Psychiatrist Breaks Down...a Sociopath? | Dr. K Interviews

all right so what's your name buddy my name is very impossible to pronounce in English okay it's it's what a chili a chili yeah it's very hard if you wanna just call me Cory I think that might be better cordless for the screen call you what fine Corky Corky it's how I'm usually for an evening game and whatnot yeah okay cool man and and so help and so tell me about what we're kind of talking about today I think we had mentioned something about sociopathy so you think that sort of fits with who you are yeah when I did the forms I fit in I had like a couple options that I could talk about most of them I think I already worked on okay multiple streams so I thought I would go with the most important one I think about me and also too when I least worrying about or like talk to anyone about like of all of them okay so tell me tell me tell me what you so what are you concerned about or what what are we talking about here what why do you feel like you're a sociopath what does that mean to you to me means like more manipulative oh no wait and also that I don't really have it's not that that sounds wrong it's not like I don't have emotions but I don't show them as easily and usually just don't you kind of mimic in a way other people's emotions so like if I am with people that are sad I'm gonna feel sad in a way and if I'm with people that are happy I'm gonna be more happy or just in general I'm just gonna be like what ever well okay I had peanuts Tech just leavin okay so can you help me understand what you mean so yeah so I think that's that's all you know I think really appropriate stuff for us to talk about let me just kind of repeat back what I heard so it sounds like you do feel emotions but that you mirror a lot of the emotions that you see around you mm-hmm and that you feel like you're kind of manipulative yeah okay so we can talk a little bit about so we can talk a little bit about you know what you feel and why you mirror and things like that so we can talk about emotions and let's we can also talk about manipulation do you have a preference about what you want to talk about first I guess can start the potions okay so tell me more yeah can you tell me yeah can you tell me a little bit more about that like how I feel yeah sure yeah I think like I don't know how other people feel exactly but I think I have like this standing see off just default to not feeling I guess the way I could put it so like in general when I am you know day-to-day basis I'm just like fine right I'm not feeling happy enough and said I'm just your emotionally neutral yeah I guess so okay but then it kind of changes depending on who I'm with so like for example if I'm with my sister who has like a tendency of being more towards the sad side I'm gonna be more like said I'm gonna be more down I'm gonna eat glass him why not and when I'm like having an argument with someone for example like if I discuss something with my girlfriend have a fight or whatever and she's very sad by it I'm gonna ease that about it you like the same way she is do you even if I'm not really sad so do you feel sad or do you act sad yeah that's that's kind of like the issue I can't really tell I feel like sometimes I'm just acting and sometimes I think I'm actually just you know like coughing it you're just acting it I it's very hard for me truth so this is something that's very important okay cuz like let me explain this so if you feel things that other people feel you're actually not a sociopath at all you're the opposite so if you're if you are empathic so if we think about sociopathy the way that I understand it is that your capacity to feel what other people are feeling is actually low so I'm I'm a psychiatrist and sometimes I can sit with people that are suicidal and they want to kill themselves and if I was very very empathic or if I was if my empathy was uncontrolled I would feel really suicidal too does that make sense like empathy is feeling what someone else is feeling so when you say when my sister is sad I feel sad too if I'm around her so in order for me to do my job I have to be able to not feel what other people are feeling does that make sense now the tricky thing I did god no I think it's actually more like acting in the sister example was kind of about one okay I didn't see when my sister said is actually just like acting in a different way than usual cuz I'm I'm usually very reserved like I'm I'm working myself more like doing my own things minding my own business so when she calls and she said it since she wants to talk to me or she's just getting down in general and I want to help her which is actually kind of rare but what's kind of real I feel like if like me wanting to help her I usually just venture ignore it because she has because uh it's very hard to deal with her so I can't you just avoid it basically so when I I want you help her I can't you like a more fun extrovert just like more of a funny person in a way right so why would a chameleon is oh I know the animal is yes yeah are you a chameleon do you change your colors based on what other people around you look like I guess no way yeah right so like the thing about a chameleon is you can stick it on a you know a green plant and it'll turn green and you can stick it on a gray or brown plant and it'll turn brown is that what you do you change your colors to match the people around you yeah pretty much yes so always like sometimes I have I feel like more self-conscious about it anything like am i just acting all the time like am I just basically making characters for each situation and all like I'm with my friends I'm this kind of person when I girlfriend them this kind family this yeah sometimes step that's thing that bothers me what bothers you is that it's like what if I am just acting you know like in my who am I in a way right because if I'm just a bunch of character to different people which one of those characters is me right because it can be three different people I I need to be one who do you think what is it I don't know what's it like to not level you are yeah it's it's weird I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad because being like adaptive in a way is good and kind of dealing with the whole manipulation thing it's usually good for me you like that tell me what you mean by manipulative yeah so like I think a good example would be how I am like in college and why not like I don't care about people or like whoever's in my class I don't make friends with in or anything I just didn't you move towards then been you know act like I care about him and I like them and we're not when it's useful to me like if I know there's a an assignment any to do like some homework right English like if there's some homework that I need to do and it's in groups I know I need some more people so I go looking for our people and act like no hey what's up i doing i like connecting with them just for the moment basic just to make a groove get rid of the homework and then I'm done I don't care about them don't talk [ __ ] in so that's like that one of the ways how do you feel about that naughty I just really don't mind it it's just useful so yeah yeah so it sounds like when when you when someone can when you need something from someone you can be really nice to them and when you're done needing people your don't really maintain much of a relationship yeah and that's the way I am with my family as well yeah like I don't really send messages true because I'd only ever my dad my parents anymore I live with like my my grandma's house so basically I just talk to them when I need money or something like it sounds awful yeah and I know like probably saying like wow how selfish and whatever I don't know I just can't control it I just think I just think you do that you know just watch people get what I need off them and then just like research I'm not caring about anything okay so so I know this is gonna sound kind of weird but let's just acknowledge that it does sound awful it doesn't mean that it is awful right and let's remember that we're not here to judge you we're not here to say that you're a bad person and I think it actually requires a lot of courage to share what you've shared and it does kind of sound like you're sort of like associate that you know and and and so let's try to understand what that means and let's try to understand where that comes from because you you may not be right so I think that we think about the term sociopath is like black or white right like like you are or you aren't but that's not the way that I see it so just to share a little bit I'm gonna try to take the pressure off of you for a second and talk about myself just so you can kind of you know cuz I know you've shared a couple of things that can make people feel very judgmental or maybe you feel vulnerable so I'm gonna just talk about myself for a second is that okay so they can judge me too all right so the first thing is that like you know I I think that empathy so I just want to go back to this idea of empathy okay so empathy is the capacity to feel what other people feel and they're a couple of really interesting sorry I'm tired but you know there are a couple of interesting things that you can look at with empathy where so when you like watch a youtube video let's say and you see someone get kicked in the nuts a lot of people have like an empathic reaction to that and what they do is you know they'll feel something in themselves why are you smiling because like the first thing when you say about that I remember seeing like videos off just with my friends up like people getting karma in a way right so try to do something better someone they just okay until it's as you said or something and just like I always just laugh at it and yeah mine yeah I think it's just so-so empathy is like so people who have high amounts of empathy feel the pain of other people and so