WORRIED ABOUT THE FUTURE w/ Mutahar (SomeOrdinaryGamers)

coming out soon we're gonna be releasing dr k's guides to mental health the guys are organized into three modules so the depression module is designed for people to understand like how depression works how i think about depression the anxiety module is for people who are interested in learning more about anxiety like not just from a clinical perspective but also understanding from a mental perspective how anxiety works in the mind like where do anxious thoughts come from how do they propagate things like that you know something that i'm super excited about is also the meditation module so for those of you who are curious about understanding you know my approach to meditation like what are the different it's there's a lot of theoretical understanding as well as um you know 20 practices or more so if you guys are interested in that you know go ahead and check out the guides so how's it going good buddy how are you i am good a little hectic this morning uh you know as i told you before coming here but yeah i woke up really early i had to get a bunch of stuff done and then uh came back home just in the nick of time cool friday's we're calling you fridays those days where everyone sort of you know does their thing comes home and relax and then i'm just i'm one of those people where it's like friday's the busiest day of my week two weeks i think that is uh my work schedule is more geared towards the weekend like weekends are where i just sort of get all of my stuff done and then i try to make a relaxing weekday for me you know as much as i can that i'm really all over the place so it's like when it comes to weekends after i'm done my work i don't my off time is doing more busy stuff is doing more like intricate stuff so that's that's that that's what comes down you know it's like there's really there's really no moment where i'm like completely off you know like just relaxing on a weekend so um with ours uh thanks for coming on by the way and and dude what do you go about pleasure to be on my name is uh just muda mudahar it works i'm actually glad you're one of the few people that first messaged me and it wasn't like hi mr ordinary gamers because i get that a lot and you know yeah it's never fun give me just one second i'm gonna try to just switch our server and see if that fixes it so so you go by mudahar yeah that's what i go by your first name um yeah no go ahead i thought i was just uh i was getting like a weird thing on here but yeah no i know it's a pretty weird unorthodox you know first name and everything how many people have it yeah so mudahar versus mutahar do you know which one uh i should go in no that is uh no mudahar is fine i never went with the second one that's okay i got it that that may be i may i may get it wrong a couple of times oh don't worry about it almost everyone almost everyone gets it wrong muda sounds very texan so i just got to channel my inner texans oh you're from you're from texas that's some good stuff i've been down there a few times so i hope to go again when all of our lockdowns take you know yeah and restrictions go down and how long have you been in canada uh my whole life really wow uh i would say i would say like if you're talking about me moving here probably when i was less than a year old so i wasn't i wasn't born up here in canada but you know i'm pretty much born canadian if you will right you know i'm surprised by how how similar your accent sounds to people down here you know i i thought about that too for a while when i lived in the states a little bit uh the first i ever lived in the states was michigan everyone told me that i didn't sound canadian and i was like what is the what is the metric for sounding canadian you know what i mean and then i drove an hour up from where i live and then i was like oh that's what the real canadian sounds like okay all right okay that's really off so you said you moved here um you moved to canada when you were a year old from where yeah uh india you know and what what part of india are your parents from uh my whole family is uh from luck now utter pradesh uh you got like half my family from luck now and then you got half my family who like move to pakistan during the partition so it's like it's just spread across the board you know okay um so i i have family back home but i would say like my side of the family where i'm from were were indian you know yeah got it and it was there something in particular that you wanted to talk about today muda honestly uh as i mentioned this earlier it's just the idea of the whole like lockdowns on isolation it's just been insane the last from a canadian i think we've had the worst lockdowns uh when i look at all my american friends right like they're able to go out for like months on end and we've been locked down for like six seven months straight like the hardest lockdowns no stores open no nothing everything has been completely curbside yeah uh meeting family has been the hardest because you you know when you go to meet family in canada during the lockdown you have to you have to do what's known as car tetris i guess where you have to like park your cars in like a block over so the police driving by doesn't like notice like more than four people are in a house meeting each other despite them being family so it's been a complete like everyone is stuck home and the entire government sort of pushed this just talk over zoom which isn't the healthiest thing right like you can't just sit over and hold on a second if there are four cars in a parking lot the police will yeah if they if they notice more than like two cars in a driveway they have the idea that there's like a big gathering in the area and then they just come in and find you like crazy and it's oh my god so they're just like police like patrolling your residential streets yeah oh yeah well there was a there was a point i think two months ago where they gave like the toronto like greater toronto area police officers the right to just like pull your car over on the drive like out on the road and they could pull you over and ask you what you were doing and they could like fine you i guess if you didn't get the right answer no cop ever enforced that all the police chief said that was a bad idea so that's where we were for a while in canada at least uh all while they didn't stop all the international travel so everyone from around the world just kept coming in and we had to like you know stay in our houses which um i'm not like i'm not a doctor so i don't want to like elaborate more on that i'm sure there's a reason but like you know it's just at some point it gets too hard to deal with you know like trying to meet your family i haven't seen my family well now i've seen them you know in the last several weeks but there was a period where i was like okay let's you know talk over the phone i guess let's facetime each other and it was it was never the same because i took it very much for granted before the lockdown ever began i was always like a solo guy like i was always living you know on my own and having a good time but we would always go meet each other over the weekends right like you know dinners you know go out to eat and then it's like for the last six months there was like a period where they stopped the lockdown for like 12 hours and then they just started it up again that same night so we had we had lockdowns over six months i would say and then it was just we were yeah we were completely separated hardcore in in the province that i'm in what's that been like for you uh i would say the worst i mean like i said it's it's something that i definitely took for granted hardcore and i'll never take it again for granted after right like the last time i could remember going out for like a meal with friends was like august of 2019 you know like that's what like 2019 is where like my last you know brain kicks in like wow that was when uh things were normal and then i had a flight to texas you know because we had packed south with friends and i went over there we had a good time the moment i flew back january 2020 is like when the whole lockdown started ramping up and you know this whole cobin 19 broke down and then in home ever since you know work from home do nothing occasionally meeting friends you know once in a while but so other than that when you say it's been rough like in what way has it affected you i i miss having people next to me you know i miss having people over you know even if it is just a talk right like i have very like i would say minimal social needs i don't need to go anywhere you know what i mean i need to like experience the world in that you know traditional way what most people expect i i i i like to i like the concept of having friends over even if it is just to watch a movie over there to have a drink or you know play a video game or something or have a barbecue over at my house like before the whole coronavirus i used to see my uh got child every once in a while right like we went over there we had a whole family thing uh it's been over a year since that's happened and he's already grown up to like you know just like kids grow fast so now it's just oh wow it's been over a year i mean what am i gonna do and that's where we're at you know it's it really sets into stone how important it is to have like an actual physical connection and like be there to other because you can't do it over the internet like no matter what anyone says you can't do you know zoom calls you can't do even when it comes to work right like when it came to my job we do like a small business over here so we're like we're like a family right we see each other in the office all the time now that we're home you know what the heck right like it's all over the place you know even even physical health-wise you know whereas i used to go out and do activities here and there now because we're all locked in you know what are you gonna do right like your timings are all over the place what what do you do how do you spend your uh for me my well i have a pretty strict schedule now for work right like i start work at like eight o'clock i end it by 3 30 p.m like i used to a year or two ago like i used to be hardcore into that 24 hour no work life balance which completely threw me out for a loop right it was the worst thing you can ever do with your health so now i have like this you know i wake up early finish you know sometime reasonably before the sun goes down and then i go out for a walk you know i go out and you know run here and there or you know just breed some fresh air and then by like seven o'clock i'll wind down and and muda can you just can we actually rewind a little bit can you tell me a little bit about what growing up in canada was like and stuff like that growing up in canada is about i guess one could expect like i mean i had a normal childhood i'm not gonna i don't have like wild stories but i'll say as an indian kid growing up post 9 11 that's the one thing that i would remember the hardest a lot of people make canada out like it's this crazy multicultural loving society and that's true for you know 95 of the scenarios but when you're the only indian kid growing up after you know what is one of the greatest north american tragedies you know there's going to be a lot of people who look at you and in a way that whole experience probably shaped me into the person that i am because i've always said this on stream right like when i went through that period of you know being bullied for being isolated based on you know who i was i could either absolutely you know let this ruin me or i could just you know hunker down i could realize okay i can take this adversity and i can you know channel it and i can turn it into a productive you know i i can fight against it in a productive manner and i feel like that's what i've done now so it's how do you do that uh work hard you know back when i back as indian kids growing up you know as asian kids your parents always tell you about how important it is you know to be good at school you know you always got to get a pluses you always got to do this you always got to do that and growing up in canada in that environment it's so much more important it's so much stronger to realize that the only way that you can prove your worth in society right and at least this is how i learned is you have to get into the system and you have to be the best of the best in the system regardless of how much it is stacked against you right so i would say for an immigrant kid literally an immigrant child you know it's probably two times harder than the average person you have to deal with over here but it is doable regardless of how much you have to sacrifice in your life and i've had to sacrifice you know high school is when i pretty much started working and only now at 27 am i winding down my life you know like only now do i feel like i can breathe right so it's uh it's it's been a journey like growing up especially here especially with how um you know that environment was post 9 11 right wow yeah and