up my mind it is made up so so then i think the the challenge there is that i want you to think for a second take a step back and imagine all of the conclusions that you have been forced to accept over the last let's say 30 years right and so what's happening is you've got a lot of conclusions which have been made up for a good reason but like they're they're adaptations to situations which you don't exist in anymore right so like the way that you relate like the way that you love someone is like confusing because you clearly love your mom she taught you what love is and she was incredibly abusive so you know i imagine that it's gonna feel very strange for you if you ever go on a date and like someone expresses compassion and so then what you end up doing is like you know you play the game the way that your intellect has told you it's to be played which is like okay how do i get someone to like me i like do things for them that's what happens in a relationship but then you sort of enter into the self-fulfilling prophecy which is kind of like bullying where there's something and i hate to break this to you but i think you are the common denominator that's a interesting thing okay so let's just talk about this for a second because when a lot of times people's shame and sense of failure kind of piles onto this idea of being a common denominator but i think there's a really tricky thing to understand is that if you are the common denominator the power to change is also in your hands right that's interesting yeah it's true so like if you kind of think about it let's just be honest because your intellectual mind is saying hey i'm the common denominator like it's something to do with me and that's where you have to be kind of careful because if you've grown up with bullying what your mind automatically does is oh it's like my fault and there's something fundamentally wrong with me but chances are it's some kind of behavior right like so as you kind of noted that kids can get a lot of social status by standing up to you and so early on you know you didn't respond to kids in a particular way which like sort of sets you out as a target and then when you go to prison you realize oh like i can't be a target anymore and then you kind of swung the pendulum the other way and then you're yelling at you know mom's in the mcdonald's parking lot because like damned if because you had to learn that it was like survival it was adaptation right and that's gonna echo and so probably what you're dealing with is some combination of the two where at times you feel like you know the other shoe is gonna drop and like no one is gonna care about you and you're gonna wind up getting bullied and like if people express compassion you know like you don't know how to handle it um and then on the flip side maybe you go into survival mode but it's like really hard to be like kind of tranquil and in the middle because i think the really interesting thing is like you know how do you think you are coming across in this interview i don't know i to be honest with you i'm trying to drop all my guards and just be as honest as i can so i'm not really even trying to focus on that i understand that so how does that feel fine because you're a complete and total stranger and i'll never see you nor will i ever see anybody in chat would i share any of these things with somebody i would ever see again i i think no i would have a really hard time on i'm so i'm burdening myself like that so let's play this tape through to the end if we were gonna see you what so like you're like you're saying that there's no consequence because we're never gonna see you again right right let's pretend that where i'm gonna see like we're gonna see each other we're gonna like hang out once a week for the next four weeks what would you be afraid of me believing about you after this conversation like what do you think you're how do you think you're coming across smart maybe i i i'm at a loss i just i don't understand how other people know things like that i don't know the answer to your question i'm sorry yeah so that that's totally fine you don't need to so i think that's kind of telling because i want you to just point i want to point out to you that you're afraid of being judged right that's why you would you're like you're afraid of being judged but as we tunnel down into what is the judgment that you're afraid of you come up empty so this general all right so this is really important anthony so what that means is that the fear that you have is like an echo from a primitive state of your brain so like there's like there's no there's no like nuance or specificity to it it's just like i can't tell people how i feel otherwise bad [ __ ] happens you know like the one time you're authentic with your mom and you're like wow it sounds like you have trouble relating to people at work it's just like a simple observation that's completely authentic and boom you're screwed so i think almost like a ptsd kind of thing where you're you've learned that like being authentic with people is tough but let's be straight bro like you call in women bridge trolls you're voicing being anti-semitic you know you're telling people that you killed someone and are i think generally speaking people like you like i think i don't think that like chat i don't know i'm not looking at chat and i encourage you not to but i think that like you know people can respect you despite these things that are negative and i think part of that comes from like owning the things that are negative in your life right and so i think there's a really tricky thing and this is kind of how i would recommend you move forward is that you keep on putting on a mask whereas like if you really want to form a connection with someone you have to like let people in on the inside and then it's terrifying because then we may think you're a racist [ __ ] which you could be but just because you're yeah but i'm also a good person i feel like there's a dichotomy yeah i i i agree right so i think that people can be you know you can the people are not like black or white and so i you know i would and we'll get to the rigid thinking and stuff later but so i i think it's kind of interesting because what you're afraid of is like you're literally like having a conversation with thousands of people on the internet and and you're like being relatively authentic i don't get the sense that you're bsing us um and you're afraid of some consequence which makes perfect sense but at the same time like the more that you tunnel down into like oh what are they gonna think and you're like i don't really know so then it's like a very primitive fear that doesn't actually have like legs to stand on does that make sense well it's rejection i know what i'm afraid of it's rejection because it's consistent i've never successfully asked a woman or a girl out through school or is it i've never successfully managed that the one time i had sex i was in my brother's town and she was just the very friendly girl in town who was pretty much the man maker um if you went to her house you're pretty set so that's how that went down and it was awkward and uncomfortable and and embarrassing and i did not enjoy it i got zero enjoyment out of it zero um so yeah so so here's what i'm getting the sense of like honestly anthony what i feel more than anything else talking to you is that you're dormant like i get the sense that there's there's a whole life and person and like positivity that's just been like slumbering and you just haven't had the chance to like wake up and really like be for lack of a better term and so i think you know when you were talking about like motivation and feeling lazy like i wasn't worried at all i think your the problem is that there's just nothing to motivate you like so i'm pretty sure that when a challenge kicks in you'll be fine like i think that you're gonna do great it's gonna be a bumpy ride so when the challenge kicks in you're gonna find out that your habits are lacking but i think generally speaking my recommendation to you if you're lazy is like do more not less like don't if you don't feel motivated don't go hunting for artificial motivation i know it sounds kind of weird don't just like wake up every day and be like oh my god like i need to do the dishes because like that's motivation i'm gonna find my internal self i'd say you've missed out on life you've missed out on 41 years of life basically so what i'd say first and foremost is like start living right like that's your job forget about purpose forget about making the world a better place you've missed out so missed out on all kinds of things being challenged failing even then i know you say you've gotten rejected a lot but i don't think that you've ever gotten rejected maybe you have but i feel like every failure you've had has been part of a rigged game i don't know that you've ever been on your a game and really been the best human you can possibly be when you ask out a girl i don't know that you've had a career and like you know been in shape and and like you know done some emotional work and like worked with a