you know when you watch a YouTube video where someone getting kicked in the nuts sometimes like you kind of cringe and you're like oh it's gonna hurt and then then so that's what empathy is it's being able to feel what someone else feels now the interesting thing is that you were saying that you know when your sister is around and she is feeling sad then you kind of feel sad too but that means one of two things if you're actually feeling sad that make that lowers you on the sociopathy scale but if you're acting sad that elevates yong-seok sociopathy scales so on the outside you know you could be act the question is you actually feel sad when she feel sad because that means you're really not sociopathic we're very sociopathic at all but if you genuinely do feel so I mean if you do feel sad that means that you're empathic and if you don't feel sad and you act sad that is a little bit more on the socio sociopathic side does that make sense yeah and and what I found in myself is that like I used to be more like you but then through because it sounds like you really do act sad instead of feeling sad and and let's just also acknowledge for a moment that you know not having empathy does not make you a good or a bad person so you know a lot of times if you kind of think about it in a weird way if people feel empathic then it's easier for them to be good people because they have a force in their body that is pushing them to make like you know help other people so that if the other person is less sad then I feel less sad so my helping them is in a weird way driven by my own sadness does that make sense it's actually in a weird way far more difficult or even far more moral to be moral and not feel those feelings so then you're helping someone really because it's a good thing to help them and not because you have an internal compass that's pushing you to help them does that make sense yeah so in a weird way I'd say if you try to help your sister and you don't feel any empathy for her I actually think you deserve more credit than someone who feels empathy because the empathy is pushing that person and it may not be pushing you so I don't think that good and evil has anything to do with sociopathy does that make sense hmm okay so anyway in my case what I sort of have have learned how to do is open up my emotions and close them off so I can kind of turn on and off my empathy which is like required for my job so there are times where I let myself feel things with people which is something that I had to learn how to do because I didn't feel I mean I had a lot of emotions like I had anger and resentment and shame do you feel those things no really I mean at least like I'm I'm always very neutral okay I don't really feel angry or do you have trouble by going to sleep no okay yeah I have my habits like just leave like leave a video clean your son yes okay dad okay is it okay if I ask you a couple more questions to get sort of a better sense of your relationships with various people yeah okay so I just wanted to explain a couple things now we'll kind of go back to collecting some more information okay so can you tell me a little bit about your sister yeah she has I don't think it's diagnosed yet but she's more than likely has borderline personality yeah okay yeah so she more than likely has it and it's very hard she treated as I'm sure yep and what may - isn't that she has borderline personality disorder though a she acts in general and how like she doesn't she takes a lot lots of medicine she kind of help her and it doesn't work as he wouldn't what is the medicine designed to help her with do you know I think it's for depression mania as well and she takes when she sleep because she has another issue I don't know the name in English at all but it's basically when she sleeps her legs restless leg syndrome yeah she has that shoe so she has taken myself and thing she takes like three antidepressants I think she thinks Leitrim okay right yeah takes that you and yeah she's very impulsive by she'll do things without even okay what kind of like what's it like being her brother uh it's mostly whatever because I don't live right so she wasn't like that when I was back home cuz I moved to another city my grandma's house to the college so you know was back home she wasn't like that so it was fine like she would get angry sometimes but that would be a you know because she was younger as well now she's 15 I think now she's what yeah fifteen she'll be 15 this year actually Oh boys so she's young how old are you yeah I am 22 okay 21 actually 21 wait no I'm Twitter I always get lost my age I don't know I kind of stopped counting after 20 okay so I'm actually pretty sure yeah so she's 15 and no yeah because of the issues she has she already like tried suicide 19 three times maybe I was like with medicine take a lot of Medicine she hurts herself now she's doing it last because she kind of replaced it with cigarettes it's your addiction right so yeah and basically we you know I say we because I'm not thinking about me and my parents cuz I try to like help them it wasn't try to help them because it it's like troublesome if you have someone like that right someone who can like you can count with no way watch my parents need help she's not doing she she's probably do the opposite and just knowing that they actually keep worrying about her like and how much time and money they have to like waste on her basically I'm using some terms without thinking a lot about them no I think it's good that you're doing that so so let's think about that for a second right so it seems like you feel like to a certain degree a lot of the effort that people make to help her isn't gonna help and let's be clear I mean that's not that doesn't make you an [ __ ] it sounds like many people have tried to prescribe her different kinds of medication that you guys have tried a lot of stuff so it's not illogical for it to sort of for you to recognize that a lot of this stuff isn't really helping but why do you try to help yeah as I said it's because like hey I just don't want to have someone like that in the family like someone so I'm reliable and uncontrollable and someone who is like always so down you know way and also someone who just like keeps making my parents worry and everything why does it matter if your parents worry well I don't know just upsets me that they have to like keep worrying about that that they can have like East what what's upsetting be you know that they can't have peace what does that bother you I don't know I feel like everyone should like have times should just be with themselves and not worrying about something but they basically in and it's also I guess because of how much he actually cuz the they worried about her but not just about her now they also worried aloud about her future right because she doesn't go to school basically because of the Lexx of lack of sleep not like I said she sleeps a lot actually so she yeah this is cool yeah and yeah that's can you tell me a little bit I'm sorry no that's like putting her behind you know it right so she won't go to college the time she should be going sister I I guess I used to care more before like before I realized how much of her how much I can't help her because I feel like you know no matter what I say to her what I do or whatever she just reset he sets actually you know mmm and suicidal he just I think they like cigarettes or whatever it is she's becomes like caring about her is futile there's there's not point to it basically can you use like that something like my parents actually sadly kind of went through a little bit an out there trying hard again I guess Chile you know find something to make her stop blink those things yeah they also made sure like a little bit of a phase off oh I don't we don't think we can do anything to help her let's just you know keep her let her smoke cigarettes and why not let her skip school we can do anything we can wake her out okay and make her to go to school so you know and if you if we like actually when I tried to try to reduce at least a cigarette she was looking every day like it wouldn't work for like a little bit and then she would be just like hey give me more you know it would be like no I already have had enough you know you shouldn't have anymore and she would just be like no give me more or you know what I'm gonna do anything she would coach the bathroom and cut herself right so I there there's nothing I can do in a way sure is if I don't take the cigarettes off she cut yourself it's like worse yeah at least and she's always saying things like oh and I'm 18 I'm gonna kill myself and I'm like just like why like I don't I can't really get her point of view I'm gonna just second is that okay do you feel hurt or any no really okay I'm gonna say two words I'm not quite sure if they'll make sense caregiver burnout do you know what burnout is yeah I'm still gonna be about it okay and and what I'm detecting is to a certain degree I think like caregiver burnout so this happens with people who have BPD where the people who love them eventually just burn out because they try to help and they try to help and they try to help and then you know they just kind of become numb and they kind of throw their hands up and they sort of stop trying and then especially with parents they can sort of like you know they're kind of like neutral for a while they're kind of burnt out and then their energy starts to build back up and then they start caring again and they start trying again and things like that so you know as as much as you know I know you're saying a lot of things that are gonna make people think that you're an [ __ ] what I'm really detecting from you in a certain way is actually that your empathic numbness is to a certain degree protective because you've sort of learned that caring doesn't help what do you think about that I don't know because like I never really like work myself