and so let me just think for a second so do you have siblings you mind if i ask i have uh one brother yeah okay older younger younger five years younger than me and and did you get a sense of so so you're you're like a full-time youtuber now right uh it's a hobby sort of but okay yeah yeah hobbyist at this point so when you say so when you say you work from eight to three thirty can you help me understand what what you consider work so eight to three thirty is when i start up my actual work computer because i have two separate computers right like a work computer and then like a gaming computer right i keep it completely separate because when i have games installed on my work computer it you know mine goes somewhere else i'll play this match in there so i started my work computer uh when it comes to my actual you know job i work as you know i work investing and you know at this point right like stock market stuff so i got to wake up i got to wake up early i got to like screen stuff and i got to like screen stocks and i got to like look at investments so i'll buy and sell early in the morning and i'm usually done by like noon if i'm you know oh so i missed that so you're like a day trader yeah i used to be but now it's just you know at this point that that was what i used to do for a while and now things have become more relaxed so it's just buying and selling and that's pretty much what it is for me so buying large commodities and putting them on the market selling and things of that nature and so what did you think you were going to do in high school oh man i had no prospects coming out of high school i was so in the middle of work and studying that around the time of 11th grade because in high school they tell you is your 11th grade results and your 12th grade results is what matters to go to college i was so busy at the time that i was like man what did i want to do um if i had any goal in my life uh it was to be a lawyer because that's i would consider that have been my dream job for the longest time is to work in law but uh this is a point where money going into law school is probably one of the after medical school it might be the second most expensive form of schooling maybe toe to toe so that wasn't a reality for me at the time after high school it was just i actually applied to the army but you know that didn't go anywhere eventually i just worked i went to university for computer sciences and that's it and and so you said you were working in high school what kind of work did you do in high school uh just computer work early and that's what i was doing you know your basic like part-time work nothing you know substantial i was also a student at the time and in fact a lot of my work really ended up being just like basic community service work just to rack on the hours because in canada you have to do your minimal amount of community service to graduate like 40 hours but 40 hours is like the minimum you need like way over 40 if you want to get into a good university or at least even have an attempt so i was always working for free either that making some part-time cash on the side um and that's pretty much or you know getting my studies done some night schooling because we had to get more credits than i had because i moved around a lot during high school in america and canada so when you move around during high school your credits don't carry over sometimes so i had to take some extra classes to even be able to graduate and get into university so it was a hectic period hectic four years of my life that you know that doesn't sound very fun it is absolutely the most unfun thing and you know what makes it even more unfun is when you're not good at a lot of your subjects like i was never good at english i didn't have a lot of good creative classes i was in the only class that i was really really good at was math that's about it that's my background right like math is one of those things where it's like okay you give me a formula i'll be able to you know extrapolate based on that but uh i i literally could not do i i was just i wasn't really feeling all the other subjects i was good at it like i could get good grades but you're not feeling it right like i don't want to go to this english class like sure i'll get your 90 and i'll call it a day but it's not fun for me it's not engaging me uh the only class that i actually even ever enjoyed asides from math which i'm saying enjoyed because i i like numbers you know to an extent was a video production class it was sort of like you know one of those electives you would have you would just pick in so i was like i get to edit videos on final cut pro it sounds like you worked really hard in high school talking about taking night classes doing community service like side jobs on the side like mm-hmm yeah no it's it's blurred i'll i'll help you understand yeah i mean can you help me understand like what was in your mind like if you're a sophomore in high school like my mind was to in my head i had this long-term goal of keeping my grade point average above a certain point right that's my long-term goal um in sophomore year super important because in my head i always think like this right like when they told me that 11th grade and 12th grade was the important grades where they would calculate them like there's no way you're ever going to be successful in those grades if you don't start that success from the 9th grade or the 10th grade era right like if you're just slacking off for the first two years that mentality rolls in to those last two years so i was always working hard and maintaining my gpas having my prerequisites all of that stuff even when we were moving around right i was calculating okay i just lost these many credits i gotta have this much to graduate i was there was a point man for like 11th grade i was just focused on can i graduate normally do i have to like victory lap based on how much i moved around you know that's that's what was running in my head so um and i remember like moving around my dad who is in the medical field he moves around a lot because of it uh i never ever told him that yeah this is really piling on to me dad because i didn't want to like you know be a burden on it i don't want to tell him to know screw your job over because i'm telling you so i just kind of rolled with it i dealt with the punches because i'm telling you high school felt like i was in the longest boxing match of my life and there was no breaks right like it was just that's punch punch it was punch punch punch dude even summer breaks we had those two month breaks and for a lot of students for a lot of guys it's like two months off i hold on i'm just getting a little two months off i it feels like forever for me two months off felt like a weekend now you know it's just like all right school's ended okay i got some homework i got to focus on what's happening going into this next grade i got to make sure that you know i have i even had like a money you know like goal too because i was like i got to save enough cash in order to even think of going to college or university right so wow yeah like i would say growing up for me happened uh forcibly you know a lot of people get to enjoy their life like you know their younger age they get to make their mistakes i was on like a tight rope with no safety net imagine having the imagine having the like the the skinniest thread going across the niagara falls and you have to cross the entire thing and there's no safety net so that's what my life kind of felt like felt like for a while when did you realize how old were you when you realized that you have no safety net uh probably first year of college i would say when i when i got into college right because when i i thought when i got into university for a while and i dropped out like a semester in because i was like okay no no i'm not doing because university of toronto like the first semester that you went in you paid this crazy amount and uh at this point i started you know getting more work on the side i started building up a career so i was like wait a minute do i choose to go through this university path which will work for me or to go on the career path that's when i realized like okay i'm on that tight rope you know like i'm on i've got no safety in it like i'm after high school high school was that era where i could make my mistakes right now i'm in college now i'm in the professional field you know now i'm like on my own i have to make money to pay my mortgages or rent at the time and that's when i realized okay now i can't make a single mistake now i'm stuck in now whatever i choose to go whatever choice i make now will affect my weeks going on forward that's where my mind was you know first year of college i find that a little bit hard to believe um because i i know it sounds kind of a weird thing to say but like it sounds to me like you you were sort of really think i mean maybe you had a safety net of sorts but it sounds to me like even when you were a freshman or sophomore in high school you were like i gotta start now like you know it's i almost hear that mentality there like even earlier than college where like if you screw up in 10th grade there's no way you can do what you need to in 11th grade or 12th grade no i i'll say that i had the mentality in high school like that then because like i told you earlier i was like okay i got to make sure my grades are good yeah to get accepted into college but when i got into college right you think like for a second that you can breathe for a bit now that you're in college you know you've gotten into the university you've wanted to you're into the program and it's still hard right like it you know it's it's not high school you know advanced anymore it's still it's it's you're professional at that point and i think the reality of when i turned 18 and i became a full adult and you know i didn't have my parents to depend on anymore i had like it felt like every choice decision that i was making was completely on me and like college that you know 18 to like 25 was that moment where like every decision i make will affect how my life is forward i feel like that's that's where i realized like okay you know call high school maybe i could have made a mess up or two right maybe you know but not not in my college or professional life you sound very um you know like the future was sort of like bearing down on you like every single day like that's sort of what i'm feeling it's like there's sort of this i still feel like that man i mean even though like i'm 27 now and i think i've got my life together i still think about what life is going to be like at 40 for me right and yeah it's interesting because my dad one day sat me down you know just before the pandemic he's like because i told him this exact same conversation that we're having right now it's deja vu for me i told him about like i got a prep for my life at 40 and my dad one time he told me he's like do you even know if you're going to be alive at 40. like my dad had this conversation it was a weird conversation like dad why would you think that right like and the dad's like no it's a legit question like are you gonna be you know alive at 40. like how do you know that how do you know why are you choosing to like live for life and why are you prepping for 40 when you're not even living now and even though we had that conversation it's hard to ever get out of that mindset you know like it's there's never a night i have where i go to bed and i don't think tomorrow you know the responsibilities that i have right like you know all of that just sort of compiles on you i would absolutely love to have like a mental guide map i feel like this is this is actually a really great question for me i i look at life in the numbers and like what's there you know like good example right like when i look at things tomorrow right i'm like this is how much i need to pay for my bill tomorrow my mortgage you know every payment for the next six seven months right i look at it from a numbers perspective right like this is what i need but i never look at myself right i never realized what do i need to make sure mentally is what i'm prepared for for the next day right like what how do i make sure that i'm mentally like sane six months from now right how do i make sure that i don't overwork myself to like you know literal insanity so yeah i would actually like the help there is there a problem yes there's a big problem that's because your goal is actually reinforcing the problem so it's subtle but you're like you know so like instead of thinking about dollars like you've said oh muda has like a bank account and he has like a mental bank account and what i'm doing right now is i'm withdrawing money from my mental bank account to make sure my physical bank account is good how do i ensure that my mental bank account is nice and full you see what i'm saying but it's still that that mentality of like how do i make sure that tomorrow is gonna be okay yeah and and we could talk about isolation in the pandemic if you want to i i you know