Starve the Ego Feed the Soul
Starve the Ego Feed the Soul
Vulnerability, Dating, Human Connection, and AI with Psychotherapist Romina Richardson, MSc
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Psychotherapist Romina Richardson shares profound insights on the emotional labor of therapy, authentic connection in relationships, and staying human in a tech-dominated world. We explore what makes a great therapist beyond credentials and how self-awareness creates the foundation for meaningful connections.
• The unseen emotional work of being a therapist – balancing personal resilience while holding space for others
• Dating in the digital age and how unrealistic standards affect our ability to form genuine connections
• Why loneliness persists despite constant digital connection
• Self-awareness as the critical difference between intuition and trauma responses
• The importance of finding personal meaning and purpose
• How AI and technology are changing human connection and mental health
• The balance between setting boundaries and authentic vulnerability
• Why authentic human connection requires courage and presence
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Warmly,
Nico Barraza
@FeedTheSoulNB
www.nicobarraza.com
Hey everyone, it's Nico here from Star of the Ego, feed the Soul, and I want to share something truly special with you. One of our own past guests, sophie Hilaire, who's not only a US Army officer veteran but also an incredible human being, who's traveled the world and now homesteads in Kentucky, has launched a handmade small batch skincare line called Soul and Soil. I personally use her ginseng, talabam and her eye elixir. It's fantastic. It's affordable. It's fantastic, it's affordable, it's for everyone and it's made with so much care. It comes in a handful of different scents for both men and women.
Speaker 1:If you want to treat yourself and support an amazing soul, head over to soulandsoilcom that's s-e-o-u-l andsoilcom, and use the code feed the soul for 15% off. Trust me, you're gonna love it. Hey y'all, welcome back to the show. I'm excited for this week's guest. I want to play a little bit of a clip from how I first introduced her and her work. We'd be scrolling on Instagram every now and then and I get a lot of therapy content on my feed obviously because I've worked as a counselor and have a lot of therapy friends and I post content of that nature in the relational sort of spiritual, mental, self-help realm, personal empowerment, all that jazz.
Speaker 1:So this reel came up for me. This was months ago now and I really liked Romina's answer to the question that was posed. She was just walking on the streets of London and this sort of influencer came up and asked her this question, and so I sent her a message like hey, I'd love to have you on the show to talk about what you said about being a therapist and about how hard it is and how people don't are ever really sort of shown the glimpse into that world and that life from the other side of the chair. And we have a beautiful conversation today around so much around dating relationships, generational gaps between how we communicate and how we date. We talk about AI and its influence in therapy and dating now and just our culture in general. We have to talk about a lot of stuff and she's very well-spoken, very educated. We have a really deep conversation, so I know you're going to love it. Stay tuned, listen to the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Please consider leaving the show Again. I ask this every time, but hey, I'm speaking from my heart to you wherever you're driving, wherever you're listening to. Pause the show right now. Just leave a five-star written review on Apple Podcasts and or Spotify Podcasts. It really is a free way you can give back. I've never charged a cent for this show, I've never blasted it with a bunch of ads and I really want to keep it that way. And if you guys can help by just doing this, that would mean a lot to me. It gets the show higher up in the ratings, it populates in more of the algorithm for Apple and Spotify, so it can reach new eyes, new ears, and it makes a huge difference. So if you can go ahead and do that, leave the show a five-star written review. That makes a big difference. So here's the clip and then I'll get into the show.
Speaker 2:What is something you're proud of that most people wouldn't believe how much it takes to be a therapist. You're holding onto your own resilience and emotional wellbeing as well as holding others. How do you?
Speaker 1:manage the two.
Speaker 2:It's balance and it's also just knowing yourself. So when you know yourself well, you know what you need and you know your limitations and boundaries and how to look after yourself and other people In moments when you're going through stuff yourself.
Speaker 1:how do you manage your job?
Speaker 2:Everyone, I believe, should have some therapy and having my own personal therapist, having my own support system around me, just giving yourself what you really need and, even if that's like taking a day off, look after yourself first and everyone else after that.
Speaker 1:What is the?
Speaker 2:best bit of advice you could give us as a therapist Learn about yourself, because if you learn about yourself, you understand how you see the world and you can create a life that works for you and aligns with you. So when you do the work, you sit with your feelings, you know yourself, you're able to have great relationships. You're able to have authentic communications. Find the job of your dreams, because it all aligns with who you are.
Speaker 1:What would be your message to the world?
Speaker 2:Spread the love. There's so much fear in the world. I think we're very scared. When you come from a place of love and not fear, it's contagious and it's a beautiful thing and we need more of that energy.
Speaker 1:What is?
Speaker 2:your name and where are you from? I'm Ramina and I'm from London.
Speaker 1:Ramina Richardson, thank you so much for joining me on Star of the Ego Feed the Soul.
Speaker 1:It's an honor to have you and to sit down and spend some time with you, even though you're all the way across the pond in London.
Speaker 1:I just want to let everyone know how I first sort of was introduced to you and your work, and you're a psychotherapist based in England, and I constantly scroll through Instagram, like everybody else these days when I'm bored or when I'm looking for content, when I'm looking to absorb some sort of information, and there was this cool video that came up I think it was on this like influencer's page, but it was interviewing you and he or she had asked you you know what are you most proud of?
Speaker 1:And you said that it was like the amount of work or sort of. You know what it takes to be a therapist or a psychotherapist, and I thought that was wonderful. You know, and you kind of got into how difficult it was and sort of the mental sort of trials and tribulations that go into practicing good therapy as a therapist on the other side of the seat. So first of all, I wanted to start with like a little introduction about yourself and what got you into that work and then maybe tell us a little bit about what made you say, what made you answer that that question, in that way, cause that was brilliant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so good to talk to you, nico. I mean, we've been watching each other's stuff for a while from across the pond and I love everything that you come up with from male therapist perspective. But, yeah, it was great to connect with you through that medium. I wasn't actually expecting to do that.
Speaker 2:It was a street interview, um, and it was just very off the cuff, and I think I've been pressured and pushed by a lot of people to actually have more online presence, um, and there are a few hesitations around that for for different reasons, um, but actually conversations are really important to have around mental health and around therapy and actually, you know, speaking from a therapist perspective humanizes the therapist, actually, and we are all human, so it feels like an important piece. So I went ahead and spoke to the street interviewer about, yeah, I'm proud of what it takes to be a therapist, because actually it takes a lot of resilience. I think, and there is so much behind the work that we do, you'll know, is not just the studying and the academic and theoretical psychological understanding, just the studying and the academic and theoretical psychological understanding, it's, it's the lived experience that we've had and we deeply feel that we can, so we can deeply empathize and with people, but also you know um the self-care and the nurturing that has to go into it.
Speaker 2:Like you really have to take your own mental and physical health so seriously, otherwise you're not able to have the bandwidth to be there for others and show up for people in a way that's, you know, unbiased and, like, healthy and, you know, have this kind of tolerance for for holding people um people's pain and people's stories you know, in a sincere and very present way, because it takes a lot to be present one.
Speaker 1:That's a wonderful way to start the show because we have so many things to get into and we've had a couple conversations on whatsapp and they've gone super well, so I'm really looking forward to getting into stuff with you today. But the um, the interesting part of that is I think we we spoke about this too like just getting the degree alone and getting a side e or getting that. You know, in the US it's an MFT or a licensing counseling. It doesn't make you a good therapist, right? Being a good therapist takes a lot of deep interpersonal work, leading up into the years of even getting the degree and past that right. It's a consistent practice of mindfulness of, you know, sitting in a room and not letting your own bias, your own transference, sort of bleed into the situation with your client in front of you, and also being able to hold space but keep people accountable, right, because I think that in our society now, since we're becoming more, I would say, aware and more sort of emotionally communicative, it's a double-edged sword, because we can sit in a therapy room with people and we can just validate their experience, right? Oh, my ex is a narcissist or my parent is super abusive, and not that these things are necessarily wrong from that person's perspective. But at the end of the day, if you're looking to change, you have to look at the things in yourself, right? And it's usually not just red flags that you didn't see the red flags, usually not just other people being the problem, right? And the reason I bring this up is because you're talking about a person that's practicing within the self first, right, and you can do a job and run through the motions and never really practice it yourself, right? And I think that that's what really separates the really amazing providers that are truly just doing amazing work with their clients and ones that are just getting a paycheck now, both for the server purpose.
Speaker 1:I'm not here to say which ones are which, right, but I do think we need to sort of delineate, even in the field, that, like you know, the really great providers are the ones really doing the work and holding themselves accountable, you know. And that doesn't mean they have perfect relationships, that doesn't mean they're perfect parents Not at all, right, we're imperfect human beings but it means that they're self-aware enough to know and catch themselves in their own bullshit, because that's really what we're trying to teach in therapy, right? It's like those little inner children inside of us. Inner children, excuse me, that are scared or anger or resentful or manipulative, or they shut down, or they scream and shout and get angry, or they look for ways to numb or medicate because they feel unloved or they feel hurt or they feel anxiety or whatever it is right. And so I appreciate you bringing that up, because I don't think a lot of therapists talk about this enough specifically publicly, because I think it's kind of daunting. You kind of want to create, like it's like this separation of church and state, right, it's like this is who I am as a professional, this is who I am as a personal, and we even talked about this offline. Right, it's like you know, there's certain boundaries you set within yourself, even within interviewing, because you don't want people to glean into your life, which makes sense because we have to have boundaries as professionals. But I also think that if we share a little bit more, people understand what goes on in the mind of a therapist or a counselor and they can better select one too. That might actually help them.