up where like I never even do I say like yeah of course trench helper and that was very tiring delayed right cuz I I tried to make her stop and then didn't work but that was most more uh best month and of thing or what kind of any like couple best marks okay that's true bones you know that's when I was trying to help for and even before then I already felt like this Betty this as you say okay so I'm not sure maybe okay meaning more self-conscious to beard so it sounds like you felt you felt pretty numb but before tried to help her yeah yeah and I think that that makes sense right because you know I don't think that your your patterns in college around like group homework and things like that then that's obviously not caregiver burnout right and and so I I'm not saying that it's all caregiver burnout it's just I was exploring that because it seems like I mean you said that you used to care more or that you used to try more and it sounds like you know a lot of the reason that you try is because you're concerned about your parents and that they shouldn't have to try this alone and at the same time what I'm kind of hearing you say is push back a little against the idea of burnout maybe that's what happened to your parents but you didn't really burn out you just realized it was kind of a waste of time is that a better characteristic okay a better way to put it yeah okay okay so sounds like maybe not so much burnout on your end and and maybe just realized it was futile yeah so can you tell me a little bit about your parents yes my mom as bipolar disorder okay she makes I don't know medicine she should be taking medicine she goes to a psychologist yeah yeah but it never really worked out what does that mean like she never got better she's always do this kind of she's a lot like my sister anyway like my family it's me my dad my mom and my sister and basically they away our family works is like I'm like my dad no way I'm calm more often tonight and my mom is more unstable my sister is just like her right so if she gets angry she's gonna act on it she's gonna break things like her wardrobe is broken down basically she's like no doors Oh true that about the work do you think your mom may have have BPD I don't think so okay well because when I think of a PD I think it's much more extreme right it's more just do your mom have periods of like for like weeks to months where she's basically normal don't be okay so I'm gonna educate a little bit okay so once again this isn't like medical advice but I'm just gonna explain sort of the differences in Diagnostics between borderline personality disorder and and bipolar disorder okay so this is something that's very poorly understood so a lot of times people with with borderline personality get diagnosed as bipolar so what people think bipolar means like I'll get a lot of people will come to me and say I'm bipolar and I'll ask you what do you mean by that and they're like I'm happy one minute and I'm [ __ ] pissed off the next minute and the next day I'm super depressed and the next day I'm super happy that's not actually bipolar disorder so bipolar disorder is a mood disorder that is characterized by weak of month or months of an episode of feeling a particular way so people who have sorry my kid is screaming outside so uh sorry it's distracting can I have a second okay I think we should be good sorry about that guys so what I was gonna say is that bipolar disorder and mood disorders are episodic which means that it's it's a mood that lasts for weeks at a time so in bipolar disorder for example people will have manic or hypomanic episodes which is days two weeks of having like a very high mood or being like super active not sleeping you know it'll last weeks followed by usually a crash of like weeks two months of depression it's not like super happy one day super sad the next day it's like three weeks of happiness followed by three months of sadness so it's an episode with borderline personality disorder what we get is something called emotional instability or mood instability so their mood fluctuates a lot more over the course of a day or is unstable like over the course of hours so a lot of you know when people come to me and they say I'm bipolar and then this is the unfortunate thing is that you know a lot of these people end up getting medication but the medications like lithium mood stabilizers can help in terms of emotional instability but generally speaking you know medications like lithium prevent or reduce the long episodes so if someone is depressed for like let's say six months and I start them on lithium my hope would be that they like you know over the next couple of weeks they come out of that depression and they don't get depressed for months again it doesn't actually change how you know quickly their mood shifts over the course of an hour it prevents whatever neuro chemistry changes keep people depressed for months does that make sense so when thinking about that do you have a sense of whether your mom's moods shift like over the course of days I mean sorry like minutes 2 hours 2 days are we talking like weeks two months yeah I think it would be more days it's just that like when I think of borderline I think more about like addiction to drugs or alcohol yep multiple relationships thing yeah yeah so so you know it I'm not saying that your mom isn't bipolar Minoo cuz obviously she's working with the clinician and the clinician is gonna know way much more than I do in terms of what her actual statuses like and sometimes people have BPD and bipolar they can be borderline and bipolar like those two things can exist together my point though is that you know it's not uncommon for me to hear stories of mom with bipolar daughter who's bipolar but it turns out that daughter is actually borderline or son is borderline her mom is borderline and really it's all personality pathology it's not like a discrete neurochemical imbalance that then corrects itself over time which is the way that I think about a mood disorder so I think about borderline personality disorder or sociopathy or antisocial personality disorder is the way that your brain is wired it's like the way that your brain is whereas a mood disorder I think about a change in function so it's the way that that your brain operates for a particular period of time does that make sense yeah so one is like the foundation it's the structure and one is an operation so mood disorder is the way that your brain functions for a period of time then it goes back to functioning normally and a personality disorder and that's why we call it personality because it's part of who you are right Korky when we listen to you you're kind of saying I don't know who I am that's not an episode that doesn't like come and go that's like who you are you don't have a clear sense of your identity and it sounds like what you end up doing is it since you don't have a clear sense of your identity you adopt the identities of people around that's the chameleon right so people are sad you're gonna be sad if people are happy you're gonna play the part you're gonna fit in because you don't know so what color is a chameleon really I think it's great see no one close right like that's the whole problem it's like you don't know like I don't know what color I really am and like how can you yeah you know who knows right so what kind of get to that does that make sense about like BPD and and bipolar and borderline and all that kind of stuff yeah okay I think I should just add my dad actually kind recently got diagnosed with bipolar - he had like was almost it was actually a psychotic episode okay right where he was hearing things that weren't there he was seeing things that weren't there because traumatic experience he had and then he went actually took clinic for two weeks I think was like journalized yeah like hospitalized actually he stayed yeah yeah that sounds weak side character yep that yeah he's taking me to my sister okay that sounds like bipolar to me so usually people like having so that too is if we think about that it's a discrete episode right so it sounds like your dad isn't usually like that and something happened to him and then he changed the way that his he was functioning the way his mind was functioning the way his brain was functioning and he started acting a different way it sounds like he needed intense treatment for a certain amount of time and then hopefully he's back to normal and and by the way dude it sounds like I mean that's rough bro like it sounds like you a lot of people in your family who really struggle and and that can't be easy yeah it's kinda funny I think I like all of them have like something like some kind of mental disorder in Stewart and I just kind of don't at least not diagnosed or never had any like issues that made me like actively look for like mm-hmm how do you feel about that struggling in college I I think it's just funny like honest it's the same way like not necessarily physically not in appearance not different like I'm a doctor or something okay it's like all of them have Nietzsche wear glasses yeah like t-shirts right and I never did my vision was always like perfect since forever mm-hmm even with me like always being on the computer and always playing games and whatnot I never thought worse hmm so I think it's very just interesting to me like how even though I'm part of the family I'm kind of completely different of them yeah okay kind of makes sense right I mean I can imagine how it would be difficult to form connections with people like that if you feel different does that make sense like you just don't you feel like you're kind of an outsider can you tell me so you said that your mom and your sister is similar in some ways are you and your dad similar did I did I catch that right yeah in what way he's very like his preserved and quiet and true himself and you know also likes green beans like like I got that from him I