Why You Can't Stop Consuming Video Games & Anime

it's it's caused a lot of friction especially in high school and especially in college like i'm in the middle of college right now and i mean people all they want to do is party dude i just i just want to play hearthstone that's all i want to do welcome friend oh thank you thanks for having me it's uh it's good to be here yeah thanks for thanks for coming so help me uh let's start with what do you go by uh my full name is dominic but people call me dom so okay so dom and and what are we talking about today what's on your mind um uh the biggest thing uh and i saw the uh the stream subject it was a computer is slowly ruining my life okay and that's that's kind of i guess that's the biggest that's the tip of the iceberg and i guess we're gonna explore deeper down as we as we go through okay so that's interesting because you said it's the biggest and you said it's the tip of the iceberg that's true i did say that most obvious how about that okay yeah so so it and i'm hearing if you're if we're gonna dig down dom what i'm hearing is that maybe like you said you kind of said that's that's what you see like the behavior that you observe is that you you the computer is slowly ruining your life yeah yeah and it's it's like it's not just computer it's the computer is kind of like the mode of transportation to a lot of things uh i mean it could be comic books it could be manga it could be netflix video games i mean reddit it does it doesn't matter i i i label the computer because that's what i use to get to my fix you know okay so help me understand what what why do you say that the computer is slowly ruining your life what does that mean um i think i think the biggest thing i mean by that is i have a lot of goals outside of electronic things uh i want to learn bass guitar i think my bass is in frame yeah i'm trying to learn bass guitar funny enough i need to use the computer to learn bass guitar um i want to learn how to play right skateboard a lot of academic goals and sports goals i run track and field the university and it's it's hard it's hard to run a track practice on little amounts of sleep when you're gaming all night so hmm okay um so it sounds like you're not happy with yourself for not being able to achieve your goals yeah yeah there's a there's a lot of frustration um can you hold on just one second there we go i just realized i forgot to switch over the overlay so people haven't been able to see you until now oh unlucky i'm not right we fixed it thank you now now check and see me you know prior to the computer we have this boomer device called a phone and sometimes my my team has to contact me it's like it's like a miniature computer that can do very few things dude that's that sounds really useful and helpful in your pocket it it it's like a device that can solely do voice chat well you can you can do dms sort of we call them texts whoa crazy kind of like emails kind of like short emails yeah it's like a short email exactly yeah um so you sound uh oh a little bit frustrated that you're you're not sort of achieving your goals yeah uh a little bit is kind of an understatement um there there are times when because i used to i used to think i didn't have an anger and i used to kind of just like bury it in a sense or maybe just ignore it not kind of bury it because it kind of just explodes but when over the past year it came to points where i just had nothing to do and i didn't want to play video games but i didn't know how to do anything else right i didn't know how to go skateboard i couldn't practice space because i didn't own one um i couldn't start journaling because i didn't own any journals right so like the only thing i could do while in quarantine after i finished my homework was play video games and i guess when it came to the point where i like acknowledged my anger at myself i don't know how to play piano and i'm frustrated with that you know i'm not i'm not getting the grades that i wanted to so i'm frustrated with that you know i'm not running the track and field times that i wish i was you know and i'm frustrated with that it kind of just explodes and i got you know i gotta go take a steaming walk outside and make sure it's uh well steaming as an i'm steaming uh what what explodes well it kind of like my face gets red um i can't focus on one thing like i'll think about one thing that's upsetting and then i'll just think about the next thing and then i'll just think about the next thing and i'll just think about the next thing and it kind of just gets out of control and all of a sudden i'm not thinking about what i initially thought about right and all of a sudden i'm angry at my parents or i'm angry at politics or i'm angry at youtube or i'm angry at the current smash bros meta right like it doesn't matter what it is i just i get just frustrated with stuff yeah yeah sometimes you know i'll joke about people becoming anger elementals yeah and and what i'm sort of noticing is that your anger will find something like you feel the anger and it seems like it's looking for some kind of outlet to latch onto whether it's parents or the meta in a video game and that each thing that you engage with with like actually like boosts up the anger more yeah yeah yeah definitely that's it that's a good way to put it so help me understand um don okay let me just lay a couple things out okay so here's what i think we can talk about um you know i want to better understand what what it means when you say like computer games are ruining your life because what i see is you know you're like you seem to have a touch of the chad within you like you're in school you run track and field you know you're learning like you have a bass guitar it sounds like you're not very good but that you know you're you know there's there's i i can imagine i know it sounds kind of weird but like i can imagine that a lot of people who are walking uh watching would actually like envy certain parts of your life and wish they could do what you wanted to do yeah so i'm curious about you know how video games are ruining your life i also think that we may wind up talking a little bit about you know two directions which is like where does that anger come from because it seems like the anger can choose to get mad about any sort of thing and what we tend to do is we say when we get mad about something that the thing is where the anger is coming from but if you like you know if you have someone who's emotionally angry they can get angry about anything and it actually if you really pay attention it seems like the anger is not caused by politics or the smash brothers meta but that those are triggers for the anger that's already inside so we may talk about that and the last thing that um really i think this could be interesting is we can try to understand like why do you have these goals in the first place like where do goals come from how does our mind decide hey i want to do this thing because what you're doing is you're kind of setting a goal for yourself and you're buying yourself frustration by not achieving it yeah yeah it's a like a discounted price of the anger ticket i guess exactly right so that's a great that's a great way to put it so what does that sound okay to you do those topics seem like they would interest you or be honest maybe okay i mean especially because it's like i've seen i've seen streams i've watched i love this i love this channel dude this place is this is not a cult no matter what uh chat says but i'm part of the dr k colts so there it is it was a pro cult face phrase there is of course and so yeah i know how these streams can kind of go where we didn't even expect it so it's like as long as we just get going and get rolling let's do it i'm telling you pumped and excited how are computer games ruining your life um they i use them i use them to cope and i use them to i use them instead of things that i wish i was doing includes the talents and the things i'm working on that includes hanging out with friends or going on with dates and i don't like playing video games as much as i used to um and when i say as much as i used to i wanna i wanna like go into that like explain that a bit because uh although i have a little bit like sure like i have a touch of the chad within me um it's it i was the lucky one in my family to get the chad within me none of my friends none of my brothers or sisters are athletic uh my dad uh actually i can't play basketball ironically because when i asked my dad to teach me how to play basketball he said he didn't know how to either then he just took me inside and showed me his gamecube because he loved gamecube right and then we played rts's online and dawn of war lord of the rings battle for middle earth i mean what all the age of empires uh that i just gamed with him that's how we bonded right so video games kind of became that thing for me right i i wouldn't just a quick question why the the when you say it's ironic that i can't play basketball is that because you're black is that why you're saying it's sorry missing something there uh there's a touch of it it's all jokes have it's like a pie chart right so it's like i am black i'm athletic um i'm tall i'm like six three and i have big hands and everyone always assumes i play basketball okay okay so it's not just the color of your skin it's also your height and yeah yeah okay i just wanted to understand why why is it ironic that you know a gamer can't play basketball i just lost me there yes i people people i mean people never see me as a gamer right they never they never pictured me to be that guy you know um funny funny thing yeah well when i when i was a kid um i moved into this new area and i was hanging out with a bunch of guys and these people were talking about naruto and one of my good friends today he wasn't a good friend then because i was just meeting him he turned to me he's like don't pay attention to those losers right he literally said that i was like dude what's wrong with naruto like that show's sick and all the losers like freaked out they're like oh this guy knows and he's one of us he's one of us and uh it's funny though he looks like a chad he had the heart of a weeb dude oh no i i try not to be a weeb i try not to i can't sorry it sounded like you're about to say something important i couldn't help myself well it kind of like it kind of goes into another facet of like why video games and manga and anime and comics are ruining my life because although like once i said like what's wrong with naruto all the chads in that group like immediately dismissed me like immediately like oh he's one of them right not one of us one of them and throughout the school year like they just it didn't invite me out as much as they did within that first week of me meeting them i kind of hung out with those losers quote unquote um but their schedules and their motivations and their goals didn't line up so much with what i kind of wanted to do with my life so i ended up just distancing myself from that group without having a connection to any other group and i kind of just ended up alone you know i kind of just ended up playing video games by myself for a long time um and it that that kind of happens uh a lot throughout my life and it's that weird balance between being a weeb and being big gamer reddit mode reddit chad uh and kind of just being a normal person quote-unquote right um it's it's caused a lot of friction especially in high school and especially in college like i'm in the middle of college right now and i mean people all they want to do is party dude i just i just want to play hearthstone that's all i want to do how do you feel about yourself for just wanting to play hearthstone dude at times like a loser i'm like dude i really am a loser like what what the heck i can't not go out right or i can't not stay in um i mean a couple weeks ago i like binged all of attack on titan in like three days from friday to sunday instead of doing anything else including working out right um and that like i i skipped i got sent workouts by my coach for the summer he's like hey use these uh and get in shape and i just stayed in watched anime all day at night and i'm super ashamed to it i know he'll never watch this so i can say it i mean i ended up lying to him on monday i was like yeah i did the workout and these were my times this is what i did um i just felt super ashamed and angry at myself for that right like not only can i not just go work out because the workout only took like an hour and a half right i can pause attack on titan for an hour and a half and come back and watch it right but i mean i apparently didn't then you'll lose the race of watching attack on time within a whole weekend before anyone else and then it's just like i even watched it and it's it's not done right it's not caught up to the manga immediately as soon as the last episode ended i just hopped onto my manga website and just read the rest of it like i just i couldn't not stop i needed to consume the whole thing and then i was done you know and it's kind of with everything right uh i read the boys all in one weekend the comic out there like the boys in berserk are two two comics that i read when i was relatively young