therapist like i don't think that you've you know you've never played a fair [ __ ] game so you got to be super careful about the identity of i am a failure when you've never played a fair game and something tells me so i'd say that you know programming is going to get harder you can slide through with 4.0 for now but i'd say let it get harder and then rise to the challenge and then keep climbing and eventually you'll equilibrate and i think that'll be like fulfilling for you even if you don't love programming at least you're not going to be [ __ ] bored right because your enemy right now is like idleness and you're slumbering like i feel like i'm talking to a slumbering giant and i don't know if you're gonna turn into a programmer i don't know if you're gonna do like analytics for like cambridge analytica and and you know help promote anti-semitism around the world or like whatever you end up doing you know but i think something challenging is gonna it is is gonna engage you right and it's gonna demand of you like what you look at that now this is a facial expression we haven't seen at all what is it what are you smile no you've smiled here this is different you made a really good joke and then i was thinking that would be great if i could put that into action but unfortunately i don't feel like my anti-semitic semitism is an exportable exportable good i'm pretty sure that some people would disagree with you but i think what i saw for the first time anthony was excitement we've seen you smile we've seen you laugh i don't think i've ever seen excitement even now you're kind of lagging so it was frozen and kind of an excited frame but i i think i got a touch i wasn't sure but you know i think that there's there's something when i when i speak about this stuff i get that there's like actually like a very very there are a couple embers buried in the coals you know like there's a bunch of ash and there's something down there that i think just needs to wake up so practically i'd say keep studying cs by all means um you know you'll rise up i think also in terms of like sexuality i think there's been a lot of dormancy right when i kind of think about it it's sort of like you're rusty you know so so it and not rusty isn't just in terms of a physical sense like a lot of sexuality has to do with like emotional intimacy and things like that which i think that you're rusty on or never really learned how to do um i do think there are a couple of really high points i know this sounds kind of weird especially if we're talking about sexuality but really not related but i think your hitchhiking experience really gives me hope because what i'm what i'm really hearing from that experience is that you met like random people and you were able to connect with them in like an authentic and and like meaningful way right and like even when you talk about it like it's some of the best years of your life and like why was that it's because you don't have to worry about what people thought right like you were just you and like you were didn't have a house didn't have a job like you were in nothing you didn't have to give anyone any gifts and what did they do for you anthony it helped me absolutely and so just think about that for a second that like when you are who you are and you have nothing to give and they don't owe you anything that they see something within you that is worth helping and i see it too i'm pretty sure all of chat sees it too is that you are absolutely someone who is scary and also worth helping you know you're you have a certain like cranky bareness to you and i guess that a lot that am i upset but i think i just have resting [ __ ] face because right now i feel completely new this is a neutral face yeah you certainly but that too is also like adaptive right where like you want to have neutral affect so people who grow up in abusive households learn how to become invisible like because being noticed in some way is like you know i can imagine in prison resting [ __ ] face helps you like it's actually quite adaptive and so i think the biggest problem anthony that i think you you have to face and this is going to be hard is there's a life like there's absolutely life i'm not worried about that at all i think the problem is that discovering that life requires you to undo all of the things that how can i say this when you go to prison at the age of 16 and that feels like 20 life sentences the only way you can survive that is to numb yourself to the prospect of life i don't need life anymore right that's the only way you survive your 18th birthday in prison 21st birthday in prison 30th birthday in prison 35th birthday in prison the only way you survive that is by giving up on life entirely and saying like i have to exactly what i did yes any kind of joy goal not just dead you had to kill it bro right when a tiny bit of hope on your 21st birthday you don't dare hope hope hope keeps wanting to sprout up in your garden like a weed and there you are every day plucking it out and then you you wind up and you're asking like i don't know what to get out of life and like that's right bro because you spent 20 years doing your level best to get nothing out of life right so i i don't think i know it sounds kind of weird but i don't think you need to actually discover what you want from life i don't think it's this deep personal journey that you have to like go and spend time in the himalayas and things like that to like discover what you want life i think all you've got to do is stop pulling out the weeds and you've gotten so good at pulling out the weeds that you know it'll it'll come up and this is where you know i think there are a lot of things that you're doing that are quite amazing like 4.0 gpa in computer programming is not easy i imagine for a 41 year old dude to do right like so you've got you've definitely got like things in your corner that are working for you and so oddly enough i think your road forward is not about like doing more it's actually about stopping to do what you have learned how to do um is that can i keep going yes please do okay so a couple of things to think about practically so i think you've got to think long and hard i'm gonna zero in on the bridge troll for a second okay you've gotta think long and hard about some of these things that you accept for yourself which i think you really need to reconsider so the first is like in your mind you're a three i don't think you're three maybe you are i don't know i'd like i'd like stick you to five okay and that you want an eight and that's fine but i think that when you really think about what's important to you in a relationship you don't sound like you're horny all the time you know you don't sound like like you're i mean it sounds like you want someone who you know if i could find someone for you it's not so much about the physical attractiveness as it is about someone who can kind of like just listen to you talk about stuff right like you just need well because i like a conversation i like i like a smart person who can give back as good as they receive i like a conversationalist sure so if that's what you like and i suspect that that's actually i know you like it but i don't know if that's what you need i i think what you need is probably like a good woman who makes you think sh you're having a conversation but is actually just letting you talk and i say this as someone who's being married to what i i know what it's like to be someone who likes to talk and likes to think that they have a conversation but really what we like to do people like us anthony we just like to talk right talking is great yes and and we like to think we're having a conversation but if someone's you know letting us speak our peace about how the jews are ruining everything like you're going to love that that's what you're that's what you're going to want yes i go on those tangents sometimes i do go on those tangents um you know i i so it's like a cerebral maybe you can help me with this because it's like a cerebral wanting a family it's like a cerebral wanting a wife but really it's i want to impress other people and i think everything i do is is in an attempt to impress and i was actually this was just something that came to me the last two three days i was thinking you know when i was a kid i was a i was a compulsive liar like outrageous lies not that i invented the question mark but uh i i remember when i was a kid i said i i was probably 11. i said i do like 120 mile an hour fastball and of course everybody said i was full of [ __ ] because i knew nothing about baseball whatsoever and i was just trying to impress people and it feels like every decision i make i wanted the car what will other what will what will other people think about will other people be impressed by will it make other people yeah i i yeah i feel like i i feel like i try to impress people or the other way i say things that are shocking yep right is it just attention-seeking behavior or don't no what it is it's it's [ __ ] distraction from what you really are right so you want to go you want to show people the best parts of you or the