guess what right now he just please FIFA okay and what do you play just Oh I currently am playing you either flashings alight friendship yeah you're an awfully have absolutely [ __ ] sociopath man I tell you what like that's that's all the diagnostic information acne but seriously I don't diagnose or treat mental illnesses on stream yeah that was a joke so so tell me in what way so you you get your reserved you guys both play games what and what other ways do you think you're similar to your dad are you guys touch basically mm-hm can you tell me what growing up was like for you I mean it was easy I guess like I never had any issues in school or anything kinda like in high school I had oh like the three years of high school that me sorry like that was like from 2012 to 2014 I was very lazy in school I guess it's kind of normal for teenagers that age like I'm rarely ever did any homework mm-hmm as I was to explain I kind of thought my priorities on like you know having fun playing games over anything school related right on because I didn't like oh I didn't like to call it the course that I was thinking like it was just very not what I wanted to do sure so to kind of avoid that or escape from that just bleep me alright so I failed some classes that I had to retake next year but I still completed it in time okay fine then what are you studying in college psychology actually not surprised yeah last year now yeah and and what do you want to do with that like when I started it I felt like I was for sure gonna go for like cleaning stuff just like people win absolutely yeah psychoanalysis we saw that one cuts my fourth then like less two years I think I've been kind of changing my mind like I want to work we like eSports maybe or like marketing somehow like I wanna like different things don't really see myself in a clinic all day every day like I don't think it really fits me anymore so we don't usually give career advice on stream but one thing that I would say so a lot of people want to work in eSports and just a little bit of career advice it helps to actually have a concrete skill right so I I work in eSports but the reason that I work in eSports is because I have something concrete to offer and believe me eSports folks definitely need mental health support it's a very high-stress profession and so I don't know that you know I think that if you don't want to work in a clinic that's fine but I think it definitely helps to have a concrete like skill if you want to work in eSports and I work with a lot of stress management kind of stuff so I work with professional physical athletes as well and and you know I wouldn't I wouldn't if you really like you know if you like the mind and you like to understand this stuff and things like that I don't think that that precludes you so you know if you think about it like physical sports they have like physical trainers right they have coaches I think one of the biggest things that's missing in eSports is that they don't have like mental health coaches that's what they need because they're stresses are like mental and obtaining flow state staying in flow States understanding team dynamics and team friction and managing egos and understanding feelings and you know if somebody feels like they're gonna get kicked how does that affect their performance how does that affect the way that they interact with their team and then the sad thing is they're afraid they're going to kicked they have anxiety about getting kicked and then their performance drops it causes friction in the team and then what happens Courtney yeah okay absolutely right and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and if they if there's one thing that's missing in eSports in the video game industry in general it's like people with psychological training because they have a bunch of marketing people right like they're pretty good at that stuff what they don't have is is actually so some some teams actually do have team psychologists and those teams actually there's some interesting anecdotal evidence that those teams far outperform teams that don't have that so they're they're a couple of teams and you guys can do your research or I can talk about it later if you all really want that that work with psychologists and their their performance is very good so I wouldn't I wouldn't toss the psychological stuff out the window if you're interested in these words yeah I intend on like at least for the next couple years working in clinics like you I get the right specializations yep I'm struggling English I think you're doing yeah I kind of want to seek out like the right areas of study before I try to dive in with sounds good can I ask you a couple more questions about kind of upbringing in some of your relationships and how you kind of relate to people so what was it like when you say it was easy like do you remember what your interactions with your parents were like I mean always good what does that mean well it's because I kind of compare myself like my sister now because she's doing like I saw her growing up and it could compare it like her growing up to my brother and so she's much more like a rebel she asks my spared my parents for something they say no she's gonna annoy them she's gonna like call them names she's gonna be rude to them hurt herself to try yeah what she wants that's like things I never did which I asked my parents for something they said no I would just be like yeah that's fine I can just wait for another moment or whatever and like so I never had any confrontations with them I was always very behaved do your parents love you I guess do you feel loved by your parents ah it's kinda like weird because my dad was always more reserved as I said like just like I am like Marcin himself so it was never hugs and kisses and whatnot yep but my mom always like showed her how much she cared about me now I guess like when you get older it kind of changes a lot yes physical it smart you can feel it easier did you know that your mom growing up did you kind of know that you weren't sure what kind of mom you were dealing with look was there like a nice mom and an angry mom yeah I was always very self-aware yeah and so did it feel to you like sometimes that love was sort of like a switch that could be turned on and off I I guess you know wait but the same time like even when she wasn't ready I knew she still like cared about me how did you know that because like every time like if she was very angry at me for some reason which was very rare okay always good things I guess uh like after she got she's [ __ ] by God not firing me or anything she would just ten minutes later she would come and apologize and say how much she felt bad for it how much she loved me and yeah how do i spawn to that yeah we just be like yeah it's okay I know you didn't mean it I and do you have any idea what would have happened if you if you didn't say it was okay I don't know I mean I guess could make her like me again or I wouldn't make sense for a mission like say it's not fine cuz he really was just like stupid things never like me big never got hit like something impactful I guess I was just like raise your voice not really okay I guess like only realize seven or something like some snaps into play that's about it I don't remember okay so it sounds like you you know got along well with your parents can you tell me a little bit about your girlfriend my household uh she's great like she cares a lot about me I can tell like how can you tell she's always saying it and she always shows like how she acts that I like I'm very important to her you know is she important to uh yeah yeah how do you know so I miss her a lot like if I I stay like long times away from her liked her a lot yeah I can't really go a day or two we are speaking to her something how do you feel like Isis beautiful how do you feel when when a day or two passes without speaking to her never happened back I've been dating her for two years hey like we had a little bit of interruption because I was very I guess it was like one of those moments where I got self-aware like I said like you know in my acting you like Who am I so I kind of thought that was me very bad like for her right there you know I mean I'm not sure who I am so how can I say for sure that I love her so like I told her that you know we should just take some time basically and we spend I think two weeks that I just put in touch her whatever and I was very like wasn't good for me to like realize that I misheard that I needed that that I need her her fight for me and like it was very bad for her she got like very sad wouldn't like do anything basically got very depressed benefit hmm no but I feel bad about it even now because I know even though we're back together and everything's back to normal I know that I still hurt her right I think that what feels wrong about the interstate uh I don't know just like she didn't deserve to be hurt and you said you became self-aware what did you become at ur of of how I was from the different different scenarios like we saw her I'm someone compelled become someone else help me understand why that would lead you to take a break from your relationship to kind of explore that why would you do that what difference does it take to her or to your relationship if you don't know who you are stinking face good think yeah I don't know I guess it really didn't make a difference for her but in my like in my mind I was thinking what if this really ships just like butyl ice right cuz what's wrong with that what isn't wrong with that a relationship building lies that's great so I don't know I just I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with someone who is like blind to me it's not the person sure but she's not lying to you would you want to be a relationship where you lied or I other oh why not it's not good lies are not good when I mean right like lying tricky that Santa Claus is real is