when i was like 13 14. and those are pretty heavy manga and comics to read you know heavy subject heavy concepts and i just read it all in a weekend even though it's like training on me mentally and i just and like looking back now when i think about my 13 year old little brother i was like dude i don't even want him to think about berserk right it's just such a kind of graphic subject matter and i even though i felt drained reading it i just flew right through it i needed to right my i wouldn't allow myself to not stop what does it mean to need to consume what does that need it's it feels like at times like i i end up looking at myself i'm like man i'm just a machine like i just i input these i input this material whether it's the primal tv show right the cartoon network samurai jack or adventure time or anything and i log it right i catalog it like oh i know all of this stuff i know all the lurthering fun facts right i know all the harry potter secrets and then i just move on to the next one you know it's like i i feel like i'm just trying to fill something that i can't be filled you know when i look back at it when i when i'm in it when i'm in the mode i'm just enjoying it right i'm watching it i'm just doing what feels natural you know and it's in a sense and like i'm like oh just watch just watch just watch when i look back i'm like man what did i just do like i just skipped workouts for this i just it's going to be there right it's going to be there in 10 years watch it then you know don the way that you're talking about it actually makes me think about addiction so what you're describing to me like actually reminds me of like patients that go on benders you know like like and they kind of like wake up the next like you wake up on wednesday morning and you kind of look around and you're like oh my god where did where what happened where did my time go what have i been it's like it's sort of like there's like a very cloudy awareness that feels like primal and hedonistic you know and then and you're not really like you just need to consume it sounds very you know base to me yeah yeah i i can definitely see it like that especially i mean it's like the hangover gamer edition right i guess like it just i don't text people while i do it i guess as well like i just like if someone reaches out to me i like won't respond or i'll say like sorry i'm busy doing something else and what goes through your head when you say sorry i'm busy not much it kind of just like that's it like i just say like sorry i got it like i don't want to it's not saying like man i gotta think of this convoluted plot to convince them i'm busy it's like i i don't want to go hang out with them so i'm just going to tell them i'm busy yeah not not so much like oh i got a front that i'm so active outside you know yeah so i i know it sounds kind of weird but you know what what do you think it is that you're trying to fill up with all of the anime um it could just be time uh it's always come to a point like the reason why i'm reaching out now in a sense is because i've never before skipped workouts to watch anime or watch a show or play video games or read a comic i've always been able to like parallel them within my life you know keep them separate like i got to work out now i got to get up for 4 a.m workouts so i'm going to bed at 8 30 right i'm gonna i'm gonna do what i need to do to make sure my outside life is successful um within the past within the past year it's kind of just spiraled out of control you know yeah and a lot a lot of it could be because like school canceled and workouts were canceled so i was like dude all the time in the world to play video games like i can do what i've been wanting to do since i was 11 years old and man i again i just consumed like i just i got this game called vermintide 2 for my dad for my uh for birthday present and i just played the heck out of it i mean all summer i just played and played and played and then i got guild wars 2. like it doesn't matter what kind of game you know like whatever game i just get attached to slay the spire played a lot of like i'll get it for one weekend and i'll play it for like 30 40 hours within five six days and then i'll kind of get sick of it and then i'll move on and i mean perfect example is this last christmas break when school was a thing so in 2019 to 2020 christmas break um i bought myself a christmas present of uh star wars knights of the republic one and two and for those two weeks i i spent like 41 hours on the first game and then the next week i spent like 36 hours on the second game i just beat it and i just played right through and then like i'll like look at like snapchat like instagram and i'll be like seeing all these people going on trips and hanging out with hanging out with each other and like hanging out like down the street right they're hanging out in the city right next to i live i'm like man it'd be fun to it'd be fun to uh go hang out i'll just continue to game right i won't even reach out to them i like i'll get angry at them for not reaching out to me i'd be like oh i wouldn't be playing this video game if they reached out to me you know and like these guys love me they would be so down to hang out with me if i reached out to them like i get in this point where i'm like angry at them for not reaching out to me so i like just continue playing you know that makes sense is that is that a makes a lot of sense can maybe i can share with you what i heard and then you tell me if it makes sense so i i am getting the sense that you you really do have like almost like this kind of compulsion kind of thing where like you'll you'll sort of like willingly kind of dive into this right and you'll come up for air like a week later and then it it's in those moments of like when your head breaks the surface of the water and you're like looking around that you're like oh hold on there's a life that exists outside of this and then you'll kind of blame yourself for diving underwater for so long you'll blame other people for not pulling you above water there's like some amount of self-loathing like you know you'll blame anything and everything for putting you into these situations and then you take a deep breath and then you play cotor2 [Laughter] yeah right that's we'll put that's why you're the doctor man the cult leader i mean you're the one who shared it bro i'm just repeating it back um and so what do you think it is that you know what goes through your head between kotor 1 and kotor 2. um or is that is that really it was it was or not did you not come up for air between those two yeah i don't think i came up here between those two i mean it just and the the problem is is i those games are some of the best games of all time i freaking i love those games and i recommend them to everybody i bought them for my cousin because i was like yo dude you need this game and it's like i enjoy the things i do like these binges i enjoy the the characters i enjoy reading like i read the invincible comics like when i was like 18 and i read them all in like a week like again a weekend and i just loved it and then the show came out and i was like dude i'm so pumped and it's actually actually a funny story because i was hanging out with a girl and i was scrolling through youtube and we were talking and i could like tell like things were moving to a point of like physical intimacy right and then i saw the trailer for invincible on youtube i was like there i have to watch this like you are going to be put on pause for like 10 minutes so i can watch this and then i then i think jk simmons was like the voice act i was just losing my mind i was like there's and i ended up nothing happening because i was so worked up on invincible in this new show coming out and it was it's just a funny thing kind of just like how my priorities like shift to like these these mediums of entertainment you know whatever it is don i'm getting the sense that you're kind of stuck between two worlds like yeah yeah uh continue sorry sorry i was just agreeing with you how tell me about that um and you again you guys know i'm i run track and field and it's not that i just run track and field like i'm i'm pretty good and i have a lot of potential and i mean like putting it say i wouldn't be able to pay for college without track and field you know like without it's basically like a job and it's not only it's it's it can be a lifestyle there's people and new people who would go to college just to be the track athlete at their favorite college and to me it was always kind of just like something that i saw and i was like that's weird that they care about track this much and then i would come you know come to these binges and come out and kind of be jealous of them right because they're going to the parties they're you know like them just running track and field is like what they desire and what they strive for right and me being blessed and talented at kind of just being a means to the end a means to an end right i just i feel like what's like i want to be part of that right and like like we've kind of pointed out before it's like so i'll try to push myself towards that right but it'll be friction and it'll be kind of unwanted because i've never been a partier you know i don't drink i don't smoke i don't know do anything like that and kind of just trying to like fit myself in these placeholders and like cause um when i think about it i'm really really close with my family and i'm really close with friends that are like like family you know um and i think when i when i kind of self-analyze myself like that's where a lot of this is coming from uh my fam they game that that's my thing that's my family thing we have this huge land room in our living room where like there's four pcs set up and all of us have steam accounts and all of us buy these games and we'll just play from like 3 p.m to 2 a.m right we'll buy terraria when there's a when it's on sale and we'll just grind it we'll just play it and play it and play it we'll order pizza it doesn't matter that's just what we do and it didn't it didn't like really occur to me like how unhealthy that can be uh for kids because i i mean i started doing that when i was like 11. i when terraria first came out like my dad and i played terraria until like 3 a.m for like four nights in a row and that's one of like some of the greatest memories i have with my dad you know but when i think back to him like i'm a nutrition major right i'm learning about how important sleep is for young kids i was like holy cow what was my dad doing like why didn't he just tell me to go to bed and we could just play in the morning you know and i come back and i see i see my younger brothers doing that thing the same the same type of patterns and safe type of things and like going through the same struggles i went through you know as a teenager and a lot of that's just teenager struggles right it's tough being a junior high kid um and i get angry right like like like like we said earlier i get i get mad and i also get mad that like that's how we again like that's what i care about like i care about my family that's how we bond you know why does that make you angry um a big thing is because i've put so much time so much of my time as a youth into these useless games like on war 3 is one of the greatest rts games of all time in my mind right and i've put hundreds of hours into it like i look at them think myself like what if i put hundreds of hours into like drawing right or theater or bass guitar or skateboard right something that would something that just doesn't leave me empty you know something that doesn't kind of just drain me like it does and i get mad because i get mad that i didn't have the supervisors or like the adult supervision to ward me against that you know and i i i don't have a problem with video games in moderation like but when i go through these binges and i go and i look back how many hours i've wasted on cs go like that's just it's so pointless right i'm not i don't want to go pro why am i spending so much time on this like i could be doing literally anything and it's like i could be reading you know i've so i've bought so many books i've gotten to like the last four chapters and then like i just fizzle out you know don it sounds to me like you've wasted a fair amount of your life or lost a fair amount of your life yeah yeah it's a it's a big it could be especially especially from ages like 10 to like 17 i just so my parents got divorced when i was 10 years old and they it's hard seeing your parents go through divorce when you're not old enough to kind of understand why you're not young enough to like just accept it as is you know um it's it's hard seeing like kind of seeing your parents break down because you have these these like immortal pictures of your parents in your mind and then seeing them just kind of be human and like worthless in your mind uh like again i just like there was one time my dad was like feeding us you know fish sticks because that's all he had and he just couldn't stop shaking because of how sad he was and i remember like looking like like he's like that's so like that's so sad you know i just thought that and then my mom kind of just reclused