worst parts of you as long as they don't see you oh that is interesting well i but i feel like i have nothing to offer yep that's why you don't want to see it have no opinions like i said i have no opinion no of course you haven't got a doctor that's not true that's not true i have no like but hold on a second wrong preferences and hold on hold on but there's another problem that you're doing which is you're setting up a rigged game for yourself when you say like so earlier we had this conversation about like i'm not interested in anything and then you like you walked yourself back and you're like no i'm interested in hundreds of things if you asked me about an activity i wouldn't be able to come up with a single one so it's like here's here's the test you're able to pass this test and so some part of your mind is like [ __ ] that we don't want to pass the test let's pick the one that we're going to fail right whereas like who you you may just not be like a doer you're like a thinker you're like a philosopher you're like one of these guys that like thinks deeply okay yeah of course it's okay how do you live like that you hang out with other people who can have conversations with you how do you how do you feed yourself like that how do you physically make money how do you make money like that by being a thinker yeah so it's paying people to think i mean so any author who writes a book is someone that people okay okay okay fair enough right i got it yeah any any video essayist are you you're a thinker yeah you're absolutely right yeah it's like you have to i have to be a little more imaginative with the medium yeah you're absolutely right so i'm not saying you should steer away from computer programming i think it's a really good so i'm on that but i think long term and this is also where like who you are and how you get paid ideally we'll we'll get together but honestly bro from like how far behind you are i wouldn't shoot for that yet okay you know i think there's lower hanging fruit i'm not going to tell you maybe it's a mean thing to say but i wouldn't shoot for you know you've just got so many like people who can afford to be thinkers oh yeah sometimes don't have they have some advantages that you're playing with a handicap so i i'd like shoot and you by all means like we should cry over that if anything right that life is so [ __ ] unfair to you that other people have opportunities that you may not have but on the flip side i could absolutely totally see a really interesting kind of angle of hey i killed someone for 20 you know i spent 20 years in prison here's how i made sense of my life like you could wind up on [ __ ] oprah and and you know lifetime and like you could like put your like you could go down that route like a lot of people are looking for guidance and if you're able to find it you may be able to help other people as well like i don't know right when i say asperger's does that do anything for you because i read the descriptions of all these various ailments and they all seem to match me perfectly so that yeah so here's here's here's what i'll say about asperger's okay so if you want that's where you should really get a full mental health evaluation but what i will say is that if you look at the symptoms of asperger's there are many things that can contribute to those kinds of symptoms like i've already explained to you you know a lot of hypotheses besides asperger's or autism spectrum that can contribute to your cognitive and empathic and friendship difficulties certainly so the symptoms of asperger's or autism spectrum have multiple causes so sometimes it's autism spectrum but frankly we see this in the gaming population as a whole i was talking to literally like my pediatrician the pediatrician of my kids and she was saying that as technology usage has increased she is getting like more asperger's like presentations from children but she doesn't think that all these kids are on the spectrum she thinks it has something to do with the way that they interact with technology and how it shapes their brains in terms of like social interactions so that science is really interesting i'd say that you know we'll get to concrete recommendations about mental health treatment a second but um going back to like impressive yeah please and at the murder thing i don't want to make light of it somebody lost their life and i see people joking and chat about i'm going to make a youtube channel real life murder now that somebody lost their life and i was messed up that i did that that's not something i even like to talk about much less use as a as a form of advertisement or i caused that family a lot of pain and that's really messed up that i did that sure sure so i i completely agree with that but i i think it's important to also acknowledge that that's the way the internet is right that we live in a world where if you did something like that there are going to be people who due to shot and freud or voyeurism or like because they're all looking for something like you know they're just like you said they're like addicted to youtube and they're looking for something that's gonna like excite them and make them feel something so i know it sounds kind of weird but i think that your karma your karma has set you up in a very unique way that i think could be an advantage i know it sounds kind of weird i think it's hard to make that case and i mean overall that disadvantage absolutely but it still makes you the person that you are and i think the person that you are i mean you have such a unique perspective on life that could be very educational to people like i've learned a lot you know and i do this this is my job and i've still learned a lot i've worked in prisons for months and i've never had a conversation with anyone in prison the way that i've had with you because most of the time they're not as scribal as you are unfortunately right they haven't done i wouldn't i had one come to try to talk to me when i was like 17 and and i would i always thought therapists were for [ __ ] were for where for fakers people who just wanted attention or to cry and feel sorry for themselves i think that was just more of mom's mom's upbringing right there because that's kind of what she instilled in me is that you know it's every man for himself you got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps you better keep your mouth shut nobody wants to hear you cry yeah i mean you just suck it up and so that's kind of that's kind of that's kind of the philosophy i lived under most of my life so can we go back to impressing people for a second because i think there's a lot here yes carry on so so i i think that um when it comes to impressing people like i think it makes sense because you know you're concerned for good reason that what you are on the inside people aren't gonna like right so like when you were five and you don't know how to put on a mask your mom was like really cruel to you your brother was like pretty neglectful you know i wonder a little bit about whether he was you know since you were the favorite whether he resented you for that um you know there's there's a lot of stuff there where you learned early on that like who i am is like not an okay person and then that gets reinforced by you know going to prison and putting on a mask and this kind of stuff and then you sort of also gets reinforced when you start like doing really nice things for people and you begin to see like oh if i give people gifts like they're going to like me and they'll want to hang out with me this is how this game is played it's all very cerebral right so i think that as a result you're going to want to impress people because there's probably also if we want to just be blunt about there's some amount of shame right because you're a 41 year old dude you got laid like 25 years ago you know there's a lot of that crap and so to compensate for all of that stuff there's gonna be like i wanna because i feel like i'm down here if i impress people to this level i'll end up somewhere in the middle where i can be comfortable you know even if i and so there's a lot going on there and so i'm not surprised that you'll also swing to the other end of the sp spectrum because if you i don't know how to say this but if you advertise something really terrible you've done and then people hate you for it that's the reason they hate you it's not because that's understandable exactly it's not because there's something broken and unfixable and deep down and part of your dna that if people saw like you would be absolutely terrified if they hated you for that but you're fearful that there's something within me that like if i ever let people see so then what you do is you advertise all this negative crap and it actually protects you both ways either way what's happening is no one is getting an authentic you and so the tricky thing there is you know i think stepping away from all of this stuff so you try so hard you're trying to figure out who am i well like i think all you need to do is stop moving away from it and you'll figure it out i think actually we know who you are i feel like i