okay but lies in general or not so corgi do you think people still think you're an [ __ ] right now how do you sound I don't think so right so so can I share a couple of thoughts with you yep so for some reason I feel like maybe taking a little bit more of an educational approach to help you understand maybe why you are the way you are and what could be going on with you and and also kind of try to tie things together a little bit is that okay I I basically have a hypothesis at this point that I'd like to share and you know I don't maybe the reason that I want to share my hypothesis is because I have enough information to form one so I don't know I mean I would love to continue talking to you more we could talk more but I think I basically gotten a an idea of what I think is going on is that is it okay to share that okay so the first thing to understand is that I don't think you're a sociopath I think you have so I don't really buy into that term to begin with but I think that the way that you relate to other people in the way that you feel about yourself developed in an environment that really didn't give you a sense of identity or how to relate to other people and I think what we see from your girlfriend is actually strong evidence that you're not a sociopath but you still don't quite understand like what the [ __ ] is going on there like you don't understand your feelings because you've never had you haven't had many situations like this before because it sounds like you very genuinely care about her it sounds like you feel guilty for hurting her and you feel bad about that those are not things that we think about sociopaths doing so I think that essentially what happened is you were raised in a particular way and I'll state I'll say what that is and so your parents didn't do anything wrong by the way it's just you grew up in a particular environment where literally your brain learned how to relate to people in a particular way and it didn't learn how to be empathic for good reasons and now you're like new empathy and you don't quite know what it is but you definitely are like growing up in terms of your empathy with your girlfriend does that make sense so let's try to understand why that happens so let's start by understanding like how do human beings learn empathy if you learned about any of this stuff in your psychology class I think so okay any-any and the ideas are you want me to just launch into lecture mode go ahead okay so let's just start by understanding how to human beings how do like children learn how they feel so you know if a kid like falls down and they scrape their knee how does everyone react to the kid yeah I'll get all wet sorry worried yeah okay but like is the kid really in any danger then why do they they're all like oh my goodness Oh baby fell down oh my goodness why don't we do that there's no danger to the kid right if you fall in scrape your knee this need is everyone around you drop whatever they're doing rushed to you and said oh my god Corgi fell down you scraped your knee oh my god Corgi is so hurt why don't why do we do that with children but we don't do that with it weird right so this is what's happening in it little baby's brain so little baby falls down and feel certain things and they literally do not understand what they feel right does that make sense like a two-year-old does not understand what it feels they don't have that capacity so how do Thanks so how do children understand what they feel is looking at the emotions of people on the outside and this is why adults have exaggerated emotions so that the child if you have a subtle emotion the child can't tell what you're doing but if you have an exaggerated emotion literally what happens in a child's brain is it looks at the worry on your face and it correlates that worry with what it's feeling on the inside and then the child says ah okay this is fear this is worry oh this is happiness because when a child goes poopoo on the potty everyone's like good job Corgi you went a poopoo on the potty in such a big poopoo you're such a good boy it's exaggerated happiness right and so then the child knows okay this is what pride feels like because they look in someone else's face and they're like okay that's pride and that's how you express pride this is how you feel pride what I feel gets determined by what I see from other people with me it's almost like the facial expressions and emotional responses of adults are like the gold standard or the answer key or the facts about their feelings on the inside with me do you understand what like gold standard means yeah okay so what do you think happens to a child who has a parent who is completely neutral what do you think happens to their capacity to understand their emotions it's not there why not because you didn't have like an example to follow exactly so we see this in in parents so now the interesting thing is that so this is this is something called attachment theory I don't know if you've studied attachment theory but you can kind of look at this stuff and basically what what people realized is that like you know the way that emotions are mirrored by parents is the way that children learn their emotional self and the way that they learn empathy it's all about mirroring so if you want to terrify a child all you have to do is look at a child with a completely neutral expression and they're gonna start to cry because they don't understand what's going on and then they get confused children get reassured by seeing emotions in their parents so if we think about it you know in a child's falls and scrapes their knee and the the parent is very very worried then the child starts to you know like they're like okay like the parent is worried and then when the parent calms down what does the child do arms down absolutely right and so like you may have seen this where sometimes if a child falls and adults are quick enough you can do something when a child Falls if you laugh and you make it seem fine then the child is happy - they laugh - and if you're worried then they start to cry you see that their emotions internally to a certain degree or determined by what happens on the outside does that make sense because that's their gold standard so now let's think about you right so your basic problem is that you don't have empathy you don't understand the feelings of others so what one thing that we know from attachment theory and if you look at data children who grow up with parents with personality disorders tend to have difficulty with empathy and the reason is because you have a pretty consistent experience on the inside but depending on how your mom's mood is she can either mirror your experience as well or mirror them poorly does that make sense like if she's having a bad day and she's feeling impulsive and angry then like you can be feeling bad about yourself and she's not gonna like be able to mirror that or you can be feeling good about yourself and she's gonna get pissed at you and I think you learned very very very early on how to almost be manipulative with her what do you think about that does that resonate with you at all like you became the manager of her emotions not the other way around and it's weird because when she feels bad about herself who made her feel better that was weird I used to think like like especially when was I'm like 16 onwards I always felt like my mom was more of a teenager than I was absolutely like all things stabilities and yeah everything was teenager yep absolutely so so adults with BPD feel like teenagers to their children and it's it's a really strange thing that happened to you right because like when you're seven years old and your mom has done something mean to you what you basically did is like you think about like you know when a parent is mean to a seven year old a seven year old should feel very very very hurt right and then mom comes to you and apologizes and then you're hurt kind of like disappears and instead what you are is like caring towards her and so what happens is like you lose a connection with yourself what you are becomes less important than what you need to be for her does that make sense yeah and that's when the chameleon is born that's when is a seven year old you changed your colors on the outside because of what your mom needed and you became what she needed and then you learned this strategy this adaptation and I think you use the word adaptive which i think is a great word you adapted to ignoring what's in here and being what they need out there and then what happened is you discovered something very very cool it worked so now you say that you had a good upbringing this is the crazy thing you didn't have a good upbringing because of your parents you had a good upbringing because of you because you learned how you need to essentially manipulate them but it's not really like manipulation it's just you recognize that if you do a they're gonna do B and if you do C they're gonna do D and you started relating to other human beings by recognizing that like what you feel is not as important is the way that you act towards them because if you act a certain way you're gonna set your mom off and if you don't act a certain way you're not gonna set your mama and then what we see is your sister doesn't have that capability which is why there's tension and sparks always between them and it's also kind of interesting because now this is where where things get kind of like interesting because if you look at the system of like western psychiatry what they say is that narcissism sociopathy and borderline personality disorder are all linked they all have actually a common root and in one person it manifests in this direction it's like a tree can grow straight up it can grow straight to you can grow to the right or it can grow to the left but the root is all the same and these are things that are called cluster B personality disorders so what people in Western