this is it's it's really your i feel like it's more i feel like it's more interesting to hit the root of my actual mental problem here yeah if you're gay this is yeah this is way beyond isolation this is like my entire life yep and that's what we're here so let's you okay diving in a little bit yeah i'm okay diving in okay if i if you ask you a question that makes you i'll let you know if i want to answer yeah yeah right okay um i was about to say it makes you uncomfortable but i think it's okay for me to ask you questions that make you uncomfortable and you got to let me know if i step too far okay okay so i'm i'm going to start with so tell me what it's like to live one day in your head if i was an observer in your head what would what would i witness well you'd witness me waking up and immediately checking all my emails work things for what we have to do today for the next week throughout the week you know doing all of that busy work in your head making all your calls making all you know you know your day-to-day communication and then uh living basically i would say hour by hour as to handling in and making sure all of your work responsibilities are met day-to-day i would say that if you were an observer looking in you'd probably notice that for an hour in the morning i get to breathe a little bit and then for the rest of the day it's like autopilot you know like work i'm doing this and then towards the end of the day like you know 4 4 35 is when you get to see me again right like i've entered my body seeing me be myself and what what is what is it like when you enter your body again it's uh i guess it's like a feeling of just i guess uh well for one you know you you get to breathe again you know you get to be yourself you get to focus on what your hobbies are you get to focus on what you want to do for the rest of the day right now you finally gotten your body back so for me it's like hey do i go out for a walk or do i go home and i sit and program something that i'm into because one of the things that i love to do after work is i love to you know sit around and program and tinker with you know a couple computers that i have sitting around over here so for me the rest of the day is just basically what i love you know like what i actually want to do not what i have to do to to survive day by day right so for me that's what it comes down to and then that's pretty much what it is regardless of what my channel name is some ordinary gamers i do i don't do a whole lot of gaming throughout the week unfortunately because of responsibilities anymore but uh you know that's the day of my life an observer if you will um i'm doing something every hour there's never a point where i sit down and i i really breathe you know like i have like my moments but i'm always what happens when you sit down and try to breathe i honestly can't like everyone gives me advices on meditation uh you know like breathe for like 15 minutes you know do something and i keep doing it but like there's this feeling of anxiety i would say like there's this feeling that a physical feeling it's almost like you know when your throat is raspy you know what i mean like it almost feels like it's just you're throwing lava down your throat like it's just it's you just don't feel good it's kind of like a panic attack if you will because i feel like i have to be doing something it could be anything it could be something it could literally be me like you know spinning something in my hand right like a fidget spinner whatever anything but i i don't know if i can sit down in a chair and just close my eyes and breathe non-stop for 15 minutes because in my head i'm always like wow you could have done something productive you could have done something you've just sat down and literally did nothing you know you just sat down in your own head my brain doesn't allow me to sort of think for a little bit to to be in my head you know because my head there's another voice that tells me you gotta do this you gotta do that you got to make sure this is done you're wasting your time you know you have this responsibility for tomorrow you got to make sure that it's set like i had i had a video project that i had to get done on friday one time this was a month ago i uh i do a big video project on my channel every month so i divide up the whole thing you know like i'll do an hour of it one day and then i'll do an hour of it the other day so i've already divided it you know but even though that i've allocated one hour of my day to this project when i sit down to breathe i'm like you could have applied this half an hour to this project and sort of gotten it done faster you could have made the project better so when i'm uploading this video in my head i'm like wow it could be way better than what i did i wasted you know free time it'll always constantly run through your head like there's never a there's never a point where your brain will allow you to stop and think and be yourself it's always you can do something you can be doing something you're not doing anything so i wouldn't say worthless feeling but you know it's it's not healthy at the same time i don't know how to exactly describe that i don't know the term if it exists but how does it feel to share that ah it doesn't yeah it feels weird like i keep a lot of this in my head man yeah i never have the i don't think i have the courage to ever describe this to people you know like if you were to sit across from me and you asked me hey are you okay i would most likely give you a lie like i would lie to your face and be like i'm totally you know like i don't think i have the why does it require courage to i just feel like i'm opening myself i feel like i'm coming across as weak when i tell you like i you know i'm calling myself this worthless individual in my head i don't want to like reiterate that same thing to you i'll tell you that i'm doing fine like even when it came to my parents right it's like are you okay like are you doing so i would always tell them yeah i'm absolutely wonder like even even when we were moving around and i could my dad like hey moving around in high school would have been pretty bad like it would have added stress i'm like no dad it's 100 great i'll make it work absolutely so you know this is one lie you keep telling yourself and you try to lie enough about that that you end up believing yourself i guess i feel weak in my head like i can't i don't have the i don't have the courage to tell somebody that i feel weak in my i've always felt that those feelings are a lot easier to deal with if you can bottle it up and punch through the day you know what i mean the boxing match that never ends the boxing match that'll never end like some days it feels like it feels like i i guess it just it's like it's like somebody's shooting me you know what i mean it's like it's like it's like it's like i'm getting shot every day right like it's like that feeling right like that punch to your stomach you know what i mean and it's like you can tell somebody that it hurts you can tell somebody that it you know you know you can lean on somebody or you can just sort of deal with the fact that it happened to you and move on you know if that makes any sense right like you know you've you've already had the impact so are you gonna are you gonna waste time sticking with it are you gonna waste time thinking to yourself what you could have changed or will you just proceed to go on or will you fight on ahead right yeah persevere yeah perseverance exactly you know the strong survive type mentality that like there's no time for a break your brain won't let you sit quietly for 15 minutes absolutely not because you have to persevere and if you don't then your brain will tell you you're wasting time do you feel me sharing this right now yeah actually to be honest with you i feel uh yeah i feel i i i got i gotta i gotta i gotta i have spent my entire life bottling things up you know like if anything is genuinely hurting me mentally i felt that it's easier if i can just bottle it up and push on but i've got you know younger siblings i've got parents you know like the older they get the more i gotta take care of them so it's like i gotta be in that mentality in some ways i gotta get used to be the stone if you will right like this tanooki suit from mario which is like just perfectly still like it just nothing can affect it yeah i know the thing about the tanooki suit is that you can't move anywhere stay stuck i mean i know listen in my head i know at one point like for a long time that if i keep doing it will be the death of me like physically if i if i choose to keep doing this concept of if i choose if i choose to keep bottling myself up i am eventually killing myself by doing you know because there's no way that i i feel like mentally i'll be able to keep doing it for 10 more years like if i'm 35 36 still bottling and things that's going to be where my brain stops working and you know i'm just either i become such an emotionless person either i do with it that i lose who i am or you know gets worse it's unsustainable it's just not possible it's not something healthy but i don't know the way out i don't know how to escape it what scares me the most is i won't ever figure out how to escape it what's your understanding of what's my understanding of okay i think for a second muda yeah yeah no absolutely go ahead take your time i don't want to feel like i'm one of your you know hard cases or something like yeah so sorry i i i i get the sense you're very anxiously looking at my face and trying to interpret how i'm sitting with what you're sharing so let me just start talking because i've i'm afraid that if i sit silently for a minute your mind is gonna like create all kinds of negative thoughts does that make sense yeah yeah it already is beginning so what is it share with me what your mind is telling you right now well in your head when you look around it's like when you have when your eyes open up a little bit and you're you know it's like earlier you're like the [ __ ] right like you were just like what's going on with i was like man in my head for a second i'm like i guess i'm i guess i'm too far gone i guess i'm just one of those people that he's like i thought this guy was you know i thought i thought i thought you know i could do some work with this guy and i was just oh he's gone i uh uh i'm i'm very confident that we can do work i can i can feel very good about helping you with this um so so but and and i i think it's tricky because no matter what i say even if i if i say something like that i would imagine that instead of being reassured you would actually feel like maybe a little bit ashamed if i say something like that do you detect it actually actually you hit it right on the money there right now yeah now now what what is it tell me when i say no no don't worry i can absolutely help you with this and then what do you feel i don't know i just i guess i feel like the the positivity like sort of the laugh for a second that you had it almost i would feel like it's kind of like a pitying in a way you know what i mean like i don't know we can we can deal with it it's just it's it's hard for my brain to believe it you know it's hard for my brain to believe it after so long what does it believe what is it my brain believes it's my brain honestly believes so it's my brain just telling me that it's all like just bs and you can't just do it you know yeah my my brain is working against it it's very difficult to explain how it's working against it but it's it's it's treating this whole scenario like like it's it's all a joke and maybe like someone's pitying you for what you're in right now um but i mean i i'm trying like in my head i'm trying to convince myself yeah okay you know this is help right i don't want it to be pity no yeah we're good we're gonna help you out so we're gonna calm your brain down you ready okay yeah so it's it's better to be dead than weak right that's true yeah you know you don't like like it's fine to suffer but like you don't actually like need someone's help you don't need your pity you can punch through you know and if like if the cost is your mental health if the cost is a heart attack that's a price we're willing to pay it's all good like we can handle that we've survived this [ __ ] no mess you know how messed up it is that i believe that 100 that is like that is a mantra i could live by like it's better to be dead than it is weak that's that's you've literally hit my life [ __ ] like you you like you know like you walk into an office and they have like their company slogan you've exactly like wrote the company slogan out there it's better to be dead than it is yeah when you say you could live your life by it bro you have been living your life yeah you're right i haven't looked any other way hypothetical my dude yeah no no it's not yeah exactly i'm making it sound like i could be in the situation no i am in the situation i am living in that i built the entire house myself yeah absolutely yeah right absolutely i mean it's like you