have a pretty good sense of who you are can you share yeah so i mean i think you're i think you're the dormant philosopher i think that you like to think big thoughts you like to have your thoughts challenged you want to have you want to put your thoughts out into the world and you want to have respect for the quality and excellence of your thoughts with all of that yep that it's who you are bro right like you want to say to the world like i'm going to work really really really hard at this and i'm gonna make it awesome and i'm gonna show it to you and y'all are gonna [ __ ] think it's awesome too the day that you're able to do that i think is gonna be the opposite end of the spectrum of when you were suicidal and trying to find a reason to wake up tomorrow for tomorrow as long as you're moving in that direction you're gonna fight to stay alive and the problem is that you've just been given such a shitty circumstance that that part of you has never had a chance to like exist in the world because who's going to listen to an ex-con who's going to listen to this guy who's going to listen to like it dude without a shin your mind is gonna fill in all these different reasons why no one has had a chance to reason to listen to you but you have a lot to say and it has immense value what do you think about that i think that'd be fantastic um if anybody wanted to talk to me about anything that'd be great yep so so and i think this is the tricky thing so now we get to like the rigidity right so you have to be careful because the ego i think is shooting you in the foot in some ways so when you know someone when you're attracted to someone because they're an eight and you want to impress everyone because you know this person's an eight and you want to go on a date with them and they say hey i think you should really meet my friend who's probably not a three she's probably not maybe she really is a bridge troll but i suspect that your mind is warping her attractiveness and the second thing is like you're not like a super sexual guy to begin with and do you want a hot girlfriend sure but i think it would be wonderful if you could like because attraction is more than physical stuff right there's like intimacy there's emotional stuff people have very healthy loving sexually arousing relationships in their 70s like they do that it's like normal right so i think a big part of that is is like you're not giving people a chance to like you you're kind of writing yourself off right it's back to this idea of here's the test that i can pass therefore i'm going to throw that one out the window and let me find one that i can fail and so when you talk about rejection from women that's fine but you know i don't know that you're also playing a fair game there where like maybe you are you know and i'm not saying that you can't get an eight like i think you can get an eight i think it's going to take some work but i think this is where other self-fulfilling prophecies could come in because the eight shows up and you're so concerned about her not rejecting you that you do a lot of nice stuff for her you meet her emotional needs while not asking for anything in return in an effort to get her to like you and then she starts treating you like a friend because that's like that's the thing right we're friends like friends are there for each other and the start of the romantic relationship is like different like people usually make their intentions know early on but this is how people kind of repeatedly get into the friend zone is you're afraid she's going to reject you so you want to stack the deck in your favor by doing a lot of nice things yeah yeah the friend zone that's where i live that's my that's my address so so you stack you stack up on your side to get her to like you in a particular like to get her to like you so you're there for her and then you know women this is going to be a generalization which you know anyone can criticize me for fairly but i think generally speaking like women are better at offering emotional support and receiving emotional support without it having a sexual connotation to it whereas like if you were like the things that you do for the women that friendzoned you you wouldn't do for your dude your boys right right you know like like you treat them differently so like there's there's a interesting thing about emotional support and sexual intimacy which men tend to tie together a little bit closer and women don't broad sweeping generalization that's very open to criticism but i do think that the more you stack the deck in your favor to try to get someone to like you the more likely you're you are to end up in the friend zone so in this hypothetical scenario where i do have an eight or even a seven or six i gotta be honest do you i feel and i would want to know if you feel as well i i fear i would be extremely insecure and jealous one time i had a girlfriend when i was a kid i was ex massively insecure like like grossly so like creepily weirdly psychotically so yep you're only with me because you like my brother and and yeah so i don't know that i'm emotionally equipped for uh for a relationship of any kind you're you're do you think that oh okay okay so i'm right then okay yeah so i i don't think you're emotionally equipped for a relationship but that doesn't mean you shouldn't start dating and that also doesn't mean that you won't become emotionally equipped over time because if you've gotten this far with this shitty hand of cards like i think you could be emotionally equipped for a relationship in no time don't sell yourself short you know you haven't really been trying i mean i know you've been trying in your way i don't think you've been engaged in a in a positive learning environment that's what i'd call it right so like even if you end up they end up recommending what you call a three it's probably closer to a five and i think you should do your best to like go and have a conversation with the person you don't have to sleep with them just try to go and like make a friend like fine well that hasn't by the way that hasn't happened since i was sick 15 14 years old so this is nothing reason that has happened yeah so i yeah okay i don't even have any friends too i don't even have any friends to refer anybody for me i don't know how to make friends i don't go anywhere so that makes it hard think to myself okay where do i go to meet people well corona virus happens so okay fair enough but in normal circumstances i don't know where one goes as an adult to me friends lovers you know just just other adults yeah so that's a challenging question um i'm gonna i'm gonna table that for a second okay we'll get to concrete advice um so the last thing that i want to share with you is i think that like like you said you're going to be very insecure if you enter into a relationship so the question is how do you learn how to be insecure right so and this is the challenge and secure or secure sorry secure so okay um you know and i think this is gonna be tough but i think this is where you got to work on the rigidity of your thinking okay so like if your mind is telling you something and it's telling you this is true this is true this is true this is true there's a general capacity to be less rigid with your thinking and be more flexible so i know this is this is i i say this not entirely i say this with judgment okay so like if you can learn how to love a jewish person you will be no longer insecure so i didn't really want to get into this but i don't hate the jews i just hate jews maybe i mean it the other way i don't hate jews i hate the jews individually i have no opinion on them okay sure so i get what you're saying i get what you're saying if i can overcome something that i have made my mind up on exactly so that's why it doesn't have to be the anti-semitism right that's me taking a sucker punch at you so i apologize for that that's fair totally fair i knew i had it coming so yeah now that we've done it we're good right so the other thing is i would say that you've made other statements i keep on harping on that because maybe that statement did bother me so i should have i should have processed those emotions a little bit better but um and maybe you did detect disgust i'm sort of reflecting now but i i think that uh what i would say is that there are several things that you said today where you're like that's the way that i am right and i think flexibility around any one of those things basically training yourself to be cognitively flexible i think is the most important thing that you need to learn because i do think i mean it's not hard to figure out what you should do in your life i think like to summarize like so here's what i'd say anthony first of all what you should your purpose in life right now is to [ __ ] live it because you haven't had a chance so i'd say if you enjoy playing video games play video games go and seek as many experiences as you can because like go eat burgers you know study computer programming be at the top of your class like get a [ __ ] award with the day that you graduate you know like be on the honors list do the things