psychiatry have done is they've looked at the different kinds of personality disorders and they've said that okay these seem to be kind of like bucketed altogether and then there's cluster a disorders there's cluster C disorders but these are all cluster B and and so it doesn't surprise me at all that you essentially grew up you know in a household where it sounds like your mom has something on the borderline personality spectrum your sister has something on the borderline personality spectrum and you have something on the antisocial or sociopathic spectrum I don't think it's like just genetics like there may be a genetic component - I don't think you're a bad person at all I just think that the reason that you feel like you're a sociopath is because your emotional circuitry is underdeveloped because very early on you learned that like your internal emotional circuitry it got confused because you didn't get appropriate mirroring from your parents and we can kind of see that because your dad is reserved so you've got neutrality from him like he may not have been exaggerated when you bumped your head and then from your mom depending on like which mom she was you got like an appropriate response or an inappropriate response and this is the crazy thing if we think about like kids or teenagers who have strong identities of self what are their parents like but do you know someone who you think has a strong identity of like who they are that's like someone that you know so I'll asked like people who are watching to also just think about who you know who you would describe as having like a good sense of identity and confident about who they are as a person and and think about that person for a second if you could come up with someone you know great if you can't that's okay too because I don't know that people watching are gonna be able to really they're not gonna understand what's in your head but then the next thing that I want you to do is think about okay who do you know who has a strong sense of personal identity and then what are their parents like right so and I think the short answer is that those parents are gonna be very good at being like reflective and supportive for that person's identity and what that means is that like they let that person be who they are but the basic problem corgi is that I don't think I think there were a couple of times in your life or maybe you know everyday to a certain degree that you couldn't who you were being who you were was less important than being who you needed to be for your mom and so you started to wither away and now you're you're sitting at 22 and you're like I don't know who I am and yeah because what the way that you learn who you are is through the mirroring of your parents right and this goes back to the idea when a kid hurts himself how does he know what he feels it's because of the facial expressions he sees on the outside parental mirroring is what helps you determine your identity because then you get data from the outside about who you are on the inside parental mirroring is also supportive parent like parents who are supportive and we see this with like you know to Tiger parent is so Tiger parents or parents that want their kids to be like super super successful and don't give a [ __ ] about their feelings does that make sense to you like so a lot of like you know a lot of people have Tiger parents and like what happens is the child has certain beliefs about like they have certain things that they feel on the inside and the parent basically doesn't give a [ __ ] and the parent says I don't care what you feel on the inside I want you two just do what I want you to do and then those kids grow up to be like not confident and don't know who they are because their parents never gave them an opportunity to like discover who they are because any time that child tries to express their identity what they got from the parent did not connect with what they feel on the inside does that make sense so I think now what's going on is you're starting to find a relationship where someone is kind of mirroring you or you're starting to form an emotional connection and you're scared because you don't really know like how to do this but you're hungry from your for your girlfriend like that's the best thing that I'd describe like you know it sounds like you really do love her and care about her and you do feel things like guilt so you're not like a sociopathic [ __ ] but I think what's what's new to you is like this sort of empathic connection you don't quite know how to do it and and what I'm getting from you is that like you know you're hungry from her for her does that make sense that word help me understand in what way that word makes sense to you well when I started like dating her it was it was basically I decided that I was gonna find someone you know was good for me you know would find a girlfriend a year and it was like a very fast found her and didn't notice that you know she was a good person and she cared about me so I guess I really under for him the way of attention and love and like really well and expressed love you know they died even though I mean I had that a little bit when I was a child really later stages yep so so like that's interesting right because you said that she makes it abundantly clear how she feels about you so she does the equivalent of oh my god Oh Corgi cuz she says she shows and tells you how much she loves you and you have to talk to her every day so she's doing for you what your parents should have done right right she's providing that like amplified emotional response because your capacity to feel emotion is like you know your volume is turned way down so she has to send you big signals and once you get big signals then you start to form a connection and I think you're gonna be okay man I think you're gonna be okay and I don't think you have to end up like your parents and most importantly if you're thinking about having kids one day I think your kids can be normal and healthy right this is not a curse that has to get passed on yeah actually I wanted to ask you yeah because it's not like it doesn't have biological roots right right it's not purely a biological thing well there's a difference between not having biological roots and purely being a biological thing does it have biological roots absolutely is it purely a biological thing absolutely not yeah cuz I was wondering if it was somehow really did you like how children are raised because I can see a lot of things that went wrong like the way my parents raised yeah so so let's remember that how you were raised doesn't mean it wasn't biological right so like like let's like if I lose a hand in an accident when I'm growing up biologically I'm missing a hand does that make sense like so so what happens when you're growing up is your brain wires a certain way and once it wires that way it's absolutely neuroscientific it's like neurological and it's biological like it in your brain your empathic and emotional circuitry is wired in a way that is like different from other people's brains so is it biological for you absolutely but was it is it genetic or pretty determined absolutely not because our brain responds biologically to influences if I'm a chef and I I learn how to taste things the biology of my tongue in my gustatory cortex which is the part of my brain that can taste things is going to be biologically superior to someone who is not a chef with me so here's what we understand about BPD okay the first thing is that there does seem to be a genetic component to it but the tricky thing there is that I think that the genetic component could have to do with upbringing in the way that you're raised by parents who may have a similar personality disorder does that make sense so even then it's not necessarily purely genetic the other thing that we know that supports that it isn't necessarily biological or genetic in origin is that one of the biggest risk factors for BPD you can just yawn it's okay man the the one of the biggest risk factors for BPD is actually trauma at an early age so even if someone wins the genetic lottery and they get traumatized in a bad way there's a decent chance that they'll develop BPD later on in life so that's not genetic but what happens trauma trauma changes our brain right so is that biological like absolutely like the two are connected but it's not predetermined does that answer your question yeah yeah so I think your brain is different and we know that so we've done brain scans on people with BPD and we see that their brain is different from normal people and here's just one example of this so people with BPD if you take an emotional insult the amount of blood flow that goes to the emotional parts of the brain and a BPD person is like twice as much is what goes to a normal person so their brain activates far more rapidly compared to a normal person after an emotional insult the other thing that's really interesting is that it maintains blood flow to that part of the brain for like days longer compared to hours for a normal person so their emotional circuitry turns on way faster and this is what's really different the biggest difference is how long it stays active so for a normal person will feel better after a couple of hours for someone to BPD they'll be they can be upset for days and there's absolutely a biological correlate to that but was it biologically or genetically predetermined no because the brain wired a certain way as a child to be emotionally sensitive and if you want me to keep going I can even explain further and the reason that their brain wires that way is so oftentimes people with BPD grow up in in households with abusive parents and so what they have to do is a survival mechanism is be able to detect a tiny tiny signal from a parent is my parent gonna slap me across the face and they have to know that the second that the parent walks in the door and we had an