The Male Psychology Doctor: “There Is A Crisis Going On With Men!", “We’ve Produced Millions Of Lonely, Addicted Males!”, “The Ugly Truth About What’s Really Behind Toxic Masculinity”

This is super scary. 50% of men who kill themselves have no history or evidence of mental illness. What causes people to kill themselves is they try to connect with others and they get rejected. Everyone is getting screwed but there's a crisis with men. People telling us that being a man means that your toxic, that there's a patriarchy, that your testosterone level makes you violent.

So men are struggling right now and the rest of the world says no you're not. You're privileged and these people have been literally killing themselves because no one has been listening to that. Except there is one group of people who says you are life sucks and that's these toxic masculine people. And these guys say I will show you a way to make it better and that's when things go bad. And this by the way is how people wind up with addiction.

Because when you look at addiction what happens is we use a substance or a technology as an antidote to pain. So I've worked with people who have pornography addiction for example that will have work on one screen and they will literally have pornography on the second screen. You're joking. No, very common and this is where there's a big problem in the world today.

Now you've got this young generation of women as well that are exploding in their suicide alice. Loneliness seems to be getting worse and worse. What is the remedy to this? So this is something that's very important to understand. Everyone who's listening to this podcast needs to... Quick one, quick favor to ask from you. There is one simple way that you can support our show and that is by hitting that follow button on this app that you're listening to the show on right now.

This year in 2024 we're trying really, really hard to level up everything we're doing. And the only free thing I'll ever ask from you is to hit that follow button on this app. It helps the show more than I could probably articulate and it allows us enables us to keep doing what we're doing here. I appreciate it, Dealy. On to the show.

With all of your work and all of the content you've produced. If someone's just clicked on this podcast now, what do you think they're going to get out of this conversation? What do you think they're going to walk away with? I hope what they'll walk away with is the realization that you are the instrument of your life and understanding that fundamental instrument that you use to live your life, your body, your mind will ultimately help you accomplish whatever you want.

And what is the opposite mindset to that? To understanding that you're the instrument of your life. What is the typical mindset that people have that go through their lives without the realization that they are the instrument of that life? I think it's assuming that something outside of them will fix things inside of them. Right. So people will think like, okay, if I get a promotion, then I'll be happy. If I date this person, then I will be happy. If I have this amount of money, I will be happy.

Everyone assumes that extra things outside of you will fix things inside of you. Why is this subject close to home for you? Because I used to believe that. So I struggled a lot. I mean, I'm by all definitions of the word an absolute failure. I failed out of college. Was finished school at the age of 35 or 36.

It took me a long time to get on my feet and figure out what I was doing in my life. And I realized that the reason that I was screwing up so much is because I always thought that accomplishing something outside of me or achieving some kind of goal would make me happy.

And I didn't understand that all of my problems came from me. I also blamed all kinds of things outside of me. So I would blame circumstances. I would blame my professor as biased. This girl is, you know, she, she doesn't see the goodness that I have in me. She can't recognize how awesome I am. So I kept on blaming things outside of me instead of accepting responsibility.

Take me from that point onwards. So what happened? That brings you to sit here today as an accomplished individual as a doctor and so on. So I think my journey starts with failure. So I think we think about failure as a negative thing. But I think that that's what actually got me started on my journey after failing out of college. I went to India.

And I stayed in a monastery or ashram for about three months and it completely changed the way that I looked at the world. So what I sort of realized is that kind of like what I was saying is that.

See, I had assumed that things outside of me were responsible for things inside of me. So as a simple example, I attached my net of my sense of self worth to getting an A. So when I went to, when I went to college, I was planning on becoming a doctor and as any Indian kid wants to do, I wanted to go to Harvard. And so I had sort of all these grand dreams of what I wanted to accomplish in life and how I wanted to be a good force in the world and all this kind of stuff. It's all ego.

And so what sort of happened is even though I wanted all of these things, I assumed that all of that accomplishment would bring me happiness. It's when I went to India that I sort of discovered that like no amount of external accomplishment will bring you lasting happiness. And this is what we sort of see. These are the people that I work with now. I'll work with someone like a banker or a doctor or a content creator.

And for all of these people, it's like once you accomplish your goal, your mind moves the goalposts. So you got promoted device president. Now you need to be director, then you do be managing director, then you need to be, you know, there's always more. The mind always wants more. So chasing after all of that will never lead to lasting happiness. So once I sort of started to realize that I kind of gave up all of my desires for accomplishment.

And the real paradox there is that as I let go of all of my goals, I started to become more successful. And so instead of trying to be something great, I just focused on, you know, small targets. I sort of focused on my spiritual practice. I tried to become a monk and take vows at the age of like 22 and my teachers rejected me. So they said, I said, I'm ready to forsake my life. And they said, you have nothing worth giving up.

Your life is meaningless. Like you have nothing worth giving up. So go back to the United States, rises high as you can finish a doctoral degree, actually get something worth giving up. And then at the age of 30, if you still want to take vows, we'll take you. What situation must you've been in at that point though before you went off at sort of 21 years old to that ashram.

To be so prepared to give everything up because I heard that reading through your story that you were you had addictive behaviors at that point already. Yeah. So I struggled a lot with video game addiction. So I started playing video games when I was very young. And then in high school, it really started to impact my grades. In college, I was basically playing video games all day long, instead of like going to class and stuff like that.

Like I remember waking up the morning of my Spanish final. So this is my final exam. And then realizing that I like wasn't very prepared for it. So I just turned off my alarm clock and went back to sleep and therefore guaranteed failure. And so where I was mentally was just in a really bad place. So I had all of these goals and aspirations. And I was so frustrated with myself that I couldn't bring myself to do what I wanted.

Right. So I knew that I had to study more every single day. I would wake up and be like, I have to study more. I have to catch up. I've fallen behind. And so I'd have all of these thoughts and no matter how much I wanted something, it seemed like my body or my brain would just not listen to me. It wanted the video game more. It wanted something else more. And so what I really was was and I had no control over my life.

I was probably depressed if I had seen a psychiatrist. I'm sure I want to gotten diagnosed with something. I'm brief periods of suicidality, basically waking up at noon every day, playing video games all day long. And I also remember like before I had to play to the point of absolute exhaustion.

Because if I put my head on the pillow and I did not pass out all of the thoughts that I was keeping at bay with the video games would come rushing back about how I'm ruining my life day after day after day after day. And I was just sort of sinking deeper and deeper and like falling into a pit that I could not climb out of. So the ashram in India tells you that you can't give up your life. What happened then? And why did you specialize in psychiatry?

So when I went to med school, I mean, when I was in med school, I was, I still had ego. So I mean, I still have ego now. But so I was going to like, like combine Eastern medicine and sort of focus on evidence based complimentary and alternative medicine. And I was going to be an oncologist and be a real doctor and save lives.

But what I really found is that in med school, a couple of things. One is my favorite organ was the mind. So what I fell in love with in India was the mind and sort of the internal sense of self and all this kind of stuff. So I really liked that. And then I think that my people were in psychiatry. So the other thing that happened is. I was trying to decide between internal medicine and oncology and psychiatry. And so one of my mentors in med school told me like do this.

So do one month of each and then just ask yourself which one do you enjoy more. So on the one hand, when I was thinking about oncology, this was also chasing a desire, right? I had this idea that I wanted to be a real doctor, right? Because those are like, I want to cure cancer. Like that's like, let's let's be like a real solid doctor and do that. And then what I noticed was that now what internal medicine has become is very like sitting in front of a computer.

So when you work in a hospital like eight hours the day I'm sitting in front of a computer and you spend very little time with your patients. And then over time I started to realize that like psychiatry is the only field of medicine that we're losing the war in. So if you look at medical outcomes for things like bypass surgery and stuff like that, those are really good.

And this is really insane to really think about. So we can take your body, Stephen, and we can give you a heart from a different human being. We can give you a kidney from a different human being. We can give you a liver from a different human being. If you have a part of your body that doesn't work, we can literally rip it out of you, stick in a new one and you will survive. So outcomes in every field of medicine are improving except for mental health.

So mental health is the one area where addictions are getting worse, depression is getting worse, suicidality is getting worse. And this is in spite of advances in neuroscience. So something has happened where we missed something about the mind and everyone is getting sicker. So like this was the problem that really attracted me. And this isn't about my desire. This is sort of where we introduce a concept of dharma or duty.

So I recognize that I'm lucky. I'm this kid who got to spend seven years studying to become a monk in India. So I traveled back and forth, but I spent my summers there. So I had this really unique perspective. And then I got to train at Harvard Medical School. And what am I supposed to do with this knowledge? Like this is 15 years that I've devoted to understanding how human beings work.