herself right and i guess i guess from that point like it's where these i just kind of threw myself into video games and i we had the lutheran discs at home the lord movie discs and i just consumed all of it dude i went through every special features i went through every second of the movie and i watched every little bit of it i did that with like every movie i ended up going through like this because back in the 2000s right we had these huge cd cases or like these little hand flips like cd books right and i would we had tons of them and i would just watch over and over and over and i'd went through every single one of them it didn't matter what it was right i remember watching uh live laugh love when i was like 10 years old or like 11 years old and it's super chick flicky movie but it just it didn't matter to me right it was like that's the next one next cd right and it's like thinking back i'm like wow like that's that was a real girly movie but done what what was it like what did you understand about your parents divorce can you um i just understood they were splitting uh they're pretty volatile at times and i under i i knew within myself that it wasn't good like what was going on um and that that's about it i didn't you know when they uh i feel like every kid like secretly has like the good guy in their mind when parents get divorced um unless it's just outright bad or it's actually done really well um what is it a good guy like uh the the aggressor in the divorce and like the one who's getting the short end of the stick right or the one once you did nothing wrong in your mind the villain right the villain and the i see the villain and the hero so who is the who is the villain and who is the hero in your parents divorce for me like i just saw them both as villains in a sense like it i was like this is like there wasn't uh both of them had their issues right and like i can see that and i was like this like i don't like this i don't like this at all you know i wasn't like oh if mom would stop yelling at him or if like if dad would stop hitting her like like like my dad didn't you know do anything super destructive and it's like there was no moments like oh like i need to protect so and so in my mind right or like i'm gonna put up it's like i kind of just like that's like this is bad this is not good i don't like any of this you know what what was in your mind i don't remember a lot of it i remember feelings you know the feelings of it bad but like a lot of it was kind of not blocked out or forgotten but i don't know i just i remember like few key moments i remember watching my dad walk out of the house from the window and his friend came and picked him up um and that's that's about it from like it was like from ages like one to like eight i remember you know just being a normal kid growing up playing ghost in the graveyard outside um and then again like those few key things i remember going on a trip with my dad when they were still together so my parents were still together i went on a trip with my dad to montana and my mom didn't want to come with us i remember that and i remember being weirded out by that like my mom and my older sister like stayed home like why it's a family trip we should all go um and it just didn't make sense to me um and that and that like those few big things and like a general feeling of like i don't like this like i don't like this uneasiness i don't like this tension i don't like how quiet the house is you know or things like that and what were things like after they got divorced um you know physically it was pretty weird uh going from one house to the other i didn't like that very much um it was also weird because we moved within the same neighborhood so like my parents had my mom the original house was right here and then my mom just moved like two streets down so we're so my dad kept all out initially out initially my dad left and was staying with friends and we'd go to the friend's house and like spend time with his with his friends or with him and then my mom ended up leaving the original house two doors down like two streets down then my dad ended up moving back into the original house and like i'd we'd just walk back and forth like the weekends and it was really weird because i mean he was just down the street you know and like mentally in my mind he was just down the street but like we couldn't go see him i couldn't go hang out with him and that was kind of weird it was also weird because he didn't have like any furniture so it was just like an empty house and we got we got pretty poor at times because like one time like the water was turned off and like i had to go to the neighbor's house and ask for water so we can like pour it into the uh into the toilet so we can flush that was that was really gross all the time especially if like my younger siblings didn't tell us they used the restroom because they just forgot and i was like oh and i'd come to an awful surprise um then then we moved again my mom moved again like down the street to like another apartment and like the reason why we did this is we wanted to stay within the neighborhood and stay within school right we didn't want to move schools sure and then my dad ended up moving all over the place all over the state we lived in and again i just i didn't didn't like it i didn't like going to different houses for the weekend i didn't like the fact that like we couldn't just get back together right because i remember watching mrs doubtfire right and like thinking to myself i'm like wow like they're just so good for each other they should just get back together right that's what you kind of think when you're a kid you're like robin williams is such a hero right then you know they now i look back and like well they didn't end back back together because you know they're adults and they make their decisions um as a kid i kind of really didn't see that i was like just say sorry figure it out right like let's let's raise above our sinful states i guess what's wrong with that with wanting to raise above yeah i don't think there's much i don't think there's much to the desire but kind of like my reaction it kind of just made me angry like again it just made me upset that they weren't doing what i wanted right it made me angry say that with them that you wanted them to get back together um i don't think so we didn't there wasn't a lot of parent-to-kid communication i should say i should say there wasn't a lot of mother-to-son communication or father-to-son communication there was a lot of parent-to-kid communication as in they fed me they kept me warm they kept me clothed right they made sure i was in sports they sent me to school but i mean when i would come home from school they'd say like how was your day i was like sick it was fun super pogers right then i just sit on the computer watch some movies and then i wouldn't see them again until dinner then we'd have some dinner and i wouldn't see them for the rest of the night you know how does your dad feel about your gaming um just sees it as normal i feel about his gaming yeah i don't like it i don't like it at all i don't like kind of any of the family gaming because i can see i see my again like that period where i just go hide in the computer i see that in my younger siblings you know i see that and what is going on with them and i'm like dad like that that's your kid man go talk to him i'm like oh have an argument and then next week make up then next week have another argument right and then make up and then develop that kind of bridge between them you know and i'm confused who's who's having an argument are you saying that you argue with your dad or that your dad should argue with the kids so that you guys would kill your relationship you should argue with the kid to build a relationship right um i said argue but it could be like anything go talk with them go do anything um like where we are now is like my dad will be playing a video game and then my two younger brothers will get in this huge fight and then one of them will start crying and then my dad's attentive he's like what's going on right what's what's happening right and then he has to play catch-up for everything he wasn't paying attention to and then it just you know ends up and the thing is we live in like we i used i don't live with them anymore but we used to live in like a two-room apartment so like everybody in the room had to pay attention to the argument that was going on with between my like the discussion and there are times like six of us in a two-room apartment so it's like you get a lot of emotions and i don't know and i like seeing that now i'm like either a the argument would be avoided because my dad would be able to nip the problem behavior of one of the little brothers in the butt or the aftermath of trying to discuss the argument or discuss the problem will be a lot smoother because my dad kind of understands where the younger brother is coming from or the the slightly older brother is coming from don how does your mom feel about your gaming um she doesn't care either because i'm able to keep track and field up right she's like as long as your grades are good as long as you are performing at sports like you can do whatever you want on the weekends right um how does your mom feel about your dad's gaming yeah you know i don't think she understands kind of like how much because they don't they don't know what goes on in between the homes right they don't they don't know what goes on in and home um and i know she doesn't she does not like a lot of the things about my dad um and i there's just a lot of there's a lot of residual anger between both of them that to me seems childish do you think that your life would be better if your dad did a better job i mean it's it's hard to see it's hard to say yes because i don't want to say yes because my dad tried that's that's the hard part he he was raised a nerd i mean he was raised he his dad my grandpa was a huge star trek fan huge i mean and he he worked for nasa he had tons he was just that guy right that that 70s nerd dad right and my dad looks up to him and i look up to him like you know there's no other and i think my dad kind of tried to replicate that sense of wonder in these imaginary worlds within me right whether a star trek or star wars or dune right he was a big dune fan um don does your dad have a job um he just got rehired um covet's done a lot of hard stuff to him and the kind of habits that he had right it kind of really doubled down on these habits that he already had build up and they kind of just took over his life in a sense um what about so you guys had the water turned off again floating through um what does that mean floating through uh he's like he was kind of like a contract like he'd do side jobs for uh x amount of money and then he'd be okay for a little bit and then he'd end up doing this one acting gig for x amount of money then he'd be okay for a bit and then he'd do this one computer thing and then he ended up getting a job then got screwed over in the job and then got a new job right and then at times like he'd be working like two or three jobs and it's it's really it was really volatile and he never again one thing i'm super thankful is like he never gave up right he never gave up on us and he ended up he like he got food on the table he paid for what he could right whether the water turned off or the gas was turning off he always made sure we had blankets we always made sure we had pillows and mattresses so it's like again it's hard for me to say yes i think he would have done better if he did a better job but we could say that about any parent right i can say that what i can say is i know he tried his best or how flawed he is you know and i i love him and i love him so much for that right and then the the greatest thing the greatest thing about it is i'm not biologically his kid um he he married my mom when i was about two years old so he kind of he kind of stepped up and picked up this extra weight right and when the parents got divorced he offered to pay child support for me as well even though legally he didn't have to because i wasn't his kid so it's in my eyes the greatest honor a man and a choir is picking up the slack of another worthless man you know and in regards to their kid and that's what he did you know as flawed as he was he gave me an awesome childhood he spent as much time as he could with me whether you know whether he developed this video game addiction right whether he helped facilitate that you know he he loves me i mean i'm a 6-3 black guy right but he's a 510 white nerd right and he looks at me like i'm his son you know and he hugs me like i'm his son and i love him eternally for that i you know i can acknowledge his flaws i can say how messed up his habits are you know i can say anything but it'll never you know give away that love that he gave me and that love that i offer him it sounds like a real hero yeah yeah it's interesting it's interesting when you mentioned you know he was white i'd already i you know i assumed that he was your biological dad yeah and i liked it i'm sorry i can only imagine how much more challenging it is to accept a child that clearly everyone knows is not your