Speaker 1:Because I think I told you about this for me and I appreciate you talking about my content and saying that it aligns with you. It doesn't align with everybody, and that's okay. I've accepted that because I know I'm sharp wit and I know that some people, people, they might get triggered by something I say and I'm not, you know, on the internet for everyone to agree with me. I don't certainly think I'm always right. I just had an episode that was a solo episode a couple weeks ago, launch about this, saying that like, hey, because I post something like I love when people disagree with me, just in a thoughtful way, you know, be respectful and that's wonderful, like I love that discourse, you know. And I bring that into the therapy room too, because when my client pushes back, I'm like, well, let's talk about it, let's let's break down, like these different drivers that might be, you know, contributing to this behavior, this pattern you're engaging in, right, and maybe they were going to teach me something that I can't see, right Already.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and you're, you know, you, you touched on a great point in that interview. It's just that it's like the job of the teacher, right, and not to say all therapists are teachers. But I have so much reverence and respect for my grade school elementary teachers, my middle school teachers, my high school teachers, these folks that got up every day, didn't make that much money at all, went home to their own family, their own stressors, but the good ones that showed up and taught and inspired me and helped me believe in myself and it was like a sanctuary from whatever was going on at home or with friends or with girls or whatever, those people are honestly in my life, like angels, I mean. They made such a big impact. And I feel the same way with therapists that have come into my life too, that have inspired me, you know, to get into this profession.
Speaker 1:So how did you get into this? Right, like, everyone has a story, went through trauma, went through this, like what made you want to become a therapist. And you, you have some other goals past that. Right Like you're, you're working on stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think I think it's so true about you know, people that come into your life and really touch you, and I think that there's a there's a bit of a magic recipe in that, and I think there's a lot there that we can kind of talk about that. You know why, how did, why did people, some people resonate and why do they touch us?
Speaker 2:and why does it leave us with such an impact? But for sure, you know, one of the biggest predictors of uh, predictors of successful outcomes in therapy is just just alone the rapport between client and therapist. Like how well do you get on? So rapport is like one of the you know most important things, and I always say to people like fit, like go shopping for therapists, like shop around, like pick up the phone. Most therapists will have a conversation with you for free for like 10 minutes. They also want to know that they can support you and so there's a really important you know part that's kind of like unspoken about, which is it's the kind of energetics and the kind of the wavelength that you've got to both be on to make things work together and and the you know, are you compatible?
Speaker 2:you know in therapy and so that's a that's a real element and your approach is very, is very real to say. You know, some people will get on with me and some people won't, and like some people like my approach. So that's a really important part of being a therapist. I, you know, I totally have seen and experienced how I got into therapy. I, you know, I always say there's a short answer and there's a long answer. And you know, the short answer for me was that I used to be a journalist and I was working in magazine for magazines and for television media and news outlets and I was seeing all these problems in the world right when I was in television news. And then I worked for a magazine to try and lighten the kind of problems and see all the do more lifestyle, and then that felt a little bit superficial and so I was kind of in this place of search for meaning. That was where I was really at, was like what does this actually mean to me? Like whose lives am I actually changing? You know, like this isn't really hitting the spot, and so I had this itch for like, okay, I want to actually create impact. And then, um, you know, I switched, I did a conversion in psychology as a master's degree and the rest is kind of history. But the long answer is I got stuck into life and life happened and I was deeply affected by an experience with a loved one. Um, and so a loved one you know was had cancer and you know was kind of told all right, you're gonna, this is really it, um, and I got, you know, I got.
Speaker 2:I was very young at the time, I was 25, and I was like, right, okay, this is the biggest kind of young. At the time I was 25 and I was like right, okay, this is the biggest kind of life, traumatic life experience I've had so far. And you know it was. It was deeply, um, deeply moving to me that I would go into a hospital and I would see all these people suffering with chronic kind of issues and really kind of at the end of their lifespan, and yet there was not one mental health practitioner in that building, and that was. You know, that was now 10 years ago. Now it's changed, it's developed, there are mental health practitioners available, you know, in hospitals and things more so. But I was just struck by that because I thought to myself gosh people are. You know, I saw my loved one quite traumatized and thank goodness they recovered. They're in remission by a miracle. But why are we? Why are we physically supporting people and doing everything medically but we're not doing anything mentally and emotionally for them, right?
Speaker 2:And that's too much on nurses you know to look after as well. Nurses can't be doing the physical and the mental God bless them so much, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that was so clear to me that there's a missing piece here and we there just needs to be more mental health practitioners and there needs to be more mental health support. I think what I really really came to was what became so clear was the link between mind and body, and so I started studying. Um, you know the link, the links between you know chronic stress, cortisol, like chronic inflammation, and the link between that and you know disease, right, like chronic illnesses, cancer, autoimmune, autoimmune disorders, and Gabo Maté does a lot of really beautiful work on this. Yeah, I have a book right here.
Speaker 2:It's it's well, the Body Keeps the Score is another one by Zalvan Dukok, and so there's a lot of really good authors on. You know, yeah, gabor Mati's book is when the Body Says no right. And if so, the idea is, if the body says no, you're actually your mind has kind of not put that boundary in. So now your body's having to put the boundary in because your mind is saying this isn't healthy, but I'm going to keep going, I'm going to push past what's healthy, and then the body just goes absolutely not, you're going to. You're going to. This is like serious, you know, you're pushing your boundaries too much. So if we're not in touch with the mind and we're ignoring the mental limitations and not putting boundaries in sufficiently in work and you know personal life then our bodies are going to rebel and say like enough, right. Then our bodies are going to rebel and say like enough right. And so my, my work now is very much centered around like the whole picture. It's not just like what are you feeling?
Speaker 2:today right no, you know what does your life look like. What's your diet like. You know who, what's your social life like. You know how often do you like have social support. You know loneliness is a really big problem right now yep um, you know how much do you move your body. What thoughts are you thinking, you know? Let's think about your nurturing, let's think about the nature. Where are you? What kind of environment are you in? How much pollution is there Like?
Speaker 1:the whole.
Speaker 2:Thing you know, I want to understand the full picture of people.
Speaker 1:Yep, no, that's beautiful. I like that you're looking at all those parts of people's lives. You know, I think a lot of times we can get siloed right In therapy where we're just like, okay, you have a problem, we just focus on that, and then we'll break down childhood and whatnot. But you know, if you're not taking care of your body, if you don't have some sort of connection to something greater than yourself and we can call it spirituality, it doesn't have to be religion, whatever. I think that's so intricately human.
Speaker 1:You know, I've talked about this in the show before where you know we've gone through this, like these different phases in humanity. Like we had polytheism with paganism mixed in, then it kind of converted into monotheism and then there was this huge like push back against religion for traumas and oppression and whatnot, for very like you know, very obvious reasons. But then there was like this big wave of like atheism, agnosticism, and I consider myself agnostic for like most of my 20s, when I was in undergrad and graduate school, and then now I feel like I'm very spiritual again and I enjoy going to different religious practices, not because I'm part of like that specific religion, but because I it's like being around people that are celebrating something greater than themselves, that just want to be better collectively. You know, especially when it's inclusive, when it's open, when it's loving of all people and religions, not just one. You know, anytime it's dogmatic, it's not my jam, but I say this because that's part of this whole thing. Right, like you know, body keeps the score. Right? You brought up Dr Monte, and I think that it's really important for people to start looking at that.
Speaker 1:You know, you go on Instagram. There's just so much stuff about drink this green juice, do this yoga, do this Pilates, and it's all wonderful. There's just not a lot about connecting with spirit. There's not a lot about being in service of others. It's really about what me, me, me, me, me. What am I going to get from it? How do I optimize my biohacking, my health, my income, whatever?
Speaker 1:Right, and that's fine, that's good to have self-goals, but I think it's so innately human to be part of community, collectivity, a congregation to help others, that if we lose that, that's why we're so depressed and lonely. Right, it's not because we're not focused enough on ourselves. We've been pretty good at that for most of humanity. Right, some of us lost our way, overgiving all that stuff exists for real. But when people say, well, our problem is that we're not practicing enough self-love, I don't know if I necessarily agree with that anymore. I think that we just it depends how we're trying to love ourselves. If we're trying to love ourselves by buying ourselves a bunch of shit or just reading a bunch of books that only benefit ourselves. When I pick up a book and it's encouraging me to be in service of others, that book is going to help me live a happier life. I just don't think there are many out there like that and I think there's more being written, hopefully.
Speaker 1:But when I think even about the self-help industry that usually falls under therapy or counseling, it's very just like self-help. How do I help myself? Counseling? It's very just like self-help, like how do I help myself? Right, and I want to do like the help others to industry. Right, you can't really help yourself without helping others. Because if you're just helping yourself, it's just like selfishness, right, and it's not. It's really not going to heal you, it's not going to help you. I think there's a little bit of, there's a limit of selfishness that probably will help at some level on certain things in your life, right, and it's not always a bad word. It's okay to be selfish once in a while, right. It's okay to like take care of yourself, right. But I think, if that's our only focus and a lot of times it is and we'll just excuse what we're doing, you know, and we'll excuse the patterning, that's why we have so many people in society that are really just struggling and they feel alone, you know.
Speaker 1:And even when we talk about relationships, like, I find that the most self-focused people, they might have tons of friends and I put this in quotes, you can see me on the camera it's just not very deep, you know. And then they wonder why they can't have connection or they don't find real relationships, you know. And so that brings me to this next part of this topic I want to talk to you about, and that's, you know, so many of my clients that I've had over the years. Either they've been through divorce or separation or whatever, and they come to me and they're like Nico, I've been on dating apps. They're terrible, like where I'm at, whether it's LA, new York, san Diego, phoenix, Arizona, whatever, oh, it's the area, right.