And like I had this very kind of, you know, chic private practice in Boston where I worked with very, very successful people and helped them achieve. And then I sort of realized like that's not what I'm here for. Right. So I've gotten 15 years to learn all of this stuff. And like there's no shortage of people lining up to help CEOs with their mental health.

There's absolutely a shortage of people helping 25 year old in cells who are like on the internet, who everyone wants to throw in jail because they're very hateful and misogynistic and things like that. So I sort of realized that like, okay, like this is what I'm supposed to do.

So I'm going to do it. Okay. So I've got a big question. But before I just to tip that big question, you said you had this practice in Boston where you're working with sort of high profile individuals, etc. What is the full spectrum of individuals that you've spent time working with on a one-on-one basis or through your practice? I worked with people out of MIT, incubators, CEOs, entrepreneurs, things like that.

So a lot of high performance people. But then I've also worked with like losers, let's say. So this is also more intensely. This is everything from 25 year old kid who's living in this mom's basement playing video games all day. Two people who are even homeless. So I worked with like basically like the whole spectrum. And yeah. You used the word losers there and you did little air quotes for anyone that can't see you right now.

I'm really interested when you talked about in cells as well, whether the way society is and the way that we're heading in terms of clarity over what it is to be. A man has had any impact on. Those people that you refer to as in cells like I'm you know like because we now have this digital world that we can. Live our lives in as a distraction from the real world and there's now more confusion than ever over what it is to be a man and the role of a man in it.

And then we look at the stats around suicidality and I think in Europe, the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 is themselves currently. Is the shifting idea of what it is to be a man having an impact on people's sense of self and that purpose 100%. So that there's a there's a crisis that's going on in men and people think that this is new, but I don't think it's new. It's always been there. So if you look at like you know even 50 60 years ago 80% of suicides are still going to be men.

So historically men have been killing themselves for like 100 years and no one's been paying attention. We're just noticing now because the problem seems to be getting worse. So there's a couple of things that are really interesting to understand. So one is that if we look at what technology is doing to our brains the first thing that it's doing is it is externalizing our attention. So if you look back like let's say a thousand years ago as human beings we spent a lot more time with ourselves.

So let's say that you and I go out hunting and then let's say you shoot an arrow at a deer and you miss and then I shoot an arrow at a deer and I hit. So in this moment I'm superior to you and then we pick up the deer and we're carrying it back and then we have about two or three hours to take that emotional insult and we kind of process it. We just give our mind space to process it which it does automatically.

Now if you look at what happens in people's days they don't actually have any time to process what happens to them because we are so constantly distracted by external things. So I don't know if you're like this but I was in this point where I was idiotically efficient.

So I would wake up in the morning and I would listen to a podcast while I'm like doing my exercise or whatever and then even when I'm cooking I'm listening to a lecture and then like when I'm walking to the train I have ear buds in and I'm listening to a lecture there on the train I'm reading. I wanted my life to be completely efficient. I didn't want to waste a single moment.

I literally listen to the news in the shower. It's right so we don't want to waste time and so if you really think about it where's the attention of your mind your mind is pointed outside of you. And so then what happens is once we do not pay attention to ourselves we lose sight of our internal signals literally in the same way that if you raise a child in a dark cave.

The photo receptors in their eyes won't develop they will atrophy so any anything that the mind does not get access to will start to atrophy if I don't practice Spanish I'm going to forget Spanish the mind is very brain is very efficient to organ.

So as we externalize our attention we lose sight of our internal signals we don't know who we are anymore and now if I don't know who I am how do I figure out who I'm supposed to be I pay attention to the outside where are the answers they're on the outside.

So this person is talking about masculinity this person is talking about what it means to be a man this person is talking about what it means to be a man and now since I don't have any internal source of information I'm trying to figure out what it means to be a man from the outside world.

And this is when men get truly fucked because what it means to be a man we are getting all kinds of mixed signals so on the one hand it means being physically fit on the other hand it means being a provider on one hand it means having sex with as many women as you can find.

On the other hand it means having sex with just one woman and being a really solid man and being a good father and then there's also people telling us that being a man means that you're shit right that you're toxic that your test austro level makes you violent that you're evil that you're privileged that there's a patriarchy all this kind of stuff so we're getting all this information from the outside about what it means to be a man.

And so the other like there are all kinds of interesting ramifications of this so men in today society are not allowed to complain so if you complain and you're a successful person or a privileged person everyone is going to think your arrogant everyone is going to think oh my god who's this fucking guy this guy doesn't know what my life is like how does he have any right to complain and even your mind will tell you this you'll look at these people you'll be like yeah I don't have a right to complain but now we need to stop for a second and think about what it does to your psychology when you as a human being are not allowed to articulate your suffering.

I've worked with people who have grown up in abusive households where children will say to their parents mommy daddy I'm hurting and the parent's maximum across the face how dare you you're so lucky you don't realize the sacrifices I make for you it's traumatizing to the child when they say I am suffering and no one listens this is what we're doing to the generation of men people are saying I am suffering for a hundred years men have been killing themselves 80% of suicides are men the most dangerous thing is the most dangerous thing.

For a man under 45 is themselves and these people have been literally killing themselves because no one has been listening to them. So in the same way that you grow up with it is a child in a household that's abusive where no one takes you seriously no one listens to your suffering and now we even have successful men who are not allowed to complain.

So the psychological impact is the same anytime you have a human being who is suffering in some way and they cannot find connection with another human being they cannot find compassion with another human being. That person is going to feel isolated and if you look at the statistics on suicide it's very interesting. So the number one thing that correlates with male suicide is not depression and this is super scary.

There's one study I saw recently that suggests that 50% of men who kill themselves have no history or evidence of mental illness and this I believe the statistic in my clinical practice because I know what depression looks like. I know what bipolar disorder looks like and half the men that I work with at least are not actually mentally ill. So mental illness means a pathology of the mind which means that the mind is malfunctioning.

Most of the suicidal men that I work with they're not, their mind isn't malfunctioning they genuinely have a life that is no longer worth living. They're looking at things and objectively realizing that there's no way out of the situation so they turn to suicide. So I know it's kind of like a very controversial statement but I think that's what my clinical practice is shown and there's some research to even back that up.

So if we sort of look at what's going on with men we're sort of they have nowhere to turn to and the number one thing that correlates with it is not mental illness but is a sense of thwarted belongingness. So this is kind of like fact multi-variate regression analysis. But basically what happens is what causes people to kill themselves is they try to connect with others and they get rejected. So it's specifically a very specific research term called thwarted belongingness.

So I try to belong to a group and that group or multiple groups usually will will thwart my attempts to join the tribe to join the community. And this is what actually correlates a lot with suicidality. What's going on with men right now is that we really don't allow them to suffer because then you're not manly and we're so externalized with our attention that we're not connecting with ourselves. And so we're looking to other people to tell us what it means to be a man.

But that may or may not work for you right that may have been what worked for them. So then we kind of get into this problem where we're disconnected from ourselves and then like the world doesn't accept us we're not allowed to suffer and that's what creates the problem. What is the remedy to this.

So I think the first thing is we must reconnect with ourselves right so when you're kind of saying like why do it does everyone think I need to like achieve this I need to make this money and things like that.

Where did you learn that you should do all that you learned all that from the outside Instagram Instagram right so we get we get fed all of these ideas because if you look at all these influencers what are they doing they're never crying they're smiling some of them will even pay very attractive women to take pictures with them. Well some of them are crying but they're crying and uploading it for alternatives right.

Absolutely and I think a lot of them are genuinely suffering too but then it's it's also like I mean there's all kinds of weird stuff going on so one thing is like people say that men is meant we don't allow men to be emotional. Nowadays but because they people say oh men are allowed to cry. This is something that I experience even in my marriage where we allow men to cry but we don't allow men to be angry.

But why is it that are men no longer allowed to be angry just think about it for a second so anger is just a completely normal emotion right.

But if I'm in a situation where I'm in an argument with my wife and I feel emotion a and I express emotion a and she feels emotion B and she expresses emotion B. These two things should be equal right we as both human beings get to express what we feel now in the case of me expressing anger and her expressing sadness she's crying and I'm yelling suddenly I become a villain.

It's so interesting I saw a viral tweet yesterday it was someone googling my wife is yelling at me what should I do and then my husband is yelling at me what should I do when they googled my husband is yelling at me what should I do domestic violence help me. I'm not going to make violence help line comes up is like a Google pop up when you Google my wife is yelling at me what should I do nothing comes up.

Yeah because obviously as you said in the case of villainization I know that most domestic violence comes from men. But it's interesting that we see the emotion we interpret the emotions entirely differently because of that absolutely right so we as a society will say like oh men. We need to be in touch with their emotions but not anger and then this is what really screws men because as men we are socialized in condition to only feel anger.