child and so how much more he deserves our respect yeah yeah um i like to call ourselves the jigsaw family um because i have a i have an older sister who has her own dad another older sister who has her own dad and then me has my own dad and then the three younger siblings all have the same dad who's the guy i call dad um you know and again dude it's like i have so much love for both my parents because my mom i mean that does not sound like an easy family situation to mother right that's a lot of ties and that's a lot of emotions and my mom never gave up on us you know she did so much for me um she's she's the reason i run track and field because after seventh grade my first year running track and field i wanted to quit because i was like this is hard running sucks like i gotta i gotta work out i gotta sweat i gotta get tired and she pulled over the car she's like you are running track whether or not like before i die right or something you know she said something super dramatic and she saw because it was the only way i was getting to college right we couldn't pay for it uh getting to college without student loans um and you know she didn't she didn't really teach me how to do homework very well uh she didn't i took a lot of her procrastination within myself right and a lot of her bad habits within myself but you know just like my dad like as flawed as he is and as flawed as she is like i'm only running track and field because she made me and i have that chad within me because she made me you know i have a future in education and college because she made me she did the mom's job and so it's like again i don't have hate for my parents i have nothing but love and wholesome you know hog champs from i think it's more than love i think that's what makes this heart because once again what i'm kind of detecting don is that you're a little bit stuck between two things so you said that the greatest thing that a man can do is to make up for the failings of another man yeah it's like it's it's pretty it's pretty uh big greatest honor i think is what i said i like to say the honor you know kind of nightly so i kind of wonder don are you making up for the failings of your dad what do you mean by that i mean so when i asked you you know a little bit about what you thought about your dad you kind of said i was like you know could your dad i don't remember exactly what the question was but it was sort of like a could your dad have done a better job or do you think your dad let you down i asked some question like that right giving you a chance to poop on dad and i was like would you like to poop on dad and you're like it's hard to say yes right he said i don't want to say yes you didn't say no right and then and then we kind of touched on then what you started to do quite gallantly may i add is rush to dad's defense and so magnificently because who can possibly think that you're there's anything wrong like the dude is he's a white five foot ten nerd who's raising who calls the six three black kid his son and genuinely loves you as a son like how can how can we toss any shade on on that guy right yeah yeah and and i i get that there's a lot of genuine love i get that your dad went above and beyond and like deserves a ton of love and respect and at the same time you face certain challenges and when you get angry i think you get angry with your parents what i heard over and over again is you didn't like it and it felt it was weird and you didn't like it and i think that there's like there's a you know an adult within you who can understand that you know adults have problems and sometimes divorce is what it comes down to and that like on balance they did a fantastic job your mom you know helped you get into track and field your dad gave you a love for gaming your dad gave you love in general and so like on the pro and con column like your your parents both win overwhelmingly so but when i hear about your struggles there's like an understory here that i think part of the reason that you may be stuck is because like you're not willing to acknowledge it right i mean like when you you kind of it's it's interesting because you said that you used to be able to keep the external the reason you reached out now is because you could keep it in check you said that you used to be able to keep your external life and your internal life parallel but i'm still hearing that there's like one foot in two different lives you know and i think that i know this may sound like one of these weird like spiritual positive things that no one knows how to do but as long as you you're living two parallel lives like dawn it's never gonna work right like you can't be like you have to live your life and like i know it's kind of weird because you're like how do you we'll get there so there's there's a lot of practical stuff here but like you know when when there's the losers and the jocks and you're like you know halfway between those two you know you can't i don't know i mean i think there needs to be some kind of like internal resolution about the life that you want and i think some of that stuff is i mean i'm not out to make your dad seem like a bad dude i mean clearly he's you played the ultimate ace card in terms of you know no one can ever think your dad and i i i i mean like like you know it's it's sort of like 50 of a joke but like definitely i mean he gets away with a lot if he does that yeah right yeah yeah and so the reason i kind of bring it up is not to like put badness on him but like to acknowledge that the things that hold you back or all the like all the things that he gets a pass for can still negatively impact you and what we're talking about is you it's not i'm not out there and i you know i know i do this a lot where people like i get people to [ __ ] talk their parents it's not that like i'm not trying to [ __ ] talk your parents yeah it's that we need to understand that like your dad is propagating probably like quite unhealthy behavior in all of his kids which all parents do right he's not unique they're like i propagate on healthy behavior in my kids it's impossible i don't even say that dude so my kid will wake up at 7 30 in the morning and she'll try to come wake me up and then and i'll like like she'll grab the ipad and she's like dad can i can i be on the ipad and i'm like yeah sure absolutely so you know it's terrible but the first 45 minutes of her day are like spent on like you know melting her brain on youtube which is not what you want for a five-year-old oh no but we all propagate bad behavior in our kids like i'm not a perfect parent there's no such thing and the challenge for you though is it's not about bashing your parents for blame it's about understanding what is the impact that you have to deal with and as long as we're giving your dad a pass and we're ignoring his effects on you then like how are you going to fix them yeah you know and so and so i get why you it's not bash your dad stream yeah and you know he really does sound like a truly amazing guy like no doubt in my mind and at the same time like you know you're a nutrition major and like you're starting to learn a little bit about the world and you're beginning to realize that like maybe some like fish sticks and you know gaming until three a.m you said you guys did that four days in a row so like was it summer vacation or was it like dude it was probably spring break it was okay i mean it's good especially even if it's just like a friday if there's if they're like it kind of gets the point like if there is no responsibility that i have to equip equate to tomorrow right i'll show up to tomorrow i'm going to throw away right now you know that kind of that's kind of like how it lines up you know and like the more i learn about habits right building habits we are our habits right i'll know i'll never be rid of this until you know i get rid of that habit of throwing away my night if i don't have anything at 8 a.m the next morning right i should just go to bed right or something like that you know so you know when it was spring break when it was summer vacation or anything he would do that as long as we didn't have anything to do tomorrow yeah so let me ask you you know don i don't know exactly if this has been helpful yet but you know i i certainly feel like i understand you a little bit better and i think it'll like clarify i don't know i don't have a clear sense of let me just think for a second why do you want to play bass guitar dude i think personally it's the sexiest instrument known to man um when i was getting into music um because you know when you're when you're a kid you always listen to what your parents listen to so when i turned you know 1314 i kind of you know started touching my own music i was listening to these kids write or listen to music at school you know whatever they were listening to and i went through a lot of stuff i went through like a little bit of an emo phase like mcr because my crush was faith lap and she had the you know she was emails like i gotta listen to this stuff you know um then my 10th grade year i started listening to like my own music like things that i really liked and a lot of it was bass guitar uh steve lacy plays a lot of bass guitar and he plays his own bass fit thundercat was a huge one i love thundercat tyler crater has some really good bass lines in his songs and i just i didn't understand it was bass until i started looking into the music i was like oh that's that's the bass that's the bass line um then my best friend's dad um he asked me out of the blue he's like play bass i was like no he's like oh that's [ __ ] like every black person can play bass you could play bass and then that kind of like solidified it for me i was like okay i need to learn to play bass right now so i can prove this guy that i can play bass and i'm sick right and so along with like all my love for music you know so it kind of it was kind of like a two-factor humor sense and actual love for the bass okay so don okay can i think for a second please please so you've watched a fair number of our streams yeah yeah i always usually turn tune into the vods so like you're familiar with like the concepts and stuff that we discuss yeah yeah i watch a lot of the youtube channel as well okay so like do you know what a sum squad is um refresher please okay so like sometimes we have emotion that gets so when our mind experiences emotion we can either bury it or process it okay and generally speaking a lot of the emotion that gets buried then manifests later in life in particular circumstances so what i um i'm gonna try to like put together i'm gonna try to like summarize what i understand as your situation and i'm gonna give you like a couple of options okay give me just a second okay so dawn you know it was interesting when you were telling me a little about yourself you know when i when i mentioned that it seems to me like you're stuck between two worlds it's interesting because what i was thinking about you are you have any experience with d and d yeah yeah okay so like you know i almost said you seem to me like a half elf because you're not in the human world and you're not in the elf world my characters are always half works my characters are always half works even better right so so like and i'm really glad i steered clear that because like i i almost because given the the racial dynamics in your family like i'm glad i didn't call you just something like that really dodged a bullet there really but but but i i i do get the sense that there's there's really like in so many different ways man like you were stuck between two worlds it's like do you become a jock or do you become a nerd you know like like do you play bass guitar like you can't play basketball but you're gonna learn bass guitar so you're gonna take advantage of your racial bonuses you know absolutely and and so like you know there's just so much there about you know i think who you're trying to be [Music] that and and i think that that's gonna so if if your problem you kind of come up with this problem of like i spend too much time on the computer and we can call that escapism we can say it's due to like some internal conflict or whatever but i'd say the reason you spend too much time on the computer is a couple of things one is i do believe that there's like an addictive aspect to it so like straight up like like what you're describing to me sounds like a dopaminergic binge where you're just like you know you like you need to get that dopamine from like attack on titan what's gonna happen next what's gonna happen i have to know i have to know i have to know you kind of get caught up in it the other interesting thing is that given your upbringing one of the things that we've discovered from studying addictions is that generally speaking the earlier you get exposed the more powerful the addiction so um you know when we look at things like pornography addiction like there's a very good chance that people who are exposed to pornography at like a very young age will be more likely to be addicted to it the same is true for like alcohol and cigarettes and marijuana and stuff like that so you know if you start smoking pot at the age of 12 it's like way harder to kick than like if you