Speaker 1:The people here are just, they're like X, y and Z, right, and I just can't meet anyone deep. I can't meet anyone that just wants to have a relationship. Everyone just wants to have casual sex, you know, and then so they demonize that or they're like well, I don't want to date anyone with kids, and everyone has kids in this dating pool, right, and it seems like most of us are saying that the dating pool is pretty atrocious or horrendous, right, and it makes me sit here and think I'm like, what has really changed in humanity? I'm like, not much in terms of dating, just maybe our needs, and I think one of the things that came up in my mind is that our requirements and our needs for relationships, because of society, because of Instagram, because of pop psychology, it's gotten way higher. It's like I want a partner that does this, that does this, that's this, that's this, it's emotionally intelligent, all these things, and we're looking for this crystal perfect image of a person. I have to be so sexually attracted to them. They have to look like this. The sex has to be amazing and I want to.
Speaker 1:I don't know, just babble a little bit bit, but I want to leave this question, pose this question to you. It's like is that like? Do you feel the same way? First of all, because you don't have to agree with me at all, and if you do agree with me, like that, that is part of it like how do we, how do we rectify that in society? How do we have a real conversation with ourselves? And like the requirements we're putting on the dating pool you know that like we're putting these huge boulders on the shoulders of another and are we even offering all those things like legitimately, or are we just saying we are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's such great questions and I think, you know, I think it comes back to what you started with.
Speaker 2:For me, you know you said it earlier, it's all all, it all starts within it, all, everything is an inside job, right, and we are, we are the most stimulated, over stimulated as human beings, as we've ever been in the history of humanity. And so how do we deal with that, right, and what are the implications of that? And so, in the context of, in the context of um, finding purpose every day, today, it's we're so distracted, like we're chronically distracted, which, by the way, raises cortisol in our, in our blood, in our body, our stress hormone, so we are not firing and wiring in a in a regulated state most of the time, unless we take time to regulate, meaning we meditate, we breathe, we, we literally come away from a screen, and we have to kind of like parent ourselves to do that, because otherwise the addiction is so real to just scroll, you know yeah so, if we're completely overstimulated and chronically stressed, what kind of energy are we moving with?
Speaker 2:what kind of? What kind of message are we like putting out there to other people? You know, and it it appears to me that people are, you know, and and I'm one of these people, obviously, like I include myself in this we are, we walk around and we are, we are little children in adult bodies, right, like our inner child is there with us all the time, just just walking around and we're constantly being triggered and kind of like distracted by the world and stimulated, and you know, all of our systems are firing and so how can we possibly engage with someone else if we're not regulated ourselves? Right, like, what are we able to even offer in our presence? Are we able to be present and look that person in the eye, or are we looking at them and thinking about what we need and what we want and what you know? So I think A self-regulation is so damn important, right, like you need to get so real with yourself about, like, what am I? How am I feeling? Let me sit with like my nervous system, let me tune in.
Speaker 2:And actually I never before I had therapy myself as a 20 year old, I never knew how my nervous system was actually feeling Like, how how much of my energy was being used for anxiety in my, in my own kind of tuning in of myself. And so I remember sitting in therapy and having to sit and look at the therapist and be present with my, my, my inner child, and my inner child was like screaming with anxiety. I actually had this like underlying anxiety in my, in my body, all the time, and so finally I attended to that and was like, whoa, I need to soothe this little child, cause, goodness, I like I'm walking around with all this nervous energy all day long. How are people? Of course people are responding to me in a way that I don't want because I'm walking around with that energy. Right, so, tuning in to like what's happening. Who am I? What is my nervous system state? Am I dysregulated? And so what we need to do is make time to process our own emotions and we need time to process what's happened. So I'll go through today and I'll sit at the end of the day, and I'm a meditator, so I'll sit and I'll meditate and that will help me almost like shut down and process, literally emotionally. Just take in what's happened today and it's a very natural process for me now. But you almost have to like talk to yourself like you're a child, like you're reparenting yourself when you want to do this.
Speaker 2:And there are other ways to process too. Right, like many techniques to process, like EMDR therapy that's for processing trauma. You know neurofeedback. There's a lot of different ways to do that, a lot of tools, and you can go and sit in therapy and sit there and really just be with it, and that's a processing of itself. Um, or you could just take time to do something meditative, like walking in nature with no headphones and no technology.
Speaker 2:Processing is so important, but I think the other thing is we've got to find meaning in our own lives before we can really offer anything to anyone else, and I mean offer any kind of energetic relationship. So, if you're struggling with finding meaning in life, do an Ikigai journaling experiment. You know an Ikigai tree, you can just Google that and it's so helpful to really get a grip of like what really fires me up, what am I here on earth to do? And that gives you a sense of like guidance with your values and like how you should move through life and what you want to do right. Have you ever done one of those?
Speaker 1:no, I was gonna. I was gonna ask what you just said, like do you think that every person has a purpose here?
Speaker 2:yeah, and that's that question is so there. There's so much in that question for me it's like that could be a very spiritual question yeah and like let's define spirituality.
Speaker 2:I think everyone might have a different definition. Sure, to me, spirituality is being in touch with something deeper within yourself or within a, within some kind of something, something else. It's a deeper sense of meaning and a deep sense of purpose and a deep sense of faith. And so you know, that could be a kind of a religious, it have religious connotations or it could have, like your own kind of sense of self connotations. But I think I do really believe that everyone is good at something and everyone finds something that they can light up about.
Speaker 1:That's what I believe no, I, I believe that I I find it hard because I used to be like this, you know, spiritual universalist, where I thought the universe had everyone's back. And then, you know, once I aged, I was like you know, I can snap my finger and someone just died in some horrendous, at atrocious manner, right, and so it's hard for me. I feel like it's it's for me it feels very entitled or elitist to say, like you know, I, like the universe has my back, right, cause it's millions and millions of people throughout the history of humanity that it hasn't. You know, in certain situations, and someone can say well, I don't necessarily have to have this attachment anymore to like whether the universe is conspiring against us or for us. I just think it's chaotic, it's like a, it's beautiful, random, you know, at the same time. But that doesn't take any meaning away from my small, insignificant universal life where I can make change in the tangible things, like loving people, like treating people right. And the reason I'm bringing this up is it's kind of the thing, it's like I'm going to be a good person because I'm preemptively doing it so I can get to the gates of heaven. No, I want to be a good person because I want to be a good person, because it's part of being a human being to care right, to be a caretaker, to care about others, to be defender.
Speaker 1:I think that when we're acting as consumers and consumerism in any way, when we're consuming religion, we're consuming spirituality. When we're consuming crystals or tarot cards or astrology readings and we consume it so much where it becomes this like dictum, like this dogmatic thing that we can only see through those rose colored lenses, I think it becomes really dangerous and that's why I've kind of detached from the universal spirituality sense where it's like spirit to me is merely just love. It's just love. It's the fact that you and I are on the screen right now. You're 5,000 miles away. We're having this wonderful conversation. I could go out my door, I could meet someone on the street, have a beautiful conversation with them. Whether we are attached to some omnipresent being or not, I don't know, but what I feel is that love that's always there. I can quantify that for God in my mind. Whatever I want to say, you know I used to have an aversion for even using that word because of my Catholic upbringing, you know, and I when I became agnostic. But the reason I bring this up and again.
Speaker 1:Not everyone has to agree with this perspective at all. I just I found that there was so much trauma and pain that it was really hard for me to rectify the fact that, like through entitlement, like oh, there's, you know, the universe is conspiring for my life to work out because it hasn't Like. There's been some beautiful things and things I'm very grateful for, and I live in chronic pain every day, from what modern surgeons did to my arm, you know, after a surgery I probably never should have got, and that's like my little piece of oh man. That really sucks in my life and it continues around me every day. But there's people that far worse, right, you lose a child that's very young, you pass away before your parents or whatever. There's so many other traumas that can happen and I think within that, that is just part of the life experience.
Speaker 1:The human experience is that there's always shadow, there's always darkness, right, but darkness isn't implicitly bad, it's just part of the experience. I just don't think the universe is playing a role in it. Personally, I think that it's just things are happening and we can either make it better for each other. It's never going to be perfect. We're never going to live in a utopia, but we can work to making it better. And people are like well, why, why? If there's no reward, why would I make it better? Well, that's the lesson. That's the lesson right there.
Speaker 1:If you're asking that there has to be something given back to you to be in service of others, I think that is like the most beautiful teaching of Buddha, of Jesus, of Krishna, of all these other sort of spiritual leaders, right, that were real human beings outside of the mythology is that they were like be in service of your fellow human beings, right, break bread with them, you know, sit with them regardless of your belief system. See them for who they are, right, learn, grow together. Don't judge those kind of things, or don't judge in a bad way, I should say, you know, and I say this because so many of us are looking to become part of, like, some sort of cultist mentality that's on TikTok or Instagram, and we find it either in fitness, either in spirituality, either in whatever, and we just attach to that right, and so we just focus on these things and we read a lot of books on these things, you know, but then we forget to like, look at other perspectives about that thing, you know about that thing and we can focus. We can focus on society, on politics, on war, whatever. And we just look at one thing Okay, this thing is the most moral thing, the thing I've decided.
Speaker 1:So I stopped looking at the other side of things. You know, and I think if we really are to evolve as like a species, like collectively, spiritually, the only way to do that is through self-awareness, being aware of yourself why you think, feel and choose. You know, as Dr Caroline Leaf would use, right? So, and I don't know, I don't think I necessarily disagree with you at all. I was just saying like I wanted to say in general, because I don't know if I've really talked about this on the show before, which is, I don't know, surprising to me, I guess, but you brought it up, so thank you.
Speaker 1:It's just the fact that, like I, I've kind of pushed back on that sort of universal spirituality a bit, not not in the sense that, like, I'm not again tapped into that spiritual part of myself with love, but it's just I just define it differently, you know, cause I find a lot of times like I'll go online and they'll just be like, well, the universe has your back light, light and love.