This is the only emotion you are allowed to feel as a man growing up and this is the one emotion that gets demonized when you're older so I'll give you a simple example so like I used to get bullied a lot right so when I get bullied in school like what am I supposed to do Stephen.

In school it depends if you can fight back absolutely right is fighting back like you didn't say talk to the teacher you didn't say ask for help you didn't say cry about it because if I cry about it what's going to happen Stephen. You're going to get bullied more absolutely so we turn every emotion so men experience anger is something called an umbrella motion we literally suppress and our condition to suppress all other motions except for anger.

And then if you talk to men about their experience of life anger is always the first thing that comes out of their mouth someone breaks up with you how do you feel about it do you feel ashamed no that's not what we say I feel pissed off how could she do this to me and then we vent that anger on the internet and then this turns into massaging right and then we get demonized for it and it's not that there isn't.

We should be harshly judged if we act on those kinds of emotions I'm not saying that that's the case but what we also need to consider is that the men who are saying these kinds of toxic things are saying that for reason this is because of their upbringing this is because of the world that they lived in right so we're condition to only experience anger even sadness gets turned into anger shame gets turned into anger fear gets turned into anger right so if I'm afraid of something happening what do I need I man up get angry right like this.

Go someone this is the emotion that we tap into to overcome fear so we don't feel any of those other emotions and we're left only feeling anger at the very heart of aggression. I had someone say to me once that at the very heart of aggression is it some kind of insecurity but for men when they encounter that insecurity they only know how to sort of manifest as aggression.

So I wouldn't agree with the first thing that at the heart of all anger is insecurity but I would absolutely agree with the second thing that the way that we the only way we know how to respond is with anger because here's the exact quote just found it the source of aggression is insecurity as we are unconsciously aware that our position in life is never secure people feel increasingly insecure and helpless so they will be increasingly aggressive and confrontational at a personal and a social level.

So let's tunnel down into that for a second okay so I think that that is true on some level but also I would disagree so the first thing is that we have parts of our brain even animals feel anger but I think that like when two dogs are fighting over territory I don't think that that's born of some kind of identity of insecurity right so if we really look at like the evolutionary purpose of anger is my opinion is that anger is the emotion that we feel to protect our territory it's a protective emotion.

So if I slap you across the face what's the first thing that you're going to feel it's going to be anger so if I insult you you're going to feel angry it's fascinating the way that it works so anger causes our thoughts to be faster.

Anger causes our peripheral vision to collapse to 30 degrees so I only see what's in front of me and it also makes me less sensitive to pain so like my no susceptors will actually like start to be suppressed when I feel angry right so if I get into a fight I'm going to be a little bit more careful.

So if I get into a fight I'm going to feel it tomorrow but like while I'm getting hit I'm not going to feel it so I don't think it's born of all insecurity I think anger is simply an evolutionary response it it's it's something that we experience to protect ourselves that's why we feel angry right so if I attack baby bear mom a bear is going to come out angry so it's really a protective emotion now I agree with the second part of the statement 100% that when we feel insecure especially as men the only way we are taught to deal with our problems is that we are not going to be able to do that.

So if I'm feeling insecure if I'm feeling ashamed of myself someone's bullying me what do I do I put them in their place right I don't try to make peace I don't complain to someone because no one's going to take me seriously right I have to stand up for myself. So we've got the first point there about how we remedy this challenge which is about self expression more self expression is what I heard not self expression introspection.

Get into myself right so so it's very simple so if you look at your idea of what it means to be a man what percentage of that idea comes outside of you and what percentage of that idea comes from within you about 90% comes from outside of me and that's why 90% of people were 90% fought right so and if you look and I'm sure you know this and you've probably done this too if you look at where is the goodness in your life where does it come from Steven it doesn't come from what other people have told you they may have told you something but then you know that you're not going to be able to do it.

So I told you something but then you looked within yourself and then you found that to be true yeah the goodness in you the motivation the really good motivation and you not chasing things but the the duty that you have you know everything that you really strive for all that good stuff comes from inside you and the problem is that we live in a world that pulls our attention away from ourselves what you think of and you take is a man.

So in general rule I don't comment on people that I don't speak to so what what tell me the features of what you're talking about. Okay so the recent wave of Internet masculine influences who have like Bugatti's and lots of women and sports cars and there's not there's many of them there's many of them and they seem to be resonant for some kind of reason that are kind of saying that the way to become a be a man is to have loads of money.

Lots of women these kind of cars physical strength and there's just this huge sort of generation of young typically men that are now disciples of that religion yeah so I think if you dislike that toxic masculinity. Well we need to understand is it's the people who hate that toxic masculinity that are driving these people towards it so I know this is kind of crazy so what's happened is this is grown right and as it's grown what have we done we've demonized

these people we've said these people are bad and as we demonize them what's happened they've grown stronger so this is something that's very important to understand if you are a man and you say I am suffering today what is the response that you're going to get.

Shut up absolutely not in those exact words but that's whatever the words are that's what they mean now I want us to be very very careful right so if you are listening to Stephen say people tell you to shut up and your first thought is a listener is

no that's not true that's the problem so if people agree with you they understand what you're saying but if they disagree with you that's the problem you we literally have a man who is telling telling us right now that your experience is when I say I'm

suffering people tell you to shut up and then people are going to be judging you for saying that and they're going to be saying no that's not true they're going to be saying shut up absolutely right so this is exactly the problem so men are struggling right now and that the rest of the world

says no you're not you're privileged you're a man there's a patriarchy and I'm not commenting on the sociology of it there is a patriarchy whatever there's men have many advantages in life I've experienced many advantages of being a man it's absolutely true I'm not let's not go there I'm talking about the individual experience of men so there is one group of people on the planet who says yes your life does suck and that's these toxic masculine people they're the only people that truly

validate men's experiences because everyone else says why are you complaining and these guys say yeah you're a fucking loser what are you going to do about it they at least meet you where you're at and they say yes your life is hard and I will show you a way to make it better whereas the rest of the world says no your life isn't hard what are you complaining about and I've seen this as a doctor I've seen patients who are

complaining about pain women who are complaining about pain because they have an internal bleed within the wall of their uterus that cannot get detected and they're saying I'm hurting I'm hurting I'm hurting and we ignore this person's pain and that's when things go bad so for years and years and years we have ignored the struggles of men and there's one group on the planet who accepts them with open arms and the more that we demonize them so when

someone starts believing in this toxic masculinity what is the response do people ever ask like help me understand what your life is like like what do you like about this person because everyone's going to them for reason but we never we never bother to ask why are you listening to this person what does this mean to you I see these we see this post all the time in our community my boyfriend is getting into this stuff my son is getting this

how do I stop it hold on a second don't try to stop it understand it first because everyone's trying to stop it and no one is bothering to listen to what the experience of these men men are and that's why it's getting worse and worse and worse as we try to stop it so find the mother of a son who is watching a lot of these sort of toxic male influences online what would be a better approach versus just banning the computer and telling them that that's toxic and not to look at it

help me understand what you like about this what is it like to be a man in today's day and age how do you feel about yourself how does it feel knowing that 70 to 80% of women want you to make more money than them and yet 60% of people who graduate from college are women so men are faced are living in a world today where there are impossible expectations to meet and so like what is it like to be someone who fundamentally has no chance at success

right these are the kinds of things that you need to say to these people you need to give them an alternate place to go where they can be heard and helped supported and understood see anytime we make a judgment our mind already has a conclusion nothing left to learn anytime we're judgmental so what do we what do we do to all these people who are toxic men we even create the word toxic we literally label them is bad in some way and I'm not saying that the behavior isn't toxic

but what I'm pointing or what I'm trying to point out is even in our language there is so much harsh judgment so I once had a patient we both just did it didn't we absolutely so I once had a patient who is smearing feces over this all over the school so adolescent kid right and when you have a kid who's literally taking a shit and wiping it on the walls

and stuff what happens the kid gets punished kid gets punished again and again and again the one really sad thing is no one ever asks why are you doing this what's going on inside you because healthy kids don't do this it's only kids who've been traumatized in some way and as I've worked with in cells as I've worked with people who are toxically masculine it always starts with trauma and when I say always I this a clinical experience but I'm talking about 100%

so 100% of people start on this path by getting hurt in some way by getting taken advantage of in some way by sacrificing something and not getting something in return and they have their share of responsibility to I'm not saying that they're hapless victims but I think that people who are raised with love and compassion and do have connections don't go down this road

you're so passionate about this aren't you because I feel like your eyes have seen in your practice some pretty heartbreaking things I mean I think it's like see unless we are willing to be what these people need they're going to continue going down the toxic masculinity route

someone needs to start offering these people safe haven no matter what they say or not no matter I think there should be consequences for actions but so this is as someone who's worked in a jail right so and this is what's kind of interesting if you really think about it people will judge me for talking to or even trying to support people who are toxically masculine they're like oh my god you're such an asshole you're giving these people a platform

how could you make the world a worse place and then I tell them I worked for in a jail for three months and I'm like oh look at you you're so compassionate you're working with these people who are like criminals and like oh my god I don't think they realize that anyone you see on social media is ten times better than the people that I worked with in jail these are people who are actual pedophiles actual rapists right not just talking about it maybe the people on social media are do I don't know

and so it's really interesting the way that are mind automatically judges things and so if we really want to fix this problem and I think we need to fix this problem it's just my take I mean I'm not a you know I'm a big fan of like compassion and trying to support other human beings I'm not saying that that's always the right answer