start smoking a pot at the age of 50. so there's some stuff around developing brains and and building habits and stuff like that so i i do think that there's like a dopaminergic aspect to your behavior which can be kind of addressed on that level but i i also get the sense that you know when you're choosing between two goals what i'm really getting the sense of is that there's like this conflict about like who you want to be it's like who does dawn want to wind up like does he want to wind up being a weeb or does he want to wind up being you know black guy who can play bass because generally speaking we don't think about those people as the same kind of person which is why i think the next thing to really understand if we had to summarize who you are you're the chosen one [Laughter] i'm the main character yeah you're all side characters so so it's it it's it's like and this is where like i i think a lot of this is going to come from really a lot of like introspection about you know where do your goals come from are they your goals or are they the goals that come from either part of your human and your elven heritage and i i sort of get you know i i think the you know the story about how you got into base i'm sure will upset a lot of people for a lot of reasons but i think it's like a great story right genuinely speaking it's it's when it comes you know our racial identity forms so much of like who we are and what we choose to identify with and stuff like that i think you know i'm i'm brown i'm indian and so i you know i did wind up becoming a doctor and i do do yoga so it's sort of like you know i have racial advantages there um so i think it is there's an element of truth to that but i i think what i'm sort of really getting from you is that a couple of different things one is you know you're stuck between these two worlds and i think a lot of the goals that arrive in your mind that you fall short of are not truly your goals i think as you really make them your goals and you sort of deal with that addiction piece then it'll help so like as they truly become your goals as opposed to like societally imposed goals that'll help you achieve them and then you've got habit and dopamine related stuff that you've got to overcome for sure the last thing is from an emotional standpoint you know this is where i'm sure we could ask you more questions but like i i think that they're you know it seems like the primary thing that you feel towards yourself is like anger and frustration and where do you think that anger and frustration comes from i think a big thing can come to be like me not being what i think i should be in a lot of aspects right um it's i get when you when you met like mentioning porn like that's a that's a huge thing for all young adults right especially young males like that i hate it right and i hate that i you know could be addicted to porn especially growing up as a teenager like a lot of that anger you know you get that post-nut clarity it's just so it's so hard you know post-nut depression is not a it's not a healthy thing to move on about it's hard to talk about right no one wants to talk about their own struggles with that but i'm telling you now because that to me is the clearest point of like where my anger could be coming from like that self loathing from what i could be right i'm like i'm not there i'm right here and i'm angry about it and it's my fault you know you just lost me a little bit sorry what is this stuff about post not depression uh so there's there's a joke right you're you're you're watching some sus material online and you know you fit you you climax and then you you get you open your eyes you know you come over the water and you're like this is gross stuff like i do not like this right that's usually post not clarity right um post depression is just the depression you feel of being attached to this being tied to it all right being tied to the computer the pornography um it's it's it's just it's really just a joke like a play on words um right yeah so so are you saying that in the post not clarity you're able to see that your life is not where you want it to be like are you clearly able to because like you're free of all of your like like mechanisms and stuff like that oh yeah yeah definitely i mean that's yeah yeah okay so all right sorry i just i was a little bit confused so so you're you know it sounds like you're angry at not being what you think you should be yeah yeah and i mean especially this last year it's also like angry at what i was um because i i gained a lot of weight in quarantine and track and field is a lot track and field's base is about the strength to weight distribution how strong you are versus how much weight you're carrying around and i gained like 25 pounds and a year and even a little less than a year and that was like not good weight either there was a lot of binge eating and just garbage and right now where i am i'm in between well i just look back at my high school life right my freshman years i'm like man i was so in shape i was so much more fit than i am now i need to be more fit than i was then right like that's so i put myself so much further back than the goal i i wanted i want you know and you know then anger and sadness and all the emotions come through okay can i process that for a second please please go ahead what do you think is gonna happen to you dawn um where are you headed you asked me that a year ago i would have had this huge awesome five-year plan right i'm gonna go graduate college go on this religious mission come back you know run professionally uh kick butt you know um but my life and my plans have all changed so rapidly that i'm unsure you know i can tell you what i want you know i can tell you what my metaphysical my my frontal lobe says i should want you know i want a solid nutrition job pro runner shoe contract deal right with adidas or nike or something smoking hot wife you know amazing you know backyard barbecues fourth of july barbecues you know um then you know there's that you know that other side the other the other world the other life um kind of just saying like dude like you don't need to do that you can just you're charming guy you're handsome you're athletic right become a twitch streamer do it do what dr k does right talk talk to the people right play video games change the world through video games right or something like that and there's that kind of pull between like like you said the two two feet in two worlds okay so don got these two dreams right let's call one of them the twitch stream or one of them adidas whatever adidas chad yeah today is july 16th it is a friday the weekend is coming up if you spend the weekend watching anime what happens to your progress towards each of those goals it decreases it goes back incorrect there's no difference right so like how many to get to the life of your dreams how many days does it take we're gonna graduate from college we're gonna go on our mission trip get a smoking hot wife become a professional runner land an adidas contract how much time does that take a lot of time you know years how many years um i would take about four at a minimum right yeah so four years is like 1300 days sure if you take a if you take a break for three days what difference does it make see i see i see what you're saying i get it right so what's the cost of you spending a week or two playing kotor two kotor one and two well you know you could look at it you know grand scheme listing like oh it doesn't cost much in the grand scheme but then within these little little deals right i didn't go spend time with my friends playing kotor until i didn't go outside much i didn't spend time with a lot of my family you know i guess that is the cost that's the cost with yeah now we get to a really tricky thing which is which way does your brain look at it so your brain calculates behavior right it calculates to engage in a behavior or not engage in a behavior when you have five years to do something which way like you know i know it sounds good actually i'll just sort of say it but like your brain calculates it in the long term not in the short term which is why procrastination is conserved across the human race right so if you have a month like no one's studying for a test that's one month away and like if you think about it you know if all like not all but you know 90 the human beings that have not been conditioned or built habits to start studying 30 days before the test the default human behavior is to wait until the last minute and i think your biggest issue and this is where like it doesn't matter which world you're stuck in because in either case like what's the cost of a weekend is absolutely nothing and this is why our generation is screwed from weekend to weekend because what's the cost nothing it's just a couple of days there's more days what's gonna happen seven days from now you're gonna get another weekend you can do it then and i i know it sounds kind of weird but like you know i i think there's a lot to like understanding you know your internal conflict and stuff like that i do think there's a lot to understand about your anger towards yourself because that i think is is to a certain degree like related to [Music] a lot of anger that you have from other places and you're kind of taking it out on yourself so so this is sort of where like you know you're you're upset with your dad for helping you get into this situation right like do we want to we want to forgive him sure on balance did he do an awesome job absolutely and like don't tell me because when you're walking around and you're steaming right like who are you blaming myself and your parents you said that earlier it did i did say i was getting angry at my parents and and what what kind of thoughts does your mind produce yeah so like can you give me an example of like what in what way you get angry with your parents parents specifically i just get get jealous of my friends and their parents um good tell me what are you jealous of between your friends and their parents stability that's a big one my in my area it's really low divorce rate in my area and get really jealous i mean because i again it's like that adult side of you tells yourself right you're like every every you know past problems you know every family has issues right but then you know my kids side looks i'm like man i'd rather have those issues the issues they're having and the issues i'm having right what especially yeah go ahead sorry i was gonna say especially when i get grow closer um saying like a it takes a village to raise a kid right or raise a whatever that was really really true in my sake um outside of my own family i have like four families where i could just walk into the door right and they'll say like oh hey dom and you know they already have a plate set up for me right um and i'm really close and really thankful for those families so i know kind of their family issues i see the sibling arguments i see the parents doing whatever um when i was a kid to answer your question like what specific issues when i was a kid i just hated having to move from week into weekend especially when my parents moved further away i couldn't see my friends on some weekends just because i didn't have a car my parents were at work we can't we can't make the 40-minute drive down to such-and-such city go hang out with your friends right you're just gonna have to sit and hang out right and i hated that and i was like man i wish the whole family family's just in one spot right um another one is kind of just reassurance that your parents love each other you know um don't take for granted if your parents truly love each other um that's a wonderful example to you about true love right as a for a kid and i kind of really didn't have that growing up you know i didn't have that golden globe of like this is what a marriage could be this is this is what you could produce like look at that look how wonderful this family is right you have all these kids and they are married now and you're getting nieces and nephews and we're all here spending time together uh my family can't really do that you know and i just i get angry and i get jealous and i just get sad you know because not only do i want that there's the realization that i truly don't have that i have to go to sleep with that knowledge you know i have to wake up with that knowledge i have to go to fourth like going to two christmases as a kid sounds like a cool idea right two two birthday presents dude the pain of driving away from one of my parents homes from christmas morning and seeing them wave on the sidewalk just tears me up inside especially as i get older especially because i'm the one driving my siblings around right you wake up at my dad's house and having to say goodbye to a parent on christmas morning go to another christmas morning is sickening and i hate it and seeing the pain in their eyes because they love us right they don't want to be alone on christmas morning they don't want to be alone anytime and going 11 years like that it's just so draining and i don't think people you know they don't acknowledge those moments within the divorce you know they don't acknowledge those 15 sentence 15 second interactions that