that kids normally go to their parents and are proud of and then like you know do the things that make your parents brag about you and then you're not gonna have any parents to brag about you and you're gonna do that thing and you're gonna feel devastated and alone and [ __ ] feel that [ __ ] too and then pity yourself and let other people pity you and let other people have compassion towards you and let go of your like you know i i don't know there's some strength in there which is like a strength of survival and let go of that let yourself be weak you know like feel all of those things and have someone to share that with and start to date and start to play video games and go for walks you're in the mountains fantastic build shelves like build your house get a dog do all of the things that life has not let you do and in terms of who you are read think write study and then you say that's going to be hard because i have no one to talk with which is exactly right so i don't know this is where practically like you have to find people you have to recognize that as you enter into places with people there's going to be this tsunami of feelings that arises insecurity what are they going to think what do i have to say how do i get them to like me but you're not going for them to like you you're just going to get food for your mind because the rigid thinking especially on politics and stuff if you're on the internet like you're never going to get a contrary opinion or you're going to discount a contrary opinion you know like whatever so just go and like i don't know where you engage with people so i'd say that you know sometimes there are like different kinds of classes and stuff like um you know even i it sounds like you're in school online i assume because of covet and you're living in the mountains right right so so this is where i don't know where your school is and and you know whether it's a local university but it's online classes yes or in person classes i could take so not just in person classes i would look at in-person extracurriculars and you are going to feel like a weirdo because it's going to be a bunch of 18 19 year old kids and you're going to be a 41 year old ex-con with tattoos right but like that carries a certain like gravitas and respect they're all children and you're a man you know you may not feel like it on the inside but it's kind of scary and with your resting [ __ ] face you know because your smile like really lights up your face it does wonders for it right you've got a beautiful smile and and and so i think even when you see it there's like mischievous in like there's mischievousness right there's playfulness there there's excitement and so i think all of those things you actually have to give too is the resting [ __ ] face terrifying absolutely are you [ __ ] xcon with tattoos like absolutely but the moment you smile it all comes falling apart and even to be able to smile like that anthony that's what you've missed man you know i want to see i want to say that your goal should be having that mischievous smile every day have a conversation with someone play a trick on them you know pour some ice water down their back like do whatever it is that like you haven't gotten to do have conversations with people and i'd say if you want like a compass try to go as close as you can to the person that you were in the way you interacted people when you hitchhiked right because i think that that's there's something about acknowledging that you may not deserve much but you're gonna give people a chance to give you something anyway and what i'm really seeing right now is that once again you're holding yourself back you're not giving people a chance to care about you all you do is you put up facades that are guaranteed to get their respect and enjoyment you're not giving people a chance you're tricking them into engaging into a false relationship with you so go and do stuff i'd say go see a medical doctor if you if you don't have one you know get yourself checked out especially in terms of the sexuality stuff there's some medical conditions like for example low testosterone production can lead to decreased libido part of the reason i was asking you about the leg muscles and the leg injury is because the largest source of endogenous testosterone in from the male body comes from actually the quadriceps muscles so people that i work with have low uh testosterone like i'll tell them to do like squats like if you want to you know get horny again do squats it's kind of interesting so it's a very endogenous kind of source of testosterone there are other things in terms of sexuality like just you know the brain you know the body kind of like you know puts things on standby if they're not like regularly used right so for 20 years while you're in prison we don't know what your sexual activity is like i'm not gonna ask zero but zero you know so your your body's like hey we don't need this thing so let's like shut it down for now and you'll be surprised it'll come back so i do think in terms of hope by the way i do think that everything that i'm hearing you have a lot of handicaps but i don't think you're like the boy who was raised by wolves right i don't think you missed developmental milestones in such a crucial way to where you won't be able to engage in these things and this conversation really reassures me because you seem like a quite a relatable guy like you seem like a good dude right you're very in tune with facial expressions you're very sensitive to different kinds of judgment you're better at detecting my sensitive my disapproval than i am and i'm pretty [ __ ] good at detecting myself that means you're an absolute beast and we see this in people who are raised in traumatic households because you have it's a survival for you you have to be able to read your mom's facial expressions right like whether you're gonna get hit that day or not like you need to know so be careful because you're going to be interpreting a lot of information that people themselves are not going to be aware of so you you will see dislike in people's faces that they're not even aware of and may not even because i definitely see the facial expressions and it's like it's like oh i see where this is leading let me go ahead and exit with some grace while i still can exactly and this is the thing though i know it sounds kind of crazy but they're only there's only a 20 chance it's going to go where you think it's going to go because the other thing about your brain and there's been overwhelming research about this is that your brain is also especially tuned to negative facial expressions sure absolutely so you're gonna miss all of the positive facial expressions and you're gonna amplify all of the negative ones which is in turn gonna reinforce your insecurity is going to cause you to stack the deck in your favor and will set you up for a relationship on false pretenses which is going to wind up in the friend zone and i fear that i have women flirt with me and i have literally no idea they're doing it i i fear that does happen and i would have no way of knowing yep i i believe it you know so i think very practically anthony i think the first thing is to understand yourself and understand your rigidity and try to engage in a little bit of cognitive flexibility really start to question what does that mean practically it means question your conclusions because like you said you see where this is going hold on a second let's actually play the tape through to the end because when i ask you i forgot what question i asked you about oh yeah what are you afraid that you know why are you reassured that we're never going to meet again what is the judgment that you're afraid i'm making and like it doesn't there isn't one right so it's actually there's this really tricky thing going on where like your insecurity is like shaping your thoughts and it feels logical to you and it feels like oh this has happened a thousand times before so i know i'm right but like it's all like if you kind of it's going to be smoke and mirrors it's going to be a mirage i'm like pretty sure about this stuff that most of the problems that you see are going to be mirages when closely examined your insecurity is going to be a mirage or there'll be some truth to it like there's some good reason you know i'm missing a shannon i'm an ex-con i'm 41 years old you know i may not be the the you know the highest what most women are looking for right so there's some truth to that we just have to acknowledge that but i think that don't let those things define who you are because you're so much more than that now you mentioned that you imagine it might be hard for me to imagine myself as an adult inside what made you say that because that's very true i tell people i don't even know what i want to be when i grow up and i i'm only half joking when i say that um what what what brought you to that conclusion because that's exactly how i feel so the first is that you weren't shown how to be an adult so you don't know what it looks like right and then the second thing is that you've missed a lot of the developmental