I think sometimes you may need things like war violence or whatever I mean there may be causes for it but generally speaking I think that like demonizing these people isn't working is there anything else that we haven't covered in the remedies to this sort of male crisis we've talked about getting more in touch with yourselves is there anything else do we need more positive role models or is it really not about the external at all

no I mean so I think all that stuff is true so we know that for example like there's like a loneliness crisis and things like that I think that we all it's not just role models like we need individual responsibility so like for example everyone will say yeah like I know it's a real tragedy that men don't have friends but it's not my job to fix I will hear this from both men and women that like it's a real tragedy but it's not my responsibility it's sad that this thing happened but it's not my

which makes sense right no no human being is responsible for another human being but then the question kind of becomes like okay let's play that tape through to the end what happens to that person whose responsibility is so if you look at a lot of what's going on with men right now it's loneliness

it's isolation it's touch starvation it's suicidality sexlessness as well sexlessness and it's it's no individual person's responsibility but the real problem with this is that these are not problems that men can solve on their own this is exactly why this is the problem that men are experiencing because as men we are taught to be independent we are taught to be you should fix everything on your own

and so men have fixed all of the things that we can fix on our own the only thing that's left is the things that we must rely on other people for right so no one's complaining about you know I mean a lot of men are obese but there's not like an obese it there is a crisis but that's not what's bothering people that's not where we're losing the war we're not losing the war on baldness right so there are lots of things as a man that you can fix in your own life

it's just the real challenges that no one is willing to take responsibility for any level of connection with men and so that's not something that is going to get fixed because you need another human being to hug you like you can't hug yourself it just doesn't work so I and my area of focus tends to be on introspection because I think that's like really really powerful but there's all kinds of other stuff that's important

mentorship role models all that kind of stuff but I think ultimately through introspection you can attain complete peace no matter who you are what your what your path is circumstances I think it's kind of like the silver bullet would you would the would the discovered so you saying that as a society we should take on more of the responsibility for some of these big fundamental issues that that men and people in crisis can't solve for themselves

subtly no not a society because as a society who's part no I mean you I mean you're in lists listeners as individuals need to take responsibility and it's not that you you have to take responsibility it's not fair to you to be responsible for someone else but unless anyone who is listening to this podcast goes out and literally hugs a man no one else is going to do it because if you don't do it who's going to do it

you can't rely on society we've been relying on society to fix the problem it's not working so I can't do shit so you're saying me if I get society don't don't wait for government to have some kind of intervention how's it working out not great I mean the direction of travel as a relationship key issues like loneliness are only getting worse and worse to a side aliti seems to be getting worse and worse

now you've got this young generation of women as well that are exploding in their suicidality yes young women I think it's the fastest growing group at the moment of my start to correct yeah so we have one really interesting thing is that that men and women are becoming more equal in many ways but unfortunate in unfortunate ways so

female suicidality is getting worse we're also seeing like male body dysmorphia on the rise and I suspect it's way worse than we realize but I think that what we're starting to see is less of a discrepancy in gender related health issues so the things that used to be predominantly men are now women are catching up which is a bad thing and things that were predominantly women now men are catching

up so body dysmorphia in men addictions in women are on the rise so I and yes there's things are getting worse what what explains that specifically the the society in young women I hear social media is a leading cause of that but yeah so I think if we look at it it's not just social media so I think

what's happened is that the fundamental day of a man and woman I believe I don't know if this factually correct is getting closer and closer so like you know women are working now men are working now like dating is hard like being on Tinder socks if you're a dude or a woman for different

reasons we get we have a lot of technological influence so like everyone's kind of getting screwed and we're all kind of getting screwed together and just because things are getting bad or worse for men and men are in crisis does not has no relation to the fact that women are

working for a whole different set of reasons so there's plenty of biases that I see as a psychiatrist there's biases against men in psychiatry there's biases against women in psychiatry I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make is that we seem to think that it's like a

pendulum where it's like if we're biased against men we can't also be biased against women but I think both groups can suffer at the same time catastrophically and they are yeah I want to talk about the role of social media your book is called how to raise a healthy

gamer and when I think about gaming I think some people think about it like holding a controller and being a I don't know a character in a video game or shooting something whatever but many of these social media apps are almost indistinguishable from gaming and many

respects so the role of social media in our mental health in the modern world good bad indifferent so bad right now so let's say something so social media and technology is kind of like introducing an invasive species so there's no there's no checks and

balances right now so I don't think gaming is evil so I struggled with video game addiction I play video games with my kids now so the main problem with social media and technology is that it's completely unregulated and we don't know how to fight against it so what's

happening right now is especially if you look at social media is that like it is affecting our brains and we're out of gun so if you kind of like look at for example we're talking about masculine to you right and what's my antidote to that it's introspection so if we sort of look at these yogic or meditative skills as we train ourselves in these skills we will become impervious to the negative effects of technology the problem is that these things are so good at literally

shaping our thoughts so as an example if we look at social media you know body dysmorphia and insecurity about the way we feel about ourselves can lead to things like suicidality okay so as we look at you know all these pretty people on social media you look at all these people who are not normal right so social media will show you the prettiest people and so we start as I see pretty face after pretty face after pretty face I start to think that that is normal my brain

makes this calculation and then I start to feel ugly so I this results in body dysmorphia so if we sort of look at that the more we see pretty things the more that we have FOMO because everyone is having fun right if I log on to Facebook or Instagram this person is having a birthday party this person is having every every time I log on everyone is having a blast but this is 365 people who each have one birthday party I get one birthday party year but anytime I look at the social media it seems

like everyone is always having fun it's not everyone it's just one person is having fun today one person is having fun tomorrow everyone just gets one birthday here but when we see it we see everyone is having fun and I'm not having fun so this makes us feel bad about ourselves so what is the antidote to that so in the yogic tradition we have this concept of a hum god or ego so you have particular meditative practices that help you dissolve your ego and essentially what social media does

is amplifies our ego makes us feel really bad about ourselves remember that one of the key hallmarks is comparison of ego so social media induces a lot of comparison so as we train our mind we will become free from those problems so if I learn how to dissolve my ego then social media is not a problem easier said than done absolutely even said that you've still got an ego 100% and you've done all this practice and you've still got an ego yeah have you dissolved it at all

absolutely so I mean it's it's way smaller than it used to be but even to say that I have completely dissolved my ego is an egotistical statement so this is a this is a battle that I will never win and I've just accepted that right so I'm there's no way to win I'm not going to become enlightened in this day and age so I'm just going to do the best that I can and I'll never succeed that's okay

there's so many shocking stats that kind of links to two things we've talked about here around connection and relationships I think we all know intuitively now especially with all the research and data that's come out how important relationships are for mental health gaming social media the digital world the vision pro I bought one yesterday

virtual reality augmented reality as we had more towards these digital world are you concerned at all that we're losing sight of connection and I sit that in comparison or alongside the stats that we know about sex lessness people having less sex marriage is seeming to get worse and worse more difficult the direction of travel here doesn't feel like it's very optimistic

yeah it's not and what what do we do about that did you do you think we just become gurus and leave the digital world in the western world and try and escape and take our kids with us I had someone talk to me about that idea no so I don't think so right so so my book is how to be a how to raise a healthy gamer what I believe is that the these things are only evil if we don't know how to deal with them

so what's happened is human beings have created fire for the first time but we don't know how to control fire so we don't need to run away from technology we just need to get better at dealing with it and getting better at dealing with it is everything from maybe government regulation or whatever to even training are like personal sense of self

so if you sort of look at like wire relationships decaying it's for a number of reasons the first is that see human relationships evolutionarily were predicated on the fact that humans needed each other for survival so fundamentally what is always bound human beings together is like I need you and you need me otherwise we're not going to survive

but what's happening in the world today is we no longer need each other for survival so I never even need to leave my house I can order groceries I can order food I can work from home I can literally stay in my home or in my room and I never need to walk out of the house I never need to interact with someone so once you remove necessity from the equation as to why human beings form relationships

so we're seeing a decay in relationships because we no longer need each other right so women no longer need men you can have an independent life as a man you no longer need a woman you can get a flashlight if you want to you can have an AI girlfriend you have pornography you don't you don't we don't need each other

and yet the human mind is the only organ of the body that in order for be it to be healthy it requires another human being so we don't need our heart can be healthy without another human kidneys can be healthy liver can be healthy our whole body can be healthy except for the brain and except for the mind we need someone else to be mentally healthy

so now what we're going to have to do is a society is evolve we're going to have to start to realize that we don't need relationships anymore in order to survive but without them we will all suffer and so what we need to do is evolve as humans and I think part of that is like learning some of these yoga

and meditation skills so that we can resist the influences the negative influences of technology but that also means prioritizing relationships even when we don't need to do you think they should teach these skills in school the yoga could be a good time to intervene wouldn't yes 100% and I've taught these kids these these skills two kids and it's amazing how quickly they pick it up

it's hard for me and you to learn because we're already formed but just like a language like if you teach it to a child I'll teach you know like I'll you know I taught infants to meditate my own children