interview a couple months ago with a guy named iris I started out dyrus Coco B and and you if you guys watch that that interview you'll you'll see I talk about that a lot in depth where like you know kids who grew up in abusive households are very very attuned to the emotional state of their parents and if they're not attuned they get beat so they have to take a tiny tiny signal and amplify it and once they take that tiny single Oh dad's not in a good mood today I better act I better be super super nice and that's absolutely adaptive and then their brain wires to like to jerk up and turn up the volume on all of the emotional stimuli and then they enter a normal relationship and they get [ __ ] because their partner is not trying to tell them that they're a terrible person but they have the volume terms so high that a tiny thing makes them feel terrible and it's absolutely happening in their brain sorry if I kind of went off on a tangent there but thoughts or questions for me Gordy or did I explain enough about BPD any other questions or anything else you want to share don't think so okay cool man can you can you share with me a little bit about what his what you've taken away from this or if this has been helpful and and how yeah I guess it's very helpful I understand a bit more about like what I knew no way yeah and why that I'm not exactly a bad person because of it yes good you know yeah and what are you what do you think you are help me understand what what you learned about yourself today I am just a very adaptive person mm-hmm didn't get uh the right amount of emotion from France yeah yeah and I'd say when it comes to you being manipulative it's just that you're kind of you know I was talking about a chef earlier who has a very fine-tuned palate in your case your emotional palette is very inexperienced so you don't know how to taste different things so when you interact with other people those parts of your brain that normally feet like make people feel bad are not active but they're definitely there right because you feel bad when it comes towards your girlfriend and as you continue to have a healthy relationship and these parts of your brain are gonna start to turn on slowly you may find changes with your interpersonal interactions with other people so over time and I think especially if you have kids your brain undergoes a lot of changes when you have children because it has to so like you have to learn your emotional circuitry has to be like up like jacked up because you have to be able to relate to a child who can't communicate so you have to learn how to be more empathic because they can't tell you thank so you have to be able to read them way better so for me I noticed a big change like the simplest way that I can put it as ice never cry like I didn't cry for like 15 years or some [ __ ] actually I mean I cried yeah I didn't try it for a while and then I used to never cry watching movies and then after I had kids like I watched the Lion King and I was like crying and I was like what is like I was just confused I was like what is happening I don't know crying the same movie like I never cry about anything yep unless like it's me Mickey yeah right Samia yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I understand I know exactly what you mean because I literally used to be the same way and then like suddenly I had children and like literally what happens is your brain changes when you have kids because it has to learn and then I was like I'm watching blank and I'm like well no one else is crying my kids don't even really understand they just like the animals so I'm sitting there I'm crying it's like 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and my kids are watching a Disney movie and I start crying it's like what I was so confused and so your your circuitry will turn back on and and you know I think you'll be okay man and you're not a bad person you're really not cool do you want to learn how to meditate because sometimes we do that yeah yes what meditation to teach someone who oh it never really worked out I couldn't really we are my mind yep no we're not gonna do any meditation involving your mind we're gonna do meditation involving your body okay so I want you to sit up straight okay so you know you know how you can't cry yep okay so close your eyes and what I want you to do I'm gonna ask you some questions and what I want you to do is pay attention to what happens in your body as I ask you and if you feel something in your body let me know okay so first what's your girlfriend's name if you feel comfortable sharing it it's Sabrina okay so I want you to think about Sabrina what do you feel all right what does that feel like in your body it's like I'm you know like tingling here take the muscles which is mild and yeah okay I smile unconscious okay and now think about the first time we met can you tell us a little bit about it yeah we were we used to talk like online because a mutual friend group and the first time we met we were pinched a movie with a bunch of friends and it was very like funny cuz I was already in the mall that we were gonna watch with my friends and I saw Hurley call me and just going straight up like she didn't notice us because at the time she was very fat like social anxiety uh-huh so she didn't look around at all and just didn't see us and I was like oh there she goes and uh I went to find her with my friends in the I just came like behind her and I was like okay yeah one of those need to tell her we are here and no one wanted to go so I just sent a message like hey look behind you and like it was so it's very like nice to remember cuz it was still cute though if you turn around and you looks now pay attention to your body what do you feel yeah I am you know okay tell me what you feel hey what does that feel like in your body tell me the sensations in your body I just know like I can't stand still I mean energy in there yeah right so sit with nachos there you are yeah sit with that just bask in it pretend like you're you're laying out in the Sun and let that warmth fill you up and if you feel like if tears want to come out they can come out a big deal don't try to hold anything back and how are you what are you feeling in your body or how are you feeling good my eyes are kind of shaky oh all right so these are these this is this is feeling and your brain is trying to process it hasn't tasted things before right everything has been bland and now your brain is trying to understand what are these feelings what is this not quite sure it's okay so now we're gonna go to a different place so now I want you to think a little bit about the moment that you realize that you're an actor and that maybe you don't really love her right think about where that thought came from you tell us a little bit about how you came to that realization it was just that I was just doing things with my sister that day that she was here butter down squeezing those gonna go talk person and and basically the whole time I just didn't set a message for her and I was just thinking like how weird it was that I didn't think about sending her a message or when I thought about sitting here a message I would just think on how should i what should I say and [ __ ] should I act when talking to her you're talking about Sabrina or your sister yeah Sabrina and comparing that to how like I act towards my sister so it's kind of cool mm-hmm so what I'm hearing is you you were a chameleon that didn't know what color it was supposed to be and you were one color with your sister and you weren't sure what color to be with Sabrina and then yeah and then what I want you to think about when you told her what did you say to her when you ended up telling her hey I'm not sure if I I love you or what do you remember what he said fracturing so now what are you feeling in your body it was comfortable gues comfortable or uncomfortable and okay what is the where in your body do you feel uncomfortable sit up straight it's like like hope bar here generally chest and belly good so what would you describe it as tightness or heaviness or some people feel like their throat is constricting it's kind of empty okay so now what we're gonna do is I want you to just sit with that feeling for a second okay so you may feel guilt or hurt or whatever those are the words that we use and I want you to breathe into your belly now now sit up straight and take a deep breath in through your nose and let it come all the way down into your belly slowly breathe out and again in through the nose and out through the nose okay so nice slow deep breath into the belly and then out and now do it third time and this time as you exhale I want you to see if there's warmth in your chest then it's kind of coming from the outside as you exhale and kind of going into that emptiness but it's it's kind of I felt like it was harder for me to like think back off that moment versus the moment at first I heard that oh that one is so much longer ago yep yeah so you're so overall I know it sounds kind of weird but that's basically the practice so what I what I want you to do so let me ask you something when you were breathing in and out what was happening to the sensations in your chest quite an experience how you doing okay I promise we're almost done so let me just ask you one or two last questions what what was happening to the sensation in your middle part as you were breathing I felt like you got kind of worse than I was Brittany right and you've got better when I was exhaling good yeah yeah so so that so so what I recommend to people if they don't know cuz you know at the beginning of this you were like yeah I don't know what I feel but if you're wondering who the real you is corgi it's that person that you just were for like 90 seconds or two minutes or three minutes that's the real you do you see that it's not like an act like that's coming from in here you're not trying to