you have nightmares about and it's just it's awful yeah man it's it's you know i know we so like there's i think a bias in western society towards like the individual over the unit so generally speaking you know there's this sentiment that it's better to have two happy people that are divorced rather than raise a kid in an unhappy marriage which as a psychiatrist i mean i have a bias in terms of my sample size right because the people who come to me are the ones who are a little bit unhappy i'm not so sure that's actually the case though i i i i when i hear stories like yours and the problem is basically every story of divorce that i've heard i'd say easily 80 percent are like yours where it does actually and this is something that i think is a is something that gets propagated like you know parents will tell themselves all kinds of things to justify being able to get a divorce and they can't tolerate the idea that like this could actually hurt your child and we as a society sort of say that divorce doesn't hurt children whereas i haven't seen that i've seen that just about in all cases divorce does hurt children i'm not saying that it's not a good idea to get divorced i'm not saying that there aren't good reasons to get divorced it's just i'm the one you know the kid walks into my office 20 years later and and so that's just what i see um but i i think it's it's kind of dangerous because like when you said you know everyone thinks two christmases is good oh man the can the most consistently terrible thing that i've heard from kids of divorced parents or holidays never do you feel so trapped so there's no way to make every anyone happy and it's it's just it's a it's just [ __ ] for everyone involved and this this time that's supposed to be like happy and celebrating ends up being just like painful for everyone and it happens every year and even especially with all the marketing it's just it's bad continue sorry i mean it even gets to the point where sometimes i'll you know when i work with like patients like we'll even have to set limits so i have some patients that over time have grown to actually tell their parents i actually can't come home for the holidays anymore and see either of you because the toxicity is just so high i don't have the bandwidth for it i'm gonna just be by myself during christmas and i will come and visit each of you for one week at a time and we're gonna hang out and i'll fill you in but i just can't do it during the holidays because there's just no peaceful way to do it it's crazy uh where things end up but kind of coming back to you don i mean here's what i think like so there's a lot of that anger pent up frustration with your self frustration with your your parents i think the more that you acknowledge that i think the better off you're gonna be um not to say that you i mean i think it does sound like you you know you feel it and stuff but i i think the real issue here and i want to talk a little bit about goal setting is that so when you look at your life and you say i wish it wasn't like this i wish it was this and then you build together this five-year plan because you're you know you have a touch of the chad within you your chad touched not faye touched not fiend touched your chad touched right uh you're you're you're a chad touched half work totally totally and and and so then what happens is your mind still builds these kinds of like goals for you you're like okay i want to be a twitch streamer i want to be this i want to be this uh look at the chad drinking milk yes this is strong strong bones it's not like an energy drink no no [ __ ] so so that's a lesson for everyone who's watching by the way you're gonna you know i'll i'll do one more um so i think that one of the you know i think when it comes to your goals and what you want to do but what i would say to you don is to really think a little bit about a given day and don't think about the goal but ask yourself in a weird way like who do you want to be today like do you want to be someone who i know it may it may bring up the self-loathing but i'd say actually tackle it head-on and sort of you know ask yourself like as you're about to watch like what are you going to do this weekend don i'm asking it's a genuine question yeah yeah yeah yeah uh my buddy's getting married um i'm gonna go i'm gonna be groomsman we're gonna hang out and swim and chillax you know some play some video games maybe smash bros meta who knows so so let me ask you don is that the person that you want to be yeah yeah it is especially it's especially because it is like especially these people these people i'm going to um luckily throughout the years i've been able to acquire uh companions in my dnd campaign because i'm the main character right um people who just love me right both the website and the chad side right they they understand that like they come to me with star wars questions because they know i've read every single comic book and every single eu book like i know everything right um they come to me with comic recommendations when they when they want so but they also you know they support me at track meets they support my healthy activities so these guys i i really want to like be with them so yes these like that's these people are awesome so like like at the end of the weekend are you gonna feel drained or be filled with self-loathing um this this kind of gets into like a different material uh because and i it feels weird you know we're already a bit into it and opening up a new can of worms is a bit weird but especially this past few year it's been really hard connecting the people who like actually love me but like feeling connected um because there are times when i'll go hang out with my best friend brian right and then you know something will go wrong or um you know specifically uh he'll ditch me or like something like that will go on and i'll come home and i'll just feel like awful and i'll just feel like wow this is really sex because when when i have so few of like the real friends when my own mind senses that it's not going right it just kind of spins out of control um it's like it could be like i can go into this wedding and i can go and i can just you know my jokes are firing off i'm killing it and i feel loved and i feel accepted and i feel on top of my game but if i go and like something doesn't feel right to me or it doesn't like i don't feel loved or something like that i get i get into pretty deep dark places and that that kind of game has been what i've been playing for like the past four months um four or five months with can you help me understand what you mean by a deep dark place um one of you my favorite stream that i've watched of you was the suicidality one because it explained the the the phases and the spectrum of all of it and how every single one is dangerous every single every single step of it is important um because i think one of the ways you phrased it was how i was sleeping like man i don't want to wake up tomorrow and i'm going to like actively stop myself from waking up tomorrow and things like that i'm like on the left side of like i don't want to wake up tomorrow because if it gets to that point where i'm like kind of just running through in my head i feel that like man i don't want to go to sleep i don't want to wake up tomorrow so i'm just like i'm just going to stay up but i don't want to i don't want to stay up i just want this night to be over and i like end up running through the circle and what's helped me with that is writing actually i've become big big into writing i actually i i restarted my high school blog and i've been writing i've been writing on stuff like that and um especially these last like three weeks it's been pretty pretty bad because a lot of stuff that's happened in the past is coming up and like specifically my my best friend uh itching me um i'll just kind of explain what happened um and new year's new year's eve of 2000 just just this last new year's eve i had three buddies that i really really wanted to hang out with like each one of them bailed on me and went to their own parties and it wasn't like oh like i'm doing this instead of this dom like come hang out with me like i called him i was like hey what what time do you want me to pick you up he's like oh sorry dude like i'm so plastered right now i'm already at this one thing i gotta i'm gonna stay here and then he hung up right and i was like oh cool like awesome and then i ended up going to this one other party with someone else and he ended up leaving halfway through the party and like i had to find a ride home talking you know talking to other people and when i don't think i really processed it then because now when something like that happens i just fall apart i just i i fall apart and and again i need to go take a walk and i need to go take a thing and like again when you fall apart what is happening in your mind not wanting to exist i'm just gonna be honest i'm just gonna be frank and i'm just gonna be honest and i i'm not gonna try and because i don't know who's gonna watch this right it's it's scary speaking this to the world um because who knows in a week my buddies i'm talking about watch this and i freak you know they're like why didn't you talk to me and it's like dude so continuing um just not wanting to exist it's truly like that it's not like man i want to kill myself it's like i just don't want to be here i don't i don't want to have this you know what is your experience of existence in that moment dude it's it's it's it's weird it it one one one way is like i'll like look at myself in the mirror i'll be like seeing someone else like look at me i'm like that like i don't want that right like it kind of gets like that i'm like i need to get outside right so i'll go outside what does the other person see when they look in the mirror dude that thing is like i don't know it's not like something like it's not like i'm like talking to it or like communicating it's like that's just like i look at it and like that's not me right so i end up needing like a sensation so like i'll splash cold water in my face i'll go outside like feel wind right if i'm inside there's like no wind and like if i feel the wind i'm like okay like cool cool right um something that i actually uh do a lot now after watching your suicidality stream is i used to i used to want to just go get drunk i've never drank before which was the weirdest thing to me right and i didn't think much of it until i watched your suicidality stream and you're telling me about how quickly the decision of suicide is how quickly decision of suicide is made and how much alcohol propagates that like how much it swings that um because one for some reason i've always been fascinated quote-unquote like my suicide side's always been fascinated with getting hit by a car and like stepping in front of a train and just something quick like a hard impact and i get the sense that like when i do like i'll just i'll just free fall and i'll fall through the air and i'll roll and then like my life is out of my hands you know and like it's it's so it's so weird because all i got i after watch again after watching your suicidality stream um i look back at my life and realize like that's been a thing throughout my whole life i'd drive to track practices or track workouts or track meets where i really didn't want to go i'd say to myself like man i really wish a car would just hit me like man i just i really wish i just not have to do what i'm about to do right and i used to not think it was a big deal because i didn't have a plan right i didn't i'm not planning on suicide it's not like this and you're telling me you are telling me you're like this is scary right and then i believed it so instead of indulging in alcohol when i go on these walks i'll buy a bunch of candy i'll just eat all the candy i'll drink soda um i'll you know get an energy and i eat healthy i drink milk so like these moments i kind of like indulge myself and step away from that kind of stuff so anyways sorry how long have you been having these um thoughts of just wanting to escape from your situation um a long time a really really long time it's not it's not like an everyday thing yeah do you do you remember how old you were when you first had these kinds of thoughts i guess the first like prevalent sentence of like i want to escape was my had to have been sophomore year of high school because i had dreads i had long dreads back in high school it was super cool um i was driving and i just finished a track meet and we actually won the track meet and i destroyed i was carrying the big trophy i had four gold medals and we went to we went to a restaurant a popular burger joint that it's tradition in my community that when when your sport your team does well you go to the burger joint right you go eat the burgers and we went to the burger joint the bus dropped us off and everything and had a great time and i was driving home i just felt so alone and i just felt like everyone there was just like congratulating me only because um because i was an athlete and i was good right um because i also i grew up in a really really white area and like they only talked to me because i was black and things like that and i