I taught them to meditate when they were like to what does that mean what what are these girls if you're trying to teach a grown up like me where would you begin so I'll tell you where I began with my kids so let's understand what meditation is so meditation is controlling the attention of your mind so if I tell my mind to focus on this it's going to focus on this so if we look at meditation there are a couple of key steps the first is ignoring impulses

so if I tell my mind to focus on this object it will have an impulse to focus on something else so we have to train the mind to stop thinking about other things so I teach this to my four year old and very fun way I tell her to lay down on the ground and we play this game called sniffer goblor where I'm a monster called a sniffer goblor and she has to be perfectly still so the sniffer goblor is going to try to get her to move and if she moves then she gets gobl so this becomes a game

so I'm kind of trying to get her to move I'm tickling her a little bit I'm sniffing or whatever I'm playing some kind of game with her and she's being perfectly rigid because it's part of a game so what's going on in her brain in this moment there's as I tickle her there's an impulse to move the peripheral body is sending nervous signals to the brain let's move let's shift let's do something let's do something

but her front alobs in that moment are learning to restrain her mind and literally control her impulses so this is step number one is stop your impulses you can learn this very simply by for example I would recommend for someone like you a practice called throttica so throttica is fixed point gazing so you take a candle and you look you gaze at the candle without blinking so the first 10 seconds will be easy but then you'll start to get signals

let's blink let's blink let's blink let's blink it's going to start to burn they're going to start to tear up you probably won't get hurt don't worry about it say practice because then your eyes will start to water and they'll lubricate which is usually what our eyelids need to do

and so you'll start to have tears but then you focus your mind and now what you're literally doing is controlling your impulses you're restraining your impulses so that's the first step of meditation is to not let your mind wander into a thousand different things now if you do this one practice which is not even real meditation your life will be transformed so you will literally it's like lifting weights for self control

so now you're sitting down to to eat a meal 11 p.m. rolls around you have those cravings but if you've done throttica your frontal lobes will be strengthened and as your frontal lobes become strengthened you are able to resist your impulses you will gain control over yourself

that's step one just resist your impulses this is usually why meditation practices involve sitting and focusing and like not moving even the second step is a little bit different there's a difference between avoiding distraction and then pushing my mind to focus on a different thing

so then for example what I'll do with my my daughter is I'll tell her to chant ohm and maximize the feeling of vibration in your chest so now what she's doing is she's attuned to her body she's chanting ohm and then she's trying to maximize the vibration

so in this moment she's using something to focus the attention of her mind because her mind is fully on the chest and feeling that vibration and then she's kind of experimenting a little bit but she's really tuned in and that trains our mind to focus on one thing

so these are steps number one and two so the first thing you've got to do is avoid impulses and distractions and the second thing is teach your mind how to sit on one thing and don't go anywhere else that's step one and two and then you'll be ready for meditation and what is meditation?

so meditation the word meditation in English has three Sanskrit words that get translated into meditation Dharana Dhyana and Samadhi so Dharana is technically a focusing technique it's something that you do so I can tell you gaze at a candle flame without blinking

this is a Dharana it is a focusing technique this is what's confusing for a lot of people the second word for meditation is dhyan so dhyan is not something you can do it's a state of mind so I'll explain this very simply do you know how to go to sleep? me no I mean well I go to bed and I lay down and I usually put something on so I can listen to as I fall asleep is that how I sleep? no how should I sleep? pretend I don't know how to sleep can you teach me how to sleep?

go to the bedroom make sure it's nice and cold lay there in the bed and close your eyes and wish for the best so I laid there and I closed my eyes I have a blanket over me it's cold and I'm not asleep yet what am I doing wrong? what do I need to do to go to sleep? maybe not tired enough have you slept before? yeah have you done it a lot? yeah but you can't tell me how to do it

lay down? absolutely so sleep is a state of consciousness so going to bed is something that you do and then sleep happens to you this is the biggest misunderstanding about meditation everyone's focused on meditation techniques these are dharanas if you are in a dharana as you gaze at the candle for an extended period of time your mind will enter a state of consciousness in the same way that you enter sleep but you can't control it you can't do it you can't evoke it

you just have to create the right environment and then the consciousness will trigger the closest thing that many people experience is the flow state but even in the flow state there is mental activity so the flow state is like the early stage of meditation

and then after you enter dhyan which is a state of consciousness which is of no mind so you have awareness but you have no thoughts no emotions you're just simply aware the best example of this that some people have experienced a couple of things one is orgasm

the moment of orgasm is one where you have no thoughts thoughts come afterward, thoughts come before but in that moment of orgasm you are aware you are present you are blissful but you have no thoughts or no mental activity sometimes also like looking at the sun

like watching a sunset walking along the beach there are some moments where you're present you're not really thinking about anything but you're not asleep you're not daydreaming this is what dhyan is this is the second stage of meditation

after you sit in dhyan for a while then you will attain something called samadhi so these are the transcendental states of meditation this is the kind of stuff that psychedelics does to you so when you enter these samadhi states this is when you start to get transformed

and all this weird stuff that's very hard to describe so I would say that meditation is these three things it's a focusing technique followed by a state of consciousness that fingers crossed get induced and once you're in that state then you can kind of start climbing and what impact has it had on your life?

transform it completely changed my life I mean I used to be a 25 year old kid with nothing to show for it and now arguably I'm successful so I'm an entrepreneur I'm a Harvard trained psychiatrist I have a clinical practice I'm a dad I'm a content creator

and it's like I'm the same kid that was failing out of college like I haven't changed the only difference between the loser and the successful person which neither of those are true by the way those are both manifestations of ego I'm neither a loser nor am I successful these are external trappings

but fundamentally I'm the same person that I've always been and the only difference is that meditation taught me how to control this thing it's like when you're living life it's like you're playing a video game and the controller is unplugged

so the character on the screen does whatever the fuck it wants to and you're trying to send its signals but it's not listening to you so what meditation is is the process of plugging in your controller so that you start controlling the instrument of your life you understand how your body works

you understand how your mind works you understand where your desires come from you understand how to conquer them you understand what your ego is you understand all of these kinds of things and meditation is what helped me do that

the thing with meditation that the sort of instant rebuttal is I tried it and it didn't work or I tried it and I can't stop myself from thinking about things that's like what I hear all the time oh I can't meditate I tried my brain's too busy okay great so let's rebut those

as I've helped at least a thousand people overcome this so let's understand a couple of fundamentals see if you've tried meditation it didn't work for you it's not your problem and it's not that meditation doesn't work for you it's that you had a crappy teacher so if we understand

okay like this is something that we how do people learn how to meditate they hear a podcast like this and then they go sit in their room at some point and then they close their eyes and try and think of nothing and it doesn't work so they stop okay great so like who is their teacher

the driver of a CEO right but this is what I mean so the quality of meditation teaching has degraded so profoundly everyone has mindfulness apps what's your teacher it's an app yeah so if I were to say like okay like you know Steven you're a pretty crappy surgeon

but you've never gone to medical school how would you expect to ever be a decent surgeon unless you literally had people teach you so there are a couple of things that I learned how to meditate because I had expert teachers the reason that I teach meditation successfully is because