milestones that people like that help people become adults oh yeah that's true i get what you're saying yeah you go to the weddings you do the whole thing the girl you go to prom or you ask a girl out for prom and she says no you ask a girl out freshman year and she says no yeah ask a girl out fresh sophomore year and she says yes that's how you grow up you you graduate from college you get a college degree you know you get your first job you have a career and then you're like adulting you like talk with friends of yours and this is your it's gonna be uh uphill battle okay anthony i hate to break it to you but like there's also like you know when you're 21 years old and you're like late night hanging out with your friends and you have a conversation about i don't know if i want to be an electrical engineer i really love art and then you have a conversation about that and your friends are like then you should do art and then you wake up the next day and you realize how stupid it is to not be an electrical engineer and you try to have a conversation with your parents like that's idiotic and then you decide to become an electrical engineer that's how you grow up because you kill a tiny part of your childlike self on the inside you know and so i think all those things so i think it's a lack of modeling and then also like you just haven't gone through the developmental milestones the good news is that generally speaking data i don't know about data but i guess i'm just making a conclusion it's been my experience that missed milestones you can catch up on very quickly so i would not be surprised if four years from now you felt like a 45 year old and you were doing most of the things that a 45 year old is doing sure do you think it's possible i only want friends and a girlfriend because that's what is expected by society is to have friends and a girlfriend to be normal yes absolutely i think that's half your problem is that you're trying to do normal yep is you're trying to do what you think you should be doing instead of actually doing what feels right to you so why do you want the eight instead of the three it's because the eight other people would be impressed that i have but you may actually you may genuinely if you got the eight to marry you and you got the three to marry you i'm not convinced that you would be genuinely happier with the eight because i don't think that physically more insecure if anything right case in point right you're the one who's telling me it's a bad idea so like instead gravitate towards what is authentically you but the problem is you've been weeding that [ __ ] out for so long you don't even know what that is right right right so i don't know who i am yeah well but so here's the thing so you get there's there's a there's a trick you can play so as you observe your thoughts and as you begin to realize that i want this eight because people will be impressed then you know you should move in a different direction if i'm doing it for external motivations okay that's that's great that's really good inside that's great right so then be like okay hold on a second what do i actually want this is what i would feel secure with because everything in your brain understand this anthony when you've had trauma like yours everything in your brain is wired not for happiness it's wired for safety and security what have you never had [ __ ] safety and security ever right right so like everything you're going to be doing is going to be the safe route computer programming like that's a safe pick well i figured future proof right that's exactly the logic that went into it what is the most future proof job i could pick that i would be capable of doing and that a felony would not hamper as much you're absolutely right you're right so it's it's all safety and security and like safety and security is important don't get me wrong i think it's it's a good choice but at the end of the day if that's where you're moving towards in your cognitive thought process move the other way like i i can almost guarantee you that if you start meeting women and stuff you're going to meet a woman who is absolutely amazing and would be a wonderful partner and she's going to be less attractive than what you would want and really like look at yourself in that moment examine that rigidity you know and it's not about security or any of that crap to be honest it's just like do i enjoy spending time with this person do i enjoy having a conversation with this person that's what's important i mean 25 years from now like everyone's gonna be ugly anyway so it's you know what that's what i got some stuff right there that's what i got for you that's much appreciated i i think that's some good insights um i think i i really i i don't know how like i just i really wonder if i wouldn't just be happier alone like maybe that's what i really want and the only reason i want other people okay i would like to have a sounding board you're absolutely right about that when you say somebody you could just talk at in the guise of conversation that does sound phenomenal um and honestly somebody to share life's triumphs and things like that with right and and and that would be great to have um but like also it terrifies me the thought of having to the rigidity you're 100 right about the rigidity because it's like i have a set way of doing things i have and this is how i think of it i have a set schedule of when i clean the house on sundays sundays when i do laundry sundays you know i mean like i have a very rigid schedule and i think a lot of that is is is prison yeah i mean it's a rigid schedule in there you eat when told to eat what you're told to eat and how you're told to eat it and so you you kind of you begin to find comfort in the routine i began to find comfort in the routine and i was literally the only thing that kept me going day to day is the routine one meal to the next one meal to the next and then wake up made one meal to the next and so i think that that's that's um yeah i think that that rigidity overcoming that rigidity and sharing my life and letting somebody into my intimate space would be difficult for me yeah so baby steps right so here's what i'd say anthony to sum you up your problem is not one of learning what you want to do it's about unlearning the second thing is you you may be right that you may at the end of the day be happier alone but you don't get to make that choice until you've tried tried dude you have to live [ __ ] life and living life means making mistakes to figure out what your life looks like thank you for that because i think that was just giving up saying that i think that was just talking myself into giving up so thank you you may be right but you don't get to make that decision yet until you've tested the alternative hypothesis right and it's turned out to be a train wreck after train wreck after train wreck if you want to grow up to be an adult you have to have as you have to have a string of bad relationships in your teenage years and early 20s it's part of the process you know so i'd say like if you're not entirely ready yet like slow steps you don't have to open up completely but i'd reign in some of that stuff about you know trying to impress people and like you're a genuinely good dude you don't have to fake it you know so just let let that authentically show do you think that professional therapy would be advisable or not absolutely is it necessary is it necessary do you sense something in there me that that is off no granted it's only been two hours i know so let me let me explain let me explain to you anthony this is very important to understand i i would strongly recommend professional therapy to you not because something is broken because you're so cerebral and you would get so much out of it is a bunch within you broken yeah man it's like a hurricane went through your internal self but that's not the reason i'm recommending therapy i'm recommending therapy because you are really good at having conversations and boy if someone devoted one hour a week to helping you understand yourself you would learn so much it's not about fixing something it's about like think about this for a second you could spend one hour a week having someone reflect on your interpersonal journey helping you discover who you are what holds you back how does all this programming get laid down you know what's what software and what's hardware all of these questions i think you can do in therapy that's why you should do it because you'd love it not because you need it will will it help you practically i think so like especially with insecurity and emotional you know that kind of stuff like but yeah and i'd say you know in terms of resources and stuff i don't know exactly what your financial situation is like but you know if you're a student oftentimes they have discounted or available resources depending on you know what their ways to get it you can kind of google search you know for community mental health center and oftentimes they can help you in some way they can even like help you get on insurance if your financial situation is like below a