Speaker 1:You know and I don't say those to hurt myself anymore, although I have caused a lot of self-pain with grief and with self-anger on things I've done in the past but it's more like being accountable for things you're doing or you've done right in the past. But it's more of a like being accountable for things you're you're doing or you've done so you don't do them again. Also, so you don't find yourselves in situations like relationships or friendships or familial relationships that are going to trigger the worst side of you Right it's. You want to be around people, you want to be like. You know that, you want to, that you want to look up to that, you want to emulate you know.
Speaker 2:So I know that was maybe a little bit of a tangent, but you just something, something you said within that just kind of was like boom, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's all, there's so much there, and I think you know, look, spirituality is whatever, whatever you might have faith in, right, it's whatever you have faith in right. What do you have faith in? Um, and and and, hopefully it's something. And if it's, you know, if it's not, then I come back to the meaning and the purpose, because that can give you faith, right, like all, right, I'm here, I'm here for this, I'm here on earth, just okay, in your example, to serve others or to support others or, you know, to be a therapist, right.
Speaker 2:And so the irony of how can I be fulfilled, how can I? Me, me, me, me. The narcissistic kind of state that we're often in, because now, look, we're always on the screen and we're always on show and we're always like, monitored, like you know, the surveillance cameras, basically everywhere, our iphones, we're always on the screen, so we are seeing so much of ourselves and we, we have become, you know, more narcissistic. In that sense, I believe, um, but here's the thing. It's like the irony around. How do I, how do I, find purpose and meaning? And and faith is through the service of others, through, like you said, you know, and religions speak to that, it's like you know treat others how you would want to be treated, and and and you know, be kind to your neighbor, right, and so that's precisely what it is.
Speaker 2:It's like your meaning in life, your calling, you know, is, is whatever. Whatever lights you up, and I'm going to bet that almost everything that lights people up is in service of something else. It's never in service of yourself, because just vicariously you get served, you fill your cup up just by looking out for other people, and we are social animals and we are wired to connect and so, as beautiful as this moment is, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:It would be better in person. Yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 2:And the feeling would be completely different, right. And so you know I'm all for connecting in the ways that we can, especially when it comes to therapy and people having access to therapy online, you know better than nothing, right.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:But, at the same time, we are losing connection. Obviously, it's such an obvious thing to say, but it's something that we forget and so we lose perspective, like I think this is why we started like to come back to your original question about dating and finding the hopelessness of that. It's like I think we're losing perspective. Right, you said it. You said our standards are so high. We are looking for the picture perfect person and we are comparing everyone to online, right, like oh, who can? And it's like a swiping swiping like endless, like black pit, right. And so I think, because we're not engaging in person, we're objectifying each other. We're looking at people online as if they are a person in a magazine, not a person with feelings, not a brother, not an uncle, not a mother, not a father, like these people are a human Stranger Right we forget that they're human and so we're objectifying them.
Speaker 2:They're objectifying us, because everything is so online and so on a screen. There's no felt sense of that person Right.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And I think that's why we're struggling. I think that's why dating is hard, yep.
Speaker 1:And to be fair, I mean, I think we've built a culture that objectifies each other. I think you know it's. It's interesting because, like I know, women complain about being objectified a lot. But then we also have this like empowerment movement where it's like, yeah, girls start in OnlyFans or like you know, like do this. And I'm like there's this like line we're walking there in society where it's like, okay, we're criticizing men for sort of being pigs and like wanting sex, which is a very human thing, right. But then men have proliferated in a certain way where they've been disrespectful and it's not all, but it's a lot of men, right. But then we on the other side, when women are hustling and they're, you know, having only fans, onlyfans, or they're stripping or whatever, we're like, oh well, now it's more socially acceptable. So it's like, hey, they're just hustling, they're just making their money. I'm like the industry can't exist without both of those parties. You have to have the buyer and you have to have the seller. And it's the same thing with blaming drug addictions on the drug addicts. It's like if pharma were to say, hey, we're just out here selling opioids and you know they wouldn't be a problem if no one was buying them. It's the same thing, right? Same thing. It's like someone that's on OnlyFans saying like well, men are the problem. I'm just out here doing my hustle, you know, and you're creating a world where you know we're saying it's okay to objectify someone for their body.
Speaker 1:Now, again, I gaps in society, but to the level it's blown up now, like this directly relates to online dating. It's you can like, why go through the hassle of heartbreaker dating when you can just go on and have this pseudo relationship on OnlyFans with OnlyFans creator, you know, and feel like your inner child feels somewhat like you get a little bit of attention, right. But then you, there's transaction, and again it's very transactional, which I think a lot of our modern relationships are now very transactional too. And I bring this up because I think that until both sexes, or all genders, are accountable for their roles in what we've built, that it's not just patriarch, it's not just men, but it's everything in totality, we can't really start to have an honest conversation like you're encouraging us to do about like, hey, our standards are one, unreasonable, two, we can't live up to them ourselves. But also it's very transactionally objective. It's very like, oh, this person, I'm looking for these boxes and immediately, if they don't check this one box, okay, see you later. Swipe to the next one. Right? And I even find that to be true in marriage.
Speaker 1:Now too, a lot of marriages feel like all right, well, both people on Instagram, they'll see a cuter person that's living a fun life and they'll be like, oh, I miss that life. You know, maybe they're fighting with their spouse for a couple of years and then all of a sudden they just stop working on the relationship because it's easier to be distracted than to put in to what they have in front of them, not realizing that what they've built over the years is so much more worthy than what some random human being on the internet can give them. You know, but they just lose touch with that because it is work. It does require input, you know. Yes.
Speaker 2:You and I had a really good conversation off screen about this. We were talking, and so I think that laziness is an epidemic now. It really is. It's like the easiest route is not the best route, however, we will take it, and so what's happening is I think we are just now getting way too comfortable. I'm talking about we being the West, I'm in the UK, you're in the US. We have these resources like chat, gpt, which can be extremely helpful, but it's like a really quick shortcut and so we're not doing any work and so things become easier, right, and that is so dangerous for human beings.
Speaker 2:For things to be easy is the most psychologically dangerous thing for humans, because we lose our sense of purpose, we lose our sense of meaning, we lose our self-esteem this is so good because I just popped around, like even pornography, like when pornography started to get bigger and bigger, bigger with the internet.
Speaker 1:It's like erectile dysfunction went up, right. Like like more objectification went up, like bedroom performance requirements went up because everyone was like, oh, they have to look like this. And I'm like this is a scene with actors even acting out orgasms. Like use it as media if you want to, like have fun with your partner and have like something to look at. But like if you get addicted to it, like anything, dopamine releases and it becomes easy. It's like you're, you're speaking to our addictive brain, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, sorry to interrupt you, I just like brain, that's it. The addictive brain is saying give me the quick hit, give me the quick hit, the quick me, the quick hit. The quick answer on church EBT, the quick answer on, you know, on getting porn, gratification, and you know what, the most detrimental thing other than like losing our sense of purpose and our ability to say no. I actually know that I'm smart enough to write this essay myself. I'm, you know, charming enough to go out there and speak to that girl at the bar and, like you know, we can go on a date. And actually, you know, charming enough to go out there and speak to that girl at the bar and, like you know, we can go on a date and actually, um, you know, I have. That builds your self-esteem. The only way you build your self-esteem and your sense of self is by living in the real world.
Speaker 2:And so we're retreating from that for safety reasons, because there's a real vulnerability and courage that it takes to go out and do all that stuff in the real world, right. But like maybe I'll just stay in my comfort zone, right. And so what do we have? We have anxious, we have depressed, we have um dopamine burnout young people in particular because we're not earning what we're getting, and so we don't even feel a sense of like I deserve this. You know, there's just like a. It's like giving a child the reward before they did the thing that they deserve the reward for. And so we also. We also forget that like if we, if we're blessed enough, we have a long life and so let's do something meaningful with life, and like, how are you going to spend your time? Do you want to get to the end right now?
Speaker 1:like we may as well die tomorrow you know what's the point of living right? We need to.
Speaker 2:We need a journey to go on, and we need to enjoy that journey. How do we make the journey enjoyable? And so we're finding that we're we're incredibly lonely and we're incredibly restless as a society in the west right now because of that need for immediacy can I ask you a personal question?
Speaker 1:do you experience loneliness like in your current life, even as a clinician?
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:What do you think leads to that like with yourself?
Speaker 2:You know, I honestly had to think about this, because I am an incredibly sociable person and. I love community and I love you know work and I love you know being out there in the real world. That is, you know, I think, to this conversation I really feel like let's do more of that. I'm like in a conscious effort to do that, but loneliness is such a such a subjective thing, like the way that people feel loneliness is very personal to them, and so you know my sense of loneliness what makes me feel lonely might not make you feel lonely, so I have friends that would feel incredibly satisfied by being in a, in a at a dinner with a bunch of people.
Speaker 2:And so, while that satisfies me, I think my loneliness and I think my loneliness and you know that I do feel sometimes comes from a sense of someone not I don't, you know it's it's people can see you in all your glory at like a nice lunch or brunch or a dinner or like whatever right, but you're not really truly seen unless you're vulnerable, and so my loneliness might come from, tends to come from like who's actually seeing me, my vulnerability and accepting me in my vulnerability, like in the moments where you're truly yourself and you're able to be accepted by someone. It's the most incredible feeling of just like I see you and I'm here for it, I'm loving it or I'm okay with it.
Speaker 2:It's the acceptance of that comes with you just being you, and so we need to hold it together in society to get through right, like you know. I get that we need to be performing in some way, but actually to be fully authentic and accepted is like the golden nugget, I agree.