was driving and i was driving and i just i started speeding up i was like i don't want this i don't want this or i want this and there was a there was a stone wall at the end of the street and like i was fixated on like driving into the stone wall and just like getting in a car wreck and i ended up slowing down you know i didn't i didn't go through with it but i think that was like the first like sentence of like i don't want this like first like conscious thought because i guess you can you know we could talk about escapism through movies and video games throughout my whole life like that was the first time where it like manifested into action you know yeah it sounds quite scary yeah and i just again like i don't know i didn't really acknowledge it until you know recently where i was like oh wow like so dawn that's the first time it became manifest but i feel like we've talked about the sentiment of i don't want this before over the course of this conversation does anything come to your mind about what we've talked about that you really didn't want and really didn't like yeah i mean especially within this conversation like my own parents didn't want my parents uh a life situation i didn't want to be poor growing up you know didn't want to move around a bunch um i mean even if you really if you really look deep into what we've talked about but i can no because like i didn't want to be a track athlete i had before i was forced to be a track athlete in a sense by my mom um i didn't i d sometimes you know i don't want to be black especially growing up around here um with with my own dad i mean it's it's the little things because we'd be at a gas station right i'm like six one right i'm 12 years old and i'm like six one my dad's still i still like dad's still five two and all my younger siblings are tiny white people right and we're we're at the gas station getting drinks and treats and i put my stuff next to my siblings the register person said like is he with you to my family right um because you know no fault on them because i looked like a young man trying to sneak some kibbles and freaking with this with this nice white family right so it's like even a sense of like i don't want to be white or black i want to be white you know and like dude i remember oh my gosh this is a weird memory that just showed up i remember wanting my hair to look like justin bieber's because it wouldn't because everyone loved justin bieber i was a kid i was like man i want to look like that but my hair curls you know my hair doesn't do that right i remember getting like gel and like making it like a mohawk like like like all the other kids in like 2006 you know 2007 they all have that like spiky mohawk and they're wearing their monster shirts right and i wanted to look like that because that's what everybody else looks like you know and my siblings didn't even look like me you know no one looked like me growing up and i guess like even that can be like a sense of like i don't want this i don't want to be you know to be or not to be what makes the difference that's that's one of my writing that's from that's from my blog so maybe i'll post a link in chat go read my blog all right don so i i think um thank you so much for sharing all that uh don't worry you know for what it's worth i say this with love i think you'd look absolutely ridiculous with the justin bieber haircut he did i looked so bad i went to the museum with it because my friends were taking me to the museum it was so bad dude oh poor poor 10 year old dom he just wanted to be cool he just wanted to look good you know and i i think i think here we see the you know the stuck between two worlds right like it makes sense man like you have you have this conflict you really are like the chosen one in in the last of you're like the last of the uchiha it's like do you want to be in do you want to be like one of these good homies from konoha like which one do you want to be i'd rather freaking i'd be sure i'd be shikamaru i'd want to be shikamara if i was a naruto character but it's tough dude because i i mean i i'm seeing the the you know 10 year old with justin bieber haircut or the bass playing dreadlock style oh the two the two sides of the same coin man same person though that's the craziest thing to me it's like it's also that's the same person that's all within me you know it's hard to like hate one side of it and be like oh i can't do that because that's it's i truly want that right that's something that not it's not foreign right so don i'm gonna actually disagree with you a little bit i don't think either of those is you okay i think it's fine for you to want those things i think that want is genuine but i think actually your journey is about figuring out who you are not what you want to be what you want to be is not who you are it's what you want to be i know it sounds kind of weird but like i don't think either of those things is you make sense you are not an orc and you are not a human you're a half-orc it's its own thing has its own racial bonuses has its own stat adjustments and play a half work like an orc you're gonna lose dude if you play a half work like a human you're gonna lose oh no right so i think it's like justin bieber haircut bass playing anime t-shirt milk drinking i actually i almost i almost wore my house moving castle shirt on stream yeah and i've been like oh no i can't do that right and i i don't know exactly what i mean by that i don't know how you figure out who you are but i i do think that i am getting the sense of um you know just in terms of the you know it sounded like an ad for the suicidality stream which is kind of awesome dude it's awesome dude that stream okay literally changed my life literally so you know i don't i should probably say this for legal reasons but seriously don i don't know if you've ever worked with a therapist i don't know if you you know if you're in college and stuff there may be like student health resources i think it's like not a bad idea um especially in your case i think there's a lot that you could work through in terms of your parents divorce kind of figuring out who you are and most importantly if you really do having thoughts of not wanting to be there is actually like a normal human experience uh going to bed and wishing you never wake up is a normal human experience and also you know driving down a road and speeding up and looking longingly at a brick wall is [ __ ] dangerous right and and so this has been my experience as a psychiatrist which is like it's almost like rng it's like you're opening a loot box and 99 times out of a hundred you won't you'll slow down but the whole point of that suicidality stream was explaining to people that like it can be and ultimately it's usually an impulsive decision i'm not worried about you like in this moment it doesn't you know i'm not gonna pick up the phone and call 9-1-1 because i'm not getting that sense from you and at the same time it's worth taking very seriously um i also don't want this conversation to turn into that i think we're still talking about you and and what i'm hearing from that is it's just a part of who you are i think it's a manifestation of some of you trying to figure out like who you want to be and what you want i am detecting one hell of a some scar though that there's something really here about like i don't like this i don't want it this is not and and it's interesting because you really describe it um like a trigger right like if if you have an interpersonal letdown by someone that you care about you feel very acutely unloved and that that can feel like a very intolerable state that is absolutely something that it is worth seeing a therapist about because the real the real thing there is you know we don't we haven't asked you much about your personal relationships but the reason i think that's really work worth working on if if you or anyone else has that kind of experience is that if you do wind up in a romantic relationship that's important to you that will rear its ugly head because they are not going to be available to you 24 7. right so you're going to get that thing is going to be triggered even if you're in a relationship with someone who really loves you and cares about you so understanding that experience is kind of important and being able to work through it you know i i feel like i should advise you or guide you in some way what do you think don is it enough to talk about what we talked about or do you want some sort of like plan it's been it's been it's been nice to just talk about it um because i've tried talking about it with people in my life but it never came out like this in like a cohesive way you know always be like i'll start talking and we'll hyper focus on one thing and i'll feel like nothing happened you know like i didn't talk about anything actually um so much as like a plan i i'm a bit unsure like again like you kind of just like disagreeing with me in like the sense that i'm i'm not who i want to be like that's that's a that's a cool thought like i've never thought about that and like a big reason i did want to reach out was i i saw how you talked and like bug ideas out of people you know with your your probing questions and i was like man like that's that's awesome and like even like the life coaches like i think those would be you know they're trained to do the basically same things and like that i don't i don't think i'm helpless you know i don't think like sometimes sometimes i do feel like chained to the ground right and like all these chains or my vices you know like i don't i think i think the key is within me to those chains you know and like i have i have to find them whether or not i go like a psychiatrist isn't going to fix me psychiatrists will help me fix me right a psychiatrist will do all that within their power to fix me like that kind of applies to you like i don't i don't think i don't think anything that we figure out within you know the next whatever minutes we have left or we do is going to be like the golden standard it'll definitely help and anything you do say that helps but like again i think listening has helped and like just discussing and a throwback back and forth and talking to someone who knows nothing about me like exploring me with that person is i think valuable and i've it's like you have helped in a sense you've made me feel better within as well like as as cheesy as that sounds like that morale bonuses are no jokes yeah so don i'm very happy to hear that uh uh and i think i think that you know that if if you take one thing away from the conversation it's you know what you kind of said about you're not who you want to be because yeah and and because i i think that like who you because i i know it sounds kind of weird but i think twitch chat knows the real you that's scary i think i know the real you and i think that dude's absolutely a chat he's not a chat in the way that like you're you know not in the traditional sense but i i think we've gotten to see the real you today and i have like absolute faith in that person i think the only problem is you get so confused about being what you think you should be like being human or being or either direction that you don't really acknowledge that you're really a half work because i think it's fine for you to have a you know howl's moving castle t-shirt when you play bass and i think we we actually all know we know who you are i mean you've made it pretty clear yeah from the get-go that you can eat healthy and like you know take care of yourself and be physically in shape and learn how to play bass guitar and spend you know weekend here there watching attack on titan like that's act that sounds great sounds sounds like you're done actually you know and that's that's the really weird thing which i'd really encourage you to think about is that you have all these goals for like what you want to be but like i think if you just keep on growing the person that you are as opposed to striving for a particular goal you'll end up in a really good place i think if you even i know it sounds kind of weird but i think you're in a pretty decent place it sounds like you do deal with a lot of like negative emotions that can come up but you'll you know that process how can i say this you know the goal the way you deal with those emotions is by living through them with a certain amount of like thoughtfulness and attention right like it could be journaling on your blog it could be seeing a therapist it could be you know talking to your coach i don't know if your parents know about your struggles it sounds like they kind of don't but like that's where you know giving them an opportunity to like letting your dad be your dad you know telling him hey dad did you ever like think that like maybe playing games like did it ever interfere with your life because i feel like you know sometimes like you know you tell them the story you told us about the coach and the training schedule and stuff like that tell your mom right and be prepared for them to not be able to listen to you because your mom will be like what the hell is wrong with you stop playing games right just stop so you'll get that from your mom sorry whoops just turn off the computer silly yeah