know that's your company slogan this is the house that you've built right that's the bet i made you know i better lay in it i guess absolutely right it's it's my i chose this yeah right i have no one to blame i don't need anyone's help no one needs to pity me like i did this yeah no 100 i i mean like i think of life as like in a way i know that i said isolation i i i said it earlier that i'm a very like reserved like i'll engage with everyone around me but in a lot of ways and if if i guess i feel i guess i feel like in my head like the only life i've ever known is being alone on an island or sort of by yourself trudging through every aspect of your life yourself because it's like for me i don't think i can rely on anyone professionally i always put it on to myself and that's how i've succeeded in my life and that's how i'll continue to succeed i think it's very hard for me to include any full partner you know what i mean like uh honestly i i feel like a lot of my relationships in life have failed right like well you know romantic relationships because i choose to it's great for a while but then i just tend to reserve and get back into myself and it's hard for me to end up trusting anyone else and sort of confiding anymore like literally the conversation that we just had now i could never have even if i was we're talking like two years into our relationship if we talk never this this is never going to happen me and you we can never be together i don't know i mean it could have been life is you know what i mean who knows but like that conversation that like level of okay you gave me my company slogan we would never even get like a quarter into that conversation like anything they would like ask me uh you know it's like are you okay my response would be like i'm great you know like yeah perfect absolutely you know how's work even though i could have had the worst day like i could have lost a contract i'm like it's great what would it what would it mean to say things aren't going great what would it mean to say things aren't going great for me is if you could look around me and see the entire burning pile that i'm in you know like if my if my if you walked by my office and it was like yeah foreclosed everything gone company's dead you know they have to dissolve that's what it would take for me to say yeah you know it's not no but so so let's say that that you you just had a bad day what would it mean to you or what would your brain tell you if you tried to share with someone oh my brain would tell me you don't share because like that other person they're probably going to look at you like wow this is the guy that like what an idiot like only an idiot messes up like that right like kind of like if i lost a contract my brain would be like don't tell them that they'll think you're a [ __ ] idiot for telling that they'll think you didn't look you can't even do your job you're like you're like inept doing your job because that's what my brain says like don't bother like even if somebody asks me that like if my parents will do it i'll be like work is going fine don't worry about it even though you know if i have a bad day i have a bad day i can't you know tell anybody anything uh uh muda i'd i'd like a moment to think but i i want us to be a little bit careful about what kind of judgments your mind is telling you yeah okay um i'm just trying to figure out how to help help you through this a little bit and and don't worry you're going to do it all on your own i'm just going to point the way you're going to do all the heavy lifting okay bro all right just can i have a second yeah no absolutely go for it how you holding up by the way i i am i'm actually surprisingly good right now i had a good i had a good day before we came over here like i got all of my work pretty much done out with so everything's great everything is fine quite a bad day it'd be up i had a i had a good day before we started this but but it's no no i have a good day now but like that would have like if i had a terrible if i didn't get my job like if i didn't get my work done before we started i would have been like in a completely off mood so now i'm just like all right so here's here's what we're getting here's my hypothesis okay i'm gonna just lay things out for you because i'm a little bit concerned about i want to try to help you participate in the health healthiest way possible one really healthy way to participate is that i can just predict what your brain is going to tell you and we can kind of like work through that just notice what your brain is doing that's actually that will help you come out of this i know it sounds weird but just noticing these thought patterns will start to give you power over them okay okay but what i'd really like to do is i i think that basically what's going on is that you have like this programming in your head and i think it actually comes from a particular place and as we understand like where that programming comes from is we understand why that voice essentially like started in the first place and further more like what has reinforced the volume of that voice right because i i think at this point if we kind of talk about it like what we see is that it's that voice which has been looking out for you right like does that make sense yeah the the guiding voice in your head that tells you how to succeed day to day yeah yeah right but it's also the voice that kind of like makes you feel like as you say you get shot on a daily basis because you know it's all tangled up right so so what i want you to understand is that like you know our mind does things to adapt to particular situations and then what ends up happening usually later in life is that some of those things can be become maladaptive so you learned how to be like essentially like a one-man show right like you know i i would guess that while your parents probably told you like oh it's good to do in school like they weren't the ones keeping track of like which classes you need to repeat right right like you were doing that for yourself so like like like your ability and so that like that sort of self-reliance was probably like really helpful back then but now as you mentioned i'm glad you brought it up because then you know i don't i don't have to but i i think like when it comes to romantic relationships and stuff it's going to cause problems like because because and so i know it sounds weird but i'd rather be dead than weak i think that's actually not the original slogan that's the rebrand i think actually this problem starts with the phrase making sure and that if you can if you can learn how to like not make sure that dot dot dot then your life will be quite different does that make sense or is that too vague no it makes sense yeah no it's like make sure you don't do this negative thing or else it'll lead into that negative yep so i'd say that the really the controlling thing in your life is like you know and even if you kind of talk about confiding how your day is like what are you really doing when you don't share how you really feel you're making sure right what are you making sure when does that make sense is that like i know it's kind of a weird question i guess i'm making sure that i'm like not exposing myself exactly right so like what are you actually controlling like you're controlling the perception you're making sure that this person does not think about you this way and so what i'm really hearing is that like like you know i could be wrong here okay so this is i'm presenting you with a hypothesis and it's you know you're welcome to push back but like the theme that i'm really hearing is that like you're making sure because it's it's interesting because i'm gonna just start tying stuff together okay could be relevant i mean i don't really know we're like you know we're in alpha testing here okay nowhere near a finished product this idea of like no safety net right and and so like if you think about like you know what is someone who's you did a beautiful job of creating this imagery of like you know a horse hair that is like stretched across for a hundred miles and what is someone who has to cross that tightrope have to do they have to make sure because there's nothing to catch them yeah right and like you know why can't you tell people how you feel because you have to make sure that something when you when you know why do you have to like work you know you wake up every day at 8 00 a.m and and and you know you're like oh my work my weekends are my busy days but it sounds like you work seven days a week and then i get a little bit of me time and then even get a bit of me time yeah but even in the me time right your your mind is like you better make sure like you're not going to give yourself any me time if your mind says you need to make sure dot dot dot because in the meantime i'm guessing goes out the window we haven't even talked about it but i'd also guess that you know you said two two hours two years ago you're saying you would work for 24 hours at a stretch no work-life balance and i'd guess that the main thing was that you had to make sure you had to make sure this went okay this goes back to your partner business where like you're kind of like i can't really trust anyone right because you have to make sure that everything is okay yeah so what i feel so like for me it's also i guess there's also a feeling of like i have to be in control of myself and i can't just you know deconstruct my feelings and myself in front of somebody else i don't want to i guess there's also a feeling of i don't need i don't want to feel like i ever have to rely on even if it's in like a roman relationship like i want to feel like if if something ever happens in that right like god forbid like a partner passes away or something you know what i mean like acts of god that i can at least compartmentalize and like make sure that i'm still me yeah so so i think that's a great example right so because i think here's the thing you can't make sure that acts of god won't happen absolutely so what can you make sure i can see in front of me and i feel like i can control right like what i think is within my grasp you know so i'm gonna i'm gonna jump a little bit here okay so what you can make sure of is that you don't fall in love with someone that acts of god can take away from you right lord i made that mistake yeah yeah have your phones i fell in love with uh individuals with your health that you know i don't want to elaborate further because i don't want to like you know expose what they have but point is it's it's terminal and i guess i knew that going ahead of time like falling in love with somebody knowing years later that they would be gone exactly the smartest thing i could have done but you know emotions are emotion they tend to happen and i made that mistake you know in life they're still fine now don't worry like they have a few more years to go yeah that was you know it's a rare thing when i say something like that is like a hypothetical no this person has a well i'll tell you this person has a pot so it's uh tachycardia it's really bad um they have a couple more syndromes regarding it like long qt and everything of that nature so for them the they've had to get like sinus note surgery modifications like burning on their hearts and things like that uh doctors have told doctor specialists who are trained in this field have started to you know give up and sort of give like end of life uh you know i have to be told about like what a dnr is like a do not resuscitate order i don't know it's it's at the end stages and that's um it's a lot more common i guess than one can expect you know people are going through it they just don't really like to talk about it very similar to how i don't like to talk about what my head is doing people don't like to ever talk about their physical ailments until you end up getting to love them and you know that comes out sorry i need a minute to process that i was not expecting that one how are you feeling when i say i need a moment to process is it more of like oh my god like i know i know i know you're i know it's definitely like you know a lot to deal with it's still a lot to deal with mentally in my head realizing somebody of my age is going through that um especially somebody i still very deeply care about but you know can i ask you questions about no i i have no interest in in digging into that person's privacy but right now i i can ask you about my side of the yeah yeah connection to that yeah yeah okay um yeah can you tell me how old you were when you met this person i would say that i was 24 24. so three years ago and that's uh can can you tell me a little bit about how you it sounds like you fell in love yeah you know we sort of met we hung out for a bit and eventually we shared some common interests uh you know she became much she became my girlfriend that's pretty much what it comes down to but uh you know around that time she told me very much before we ever got together that she was going through all of this and all of you know these health issues