be unless you're really [ __ ] manipulative and you're fooling all of us which is a possibility maybe this is the part of the chameleon where you pry because you're supposed to cry but I don't really I don't think so but I would say that that is the real right ensure you've been a chameleon your entire life but you're in there man and there's good [ __ ] in there and there's bad [ __ ] in there and that's what that's what the real you is it's all of it and all you have to do to get to know that person is to just stop and close your eyes and think back through things or think back through your day and it doesn't have to be big emotions it can be all kinds of things it can be little things again all things it can be fun things it can be ice-cream it can be a plant it can be a sunset and and just let yourself feel what's in there and if things come up as you think about your sister or think about your dad or think about your girlfriend as you think about not texting her for a day or two how do you feel what feelings come up and then breathe into it and then breathe it out and then do that for a while and you'll know who you are be good all right yeah all right man strong work thank you very much for coming on any last questions or thoughts before we wrap up for the day okay guys that's it thanks a lot man take care so that was good that's fun weird huh cuz like he really sounded like a sociopathic [ __ ] at the beginning of that and and that's what I'm saying like you guys got a you know we have to be careful about the way that we judge ourselves and I don't want you guys so this is the this is the problem is that like you know he looks at himself and he judges himself because he doesn't see the full self you guys judge the person that you are today without giving enough credit to what made you that way right and and you know you can notice things about yourself and just be honest it doesn't mean that you're like a bad person he's not a bad person he's just he's he's emotionally his brain circuitry wasn't given an ideal environment to develop yeah anyway and yeah right so he's okay um would a true sociopath even know or admit that he was yeah so that so this is an interesting question because it implies a true sociopath is a binary thing right it's like a true sociopath is like a hundred percent likes sociopathy is is a personality trait that has a scale there are some people at one end of the scale and another other people at the other end of the scale and I don't think that I mean maybe as a true sociopath exists but in my overwhelming experience it's a scale and even if you think about like neuropsychological testing it's a scale and you get a score it's not binary it's not like yes or no right and and I think that most people know most people who are like test hilum on sociopathy scale have an inkling like he knows right like he knows that he's a chameleon and like he knows he's manipulative and he knows that that's the way that he functions so I I wouldn't be surprised I mean if he got psychological testing and was thoroughly evaluated and things like that there's a decent chance that someone would diagnose him with sociopathy but I I mean I think that that that doesn't mean he's a bad person so that's the other thing that's happened is that in our society sociopathy which is a personality characteristic which roughly correlates with like you know super we have empaths on one end of the spectrum and we have sociopaths on the other end of the spectrum and it's kind of a spectrum of like where where your empathic you know how empathic you are in and oftentimes what happens is we have like moral judgments that we place on a certain personality characteristic but I'll say again that surgeons and psychiatrists test highly on sociopathy scale and that's because it's like an adaptive part of our job if I was super empathic and kind of fell apart every time I was with a suicidal person I have colleagues who are very empathic and their job is like hard they suffer a lot so you know it's it's it's not like a good or a bad thing and I think if you guys really stop and and listen to him he's actually incredibly more right and even so more moral than someone who maybe you know more moral than someone who may be empathic because without those feelings he tries to do right by people right so he it's like it's not like he's like emotionally drawn he makes choices out of like a genuine sense of choice are you allowed to say what mental illness he thinks someone may have on streams sort of so I don't diagnose surfeit mental illnesses so I don't make diagnoses but I think it's fair to say I mean I think I have sort of an ethical responsibility to say like hey man you may want to get that checked out right so if someone that struggles with anxiety sometimes I'll say to people like hey you should really think about seeing a therapist and see if you've really got that I think that that's fair it's not me making a diagnosis it's just me suggesting that it it's worth looking into it's sort of like you know if I see someone on the street who's got like a lump that I think could be cancerous I'm not gonna make a diagnosis but I'm gonna say like hey man maybe you want to get that [ __ ] biopsy right that that I think is a duty that comes with knowledge yeah so I thought that was really fantastic I hope you guys enjoyed it you know a lot of people have been asking about sociopathy and and so hopefully that was helpful and I think that's actually a really good example of what I think real sociopathic tendencies sort of looked like and it's conflict it's like complicated and oftentimes it has to do with like the way that this person was raised and then the way that they were talking about emotions and things like that so you know thank you guys very much for watching thank you guys for supporting us and you know supporting us during Mental Health Awareness Month I think sociopathy is one of these things that's poorly understood and if you guys feel like y'all are sociopaths then like that doesn't mean that you're bad people and chances are you know you are that way for a reason and it's like you can still change like you don't have to be that way that's the cool thing about personality quote-unquote disorders is that even though that your brain is wired a certain way it's not like you can change like people people with BPD can no longer be criteria or even be cured of BPD it I mean it happens right people who are like codependent which is another personality disorder or people who are narcissistic they can no longer be narcissistic or no longer meet criteria for the disorder which this is a tricky thing about psychiatry as we like draw a line and we say you either have it or you don't have it but it's all a spectrum and people can get better right like I used to be a narcissistic [ __ ] too and I got better can alexithymia be treated absolutely so he's also Alexa thymic in the way that you treat alexithymia is exactly what we did right he's a guy and he's like yeah I don't cry and then like within 30 seconds he's like tearing up thinking about his girlfriend that's how you treat alexithymia it's like you just teach people how to engage with their emotions and you teach them how to taste things and it's gonna start with big signals right if I started to ask him about his sister he's probably got emotions there that are buried too but we start with the girlfriend he learns how to taste taste those those emotions amplified responses from girlfriend as he becomes more sensitive or more in tune he can tap into other emotions tap into other emotions tap into other emotions so what about internet trolls I love talking to internet trolls and none of them seem to want to come on though so what's the difference between alexithymia and sociopathy so alexithymia is is a symptom right it's a particular slice of thing and its inability to determine your internal emotional state sociopathy is people who don't feel empathy so sociopathy is is I mean there are more complicated definitions or better definitions that when I'm giving I'm giving a simplistic term but the way that I think about sociopathy is I think about it as a spectrum on like the empathic scale and so its inability to like feel of the emotions of other people and alexithymia is an inability to determine your own emotions so it's an issue of direction good question though yeah so one person says how about if I feel too emotional like sometimes I get emotional watching things that are not emotional at all yeah that that signals to me that you've got pent up emotions that are buried down there that come up at random times so you got to process that stuff too that's more about cleaning apps and processing old emotions that have built up do you talk with viewers absolutely that's what we do so we usually do yeah okay there's no one a truly bad person no I think there can be people who can be bad people absolutely yeah people can do bad things sure so

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 398,485

Keywords: mental health, meditation, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, harvard, twitch, psychiatrist, sociopath, interview, dr. k interview, sociopath interview, interview with a sociopath, sociopathy, sociopathy psychology

Id: DCEJQ2pQCF0

Length: 104min 40sec (6280 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020

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Explanation: In this video, Harvard trained psychiatrist Dr K. talks to a man who thinks he's a sociopath because of difficulty feeling emotions / connecting with others. He grew up in a household with a sister diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and two parents with Bipolar, which affected the way he feels emotions. Even though its not explicitly about SPD, I think many of us should be able to relate to some of the emotional issues he faces and have similar family situations growing up.