I'm a decent teacher I'm not even the best teacher out there so a couple of things to understand about meditation one is that there are 112 meditation techniques one of which will work very naturally for every person on the planet okay so the number one reason that people suck at meditation

is because we're not teaching them the right kind of meditation as a simple example so I have patients with ADHD and I teach them very successfully to meditate now a lot of these patients when they come to me say meditation doesn't work for me because I can't get my mind to slow down

and focus on one thing it always wanders to which I say that's great no problem we're going to teach you a meditation that's going to feel so easy for you so let me ask you this if I've got a kid okay who's running around and I want my kid to sit still how do I get the kid to sit still

how do people typically do that yeah they shout at the kid okay so the kids sit still for a little while then what happens runs off again absolutely so how do I get a kid to sit still when does a child sit when it's playing a game okay so we can engage it in some way

so like if like this is why I don't know if you've seen this but in airports they'll have like these little play places so the best way to get a child to sit down is to tell to run you run go to the playground go to the playground for an hour and then what will what will the child do

naturally I want to sit down so when I'm teaching my patients with ADHD how to meditate I don't tell them to slow down their mind I tell them to move it as fast as you can so I'll literally take my my patients to a cafeteria and we sit in the cafeteria and I tell my patient

you have to pay attention to as many sounds as you can as quickly as you can I want you to hear every sound in the cafeteria don't miss a single one don't pay attention to what people are saying but hear the words hear this sound hear this sound hear this sound hear this sound

so what I'm really telling their mind to do is run instead of sit still eventually what happens is they're paying attention to sound number one then sound number two sound number three not fast enough faster you need to listen to ten sounds in three seconds go faster go faster go faster go faster

and eventually the mind gets tired and then the mind naturally sits down easiest meditation in the world then they enter beyond so what are they doing in the harina they're paying attention to sound number one three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen

and then eventually the mind will calm down it'll get exhausted and then they'll enter the on and then they've learned to meditate so I think the reason that meditation doesn't work for people is because they haven't tried the right technique so you look like a guy who exercises you exercise yeah

how do you exercise go to the gym lift the weights okay what about running yeah sometimes swimming no can't swim why not I think it's just a story I've told myself I just can't float okay great right so so if all exercise was swimming you would have concluded that exercise is not for me

but there are a thousand ways to exercise because human beings are different so you just have to find the right kind of exercise for you and it's fun for you people will look at you they'll say I don't understand how you exercise oh my god it's awful I personally I hate lifting weights

but I love swimming I love hiking I love rafting so learning how to meditate is not about doing one particular tradition and this is where there's a big problem in the world today which is that most meditation teachers just know they're one tradition and so if a student comes to them

and they don't do it right the teacher tells them you need to keep trying keep trying I've seen very few meditation teachers say you know what I'm not the teacher for you this is not the right app for you you should go use this different app because based on your mind

this is what will suit your mind we each have a cognitive fingerprint and learning how to meditate very easily is about choosing the right meditation for your cognitive fingerprint and does meditation help us with these addictions we've been talking about social media addictions poor addictions

you talk about as well gaming addictions I think I would go as far as to say that it conquers them all so that's kind of a grandiose statement but if we really look at what is an addiction an addiction is two things it is a source of pleasure and it is an antidote to pain

so anytime we look at any addiction so opium for example gives me pleasure and it also numbs out it shuts off the functioning of my amygdala and my limbic system video games shut off my amygdala and my limbic system make my negative emotions go away and release dopamine so we have dopamine release

and we have suppression of our negative emotional circuitry all addictions do this so if you sort of look at it how do we fall into an addiction it's because we become dependent on this dopamine surge on giving into our wants right so our mind says I want this thing and we can't control that impulse

when it wants something I have to give it I can't control it I'm too weak the other thing that happens is that when we anytime we have pain we have to run away from it but meditation is literally the process of training those two skills so when I have a want I learn to resist it

I want to scratch my nose no scratching your nose and what we sort of know from a neuroscience standpoint is that we know that meditation strengthens our frontal lobes and weak frontal lobes are fertile ground for addictions so we know that we literally strengthen the parts of the brain

that will help you resist an addiction from the pleasure side the other cool thing about meditation is that it makes us not impervious to pain but we stop avoiding pain so you asked me like am I nervous about how the book is going to know if it's if it crashes and burns then I will be sad

so what right so I'm going to be sad will be sad forever well that depends on whether I base my sense of identity on this one book I'll be sad for some amount of time and that sadness by the way is is comically what I bought when I wrote the book and I think there's something that a lot of people miss but the moment that I write the book I open myself up to the pleasure of it being a success and the pain of it being a failure does that make sense?

so if I really wanted to avoid the pain the only solution is to not write the book in the first place but that's not the way to live life so meditation teaches us how to tolerate pain how to accept pain and then once you can accept pain oh my god your life will become so much easier

and then something beautiful happens now I don't have to use the opium I don't know my day job is as an addiction psychiatrist so I teach the stuff to people who are addicted to heroin and fentanyl and video games and stuff like that it works for all of them not all of them, most of them

and so meditation absolutely helps because it literally strengthens the parts of our brain that addictions prey on and these are all addictions like food addictions and poor addictions and gaming addictions and social media addictions so each addiction has a slightly different manifestation

but the core aspect of providing pleasure and taking away pain is true of all addictions what is the most popular addiction in your mind that the vast majority of society are currently prey to but don't really realize I mean reading through your book I think phone addiction

which you talk about in chapter 7 is maybe the thing that none of us see as an addiction but we're probably addicted if I look at my screen time most popular yeah so I think phone addiction is really bad I mean in a weird way I'd say this doesn't really qualify as an addiction

but the biggest problem I think is addiction to success right so if we sort of think about it like I don't know if that's kind of the context of the it's just where my mind goes but if we sort of think about it everyone is using success is an antidote to their pain and a source of their pleasure

and so here we are chasing all of these things for success, for success, for success but in terms of like technology or like from a psychiatric perspective I think phone is probably at the top of the list I think I've been quite confused about something in my life but just generally because I

when I think about those young men that are struggling or young women that are struggling I often think what their life is lacking is a sense of purpose and ambition and something to strive for this is kind of what we say but now I'm kind of confused based on what you said because is that what they're missing?

Like you see a kid he's 22 years old he's in his mum's basement he you know low self-esteem playing video games all day he doesn't respect himself low self-worth I in my head I used to think what that kid needs is a big goal to strive for fair enough so but let's pay attention to your specific language so you said what that kid needs is purpose ambition in something to strive for are those three things the same?

no right so this is the core of the problem is this is why things get modeled and this is why people get confused because ambition is very different from purpose they're like it opposite ends of the spectrum if we look at it from a scientific perspective the number one thing that correlates

or one of the two most popular or two variables that correlate the most with pornography addiction is meaninglessness in life so if you want to conquer your pornography addiction you have to have a reason to not jerk off and watch porn all day so you have to have a life that like makes it so that

you just don't do that because what happens is if you have an empty life and your brain is kind of sitting there and it's like okay we're not doing anything anyway so let me get some dopamine like let's just do that and that's how people become addicted to pornography

is there correlation between when people masturbate and what they're going through in their life absolutely so it's not even masturbation with pornography addiction but what we find is that the more emotional the more their amygdala and lebic system gets activated the more pornography they will use

so the more negative emotion you experience the more pornography you will watch why because I want dopamine not no so this is where it avoids the pain so pornography shuts off our experience of negative emotions it's not even the pleasure it's the avoidance of the negative emotion

so if I'm really stressed and I'm going through a lot of shit at work I will I have a higher chance of masturbating that day not even masturbating watching pornography okay so masturbation is what leads to the dopamine but watching pornography will shut off the negative emotions

so I've worked with people who have pornography addiction for example work on one screen and they will literally have pornography open and playing on the second screen you're joking no very common so we don't talk about pornography addiction so

like and the worst their life is the more stress they have that's when I'll ask them you know when are the days that you have porn open on the second screen and they'll say it's like it's the day the worst that a stress gets the worst that a you sketch the person you teach them a couple of things

one is that you have to understand what the pain is right and then you teach them alternate emotional regulation skills so if you teach them other ways to manage their emotions they won't need the pornography the reason that porn is so addictive is because from a biological perspective

we're so wired for sex that is a very effective way to shut off our negative emotions but if you can teach them the second thing that we do is we metabolize the source of your negative emotions so if there is some kind of trauma at the root as we heal that trauma the drive for the addiction will melt away interesting have you dealt with a lot of people that have a pornography addiction sure and the sort of common thread is that they will have some kind of early trauma

and I'm writing you book as well that those people are typically exposed to pornography at a younger age yes so there's all kinds of stuff that have but yeah usually people have what I would say is they have unmetabolized emotions or a source of constant streaming of negative emotions does it create shame? 100% and those people is that one of the that's the problem right so as I become addicted to pornography I feel ashamed of myself and what's my antidote to shame? Stephen?

pornography so that's the downward spiral the upward spiral looks like like getting out of there so I'm watching pornography I do something I need less pornography yeah so so oftentimes what the upward spiral looks like is when you feel shame come and talk to me

so we're going to talk about what you feel ashamed of you're going to vent that negative emotion so we also know this is something that Freud discovered is that experiencing emotion even if it's not related to a real event weakens the emotion

so what he's sort of found is that if you can get someone to cry in your office as a psychotherapist and they vent that emotion out they feel lighter they feel better the emotional energy is left their body in some way so that and then we oftentimes will get to the source of their trauma

and we're going to metabolize that emotion that's really deep down there and that's kind of like it's kind of like an oil well that's just pumping up this black stuff so we shut off the oil well we teach them alternate emotional regulation skills and we work on building a life that is worth living

and we work on the whole process where someone has gone from really zero to a remarkable places there a case that he that comes to mind we go oh my god that is proof that any transformation is possible sure so there's a privacy concern so i'm happy to be a little bit general here but you know so i had someone who was started using opiates in their teenage years And at the age of 32, went back to school and has developed a career and became a best-selling author by the age of 36.