but i mean you know i think it could be a really like connecting conversation to ask your dad like really not in a judgment sort of way but say hey dad i'm struggling with this did you ever struggle with it and i think that the last bit that i would tell you is you know on a given day i know it sounds kind of weird but i think when you think about the goal you can afford to lose a day you can afford because remember the attack on titan binge is not a you don't binge the whole week in a day you binge one day and then the next day can i afford to watch attack on titan yeah i can kind of get away with it and then the next day can i kind of get away with it it's like yeah i can get away with it and so i if there's one question that i encourage you to ask yourself is that when it comes to a given task as best as you can with awareness ask yourself who do i want to be today do i want to be someone who spends this hour watching attack on titan do i want to spend the day being like what's more important to me on this day maybe that's actually the better question and you may be surprised this is going to be challenging but you may be surprised because oftentimes the answer may be it's actually really hard for me to go and meet up my friends meet up with my friends down the street and actually like on this day and in this moment this is actually what i want to do there can be self-loathing that comes with that which is fine but you don't want to like pile up the self-loathing and then experience it at the end of the weekend i want you to like deal with each piece as it arises and really just think about you know who do you want to be today and i think you will find that like the answer will be a half work like you're not going to be an orc and you're not going to be a human today i do today i want to practice bass and you know what today anime is more important than bass and on another day bass is going to be more important than anime thoughts thank you thank you i mean that's first thought is thankfulness i mean that's that's some powerful stuff i like i really like the idea that i am not what i want to be you know it's not it doesn't define who i am like who i am is the person i wake up as you know and that can change you know the ability to change is hard but powerful you know it's slowly i always i like to say well there's a quote history turns on hinges and i i think that's the same for people as well you know it takes data day by day to [Music] become yourself you know and as long as i'm taking two days to become this person and two days to become the other person i'm always gonna be one day in the middle you know and so i'm always gonna be just in that weird friction place or you know i can kind of like accept my person in the middle you know instead of they're like oh i need to only be athlete chad gika chad you know and the other side is like i need to be a cheesy eating vermintide two player or whatever you know who cares like i'm you know i'm thankful and it's like it's also something to chew on right because within these like these dark weekends like i feel like i just sit and like again just look in the mirror or not know what to think about and then i end up thinking about things i don't want to think about you know hard things hurtful things you know and having that kind of sense of mind that i can kind of like direct where my thoughts are going it gives me comfort you know gives me stability i think so i thank you for that well you're very welcome don did you you're kind of a gig of chad yourself you know what i did not i know it's kind of weird but what makes you think i'm a giga chad dude i have a personal belief that chad it's a mentality thing it's not a physique thing it's not a what is the mentality of a giga chad i raise others up that's the thing i mean it kind of that kind of ties into you know what my dad did for me but like we're on this planet together bro like let's raise each other up when i think about you know people at the gym help out the weaker one you know or the person who's not doing good form just helping each other out that's a gigan chat you know not the 200 pound person who's only looking at himself you know 200 pound uh bodybuilder you know so when i think when i think of gigachat i think of people like you you know who's kind of who has his life set up has his life in a situation that can you know he can live the rest of his life than you know on the side like you said you're not a streamer here you are on twitch helping out little old me you know with with my mentality and how many people are watching what 5k people watching you know who knows if two people in there are being changed to me that that's that's a giga chat so when i say you're a giga chat that's that's what i think so i'm sure that i look like a giga chad from the outside but i would say to you don that you and i are exactly the same and and i i'm not just i know it sounds kind of like oh like that's what a geeky chad would say you know i got that i understand that yeah but but i think this really importantly needs to be understood the problem don is that when you wake up and you try to be anything that's the mistake like you are what you are right and in that moment you need to ask yourself like what do i want to do right now because we think about who i am is something that's longitudinal over time but it's not who you are is only present in the moment so i'd agree with you that a lot of giga chads have a mentality and that mentality is to not try to be a chat at all but just like what do i want to be in this moment devote yourself fully to like when you went like today i don't know where you are what time zone you're in but it's friday right it's 2 15 in central time and so like what are you gonna do for the rest of the day that's who you are you cannot like who you are is defined by your thoughts and your actions more importantly your actions and so like what are you gonna do today and be like and it's okay for you to like you know be a degen person from time like i do it too you know like dinner for me last night like oftentimes i eat healthy but dinner for me last night was like a leftover taco and like a glass of milk and some indian snacks because it was just it had been a long day and then today i'm gonna like eat better you know and and so just you are you're already exactly what you need to be and the giga chad is one who realizes that that it's okay to like not be where you want to be i like that right and like the more that you like are you gonna be a professional athlete one day sure why not but today are you going to be someone who does your practice or not because forget about the professional athletes like what are you going to be today yeah yeah powerful stuff you can't can't skip today man i always want to montage rocky montage my way through through life you know and then show up at the end but exactly so so one of my mentors once told me that no one wants to write a book everyone wants to have written a book yeah that's the problem with the goal mentality right you want like oh i want to have a backyard i want a barbecue you want you want to be at the end like you want to be at the end of the story no one wants to live through it yeah dude it's true and the biggest paradox is it's the people who chase the end that never get there and it's the people who let go of the end that are the ones that become the giga chats so i do you meditate i i've been trying to um usually in the mornings sometimes i just fall asleep and it's i always laugh myself that's okay so if you fall asleep while meditating um i that just means your body needs sleep so so that's okay stock stock um but i i'd give you one practice uh let me just think about this so you say that sometimes you look in the mirror and you don't like what you see yeah it's it's like a mix of like not liking what i see and like not recognizing it and that it's kind of like why i don't like it like it's not it's not me you know it's not i just don't like it you know whether or not how i get there i don't like it so i know it sounds kind of weird but i'd say do any one of our meditation practices like uh alternate nostril breathing or anything like that and then i want you to go and look in a mirror and then you're gonna say to yourself that's not me which is great then i want you to go and sit and close your eyes and then ask yourself what about that person is not you and if that isn't you then who are you and try to figure out like if this because i agree actually what you see in the mirror is not you then who are you be careful about doing this when you're in a dark place though okay the reason i say like doing alternate nostrils do something else first because if you're in a dark place what you'll notice you can even do this but what you'll notice is that all of the things that are not you or all of the things that you loathe about yourself i wish i was this i should be this you don't want to like give in to that so in a calm way just look in the mirror and try to see like is this me and if not then what am i i like that seems easy enough you know so if you fall asleep during formal practice it seems like you're a contemplative guy so i'd say that you may be someone who benefits from a non-formal meditation practice i definitely recommend one for you down the road but for now like put some structure around your thoughts and every day like you look in a mirror every day yeah so then i'd ask yourself what am i today and is this person me you know and that can be your meditation for now are you giving us a link to your blog by the way oh muted gg okay we're sol can't hear you hello yeah there we go is it is it back to normal it sounds different but it's like echoing but don't worry about it i mean we're basically just get send your link all right all right i just posted it do i just post it in chat oh is are you dom windu i am dong windu it may be that you can't post a link because mine is so showing is edited okay okay so this is what you message dm it to me i may be able to post it um it's my old high school blog so you know if you want people to read it yeah please go ahead and read it okay um yeah so dom thanks a lot for coming on man oh no thanks for having me you guys really you know put a smile on my face and that's that goes a long ways for a lot of people so i'm gonna leave one last thing for you okay this could be hard but i want you to recognize that at some point somewhere around down the line someone here may be listening to you and be like wow dom seems a lot like me or maybe they'll think he isn't because he's he's more chat he's chad touched and i'm not but dom i'm gonna put some awkward responsibility on you which may be a little bit unfair but i think you need to learn how to be the person that you really want to be if that involves playing bass then learn how to play bass and then come back and tell us what you've learned or how you've grown i know it's it's a lot of responsibility but i i want people to understand that like if they connect with you like you now have a responsibility to each and every person who's watching to see if like you can do it and maybe this is a mistake maybe i'm burdening you too much but like there are people out there who are going to think that it can't be done and you need to prove them wrong i could do that you know what everyone you know it's crazy to me to think that someone else is invested you know someone i've never met is now invested in me and always you look up to heroes and media who do what you're asking me to do and i think i'm willing to commit to that i'm willing to commit to not only improving myself for myself but for someone else that that seems pretty chat like for me you know to me good really figuring it out i can i'll accept that okay cool thank you very much because i can't do it alone bro i'm here for you man awesome i'll do it for dr k leader do it for for twitch chat the twitch chat oh man for the chatars the chat ours i'll do it for you boys i'll do it for you boys man let's go freaking go let's go absolutely take care man i'm getting pumped i'm getting pumped okay good so then do something good for the rest of the day man i'm excited that this is a new wow amazing thank you doctor okay good luck thank you have a good one bye see you guys all right chat let's go you guys heard it from dom right so like for each and every one of you we're not gonna let dom do it alone because he may need us

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 169,218

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist

Id: 1BeRKy_qa7U

Length: 125min 3sec (7503 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/diggerballs16]

How do people get chosen for these streamed sessions?

[u/Jordans6946]

I feel like this didn't really go over how he can get over his dopaminergic binging/addictive behavior of anime/video games and as someone who struggles with this, I'd like to have seen it talked about more.

[u/coscorrodrift]

Great video, I especially liked how he talked about his parents' divorce and how it's some little moments like having to say goodbye to one of your parents to go to the other parent's house on christmas morning is heartbreaking and nightmare inducing