certain level like you can basically get insurance to get therapy um but i would absolutely recommend it i think i mean if you find a decent therapist that fits well with you i think uh you know it doesn't i think the thing you got to be careful about is like some therapists may over pathologize you so they may like think like oh my god like anthony's like such a oh he's like such a poor traumatized little baby and there may be a part of you that really wants that compassion because you deserve it right there's a part of you that it's going to piss you off it would yeah it would it would be very awkward right it would be very like pity is very uncomfortable for me as was compel actually i i don't know the difference between compassion and pity to be honest with you and so i don't feel the difference that you're absolutely right it's very shameful for me to get compassion very shameful yeah so here's the difference so pity oftentimes comes at the cost of respect right so what you really need is a therapist who can recognize that you've had a bunch of [ __ ] happen to you but that you are not like a victim like you are a victim but like let me say it this way you have been victimized but you are not a victim i don't feel like i'm talking to a victim i feel like i'm talking to a survivor and that degree of respect i think is going to be very important to you and you have to be patient with therapists because when they hear about your life what they're going to see is a victim and as you overcome your ego and your rigidity you will allow yourself to become a victim too and you will say actually it's okay for people to pity me it doesn't mean that i'm a weak person but that's that's going to take time my friend and you know i want to thank you for this time dr k you know one of the things i like about you i i just i don't know if i've heard this word before but you don't over pathologize people um i've watched a lot of your previous sessions i really resonated with the gifted group and i hope you get to have a follow-up session with them i thought that was an amazing session i would love to see it again um but as you don't just jump straight to well i see that you're suffering from bipolar you know you know all these self-diagnosis that people lay on themselves that's you don't indulge in any of that you say let's be let's have common sense and here's some very practical you know easily applicable things that you can that you can put into your life and that's what i really like about your style and that's why i wanted to come on here so thank you so much for the experience i really got a lot out of it um i don't know if you ever want to talk again you guys have my contact information sure um but thank you again so much thank you to chat for the support um you you've been awesome it's been a great experience thank you so much yeah thank you so much for coming on anthony thank you for sharing thank you for being authentic and to a certain degree vulnerable i i think um you know i know that there's some mental protections in terms of not seeing us again but i think what you're doing is awesome i think that this is the story that you're sharing is one that not enough people share because the truth is that there are a lot of people out there who are like you and that you know ex-cons are not people that should be relegated to menial labor for the rest of their life you know many of them are talented and gifted and and dormant i'll toss that word out again i think you're just dude you're just like you're just waking up give yourself time but you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish so thanks for coming on and good luck thanks doctor okay you have a great one um just uh i can't teach meditation today because we're about 20 minutes over but otherwise um i would highly recommend i think you should get an access code if you don't have one already just because you're a guest to the stream but i would definitely recommend the meditations in the atman of dr k's guide to mental health um so we'll we'll send you that but uh i'm sorry i can't teach you meditation today just because we're kind of ran over best of luck seriously anthony like i'm rooting for you man appreciate you i appreciate you guys yeah take care thanks you too bye now okay chat we are over time gg oh that was interesting um anthony's fantastic right it's so interesting so here are a couple of takeaways i don't know if y'all if i need to say this but so too often our identities get dominated by particular events in our life right i am a failure versus i fail to test i am a convicted felon versus i committed a felony and you know served a prison sentence and so um and sometimes lsd is amazing so i think i think if we want to talk about lsd for a second i think it just speaks to the the potential therapeutic value of psychedelic substances which are being studied just a reminder i don't know if you all know this but like you know people will have bad outcomes from lsd too people will like develop anxiety and panic attacks and ptsd and all kinds of stuff so i don't recommend that people use it at least until it gets sort of kind of verified through clinical trials we try to stay as evidence-based as we can in terms of our recommendations here but we do also offer a lot of non-evidence-based recommendations to be fair so in terms of lsd you know i'd say be careful but i i think you know for all of y'all the thing that really shocked me about anthony is how relatable he is right because when we think about these labels right someone who like you know committed murder at the age of 16 it sounds like and went to prison for 20 some odd years like we don't think about someone who's so relatable but i think part of why i love doing this work is because we're all human and the experiences that we share are like surprisingly similar and so a lot of the stuff that he's dealing with i think is very common in our community about this whole business of friend zone and being insecure and like doing things for people and then feeling resentful because you've invested so much and they haven't given you anything because you were and then you feel that entitlement and then you start to feel like constantly rejected and and it kind of changes the way that you think so be super careful about your rigid thinking i think part of what holds us back in general is our very rigid thinking and anthony's a smart guy so clearly he's like super high iq is capable of a lot um and and you know he's just another key kind of takeaway is that a lot of what holds us back a lot of like growing and learning is not so much as actually not about learning it's about unlearning that usually what human beings do is we'll develop adaptations to our circumstances and those help us survive particular periods and then growing as a person involves letting go of those adaptations and actually trying something different it's letting go of the strategy that works you know if i kind of think about a video game analogy it's sort of like you can get away with something in like low level games right you can be like a one trick pony and like zerg rush your opponents like six pool people people even know what that means you know you can do like some kind of cheese strat when you're in bronze league but as you ascend through the ranks like you can't keep using that cheese strat over and over and over again you actually have to unlearn things and start to come up with different strategies as you rise through the ranks and so if you feel stuck like i'm concerned that if anthony doesn't unlearn what he's had to learn to survive he will stay stuck right another six years will go by he won't be in a relationship and so if you all are feeling stuck in life it's not so much that you're you know bad at something or you're a failure or you're lazy or dis undisciplined that's all unactionable information so let go of that crap instead what you need to be asking yourself is like how did i learn to do the things that i do you know when did i how did i benefit from playing video games 24 7. and you may say to yourself oh i didn't benefit at all it's all a waste that's when your your thinking needs to be better you need to be a little bit more clinical a little bit more scientific recognize that playing video games all day long protects you from all kinds of stuff you don't have to feel shame while you're playing a game when you have a 60 minute game of dota and you come back at the last second against medi mega creeps you get to feel like the best thing on earth and what else in your life gives you that feeling what else in your life gives you a feeling of absolute triumph and dominance right when you don't have access to those feelings in the rest of your life that's why you play the game it does things for you that you aren't able to do in your regular life so you may think that all of the things that hold you back are negatives which you need to understand is that all of those things are actually positives they're not problems they're solutions and moving forward actually is about undoing solutions that have gotten us to where we are