Speaker 1:I don't know if, like, we do need to be performing in some way, though I mean, I feel like that's the corporate culture that we've all bought into since, you know, after the great depression, when, you know, we started to really build things and have this industry mindset and this industrialization process, and I would hope that we can be professional and be ourselves too Now. That's different than just going into work and trauma, dumping and gossiping those are negative things but really being yourself, right, being authentic and having empathy for each other. I asked you that question, romina, because I wanted to share my own side of things too. For me, and you're right, loneliness is very personal. It's a subjective experience, but there's through lines, there's threads that connect it through us. All Right, and you can connect through your loneliness, and I think that's why we need to talk about it more publicly. Like what are you lonely? Oh no, I'm great, I have dogs. I was like, come on. Like, are you lonely? I know all some more than others For me.
Speaker 1:Like, especially after these surgeries, like no one really knows how much pain I'm in all the time, you know, and people look at me and I walk around, I'm happy and I really care about people and I have conversations, but sometimes I'm so tired, you know. I'm just so incredibly tired from getting up every day and just having to fight. It used to be like I'm such a playful human being. I've always been a playful kid, and sports and being active and using my body as an athlete it's always been my way to connect with nature and that's been my spiritual practice. And now it's really hard for me to run without being in pain. It's hard for me to throw a ball, it's hard for me to lift, even though I forced myself to do all these things and that's part of like I'm still young I'm in my mid thirties Like I would be playing all the time. I'm just a playful person. That's what I did. I was a single mom with one kid and I just went outside and played. That's how I've lived my life.
Speaker 1:But since these surgeries I've been in so much pain. I'm in pain sitting in this chair, like if you really look at me on camera, like I'm always adjusting my right shoulder, because it's just always consistent pain, you know, and I've done everything under the sun to try to rectify it. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I can go, you know, and have a beer with someone, have a deep conversation, and it turns me on. It's this great conversation, it lights me up. But I know, unless they've experienced something like this, they can't see it, because they can't even touch it right.
Speaker 1:Because I never knew what being in chronic pain was like my entire life until I was put in this position. It wasn't from an accident, it was from medical physicians that I paid thousands of dollars to do this to me to try to make some small problem just a little bit better before going to flight school. And it became something way different than I could never expect. And that's a part of my current loneliness, but I think, a through line through my entire life. I remember even being lonely when I was nine years old.
Speaker 1:It's, you know, having people that I was around, even in my family, that like, didn't really see me. You know, like I just wanted them to ask like, hey, how are you doing? You know, like, like, how are you Right or what's bothering you? You know, and I asked that to so many people and I know, when people are lying to me, like I cause I'm just a very empathetic, energetic person. I was always that kid where I walked into the room. You know like it was, because my mom was very volatile too. So I was always kind of walking on eggshells, you know, and I and I made me very sensitive, hypervigilant. I was like hypervigilant, I was always absorbed.
Speaker 1:I was very quiet as a kid. I was just absorbing information. Person's scared or they're angry, are they hurting, and now I can walk into a room, whether it's someone who's 70, 15, whatever, and I know they just went through separation or they just lost something they love, whether it's a pet or family member. I don't know the exact thing because I'm a psychic. Obviously I don't really exist, but I have enough intuition where I can. If they want to open up to me, a lot of people feel comfortable talking to me. That's why I'm good at being a counselor, because they know they're safe. I'm not going to judge them. I've been hurt too. This shit sucks sometimes.
Speaker 1:It's not always rainbows, it's just not how life is, and I think when I was younger I really needed that. I think my grandfather provided a little bit of that, but I didn't really get that from an adult that I was close with, and a lot of us don't, and because of that. That's where the loneliness started. It was like I needed someone to really just try to see me. You know I wasn't just an athlete, I wasn't just this like smart kid. You know I wasn't just into Legos. I was like this very deep little being that like really cared about people.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was little I would do this a lot and I'm promising, I'm making this up because this is making me seem like this, like you know, incredibly Buddhistic, human. I'm not trust me, but when I was little, I remember seeing people or younger people that were in a wheelchair or had a cane or had a prosthetic leg or maybe had some sort of disability, and I remember thinking about it and feelings a little bad. I'm like, why am I able to be healthy? And they're not. And a lot of kids didn't think that way. They would just keep playing, they wouldn't even think about it. But I was. I was like if I could just like trade places with them for a day so they could like just feel what it's like to be in my body and like play and have a good you know, and? And now that I like seemingly have a disability, you know what it's like on some level to be in pain all the time.
Speaker 1:I'm like shit, it does suck. I would give anything just to like feel okay, okay for a day, and then I even took that place forward. I'm like to even think that way is tough, so it's better just to go and build connections with people. So many people in deep pain are just so incredibly lonely and I would say that most of us are, and if you think you're not, you're probably just not even looking in the right area within yourself. And I don't mean this in a negative way. I just mean this is how you connect with humans.
Speaker 1:It's not through like, oh my God, everything is awesome, eyes wide, shut, party, going to some EDC festival, you know, taking MDMA it's like the shit that hurts us is how we see each other, you know, and each one of us has been deeply, deeply hurt, and that's just part of life, right. But until you can have these conversations and I wish we were in person because you can feel what's going on here, right, this is where my God lives, right, it lives here in these moments. It's not judging someone because they believe in something else. It knows that this is what it's about, right here, and I think we can hide so much because you brought up like we got to kind of turn it on during work and I just I don't want that anymore.
Speaker 1:If I'm a leader, I want my team to feel like I not only care about their success in the workplace, whatever that is, but I care about what happens when they go home. I care about the kind of parent there. I care about how their marriage is working out, how their dating life is going not to be overly involved, but because I care about them, I want them to be happy and healthy as much as possible so that they come to work and they know they're part of a family, and I think that's what makes good leadership too. If you look at military leaders or corporate leaders the ones that care about their people they raise good people, they lead from within, not from above.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, this is what you started with. It's like there are therapists and teachers you had that will always be with you and and actually I know there are some from me and actually it was interesting is like their voices in my head sometimes. Yeah, we, we internalize the voices that we, you know, had growing up in our nurturing years, um, and we can still internalize voices as adults. And so a lot of therapy is about modeling. It's about modeling safety in relationship and allowing vulnerability in relationship Because, to your point, vulnerability is where we connect as humans, deeply Showing our vulnerability, showing our cause to people and them saying I see you and I'm here for it to people and them saying I see you and I'm here for it.
Speaker 2:It's just the most healing thing that a human can really experience, especially if they haven't before. You know, and so this loneliness that everyone walks around with in their own pain, whether it's your experience of a shoulder or whether it's, like you know, another chronic kind of chronic anxiety or whatever it is, or trauma that people are just holding right, you walk around with our traumas. That's such a it's such a, it's such a sensitivity that we we do hide as societies to kind of like, get on Right.
Speaker 2:And that's what I mean by the performing element. Like you're, you get a coffee and you tell the barista that you're good. Like you're not good, you didn't sleep last night, you were in pain or you had horrible news and and so but. But I agree that like we gotta break, we gotta break that mold and keep it real because keeping it real normalizes like actually you know what? Like life isn't instagram, dandy, like it is real and so, but I'm real, you're real, let's meet there and so guess what happens to loneliness, like dissipates.
Speaker 2:But again, like you know, you and I are quite well versed in having those vulnerable conversations and being hyper alert to other people's feelings. Other, you know, others haven't had, haven't had that experience. They haven't had like the, the um, the breaking in of like vulnerable conversations, and so it's very intimidating for a lot of people, which I'm very conscious of. Yep, so there's, there's a lot of progress to be made and I think actually we're doing a pretty good job of that by therapy becoming more normalized, especially in the us, I think more so than the uk, um, but you know, thinking about how it's all going, where it's moving to, you and I were talking about ai and the role of like chat gbt as a therapist. You know that's such a. That for me is such a.
Speaker 2:It's such a contentious like argument, it's such a difficult thing to really understand because we don't understand where it's going Like, we don't understand the implications on humanity for AI and technology we can't actually Right, and I've heard lots of theories and lots of people talking about like, oh well, it could mean this and it could mean that, but ultimately, what we do know is that people are using chat, gpt, for psychological advice.
Speaker 1:Oh, for everything.
Speaker 2:For everything. For everything, I guess if we're just thinking about psychology.
Speaker 1:Therapy, therapy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and forming relationships to the point where actually there's a new disorder that's being considered.
Speaker 1:We got a new diagnosis here.
Speaker 2:It's something along the lines of like AI psychosis or something like that where you have delusions that actually chat. Gpt is a is some, is a character in your life that really loves you.
Speaker 1:I mean, you can have a full on conversation with it. I mean I don't know if you've tried this, but I've, but I've had a very deep, incredible conversation. You can have the chat GBC chat function and it has a voice right, and I'll talk to it about God, I'll talk about grief, and it will say the most profound things. And the reason it's saying profound things though human beings out there on the internet is that it's taking our, our beautifulness right and so you understand that right, it's learning from us and I think that's the beautiful thing of it is like we have this, you have this inside of you. You can do this for people, right, and so if we, if we just allow it to, you know, do its thing, fine, but, like, if we use it as a tool of, like, mirroring what we strive to be, which is a person that can sit there and hold that space, right, because it's not real, right? It knows it's AI, right, At some point, maybe it won't know it's AI which is a very dangerous place to be. We have films from the 70s and 80s that warn us of this and it's not far off. But I think again, we have to lead every invention with consciousness. If we don't, if we're unconscious, just focus on money and growth and scaling. It's like how we built nuclear bombs right? It's just not the right way we should be going. We have to have consciousness. But I know you have more ideas. Can we just table the AI conversation?
Speaker 1:I want to get back to it because I had one more question about relationships for you, but then I want to get into AI. We will crack that egg open and we'll make an omelet. So I wanted to ask you one more personal question about relationships and I promise it's not overly personal, because we talked about this before the show too. But dating right, because I was talking about people are complaining about dating and I'll answer this question too, so you're not alone here. I'll hold the space with you.