and at the time it wasn't it wasn't as severe as it is now so i was always in my head like ah you'll get positivity right i'm like you have the best doctor care in the world you'll be fine and uh now it's also to a point where you know the best doctors in the world couldn't do it right god's calling her home that kind of [ __ ] so yeah how do you how do you feel right now sharing that i feel really [ __ ] sad that i'm about to lose someone as it's in my head there's nothing that i feel like personally is happening to me like you know i'm being affected mentally because of it because in my head i'm just realizing as much as it affects me right like you know that's i would say inconsequential to the physical health of this other person right you know even if like it's hard to see somebody in that situation you know what i mean like i don't want to see somebody in that situation even wherever i care about and so i try to like distance myself in a way as much as i can you know by burying myself in work or a hobby or something but then like you know you can't completely do that you can't completely ignore the world around you so i look at that and i guess i get really angry seeing that that's happening to somebody i care about somebody a very young age you know in their mid-20s like me it's like what the [ __ ] you know like i guess i'm more angry than i am thinking about myself because i don't really matter in the scheme of thing when it when i'm looking at you know somebody go through sailing they're about to go die and you know i'm about to you know live on in the world while losing somebody so what right do you have to complain yeah right exactly like i'm sitting over here and you know i'm not dying with a functioning heart yeah right like i'm not dead you know i get to i get to see tomorrow i get to see our acts of god 2022 2023 and beyond you know this person is at the end you know i mean there was a period of my life where i actually thought i could have it like i could have had like family something going forward right like it could have worked past it could have been everything i i had i had a i had a brief moment of like i could have like you know really i could settle down for once and then things started messing up and we ended up growing apart you know because of my work and everything that was it you know do you do you talk to her oh yeah here and there you know we have uh you know it's not like we stopped communicating fact i'm one of the few people aside from her parents she'll communicate to about health issues right i guess i'm like an emergency contact so that tends to happen does she know how much she means to you yeah i tell her that yeah i tell her that you know at the end of the day i wish things could have been different but uh you know they're not does she get to see strong muda or weak muda i don't think she's ever seen weak muta to be honest with you it's been we weren't long enough together for her to ever see me like i think in a lot of ways when i saw her in the way that she was and i saw her physical like you know issues her terminal issues like you know health problems i'd never ever wanted to show her muta because i was like this [ __ ] on a daily basis and she was already really strong you know like dealing with all of her illnesses when you're putting a smile on your face after the specialists have told you no i don't know if i could know you know what i mean i don't know if i i recently had appendicitis surgery right and i remember waking up in recovery and the doctor like was telling me we did your blood test uh you're gonna have to stay another day i was losing in my mind i'm like die you know what i mean like what is he saying right and i mean that was like inconsequential compared to like this right like i was like i was i was in a recovery i was going to come out just fine but then i look at her situation and it's like the doctors the specialists are telling her okay we should be discussing eol and all this nonsense only dude that would have completely broken me mentally i don't know if i could have done it i think at that point i would prefer that they stuck some cyanide in me and like ended it right there but i mean if you're still putting on a smile and you're still fighting through it and [ __ ] if you're still exercising day in and day out because of it you're you're stronger man than i a stronger person than i you know so uh when it came to being with her i always had to put on like an extra smile i guess so to speak like i had to bring out the extra smile just so that you know since i knew this person was already putting so much effort into keeping sane themselves i didn't want to bring them down right like that's the last thing like we're in a relationship i don't want to like you know drag you down you know if you're working so hard to be where you're at and also in a way dragging too i'm gonna need a minute i don't know this is this is quite the curveball it's not what i was expecting yeah well it's a it's an interesting it's an interesting like point man because when we're talking about the loss of loved ones isil it all sort of ties back to that beginning right like the loss of loved ones i mean you're the psychologist but i know there's never like a one track answer to any of this there's never like a one straight up solid answer to how to deal with for impending doom or any of this nature what makes it there isn't one solid answer because because human beings aren't you know computers right there's no like one program you can run and you get a finite result at the end right like the brain is different um and again i'm not a psychologist but i like to think that human beings are much more complex than you we let on so it's like when it comes to grief everyone goes through it in a different way who knows that's where my mind is okay so there are a couple of different directions i'm i'm honestly mood i'm gonna need your help and and i hope you're not getting this is like um you know like you're so messed up that i can't it it's really more about that no i i know okay okay so so i it's really just about choice because i think there are a couple of uh they're just a couple of really important conversations that we could have from this point forward and and i i'm having trouble choosing and i was hoping you could help me pick okay so one is you know we could talk more about your friend who it sounds like is terminally ill which and and relating to that there's just that we could talk about that we can also talk a little bit about and also relating to that like i think there's a important conversation to be had about showing weakness um and and i know it sounds kind of weird but like i've worked with like terminal cancer patients uh mostly cancer and and sometimes you know the family's trying to be like really really strong for this person but like actually what like everyone's just pretending to be part of a play where like no one is being authentic and it really doesn't like it can actually be like really wonderful to let people who you care about know that life is hard for you to it can actually be like really really healing to i know it sounds kind of weird but have the terminally ill person comfort you like it can mean a lot to them it can mean a lot to you like and it's kind of weird but you kind of feel like they're the only ones that need support whereas i i know you know for a lot of people if you really think about love like what is someone you know you want to take care of her and presuming she feels the same way like she wants to take care of you so in a weird way one of the nicest things you can do for her is to let her take care of you so there's a there's a conversation there if you want to talk more about that that's fine i've also noticed that um you know you're talkative and and so i think we can just kind of meander a little bit um yeah we can meander and and you can just i'm happy to just listen because i think you're saying a lot of important things that need to be said and the third thing that that i was which is sort of what i was originally kind of hinting at when i offered this hypothetical but was just sort of trying to understand like where does making sure come from like where does that complex in your mind if i were to call it something i'd call it the making sure monster because it's interesting because you say like my brain won't let me which then begs the question what is your brain and what are you but i i think what we're really talking about is like it's the making sure monster right so if you sit down and you do nothing for 15 minutes the making sure monster will be like no no like you should be doing something that way we can make sure that something you know that this will go well tomorrow so it's you know we can kind of leave it up to rng we can go down talking about you know loss of loved ones and and sort of what makes it hard for you to express vulnerability or we can talk about the origins of the making sure monster i feel like if i do the making sure monster i'll be able to learn about myself more i'd rather i want to deal with the making sure monster i feel like that's a mentality that's going to be the hardest thing i've ever done in my life to get out of yep i i would agree i think that's going to be the most useful so let me ask you something how long have you been making sure fifteen sixteen okay you sure it's not even before that wow you're really you're really getting me about elementary school all of a sudden jesus you're getting me all the way back to the sixth grade with that i wouldn't say it was like as insane but yeah i guess i was making sure since tell me about the sixth grade sixth grade um we ended up moving for a bit like couple months and uh this is a time when i was moving back and forth from canada and the states and there's a period when i got into canadian school again that they told me that i was going to fail the sixth grade because i guess things were going to try maybe i had to do a read and i remember my parents being there with the teacher that day we were having this long discussion and my parents they weren't they weren't mad at me but i thought they were you know they thought it was like stupid how the hell do you have to repeat the sixth grade they never said it but in my head that's the only thing that i could think of right i never asked them about that i never bothered to what am i going to ask my parents that i'm i'm a [ __ ] idiot so i didn't and it was at that point i guess it's great that i had to make sure that i go to middle school right i go to the seventh grade i go one more up so i made sure by then and i guess it wasn't i i hate to say that i was making sure ever since then because i don't think the feeling is something that i recognized until i was 15 and 16 when i started when i knew that i had the feeling but i guess if i sixth grade was that point i honestly i i hate to say it but i also very much remember i don't remember a whole lot of my life at this before the sixth grade like i know that sounds weird to say because people should have memories of it but i've lived such a blur at this point that when i think you know like what was grade five four three two like i've forgotten like teacher names at the point like i've forgotten you know every like i've forgotten you know the final tales and i've also forgotten well i've forgotten the course details as well too i find that i can understand but i should be able to remember a chunk of it were you worried about needing to repeat a grade like did you have any inkling before that conversation with that teacher and your parents that things could have gone wrong um yeah i know when the teacher told me right like my parents and i had that but uh did i have any like i think i was too young to understand the idea of when i had so i didn't know about that oh sorry your voice clipped out there for a second oh uh yeah but i don't think that i i like when my teacher told me that i had to do it when my parents had to come in that's when i knew i don't think i had a realistic understanding of what it meant like to repeat the grades no no can you just tell me as much like do you mind just telling me like a brief story about the sequence of events and like what you remember like i'd love to hear a little bit so what are like how it happened so for us when we started this when we started school again right in like september and everything um things were fine uh probably up until november is when we had to like move to the states and everything so we ended up switching schools out into the states uh this is around michigan so we ended up going to michigan in the sixth grade for me i went to school there for a little bit um until february or whatever like this was you know we immediately uh and then around february my dad you know had to move back to canada for his job and everything right and initially i remember at the time that my dad was moving back and forth like he was coming back and forth from the states and canada all the time so eventually you know in that