So in the four years that we worked together, they got to writing, which is what they always wanted to do, published a book and like the book was very, very successful. And then they actually have a separate career on top of that. Chapter five, the first conversation. The hardest thing about talking to someone about an addiction they have is that the first conversation has to be open without it affecting their gaming addiction in this case. That first conversation is the most difficult often.

Yeah, so it's not just for addiction. So if we sort of understand like the first conversation that you have with someone about something that they're not doing well in their life, and this relates to like man or insults or whatever, you have to approach that non-judgmentally. So if you want to connect with someone and a big part of what I believe about addiction and I would not believe in, this is true, is that you can't cure an addiction for someone else. So they have to want to stop.

So I've had people, you know, I used to work at two rehabs and these are like 30 day rehabs where people get forced into rehab never going to work. The person themselves has to want to stop the addiction, conquer the addiction, quit the addiction in order for it to be successful. So how do you convince someone that, okay, this is a problem and like you need to stop this, you can't, you can't really convince them. But the best that you can do is approach them non-judgmentally, right?

So like help me understand what is going on in your life. Help me understand why you use this thing. Like you can have judgments in your mind. That's okay, but be open-minded and be compassionate. Recognize that if this person is doing something, they're doing it for a reason. If they didn't get, if their brain did not get more benefit than harm out of it, then their brain would not be doing it.

On that first conversation, and also that moment of sort of change where they realize that they want to make a change in their life and it's, you know, enough is enough. People often refer to that as the rock bottom. Is it true that people need to, because I speak to a few people about this, whether we need to get to a rock bottom in order to make those big changes in our lives or if there's a way to not get to rock bottom before we decide to make the change?

So I'll give you an answer from one of my patients who I think knows this way better than I do. See when you hit rock bottom, you can always pull out a jackhammer and break down to the next level. So there's no such thing as rock bottom. There is just as low as you go before you start moving up. That's honestly what I believe. So you could say that I hit rock bottom, but you could easily, I mean, I'm sure I could have done worse, right? And so a lot of people for them, it is hitting rock bottom.

But I think really I trust my patients that it's just as far down as you go before you turn around and that's your lowest point. We can all think of people in our lives that we want to help change. And I guess in what I just said is part of the problem because we want to intervene in their lives and create change for them.

But we sometimes watch them self sabotaging and self sabotaging and then telling us they have this goal, they want to be this or that or the other, but then their behavior continues to follow a similar pattern where they continue to self sabotage. And as bystanders, sometimes we try and intervene, we try and help them in various ways. I'll pay for your therapist. I'll take care of your gym membership, whatever.

What should we be doing as bystanders of someone who's saying they want to change, but it's showing no sign of doing anything about it? Great question. So what we should do is not be bystanders, but also not quite pay for therapy. So this is something that's very important. If I once had a very brilliant teacher at Massachusetts General Hospital who told me that as a doctor, you should never go the extra mile for a patient. And then I was kind of confused by that, right?

Because I was taught that, oh my God, like, as a doctor, you should sacrifice. You need to go the extra mile. And they said the extra mile is a mile too far. So anything that someone can do for themselves, you should not do for them. So what I sort of really found is that, you know, there's really interesting case of a patient that I had that was a child with HIV. So this is when HIV was first discovered. They got diagnosed as an infant. So they had a perinatal HIV exposure.

And so this is when we were really discovering HIV. And so everyone bent over backwards for this kid because it's a port of this is a seven-year-old kid with HIV. So if they ever did anything wrong, it's not their fault. The kid has HIV. They've come late to appointments. They wouldn't do their homework. Oh, there's always people bending over backwards to help this person, help this person, help this person. So I was this person's doctor when they were in their late 20s.

And I was stunned by how incapable they are. They can't do even the most basic things like fill out an application for a particular thing that they needed. They needed the nursing staff to sit with them and fill out the application. Because what we had done is engendered some degree of helplessness by doing everything for them. So the biggest mistake that a lot of parents make is that they accept responsibility for their kids.

And if we love someone who has an addiction, we want to protect them from the consequences of that addiction. So we actually step up and we do more. The problem is that the moment that you start doing more, they will start doing less. So if you look at something as simple as, let's say you've got a roommate and there's dishes in the sink. The more you take responsibility for the dishes, what is your roommate going to do? They're going to do them less. The same is true.

So what I sort of find is that instead of, because we're so afraid, oh my god, like if I don't help them with this, if I don't pay for your therapy, then you're going to be fucked, you're so afraid. And so who's taking responsibility for it? You are. Let them ask you to pay. Let them come to you and say, you know what, I really want to conquer this. I found someone but I can't afford it. Will you help me? The outcomes that you see will be drastically different in my own practice.

Sometimes I charge a lot of money. And what I have found, 70% of my practice at one point was free. What I found is the number of people who know show for their appointments, which I'm giving them a big break, the more of a break I give them. And if they're free, they show up the least. If someone has skin in the game, they will actually do it. So my patients who are actually paying for my services, they're the ones who always show up.

So what we want to do is we want to start by asking these people, hey, tell me how you feel about your addiction, or not addiction. Just tell me what's going on with your gaming, right? Like how do you feel about your life? Like help me understand what's going on with you. Start by just understanding the person. And if you do that, everyone has ambivalence. That means internal conflict. There's a part of them that wants to quit. And there's a part of them that doesn't want to quit.

The problem is that anytime we see a flash of them wanting to get better, what do we do? We're like, yay, let's do it. And then what happens? We get that resistance from them. So if I'm like, if I come to you, Steven, I'm like, hey, man, I'm thinking about going to the gym. What do you say? Yeah, come on, come with me. Right? So what's kind of interesting? So what we do is what I do as a psychiatrist is like, you know, you're just thinking about going to the gym, but like, do you really need to?

Oh, really? You push back. Yeah, right? So whatever side you take, they're going to take the opposite side. Why do you do that? Because that's what the science tells us. So there's this technique called motivational interviewing. And anytime you're dealing with something called ambivalence, which is internal conflict, if you push them in one way, they're not moving in that way. They're going to move in the opposite way. I'm not saying that you can't encourage them, but let them take the lead.

That's the big difference. Let it be their motivation. Let it be their motivation. And anytime they move in the right direction, you want to support that, but don't ever push them. The choice is theirs. And the less that I do for my patients, the better that they end up doing. Last question. You talk about this 25% rule. What is the 25% rule? And go just want to apply it. So see, we all all think about goals where I want to be. Now there's a really tricky problem in our brain.

So if I have a goal that I want to be a millionaire and I work today and I earn $10, how does my brain interpret that? It looks at the effort that I put in. It says $10 is nowhere near my goal and then actually tanks my motivation because it looks at the situation. It says, I have not moved sufficiently close to my goal. So the bigger our goal is, the harder it is for our brain to get on board with doing it.

So the 25% rule is take anything that you want to accomplish and cut it in half and then cut it in half again. And this should be your first goal at a minimum. You can even go small with that. You have 12.5. There's no amount that is too small. But generally speaking, if you really look at it, the more ambitious your goals are, the harder they will be to achieve. And I know that sounds kind of weird, but you can still achieve it. But only if it's not your goal. It's been my experience.

There's neuroscience to back this up. But even then, when I was 18 years old, I wanted to go to Harvard and I wanted to be a come a doctor. When I gave up on the goal and I focused on the task at hand. So if you really look at how do you accomplish great things, not by wanting to accomplish great things, I can be at the bottom of Mount Everest and I can look at the top and I can say, I want to climb to the top of Mount Everest. Or I can not even look at the top of Mount Everest.

Whether I'm looking at the top or not looking at the top, the way to get to the top is the same, one step at a time. So it's really interesting because everyone is so focused on goals. What I've sort of learned is a psychiatrist and even in my own life is like focus on today, focus on doing something today and be super careful about setting a big goal because then even if you set a huge goal and you do 50% of it, you'll feel like, oh my God, like I didn't accomplish my goal.