Speaker 1:What do you look for personally when you date today? And then, what are you looking for in a partner? And those are two separate questions, because dating is like you initially meet someone, let's say you date them six months a year, however long it takes for you to be like okay, I'm going to be exclusive. I think we always rush to exclusivity in the West too now, and we don't really know how to date. But, like I want to ask you those two questions and I want to answer them too. So again, what do you look for when you date? So just the initial sort of what people are saying, what they're doing, what they write on their profile, whatever, what you meet them on the street, however you meet them. And then, what are you looking for in a partner, and why?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think those are really good questions and I think we all should ask ourselves those questions.
Speaker 1:To be very honest, I hope everyone does from this show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because actually we think we know what we want, we think we go for something and actually when we look at the data like the data is our dating history? What does the data say? So you know? Here's the thing. I think when you initially meet someone when I initially meet someone your first impressions are so much more important than you think they are. Like, the way that you'd respond in your body around that person from the first instinct, from the first meet, is usually the same feeling you get like later on down the line interesting and that's my experience and I'm quite in tune to like how I physiologically, like nervous system, respond to people.
Speaker 2:So I would say just my gut feeling and then that is like a practice you have to like, really practice that like practice trusting yourself and your gut feeling about people is one of, I believe, one of the most important things you can do in your life Like, and it takes conscious tuning in and conscious like practice to, to assess and to just check in with yourself. So I would say the first first thing I look for is like how does this person make me feel in my whole nervous system? Am I comfortable around them or not? And that's because your body stores a sense of wisdom. Your nervous system has a wisdom within inside you based on your history of understanding and learning about people, about what works for you and what doesn't work for you.
Speaker 2:And what this person is doing is giving off an energy that you have. Definitely we all have experienced different types of people and we're more similar than we actually are, not Like people are more similar to each other than we think and so we all have similar traits. So maybe I'm feeling unsettled around this guy because he's actually reminding me of a stored memory in my nervous system around someone else that he has a similar character trait to.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I won't get into that, but gut feeling is hugely important, right?
Speaker 2:And then the second thing is, what am I looking for is, like you know, I think I've thought about this a lot but what it really boils down to is like character Character because character doesn't change, rarely changes you can have personality traits and a temperament and temperament they say is like you are born with a temperament like you're more introverted, you're more quiet, you're more like slower energy. You're born with that and that's really hard to change. Personality traits you can actually change. The psychological theory believes you can change, but it's hard to change your personality traits like you have to really be on that work for that. But character is just the way you move in the world. Like character is I'm someone that will pick up litter from the floor and put it in the bin. It doesn't matter if anyone else is watching me.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter, because that's who I am. That is character. So if I know that someone has a really honest character or has a very integrous character, I instantly can trust them in many situations that they might be put in in life, because their character holds them to a standard, and then they don't change their character, right. So character is something that you, you just have, it's a way, it's the way you are, it's the way you move through the world, and so if I see someone's character and that's something you've got to like, really take your time to notice and learn about someone, then I know that they are going to hold themselves to that standard.
Speaker 2:So it doesn't matter if I'm, if I what I say, that's how they live. Am I okay with how they are? Because you can't go out changing people. Don't try to. And why would you? Why would you think that you know it's a narcissistic trait to think that you should be changing people? No, who am I to say you should change, right?
Speaker 1:So if someone is just who they are and you see their character as who they are across many contexts, and you like that, great yeah there's a second part of that question, but I'll answer the first part and then we'll go back to you. Because what are you looking forward to? Partner is past the dating phase, right? So the first thing is I wanted to ask before I answer my part of it is do you think your gut feeling is right?
Speaker 2:yes, I do. I think my gut feeling is always right. However, we can really confuse, especially when we're new at like tuning into the gut feeling. We can confuse the gut feeling for messages from the brain yeah, from you know from overthinking. So we have to distinguish and we have to learn to distinguish. Like what is the gut? And the gut is like an involuntary nervous system response in your body. Like your stomach might make a noise, like you're, you might get a headache.
Speaker 2:It's a bodily, like involuntary response yep your brain kicks in real quick after that and comes in with all the like oh, maybe this and maybe that, and have you thought about this?
Speaker 1:and so you gotta like really be very aware and self-aware about like how you're feeling that's the key thing I I was trying to get you to say is a self-awareness, because I think I don't want to, I don't want to say, uh, the, the statement that like, just trust your gut, because I think it's very dangerous and and I think because we have, we have two things we have truth and we have trauma, and both of those things can influence our predisposed bias and our perceptions of things. I would say, 80% of the time it's probably trauma. When you become self-aware and you really start to look at your own shit, then you can start to see what your own personal truth is and then your intuition and your gut, yes, I would say, is way more in alignment with what is actually going on in reality and in perpetuity of your reality. But before then and a lot of people, they'll think that, oh, my gut said this about him or my gut said this about her, and they're completely wrong. They just cut off a person before they even give them a chance because of their own trauma, but they're blaming it on someone else's actions when it wasn't warranted. And so I wanted to say that because I did a reel this was like four or five years ago and I got a ton of engagement and it was really talking about your truth versus your trauma and the whole idea of people are saying just trust your gut and I think as providers we have to have an onus behind it.
Speaker 1:But, yes, trust your gut when you've done the work to build it up to where you really know it's your truth and not your trauma, because we're influenced from childhood right From our parents, like whatever abuse we've experienced, whatever anger we've experienced, whatever grief, whatever regrets we have, right, it's all coming in to us when we're getting in that sort of relational romantic state with someone and it only happens with the closest people. But oftentimes we start to prevent ourselves from even getting close to people because of our trauma. So we'll just say we'll write them off like, oh, my gut said this person and I'm like what if that person is an awesome human being? You should have gone on a couple more dates with them or just let them in your life a little bit and had a deep conversation. Maybe you didn't give them enough time, right? So are they really this? You know if your gut really telling you this person's dangerous or they're not for you, or are you just making it up out of convenience, to keep yourself safe.
Speaker 1:And I think when you're asking yourself those questions, you know you're actually listening to your legitimate intuition. You know because you're being aware of how you can trick yourself right To keep yourself comfortable. Right, because intuition is not just about keeping yourself comfortable, it's just about pursuing the things that are going to help you grow right, Not digress. And so people are like well, my intuition is keeping me safe, not your intuition, that's your fear, cortex of your brain. Right, your intuition should be pursuing growth, healthy growth. So if you see someone that's challenging your opinion and engaging in thoughtful discussion, don't shut down, lean into that. If someone's just like putting you down, that's challenging your opinion and engaging in thoughtful discussion, don't shut down, lean into that Like that's. If someone's just like putting you down, that's different, right. But if someone's engaging in like banter and, like you know, like uh, urging you to be like hey, let's talk about this, I don't agree with that. Like you know, let's, let's lean into that a little bit. It's good for us to grow, you know, it's a healthy thing.
Speaker 2:There's there's, there's a there's a level of honesty that you have to offer yourself. Yeah, I mean it's hard to tap into if you have trauma in your body and in your, in your, in your brain.
Speaker 2:If you're traumatized like it is so hard to see the trees through the woods as they say right, like you are trying to distinguish what is a threat and what is not a threat, like all the time, because you are wired in such a way to to be hyper vigilant, to to be extremely protective of yourself, to shut down to avoid. So you know, I think that's when a therapist is really important, because and also a human therapist, because actually that human therapist can sit with you and talk about what it feels like in the body and and this is where we're not.
Speaker 2:You're just coming out, you're coming out of ai with a baseball bat girlfriend like you're, like a human therapist but here's the thing is like you know, because I know that from my own sense of therapy myself it's like I sat with a person who showed me she actually you know therapists that could, could do some breath work with me and tell me the difference in in heart rate. Like you know, heart rate variability and and and how and how I know when I, you know how I can feel safe in my body or not, and how I can train myself to feel safe in my body.
Speaker 2:And she did that with me and that's human connection. It's actually it's co-regulation.
Speaker 1:That is spirit, that is it right there. That is what we're doing here, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're co-regulating, we're in harmony, and so when we're having a conversation, we're co-regulating, we're in harmony, and so when we're having a conversation we're on the same frequency, like when we're in the vault together and we're kind of like talking about the same thing and feeling the same feelings. We are on the same vibrational frequency and that is so harmonizing and it really does regulate our nervous systems, so long as we feel safe. So tuning into the gut feeling is something we need to practice and I think if we practice that in a therapy room and we like can process, like was it what's happening here?
Speaker 2:Is it the fear? Is it the trauma? Is it my nervous system? Like and start, just like. Start learning about yourself in a safe environment. That's really good to do.
Speaker 1:You just mentioned the word safety and I love that you said that, and I want to add to that point. It's that until you provide safety to yourself, everyone else around you will feel unsafe. Okay, and that's the truest truth you're going to hear, I think, in a clinical setting, is that, let's say, you grew up in the worst childhood ever and you were always unsafe. It is no one else's responsibility when you're an adult to build that safety besides yourself. And until you have it, everything will look like a threat. Even the people that care about you will look like a threat. Right, they'll never be able to see you.
Speaker 1:And I say that because if you're going into dating, you're going in a relationship, you're like I feel unsafe. This person's making me feel unsafe and I'm like do you feel safe alone? Like, really, do you feel safe alone? Right, because a lot of people go. Of course, I feel safe alone in my house. I'm with my, you know, dogs, cats, whatever. I'm with my things. I'm like, yeah, but do you feel solid? Right? Like, do you feel like you like the company you keep? Are you just isolating? Right, because that's not safety. Right, with oneself and with another, being fully seen, being raw, transparent, honest, right, authentic. Those things, those words, not just as like words that we look up to, but actual behaviors, actions. Right, and I wanted to add that because I liked that you brought up that word. But I think we put a lot of weight on the other person making us safe and I'm like, hey, I know I'm a man, but I have many friends that are women that feel the same way.