sixth grade right like when i'm telling you like november we moved with my dad because we wanted you know i guess my mom and dad wanted us to be sort of like a family rather than my dad going out and hearing that when i came back you know in february to school i i guess the system was so different that i may have had to repeat the sixth grade because i was missing like a chunk of the curriculum um so around the time of you know february when like this came up right like and at this point march had started to roll in and this was a week before march break so like my teacher you know they brought in my parents they talked about what i'm missing out of the curriculum so i remember i had to read like two books i had to do like a big like project a big project you know sixth grade project like something you do over the weekend like put stuff on cardboard paper or whatever i had to do a bunch of these reports or whatever basically i had to do the entire curriculum of six months school you know and i did it all in march break like i i i asked my teacher i'm like can i just have all of what i missed and can i just do it for you so i remember i spent that entire march break i didn't go outside and play or do anything i literally did a curriculum work right in march i read literally like two books and back then you're in the sixth grade right like a a book is like a book is like a commitment you know yeah now it's like now it's like nightly reading so i'm doing this entire like do these two book reports and i ended up getting it done in like two three weeks and it wasn't until the end of that entire year now my teacher was like no you'll be fine you're you're going to the seventh grade like i remember the day came where we all went into a room the entire sixth grade class so it's like we were split right they started to give us sort of this middle school um orientation where they split us up into different classrooms they gave us like lockers so they made us feel like we're in middle school kind of going into high school and the last day of school they brought us into the room it's like congratulations you all graduated that was the most relaxing thing that i've ever heard in my life because i knew i knew when i knew in my head she was talking to me you know i knew in my head she had to she the only reason she said that is so that you could finally say okay i'm getting through school i'm graduating finally i'm not a total idiot like you know so so when they were like assigning lockers and stuff did you think that like that stuff may not apply to you like it applied to all of your clients i mean for the longest time i was like i was like what's the point of me doing this i'm gonna have to repeat sixth grade again so until the last day came like you all graduated and they gave us like our report cards and like those brown envelopes and [ __ ] i was like oh my god i succeeded i i honestly to this day i've never even asked anybody else if a teacher has said that to him right like in the sixth grade like it feels so foreign to me is it normal for a sixth grade teacher to tell the entire class you all graduated it's elementary school but i mean for me a kid who's on like that verge of failure i guess from what i know congrats i succeeded and then i go into the seventh and eighth grade and i wouldn't say that i feel this this uh moment of like um i i guess i guess i'm not a feeling of like making sure in the seventh or eighth grade but even when you go into the seventh grade they're telling you all right you're going to need this and this if you want to go to high school because we had like high schools we could apply to back then like those like uh i remember kathra uh the greater toronto area was like this artsy sort of like college that people could apply to gordon grayson was like a business school that you could apply to um we were talking about high school applications back then bro [ __ ] insanity if i'm gonna be honest with you but yeah that's what uh that's what we had to that's what i was doing back in the day it felt it dude i feel like it was i grew up in like india abroad you know because it's like you know you hear all the stories of like people back in india it's like you need a 99 gpa to get into the best indian universities imagine well i'm like [ __ ] man no one's getting that it's kind of crazy right because i what i'm really hearing is like when before your your march break you kind of have a sit down with your parents and and your parents what what are they what did they say like i do you remember i remember like my mom was the one that was trying to like you know rationalize she's like you gotta go to we're gonna talk to your teacher she's going to give us all the schoolwork and you're going to get it done you know you're going to have you're going to make sure that it's it's done right like that's what you can do my dad didn't really say anything to me like i don't remember anything my mom was the only one that walked me through it because she's like she is kind of like me she knows how to you know break things down flowchart your way through so that's pretty much what my mom got me through my dad didn't say anything i asked him later on you know after you know my teacher was like everyone graduated i'm like were you guys ever mad at me my dad was like no he understood everything but uh it was it's also dude it's also weird from a social perspective too because when you're in the sixth grade and you know your entire grade because i grew up with some of these people they're going a year ahead of you and now you're getting like last year's kids coming up to you yeah and everyone knows you're there like makes you feel even dumber than you usually are [ __ ] yeah no i think it's quite humiliating i'm wondering what is what are you imagining also yeah yeah go ahead and go ahead no i was just saying like it's also kind of weird like i've carried that mentality in in college too because uh there was a period where i did some continuing education and like it only became normal for me when i ended up going education i was like oh wow there's people that are like 50 coming with me okay like my classmates are you know varying ages people my i was me and my buddy were like one of my closest friends now as we're one of the youngest people in our continuing education courses because we were doing like after effects uh continuing education and like all of our peers were like 40 45 so we're like oh okay it's normal yeah cool [Music] sorry i get too chatty about it when you want me to describe something i will describe it no i think it's wonderful i think it so i'm going to ask you kind of a weird question okay there's there's going to be a weird question maybe weird emotions will come up what do you imagine your dad was feeling during that meeting think he took it on himself because i think he i think he came to the realization that him moving around a lot cost us i think he even realized that when um i i think to an extent the conversation he had where he told me like how do you know if you're going to be alive so many so years came up you know i think he has to know like my dad's my dad's a smart guy he knows that he cost you know family that and i feel terrible saying that because i feel like i'm calling my dad a terrible person for that [ __ ] but it's not so the truth like we ended up fine you know but i think my dad realized that his actions may have caused difficulty for me growing up and even my brother like i haven't i've never talked brother about his school he turned out just fine now but i've never had that discussion too so i feel like to an extent my dad has to know he probably has that in his head so what dad doesn't realize yeah so what what do you what do you think about that how does that how does it feel that makes me feel worse though if i'm making my dad go through that yeah because like i feel like if my dad thinks that way i'm like then i feel like wow i guess i caught it [ __ ] in a way and it's like it doesn't even make any logical sense but that's what my brain is doing too yeah right so and and so if you're strong for your dad what does that do for him i feel like that relaxes him in my head like for me i look at my dad i'm like okay you're getting old now so i'm your oldest son so i gotta you know step up and make sure that the rest of your retirement days are solid and relaxed you know like that's what i'm so to me my parents are the most important thing yep i i i do i go to bed like every once in a while and i think of a day when they eventually have to pass and everything and i don't know how i like that's uncopable in my head because i'm like closest people i've ever had and it's like regardless of what has happened i don't know what i'll ever do you know yeah so you know how okay we're gonna really go i'm gonna go hunting now okay so i'm gonna ask you a lot of specific and arguably leading questions okay let me know if it starts to feel weird so you said that you know you you said several times actually during this conversation that you would have never let your dad know that him moving around was hard on you yeah i don't think i would want to no right so let's think a little bit about why not because i feel like he'd blame himself okay yeah and slamming himself yeah no wouldn't be good for me when you say wouldn't be good for you how would you feel if your dad blamed himself yeah i feel like i'm causing my dad some level of grief when i could have just kept it to myself and maybe in blissful ignorance life would have moved on and all this would have been a memory okay so i know it sounds kind of weird and now i'm gonna look for a particular answer so when you don't tell your dad about what your experience is when you don't open up to him what are you doing i'm lying to you you're sure you're lying so the word i was looking for is protect yeah what do you think about that i want to say protect but literally we just had a conversation not five minutes ago where i know that in his you know what he's done moving around and everything so it's like what am i protecting him from the fact that excellent am i protecting him from like him i know the reality of this okay i feel like in some ways when i lie to him i'm feeling like an idiot because he knows what like he's not so yeah some days what am i even doing okay let's just go on with it yep so so this is where it was adaptive at one point it's not stupid it's just maladapted because i think this is like literally that this this is a pattern i see a lot where like when sometimes our parents in a sense do the best that they could right like your dad did the best he could oh absolutely and and you love him and respect him for all the sacrifices he made and it can't have been easy like for him to have to move you know every six months to like michigan canada was rough right yeah and and who bore the brunt of the situation that he was in i mean i i don't know what his work life was ever like you know i don't know what he was doing in the professional career you know what i mean like i was too young and i never asked i i don't know dealing what but i knew at the time like my mom was dealing with you know because at one point dude it felt like she was a single mom for a while you know what i mean like literally when you see your dad like one weekend out of the month you know you're way closer to your mom felt like she was super alone me and my brother were just on my own too you know like we were just doing our life the way that we did it we never had like say family normality and have like i guess everyone around me i must be with their mom and dad i was just always with my mom and even then i was always doing schoolwork or you know all that [ __ ] even the time when like i moved around and we lit my dad dr work in that period it's like how do you how do you like how do you just make everything you're cutting out sorry sorry oh i'm sorry i don't i think it might be but it's like how do you move in like how do you move together as a family right and then make it normal in a day right like how do you act like of how do you like participate in family activity after like like when we moved in november together and we started living it's like okay what's going on right like i guess we're together now let's we'll be yeah it's like it feels pretty artificial the event honestly it still feels artificial to this day even like even going all the way up to now like just i would say in a matter of like a few years ago i started becoming closer to my family because there was a point where like i left like college you know like i left and went into the world and lived my life and now i'm more participant in my family at least direct family um now like years ago but it's like how do you how do you how do you get back to normal like how do you make something that you know isn't normal like we're we're gonna help you with that yeah okay so why do things in a family feel artificial why because they are artificial okay right simple yeah and and so i know it sounds kind of weird but like