And even 50% progress will feel like a failure because you didn't hit your goal, right? And this is really weird the way our motivational circuitry works. So cut your goal in half and then cut it in half again and focus on that one. It makes sense.

It's what the performance director of I think teams guys said, David Briles, for talk to me about many years ago, he said that he used to ban the athletes from thinking about the podium and just focus them on their pedal strokes today on their bikes and that team went on to become the greatest cycling team of all time pretty much from being down and out.

And I always wondered why he would, yeah, he said he banned them thinking about the medals and stuff like that because it would form as a distraction from today's performance. But it's difficult to do. So I'll, okay, I'll stop setting goals. Oh, or set them 25% or set them with awareness. No, I do anyway. I, to be honest, I don't set big goals in my life. I find it really difficult when people ask me, what's your five year or your 10 year plan?

You feel like you're bullshitting because the answer in reality is I'm just going to do my very, very best every day. Exactly. Right? So I agree with that 100% because what more than can you do? Yeah. 10 year goal doesn't, I mean, we can sort of think that it makes us work harder and it can in some ways, but it's not the ideal way.

It's going to confuse today and cause a lot of procrastination and confusion about what I should be doing today because if my goal is 10 million in five years, like what, like absolutely doing a course online today doesn't feel like it's so if you have a 10 year plan, you can afford to waste today and you can afford to waste tomorrow because you have so much time. Exactly. And that's not useful.

So if you've seen my most recent post on LinkedIn, you probably have seen that I'm on a bit of a hiring spirit at the moment across my company flight group trying to find the world's best talent and throughout these years of building these businesses, my first port of call for hiring has always been LinkedIn jobs who are a proud sponsor of this podcast. This is because of two reasons. Number one, LinkedIn isn't just another job board.

It has a vast network of more than a billion professionals and quality candidates, which I believe makes it the best place to find and hire professionals you can't find anywhere else. And number two, their process and features. LinkedIn is constantly finding ways to make the hiring process easier with super easy and intuitive features. Hiring is easy when you have that many quality candidates.

In fact, 86% of small businesses get a qualified candidate within 24 hours through LinkedIn jobs post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash D O AC. That's LinkedIn.com slash D O AC to post your job for free right now. And of course, terms and conditions apply. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. Okay. And the question that's been left for you.

If you could write one more book and that book was one page long and it was the last message that you could send to the world and your family, what would you use that page to say? So I can tell you what I would want it to say, but I think writing it in one page would be very difficult. Like I would do it. So I've thought about this that, you know, if I die tomorrow, I basically only have one regret about life.

I only have one thing that I want to accomplish, which is that I'm trying very hard to help a lot of people in the world. And the one regret that I would have if I died tomorrow is that I would not have taught my children what I teach the rest of the world. So I've even thought about this that if I got diagnosed with cancer and I had one year

to live, how would I spend that year? I would write a book for my kids that distills everything that I've learned about this sort of motivation, neuroscience, spirituality. It's all the same thing. It's all the same truth. See, the yogis learned this stuff and they were using the same brains that we learned. So they discovered all the principles of neuroscience through internal observation. So I would put on that one page, probably one page is how many lines, 16 lines, 18 lines, 20 lines maybe.

So I'd probably write 20 sutras that are like the core of what I've learned. And that may be things like, you know, like one of the sentences will be like, what is the ego? The ego is that which compares in the sense of self. How does one introspection is the way to shed yourself of like worldly expectations? Like once you start to know yourself, you won't look to the outside world to tell you who you should be.

And as long as you're telling the outside world, as long as you're listening to the outside world to tell you who you should be, you'll never be happy because they keep changing. Right. So some of this stuff, it would be something like that, but that's probably what I would do. I tried to distill everything that I've learned in the 20 lines. I was hoping that I can do it in a book, but one page would be tough. I'm curious about what some of those other lines would be.

So you talked about introspection about ego. Yeah. So I'd probably include one line about glistah and one line about vasana. So glistah is coloring. So the realization that most of what you experience in life doesn't come from the outside world. It comes from what your mind adds to the equation. So I'll give you an example. So if I met you for the first time and I called you a loser, if I said, Stephen, you're a loser, the impact of that, these are just words.

But whether that hurts you or doesn't hurt you is based on the interpretation of your mind. So another good example is, let's say I'm like talking to a girl and I have texturing she doesn't text me back. There are a thousand reasons why she may not text me back in 10 minutes. But it is what my mind adds to the reality of the world that actually fucks me the most. And most people don't realize this.

They think that, oh, this person dislikes me and this thing is going wrong and this thing is going, no, it's not actually like that. It is your mind that is actually coloring all of your experiences. So there'd be one sentence on glistah, one sentence on vasana, you know, an understanding of the ego and understanding of where desires come from, how to be happy. This whole idea that chasing an external thing for happiness will not ever achieve it in a lasting way. You got two kids?

Yeah. What would be the last paragraph you'd ever say to them? Probably I'm sorry I have to go and I wish I had more time with you. That's probably what I would say. And then I love you and I may be gone in this body, but I'll be around and we'll meet again. It's interesting because you know, when you meditate, we have this idea that we only live this life and that's because of the conditioning of our brain. And there are lots of studies.

There's a guy at University of Virginia who's done research on past lives and I've even done like past life psychotherapy with my patients. And when I was meditating, I realized one day that in a past life, I know this is going to sound completely insane, but I've done that. What you're hearing now is not a hypothetical. I've lost a child before. I've been a mother before and it took me some time to figure this out. But when you meditate, you start to discover things about yourself.

And I have this very deep sense of loss in me that I've lost a child. This is not hypothetical. I know what it's like to lose a child and it's happened to me before and I still carry that hurt with me from a past life. So when you ask me this hypothetical, this is not a hypothetical for me. This is a trauma that I've experienced just not in this life. So I'm lucky that so far it hasn't happened. I hope it doesn't happen, but I've chosen to be attached to my kids.

And in the same way that we talked about, you know, the moment that I write the book is the moment that I open myself up to success of the book or disappointment in the book. And the moment that I choose to love my kids, I open myself up to the hurt of losing them because I could lose them one day. And so that's one question that I think I've answered before. It's the first person that has ever asked me that. But you know, I can feel the hurt, I can feel the loss.

And just in my own experience, maybe it's an imagination or a construction from the neurons in my brain. But just what I've learned, I think it's like I've been there before and it's very painful and I still carry that pain with me. Do you think that's some kind of generational trauma or do you believe that that was you in another life? Well, same thing. So I think now we know from studies of epigenetic inheritance that we as human beings, we actually all inherit memories.

So I think it's really interesting because even if you look at your aversion to snakes, how do you have a fear of snakes even the first time you see a snake, you'll be scared of it. So we know scientifically that we inherit memories that are not our own. So now the question is just a little bit intellectual or philosophical that if you inherit a memory, was it you? I don't know. I mean, it's part of your DNA. It's part of your epigenetic expression. Would you consider that part of you or not?

I think most people would consider your DNA part of you. So I think, yeah, we even have scientific evidence that you could argue is sort of a mechanism through which we inherit memories from the past for sure, whether it's your life or not is up for debate. My girlfriend said this to me. She's talked about traumas that she feels like come from a past life. It's very difficult to believe. Very difficult to believe. My girlfriend always seems to be right about everything, eventually.

I eventually come to learn through lots of research that what she's saying isn't crazy. And she's gotten very, very emotional at times about things that she thinks she's tapped into from her past life through meditation. She's a breathwork practitioner. She's actually in Costa Rica now doing some retreats and stuff. It's so interesting. I'd love to learn a lot more about that. But for now, Dr. K, thank you so much for so much.

Yeah, you're one of the most engaging people I've ever spoken to in my life because you're also deeply passionate about the things that you speak on. And your book is about much more than gaming. The book is called How to Raise a Healthy Gamer, but it's about everything. It's about addictions. It's about our mind. It's about our relationships with both the technology that we have and each other.

At the top of the book, it says end power struggles, break bad screen habits and transform your relationship with your kids. But it's much more than just about kids. It's about all our relationships with all things and all people fundamentally because it's about the human mind. And that's why it's so incredibly important.

And if nobody has discovered you online before, I would highly recommend they go and check out your YouTube channel because you've managed to distill some of these complex things into highly engaging science-based advice. And it's a remarkable talent that you have. You're one of the most effective communicators I've ever encountered. So thank you for your time today. Thank you so much, Stephen. It's been awesome being here.

I feel privileged to be a tiny slice of your life because I can see you're such an amazing dude. And like, I'm very excited that you exist in the world today and I get to see what you continue doing. I want to come to them. Thank you. The key to growing a business is making sure that it's scalable. And this comes with integrating into the right platforms early in the game to support your growth. And the platform that's helped me and my team to do this is Shopify.

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