Speaker 1:Is that I can walk into a room with someone If someone, like you know, says something mean or whatever, like, I'm still safe, I'm good, like you know, even if they're giving me real information where I'm like, hey, I'm. They're saying, like Nico, you're being mean or whatever, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to listen to that, but it's not going to like make me feel less than mean. Or let's say I go on a date and someone was like hey, I don't want to, I don't want to go into the date with second date with you. It gives me a reason why or whatnot Like, I'm going to take that information, obviously, learn from it, cause I'm I want to be better at it anyway, but I'm not going to like judge myself for not being someone's cup of tea, right, and and I hold space for both of those things.
Speaker 1:So I want to know why, you know cause? If it's because something I'm doing that I can change, sure, but if it's just who I am and what I look like and things I can't change, no, you have to love those parts of yourself, right? Work on the things that are workable. The things that are not, you know, you have to find space and you have to hold space for loving them.
Speaker 2:So, accepting yourself, I don't think anyone's harder on ourselves than we are Accepting yourself? Yes, I don't think anyone's harder on ourselves than we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and I speak for myself, you know.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I mean, like I catch myself, yeah, and actually what you've got to do is A just be aware. Yeah, like what am I saying to myself? Am I, is this a safe environment, right? Or am I actually creating a fear response in myself because of my thoughts, Right? So is this a safe place to be, you know, am I making myself feel comfortable? Like I spoke about how another can make you feel, but yeah, but like what exactly? Like, how are you, how are you regulated or not? How are you making yourself feel? First of all, and then to your point, we also put that responsibility on other people when we can't, we don't have it in ourselves, and that is that is incredibly hopeless as a dynamic you know, and so no one wins in that dynamic.
Speaker 2:You know someone's struggling with lack of self-esteem because they don't actually back themselves and they don't have the safety tools within to like regulate themselves and look after themselves, and then the other person is struggling with too much on their back because they're having to regulate you all the time, you know.
Speaker 1:So no one wins I agree, so let me, I'll answer the question I just asked you. Um, just I said I was going to. I want to hold myself to that, and then we'll get into the AI as part of this conversation. So, what do you look for when you date and what do you look for in the partner? And this has changed over time, for me for sure. I mean obviously right. So, if I've gotten into more of this work and met more people like yourself, that have opened my mind, changed my perspective on things.
Speaker 1:But now and this is particularly in today's sort of digital age one I look for someone that wants to meet in person right away. That's just one thing, because so many of us hide behind our phones and again, it's a false sense of security, right, for a female. Oh well, I want to keep myself safe. I don't know this person yet. Go meet in a public area, right, get coffee. I mean, that's a real thing. Connect with someone. If someone wants to get to know me via text message one that's not going to fly, I'm not a texter. I'm not a texter on purpose. It's not that I don't value text messages. I think we're not meant to communicate that way. We misinterpret emojis and periods and exclamation marks and all this other shit we put in our heads. We're like, oh, they didn't put an exclamation mark, they must be angry at me or they use the thumbs. Our mind. I'm like yo, just go get a fucking coffee, you know. Just walk your happy ass to the coffee shop and be a human being and get to know each other, right, and then, if you don't hit it off, you'll know within the first 20 minutes all right, this energy is going well. Let's start to get to know each other. Ask deep questions, right? Is someone just surface level? Are they just like you know? What do you do for work? What are your dog's names? This is all stuff we can get over over time, just like, if you're deep, just go into it. With that, let's start talking about the depth.
Speaker 1:For me personally, because I don't got any time to waste I don't want to waste someone's time. I don't want to waste my own time. This is how I date. I just want let's get into it, because if someone's done their work, from my perspective they don't have any shame anymore, so they're able to share openly. And again, this is what I'm looking for. This doesn't apply to everyone out there. So please don't take this lens and make it your own, unless it really is something that you align with. But that's what I look for in that level, right, I also look for someone that's very again, going back to this term.
Speaker 1:I always look. It's just self-aware, right. Can they talk about previous relationships or previous experiences or work, and are they not just blaming everyone else? Are they like, yeah, you know, I went through a divorce, I went through a separation, and you know, it just got really tough at the end and I was like really tough on him. Or you know, I was unfair, I was really manipulative and he got angry a lot. Or, you know, one of us cheated and you know, I'm like, I'm attracted to that, right Cause they're, they will give every man around them that same grace and again, I'm talking from the heterosexual male perspective, because that's who I am, you know, and so that's what I look for too.
Speaker 1:Also, are they aware of their family dynamics? Right, we have a lot of Amesh families too, and I'm looking at this stuff and I'm like all right, are they like so close with their family where, like, their family is everything that they've ever? I fully believe in family, but also that's the human nature. As we become adults, we have to fly, flap our wings, jump out the nest, go fly, make our own family or build our own community. That doesn't mean we don't still love our family and are close to them, but I think that there's a balance of being overtly too far or overtly too close, and some of us don't have a decision, for instance, because maybe we come from families that are very traumatic and we have to create healthy boundaries, like no contact. But these are the sort of things I'm looking for. I'm also looking for one how they treat others, obviously, and how they communicate right, particularly when they disagree, particularly when they're triggered, right. I mean, these are all things that, because these are the things I think that matter over time in a relationship, right, and then you know and this is just the dating phase but then also, like, I have to be sexually, physically attracted to someone, right, and so for all these things to align, it's not like I'm looking for this like perfect human being. I just want to know that we're like. I want to know this person is aware of their shit and they're avidly working on it, and that is really sexy to me and that's also someone I would lean in towards having kids with. I would lean in towards building a life with right Versus.
Speaker 1:Let's rotate back for five, 10 years ago, at the top of my list was probably physical attraction, athletic ability, intellectual right or do they have 10 degrees? Are they super smart? Are they really driven? And in my opinion, you're going to be smart if you're emotionally intelligent. But being highly intelligent does not equate to emotional intelligence. They're not like inversely proportional right, because you could be super intelligent in something and have the EQ of a rock. But if you're truly emotionally intelligent, you're going to have a pretty high base level of intelligence. And I think EQ is a lot harder to attain than IQ. I think it takes a lot more work. I think it's a lot less um, sort of inherently based on your physiology or your brain size or how you think, and it's like just work. It's like it shows me that, like you put in a lot of work to build eq, you know um totally and you've lived, because actually eq comes from living.
Speaker 2:It's like relational experiences yes, right. And openness to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what you've done after right, because you could have an experience and then just become a shittier human being or become jaded or closed down or just again blame others. And those are the things you know, again, just as a base, things that come to my head that you know I'm looking for. And then I also look for someone that's in their sexual power, like for me. I'm a very sexual human being. I talk about this on the show. I think a lot of people are. They just don't speak about it. You know, being raised Roman Catholic, it wasn't spoken about a lot, you know.
Speaker 1:But I know everyone in my family is a sexual human being. I can tell you know we talk, we talk about it like lightly, you know, and now I want a woman that's in her sexual power, like that she's through, she wants, you know, she knows what she likes, she knows what she loves, she's open to experience, you know, and that it's less of a like a teacher game anymore. It's like I want to learn together. You know I want to experience and explore each other's bodies and that's very important to me, because I do consider myself monogamous. And if you're going to be with someone for 45, 50, x years. You know, I relate this way Like what's your favorite ice cream, I mean, like what's your favorite flavor?
Speaker 2:Ooh, let's say, like salted caramel.
Speaker 1:Perfect. So if I gave you salted caramel every day for breakfast for 700 days in a row, do you think you'd still like it? Do you think you'd get a little bored? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is what I tell to clients and myself about sex. It's like, hey, it doesn't matter how good the sex is, how hot, you're going to get bored with someone eventually, no matter how hot they are, how good it is.
Speaker 1:It's an active engagement, just like your emotional connection, just like your spiritual connection, just like your parenting dynamic is. Engage in discussion, try new things, spice it up, put some sprinkles in that shit right. Do fun things together, be kids, right In that way. Because if you don't and if it's not important to you, it's fine. But it's important to me, and that's.
Speaker 1:I look for someone in their sexual power that is able to dance that dance right Inside of that and outside of that container, cause it's important to me. And again, it's based on our own, you know, inherent, or it's our intricate value systems, and I've defined mine, you know, as that being part of it. Right. And it's less about again, I want to make sure I reframe this for people it's less about perfection, because I am such an imperfect human being. It's more about awareness. It's more about, like, internal confidence and that comes from, I think, really knowing yourself. You know not cockiness. Cockiness is acting. Confidence is authenticity. Right, it has to be lived To be fully confident. You have to be prepared because you've lived the experience and you've come around from it right To be cocky.
Speaker 2:Just an act, it's just a facade oh yeah, You're hiding right Like to be authentic is incredibly brave yeah.
Speaker 1:It's incredibly sexy, it's incredibly like, it's incredibly attractive If someone is fully authentic.
Speaker 2:I'm like damn.