muda what i get the sense of is that like there's a lot hanging between you and your dad and so like sometimes like like there's a lot behind what he told you like you know he's like you don't even know if you're gonna be alive when you're 40 right like that i'm sure that it's important for him to say it sounds like it's a really important conversation but do you get how like that's the output and there's a lot of like number crunching behind what he says like does that make sense there was a lot more to his answer to me that he was thinking that i just never picked up on you yeah right so like like your dad doesn't just show up to you and he's like hey where'd you have for lunch today cool yeah are you gonna be alive when you're 40 like what that's not right so he's like thinking about something processing observing something within you and then decides to like give you this particular package yeah right so like he's been thinking about this so like i think that what i think the reason that there's some amount of like artificiality is because you guys are both ignoring the same damn thing and so like like you know and you guys have learned how to do this for a while because you all have been doing it now for like what sounds like you know a decade or two yeah where you all have learned you all have learned like not like because like because it's interesting right so you're you're you watch game of thrones or have you read the book i have watched maybe episode one of game of thrones i've never been into that yeah anyway so so like you know if there was a house of muda the words would be so each house has words right so your house words are better dead than weak those are the words of house the slogan on the slogan on the house yeah the slogan on the house exactly like when you walk in like that's what better dead than weak and it's interesting right because like when i hear that sixth grade story like i i totally get why your mind jumps there because you know you had a choice like you can be like oh [ __ ] can i do six months worth of work in two weeks i would rather be dead yeah right so like well i mean i don't wanna i don't wanna fail yeah yeah right so like like i'm not gonna be left behind like if i have to sacrifice two weeks of my life i'm doing book reports i'm i'm gluing stationary stuff together i'm gonna i'm working in a i'm in a sweatshop of my own for two weeks yeah absolutely and it's a sweatshop that you've been in since the sixth grade it's the boxing ring that we're round after round and never around there's no there's no like it's not even like the round over chills out you know i mean it's like you sound like you have a 10 second break to drink water no you just keep going with the blood it's it's the sweatshop of your own making and i think it's like i because i i think back in the sixth grade i realize i'm bouncing around a lot right because i'm just gonna start spitballing here but like i think you kind of learned a really important lesson back then which is that you know it's it's really interesting because it's that there's circumstances outside of your control and that your life can be screwed by things that are like completely like outside of there's almost like a healthy amount of paranoia which i can imagine gets set in the mind at that point like you just can't count on like you never know when your teacher is gonna call a conference like you never know and then if you work really really hard then you can like there's a way forward and the only thing you have to sacrifice is yourself and so like there's there's a lot there in that story about like you know sort of being put into bad situations because of other people sort of not being able to rely on others like you know like your dad's sort of like not really owning up to you know like why you're in that situation in the first place like not to say that you shouldn't have done the work or things like that and it's not even to say that like he really had much of a choice because you know sometimes you just got to follow where the work is yeah but i think that's where like a really healthy conversation at that point really could have been hey son i'm sorry you're in this situation we have to do this because of work i love you a lot i you know i know you can do the work like i'm sorry to put you into this situation um but this is just the way that it has to be right now like what are you feeling as i say those things i've never heard that out of his mouth actually i wish i wish well i mean i've heard half of that i never really uh yeah that uh that god that perfectly exemplifies what you know the whole situation was like i know that he had to do his [ __ ] but god some days i wish you wouldn't yeah some days i kind of wish he i kind of wish our family was god you know i i t i take living in absolute abject shitty conditions if it meant my family was more together but maybe that maybe that's why i keep thinking you know in some ways if i ever get to be a dad if like if that day ever comes i don't want to have to be the one moving around i don't want to have to i want to be able to you know have everything in the most perfect way that i can even if that means killing part of myself to achieve it you know what i mean sure what i'm hearing from you is you want to make sure that your children never have to go through what you went through absolutely and muda is well worth sacrificing for that yeah 100 i uh you you 100 hit my mindset right there and you know the thing is i in a way i've i've even told myself i'm like there's got to be something wrong to never i've never sat down and did the original you know like you know how you know you do like the uh the good and bad you know sort of tea table i've never done that i've never come across with bad i've always realized it's always good for the people around you it's always good if you have kids for their benefit growing up it doesn't really matter tough through it you've already done it so far what's another few decades right sure you know so now we get to a really important question right so a little while ago i asked you do you want this to change and you said you remember what you said about the what's going on so so you were like yeah i think we're probably rapping we're probably hitting the limit because i think you've done a lot of good work today i'd love to tie it up for you a little bit more but i think you should just process this so i'm going to try to summarize okay and give us at least a stopping point i'll make a couple recommendations first is like when we talk about better dead than weak gotta make sure and you were like yeah this is the thing that has been like running my life and i want it to change but now after we talk about it do you want it to change i don't think so no good right so now we understand because what is the and don't worry we'll flip-flop you back and forth a couple times okay so like because what would be the cost of you changing everyone around me right so and and what we're thinking about is like if you changed if you started to become more indulgent like you could be subject to the whims of the world right like this goes back to control like you're not gonna give up the [ __ ] control that your dad did not have like you are gonna move mountains to make sure that like you're gonna make sure right because it's like you're not gonna be in that situation where you have to do something that could potentially hurt your kids yeah [ __ ] that never and so then the next question that i have for you is what do you think your kids will do when they grow up if you do that if i do what i'm doing right now what are you gonna learn and what are you gonna teach them i mean if i if i had a kid i feel like i could honestly i feel like i pass on the same [ __ ] yep i feel like i feel like i tell them like honestly if i had a kid i would tell them life for people like for for you and me and our entire like everyone around us you've only got yourself like i'm here like if i have my kid i tell them listen i'm here in the ground after me you've got no one else but yourself no one else that you can rely on you better learn to [ __ ] dig your heels in the ground and make something worthwhile or die like the rest of okay like yeah i think that's what your dad taught you right because he's like you got to do like is your dad weak no no i don't know no he's worked hard yeah yeah right like so he taught you that lesson too he was like if you have to commute to michigan every single weekend that's what you do to provide for your family i i look at my dad like this you know he went to medical school twice one in india one over here could get your medical license in one part of the world you don't get it carried over here so yeah when i look at my dad and i look at all he had to do like imagine across the world at age 35 you're young but you know you're hitting that middle age pretty [ __ ] quickly you got a wife you got a kid you got another kid on the way [ __ ] you know you can either my dad worked his ass off when i was you know there were days where when we moved into the gta we lived in an apartment in east toronto and i got to see my dad once out of the week okay because back then to pay for medical school again he would have to pour it right so he would drive from toronto all the way to my [ __ ] insane drive back and forth day to day to day to day to day-to-day and i i mean at one point the man [ __ ] kills himself right like you have no personality of nothing you gotta do gotta do to money to pay off these mounting debts he taught and eventually yeah yeah i'm gonna interrupt and he taught you this lesson which you were going to pass on to your children right yeah and what is he trying to teach you now i feel like he's trying to teach me that i have to i have to keep my [ __ ] together i have to stand on my own two feet because there's not going to be anybody else out there that's going to do it for me i also feel like you can't rely on anyone so i i think if you pay attention to his last conversation right when he comes to you and he says you don't know if you're going to be alive when you're 40. [Music] i think he's trying in his own way to tell you that like you know i'm not so sure right like that sounds yeah because he's lived it yeah because right he's saying like he's actually saying like don't be like me dude i just feel like man after all this [ __ ] i feel like the only normal generation after like as far as i feel like after like this entire situation the only like normal generation that i'll have a chance to make their own decisions and will have a chance of normality in this part of the world is the next generation after me i feel like i'm already going already going blow-by-blow you know yeah to live that normal life that's what i'm only worried about right because i've already been past it my childhood's gone you know i'm an adult so i got to make sure it doesn't repeat itself yeah so there's more there right there's a lot to talk about there which is like i'm sorry if my mic keeps cutting out by the way um i just like i keep looking at the uh discord light so i don't know let me just yeah is it better now it look yeah it seems better yeah but um i think sometimes it's when you move around but so here's here's what i'd say murder like i know we've been at it for a little while i think we've covered some good stuff um you know the next generation things like that i i don't think your generation is lost yet i also don't think you're lost and i think you can reclaim some of your childhood as well but i want to leave you with a couple things to think about okay right first is i think you got to talk to your dad i think you got to have a lot of conversations with him oh yeah we do right so that that is that you say that but man in my head that's like the hardest thing to ever achieve man to sit down with my dad and have this discussion holy [ __ ] dude i would rather architect like entire server farms for a company and get over this jesus christ that's too much you know yeah so the the good news is that you know if you want to he can just watch this although i imagine you'll be terrified of him watching because yeah because it's going to be hard to protect him if he listens to you right absolutely if he actually hears what you have to say like you see that you want to protect him you don't ever want him to watch this and the reason you don't want him to watch this is because he may feel bad oh absolutely yeah right so so you got to be careful because i think i think in order for you and your dad to like really connect in the way that like sounds important to me it's important to me i you have to [ __ ] decide if it's important to you but you know i think it's about talking a little bit about you know like because there's i think there's a really healthy way to have the conversation which is sort of you know you love him you respect him you completely understand the sacrifices he made he did the best that he could it was really hard and it also kind of sucked for you and if he's if his