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 228,699

Rating: 4.9730997 out of 5

Keywords: 20 years in prison, 20 years in prison making up for lost time, doctor k, dr k drugs, dr k interview, dr k prison, dr kanojia, dr.k, drk, healthy gamer gg, healthygamergg, mental health, prison, psychiatrist, twitch

Id: W96yNjU_KFE

Length: 129min 31sec (7771 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/unstableconglomerate]

Really hope that some of Anthony's views are changed on anti-Semitism. It was very strange to see someone so obviously intelligent harbour those views. It was a very useful conversation because you can definitely see that perhaps as a result of being in prison gangs (just a guess) and 'shit life syndrome' Anthony has come to those views rather than inherently being a bad person.

Fingers crossed as he continues to explore who he is and engages with other people that he becomes less rigidly minded. My belief is that someone who is as curious and intelligent as Anthony is will eventually come to see that such beliefs are not founded in good logic or evidence, so long as he continues to be curious and seek different perspectives to challenge his own.

Wish him all the best going forward.

[u/Due-Plantain-3309]

Jesus this was really intense. Respect for Dr K for having someone as 'controversial' as Anthony. Weirdly I related to him being dormant and not being excited by anything and im only 20.

[u/Affectionate-Sand838]

Of all the videos I have seen on this channel I didn't think that I would resonate most with a 41 year old ex convict for murder.

It was really hard to hear him talk about the fact that he didn't even want to tell social services about his mother, because who knows what other (even worse) people were possibly waiting for him in foster care.

Or when Dr. K told him he is dormant now because he had to crush all hope and dreams of having a future when he went to jail for 20 years.

Even though I didn't kill a person nor ever went to prison, I had these same experiences. Down to this thought of constantly trying to get away from who I am and then asking myself why I felt so alienated from who I was. Dr. K was completely right, it's because I too make up artificial rules in my head to fail my own tests (loved it when he explained to Anthony that he says he has no interests - while at the same time having a lot of interests. But his interests didn't fit his idea of a "real" interest, which is "doing outdoor activities" and only fell into the category of "being interested in something" which apparently wasn't enough)

Will probably watch this video again because I need to make some more notes!

[u/nyoten]

This is easily one of my favorite Dr K interviews. Out of all the interviews I've watched, never thought I would relate most to this guy even though I had a very fortunate upbringing.

[u/Nonstopx]

Does anyone have a source on Dr. K's claim that the majority of endogenous testosterone is produced in the Quadriceps? Im not a doctor but Im into lifting and that just sounded really off to me, I couldn't find a source on that.