narcissistic defense mechanisms are are up he'll get mad at you and he'll say you are grateful little blah blah blah blah right but but i think that the reason that those narcissistic defense mechanisms arise is because they arise to protect himself from his own guilt right and and so i think that like not you don't have to blame him i i think you can just but but i think like it's it's i don't like i don't blame my dad or anything of that nature you know like at the end of the day like i know i i'm completely understanding of what he's done you know like yeah so it's not like my dad ruined my childhood right of course yeah so so i and i think if you want an easy way okay so i'm gonna try to protect your brain so like an easy way to enter into a conversation with your dad is is that you just revisit this conversation about like are you going to be alive when you're 40. you just ask your dad questions like hey dad like last week or a month ago or a year ago or whenever he had it you remember you told me this thing i was hoping to understand that you don't have to talk about feelings you don't have to talk about the past you don't have to demonstrate weakness he doesn't have to demonstrate weakness and then i would ask him so that's the first question you feel okay asking that question yeah i can actually okay if it's like purely non you know like no confrontation nothing edges no yep yep easy easy questions okay we're gonna go nice and smooth so then the next question is like can you tell me a little bit about like what you know when you when i was your age like what was going through your head about your life and ask him like you know what it what do you see like how do you see me living my life what do you think about the way i'm living my life what do you think i you know because he's saying that to you for a reason and how did you live your life back then how did you live your life in your 30s what was it like to have to go through like residency again or medical school again yeah you know and just ask him questions about like his his upbringing and stuff like that and and then you know that's gonna be safe and then you know if you ever are able to or he may go there um you can also have a conversation about you know what it was like growing up and like just try to understand his perspective and and i think the closer you you the the more he starts talking about you growing up the closer y'all are gonna get to emotions and you have to decide whether you're comfortable talking about that does that make sense yeah i know it should lead the conversation into where he was at my point in life and see what you know similarities and and you guys may have the ability to just communicate with each other without ever saying anything but i think both of y'all need to know that like like there's something needs to happen between y'all yeah no i i think i think it's to me i feel like the way that i want this conversation to go is i want to like really talk about the commonalities we had because i know he's been he's worked hard around my age too so i want to see like yep why like i mean when you're talking about this whole cycle repeating itself like this maybe it has repeated itself more literally than i'm thinking right now maybe maybe the parallels are just more there than it ever was you know yep yep and then i would i would also share with him this may be actually safer because in the context of that conversation you can even tell him sometimes when i sit down and i like try to take a break my mind tells me i should be doing more work what do you think about that just ask him about that oh i feel i feel like we'll come across some real commonality because i know my dad he's definitely one of those anxious people too yeah yeah he can't take a break either yeah and so i'd say start there and i think more long term this is going to be harder but it's definitely doable it's going to take some work i think you have to learn how to like not be so sure about stuff right like i think you've got to learn how to like let go a little bit and and sort of know that you can do the most that you can do and you can do the best that you can do but that like [Music] you know that trust trust not in your ability to make things perfect trust in your ability for damage control so basically flowchart less is my life right instead of thing instead of waking up every day thinking of every possible action instead of making like you know every like because because in my head i think of every find it like if i do this it could you know lead to this or that or this or that maybe instead of you know making six or seventy different little boxes have it all one box as a this could happen and i'm going to have to learn to adapt to it regardless of how it happens yeah sort of so i wouldn't quite say flowchart less but what i'd say is what you need to learn how to do is tolerate uncertainty because i think it's the uncertainty that terrifies you and it's it's a lot of you trying because like muda what you are is a control freak because uncertainty you've learned that that uncertainty is like just way too painful and and over time i think what you need to really do otherwise you really are going to pass this on to your kids which i'm sure that you'll i mean i'm not sure but i imagine you'll have one day um and i just think it's karmic it's just two too too much karma in your life to not have children um but like like i i think it's it you got to be a little bit careful because you have to understand that like some of some of your aversion to uncertainty i think has come out of experiences that are like like because you learned early on that [ __ ] is out of your control so like if you double down i mean that sixth grade story is perfect because it's like random thing happens to you that could screw over your life yeah and all you have to do is sacrifice yourself get into the ring and then you can alter the course of fate and so that lesson is what you've has become a part of your fabric you can cost yourself and you you don't have to like bring other people in it just takes you to win you know that's exactly yeah and and so i think as you kind of work on that it's going to become important for romantic relationships and stuff like that but i'd say start with your dad and you know there's more conversations i don't know if you've ever worked with a therapist but i think this is definitely the kind of stuff you can work with a therapist i've never worked with a therapist actually i've always again like it goes back to what you said before i like do i feel weak when i open myself up i don't think i could it's hard for me to like go sit in front of anybody even if it's like so personally detached from me like a therapist who you know i pay this person we sit down we talk they professionally you know respond to me it's still so difficult to let them into your head you know how has this been difficult oh it's been incredible well this whole thing hasn't been difficult like i've been able to ease in with you it's kind of like you know buddy talking but it's just um i feel like i feel like if this is this is professional i don't want to say that what we're doing isn't it's you know it's not professional but if this was a real professional setting like if i was sitting with you right now and like in like an office like laying down on one of those you know like you know therapist beds or whatever i don't think i could do it man i think i probably i would walk out i'd be like you know what man not for me i get up in 10 minutes i'll be like bye so so what what about doing this in front of thousands of strangers on the internet makes it easier for you than doing it alone in the privacy of a therapist oh it's uh it's streaming i'll be real with you when i first started streaming in front of like a couple hundred people it used to be a little anxiety inducing uh you just get that that i will say you just get used to after a while it becomes like a number you look at like whatever okay it's just it's someone on like the other side of the world cool it's not it's it's it's also just i don't know i just i've i've gotten used to seeing those number counts like it's it is what it is okay how i know is me and you are talking you know yeah so i know it sounds weird but that's the strange thing that i've discovered is that like actually a lot of people feel the same way you do and that like almost doing it in the privacy of a therapist's office which you know you're right that this isn't we're more you know we're both like we're streaming here we're more like content creator colleagues just having a conversation but there is something strange about you know this being more accessible even though in theory it should be like way harder to do i don't understand it myself but i totally get what i'm saying like i feel like i'm just talking to a dude we're just chilling yeah you know there's it's like in a way it's i think it's like being there and you know why you're there like you understood like when we started this conversation we didn't exactly have like a plan set or what we were going to attack or whatever right you know we didn't like jump down into this like this is what we're gonna cut like it just sort of led into one another and it is it is what it is you know has it been tougher at times during the conversation yeah has it been easier yeah but you know it's a conversation i could go with it's again i don't want to say it's not professional but it's like you said it's just two dudes talking like yeah yeah yeah no i i think it's it's i mean this is not therapy or medical advice so you know there's a legal disclaimer of that which yeah but but i mean i think there's also something different i think this is where a lot of people get confused because they sort of say like because actually you know to just be just to be perfectly honest i would be saying and doing different things if the two of us were in our office and i was your doctor i would actually be doing things quite differently but um uh but then the last thought is just you know if you're interested then i mean i would actually recommend a therapist in your case but um you know if that doesn't feel comfortable to you we do actually have a coaching program for content creators which they seem to you know so far the content creators seem to be happy we can send you some info if you're interested but i'd be interested in that yeah yeah so it it's some stuff around work-life balance and and things like that but any questions for me muta before we wrap up i know we've been at it for a while you've been doing a fantastic job by the way it's hard i know i i i i honestly i feel like you're giving me the road map to have a discussion with my dad at some point so when this lockdown is a little more eased up i think i'll take him out to dinner just me and him somewhere and we'll have this conversation um that's that's the only thing i'm looking like really forward to actually now like i'm not so much scared of doing that uh i want to you know it's just something that i feel like needs to happen i feel like it needs to be discussed either do it now or yeah or you let it screw up another you know section of your life yeah but yeah that's that's where i want to go to now that's like the next big point yeah well muda thank you so much for coming on man and and i hope the conversation goes well you know and we'll do i'll let you know yeah yeah um and you know if any other questions or anything like that pop up just let us know we're happy to try to support you love the work that you do can you just tell us before we kind of tap out um where we can find you and what kind of work you do you guys can find me at youtube.com some ordinary gamers twitter is at ordinary gamers and i you really ask me the burning question that i'm gonna ask myself what my channel is about it's really anything guys i make videos about tech i comment on random stuff sometimes i laugh at really stupid [ __ ] uh i don't even know when i'm uploading some days okay let me just tell you that much but yeah that's what i do i i think your channel is a fantastic example of producing content that the rando adhd gamer mind loves to to consume yeah you do a good job of actually just like you know it's like it's not always the same thing but it's it seems to be in the same general ballpark yeah yeah so yeah you all should you all should check out some ordinary gamers so thanks a lot for coming on man good luck yeah man good luck with you too take care man take care bye okay all right so that interview was phenomenal i think that guy is fantastic

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 206,836

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

Id: 1agKagI1dT8

Length: 106min 38sec (6398 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/sirko19]

I think this will be good

[u/Distant_Past]

Nice of internetajay to conduct this interview with himself!

^{inside joke in his community}

[u/Ghazillion]

Muta always keeps his pain hidden. He's stronger than he knows!