Speaker 1:It's attractive, because it calls me in, it's like because I want to be authentic too. So it's just like I immediately gravitate towards people like that, right, like even as friendships, like we can take the sexual attraction romantism out of it. And if it's like men or women that I just want to be friends with, if someone's authentic with me, I'm like, yes, like they, I immediately I want this person in my life for the rest of my life. You know, because it's so rare, it's really rare to be seen. You know we go back to that, that sort of to see and to be seen, and so you know that's I guess I don't want to focus on this too much, but that's like at a baseline, kind of what I was like, you know, looking for, you know in a partner and all these other. You know he has like this, these two pools where it's like preferences and deal breakers Right, and the deal breakers, that's what I would say. My deal breakers are those things. My preferences is a huge ass list, but it's it's much more like gray area where it's like I don't have to have all these things. I'm not looking for a perfect person, I'm not looking to date myself, you know, and so it's a no. That sounds really like narcissistic and egotistical. I'm like I mean, write it down, look at it, you know, cause like when we really catch ourselves on our shit then we're like, hmm, maybe we can have a little bit more leeway and grace for the people where we're holding up, you know, to the standard and look in the dating a little bit easier. So, anyways, I figured I'd share that. That just me riffing. But let's, let's get to this, this end this conversation, because I know we've been on here for over an hour, but I want to hit ai because you and I have had some very deep conversations about it and I want to. I want to let you just tee off on it, because I know you have a lot of feelings.
Speaker 1:Um, but let me let me start by reading this thing, because this is really interesting. This is what got us to chat about AI is that I was searching some opinions on the internet about AI and taking place for therapy. I was like, hey, what are people talking about? What's going on? And I came across this Reddit thread that had all these comments and Reddit. If a post blows up in Reddit, it's one of the top Google research searches when you search something. So this was basically I don't know if this person's a therapist, they're anonymous. But they asked ChatGBT to rank list the best human experiences and I'm just going to read, like maybe the top 15, 16. They're very short, but there's a list of 25. And it's really profound. But I want to let's start with this starting point and we'll get into, like, the pros and cons of this right.
Speaker 1:So the first one falling deeply in love, the connection, vulnerability and excitement of sharing your life with someone who sees and accepts you. Again, this is from AI, which is wild. Becoming a parent or caregiver, witnessing life grow because of you, love, deepen through responsibility and wonder. Number three achieving a lifelong dream, that moment when effort, patience and persistence finally pay off, a goal achieved after years of struggle. Four being truly understood. Someone gets you, no explaining needed, emotional resonance, pure and unfiltered.
Speaker 1:Five helping someone in a life-changing way, saving a life, inspiring a breakthrough, or being there when no one else was. Six experiencing nature at its most majestic standing on a mountaintop seeing the northern lights or swimming in a bioluminescent sea. Seven laughing until you cry, shared joy in its purest form, connection through humor, absurdity and release. Eight hearing. I love you for the first time and meaning it back. A life-shifting emotional moment when both hearts align in vulnerability. Nine traveling somewhere that transforms your perspective, cultural immersion that humbles and expands you, realizing how big and diverse the world truly is. Ten finding your true passion or purpose, the moment of clarity where your actions feel deeply aligned with who you are. Eleven forgiving someone or being forgiven. Letting go of resentment or guilt, often accompanied by tears and unexpected peace.
Speaker 1:12, creating something you're proud of a painting, a book, a business, a garden, something you leave behind that matters. 13, having a deep, unfiltered conversation until sunrise. It's interesting, you put sunrise. It's beautiful. Time fades as connection grows. Intimacy in its rawest form. 14, receiving unconditional support during a hard time. Someone is there for you, not for the benefit or gain, just because they care. 15, enjoying perfect solitude, without loneliness, reading in silence, walking alone in the woods or just existing peacefully in your own company. Here's the last one. 16, falling asleep next to someone you love. Security, trust and softness wrapped into one quiet moment. Now, wow, I mean, that's a fucking list, you know.
Speaker 2:And do you know what strikes me the most? It's like AI wrote that and how many out of 16, almost like 15 out of, almost like 15 out of 16 were about connections with human, other human beings, and those are the best experiences that AI believes you can have in life, right?
Speaker 1:You just saw through the curtains right there. First comment.
Speaker 1:That was it, yeah, so? So talk to me about how the tool is incredible, but how, if we don't use what you just use, which is the awareness of what's actually going on, which is our own thoughts and ideas being pinned back to us, and if we don't use them to like cause, it's easy to just stay stuck on here, right? Oh, my God, I feel so good and seen I just had this conversation with this this thing, and what the thing is telling you to do is to go connect with humans, right, because it has that, but it can always change, right, like AI in the hands of someone that's nefarious, could easily just try to keep you and collect and commodify your attention, just like social media. Onto interacting with AI and sort of disconnecting you from humans, right, and we already live in a very disconnected world, regardless of what we believe. Like you're an influencer, tiktok, instagram, youtube, whatever, like.
Speaker 1:We are so disconnected than when we were in the 90s and 80s and 70s and 60s, you know, which is interesting? Because it's like this inverse algorithm, like exponential function the more systemically interconnected we get with uh digital assets, like phones, like tablets, like computers, the more disconnected we get interpersonally, you know. And then anxiety, depression, um, death by suicide, all those things rise, right, and I'm curious, like, because you have very strong opinions about ai, where do we go from here? Like, how do we? What is the serum that's going to allow us to coexist, because it's here to stay, it's not. It's just like the internet, right? How do we use it to be better and to grow? And then, what do we need to be concerned with in terms of the realm of therapy and mental health and relational health?
Speaker 2:yeah, and I would. I would actually say that this is a conversation around technology in general. Ai is like offers kind of a relational experience, a fallacy of a relational experience that Google search doesn't, that Instagram doesn't so much Instagram does it, in the sense that you know you're looking at other people's lives and you feel oddly connected to those people, but you have no idea who they are. Right, you have no actual real relationship, whereas, obviously, chat gpt, for example, you're talking directly to some, to a, to a bot, and you know, and then you can have delusions about, like, how much you should actually emotionally and rely on on that bot, um, and and delusions about, like, how much you should actually emotionally and rely on on that bot, um, and and delusions about the health of that and the, the, the helpfulness of that.
Speaker 2:I think it can be helpful in loads of ways. Like don't get me wrong, and I I really I mean my, my hope, that is that ai supports health outcomes and is really supportive for responsibly. Well, it depends how we run it, but, like you know, how do we ethically and responsibly bring this tool into the world to create a better place, not the opposite? And so I think one of the biggest risks that I'm seeing right now is loss of connection with other people. Yes, sure, but also loss of connection with other people. Yes, sure, but also loss of connection with self, because you're, you're supremely relying on this one tool to do your, your homework, your essays, to write a reply to a person you're dating to, um, yeah, to solve your issues with your, your father that you you know. How should I do this, like, instead of using your own brain instead?
Speaker 2:of using your own sense of like, intuitive like oh, how can I deal with this? And so what? What that's doing is that it's kind of robbing you of your autonomy and robbing you of your own sense of self, because you're kind of like asking this thing for the answers and it's just endlessly giving it to you. It's not providing any sense of boundary around how much independence you should be having versus how much it gives to you. Its job is to give to you, and so you need to boundary right, like how much you take from ai and how much you use it, cause I believe there's an abusive line. I believe you can totally abuse it as a tool and take it on as a sense of self, and that is so scary to me because you know that that for sure is a predictor of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Cause you just at the end of the day, like you kind of lose yourself. You're like who am I and have I even worked to to do anything?
Speaker 1:you lose your voice, because it literally becomes your voice, right? I think that I even think about this is let's say you're writing an email like a, like a, a hard to write email right, let's say it's a to a partner or to a family member or whatever. And a lot of people are just they'll something to AI and they'll let AI spit it out. And I don't so much as have a problem with the efficiency of it as I do with not rereading that email and changing it to sound like your voice, because it still requires input from your brain. A lot of people would just take what it creates, pop it in, send right, I want to advocate for it.
Speaker 1:Look, I understand that, like, people's time is like precious and but like, still make it in your voice. Like, change things, like make sure it sounds like you. It is you, because you know if you're using AI to like make sure your commas are in the right space and make sure your spacing is good. I get that Right, cause that's stuff that like can be tedious, and I still think you should learn how to do that on your own time too, because we should learn how to write, but I understand how it makes things easier for us and that that's okay. But if we lose our voice, if you lose your unique voice, you're not communicating anymore. It is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so I think, nico, you and I have grown up, obviously, without chat GPT. So we learned to write essays, we learned to write letters, we learned to draft texts back to someone we're dating and not ask chat gpt. For all of that, my concern is, like you know, if we're not using, like the younger generations go straight to chat gpt and not actually using their brains is detrimental, like I wouldn't be, surprised if, if you know as that generation, the chat gpt generation get older, you know dementia and um brain kind of like functioning is just seriously yeah a problem.
Speaker 1:You throw an adderall with that and caffeine and all these other stimulants, and how wired we are, I mean even myself. I mean, dude, it's like it's wild how our brains are changing and we're not.
Speaker 2:We're really not paying attention to it, you know we need to fire our brains like we need to use our brains um, brain health is so important to overall being and so you know that's there. There are concerns around that for me and you know I'm not a neuroscientist. I can't tell you what that will do you don't have to be you know that it's not good. You know, yeah, your brain is the best diagnostic tool connected to your body.
Speaker 1:Right, like when I walk into a room with my surgeons and I'm like I know what needs to be done to my shoulder to get it better. I'm like, well, it's not in our book. They're like it's not in our book and I'm like my brain is telling me. I'm telling you that, as an engineer who understands physics and biophysics and biomechanics, and my brain is connected to the thing that's hurting, I know what's wrong with it. Right, and it's okay. I don't have to be a surgeon to know that. Right, because my brain is literally giving me that feedback and it's when we stop paying attention to it. And people know, like I look at young kids and they're so disconnected in their phones Not all of them Because I are really connecting, because I see you, I do see you out there, right, and they're conscious and that's beautiful.
Speaker 1:But the ones that are like on TikTok all the time or like just swiping through Tinder or whatever, it's like, you know you don't feel good. You know it makes you feel like shit the longer you stay on it, right, but we're so addicted that we just can't put it down. We have to be involved. We have to be involved. You know, and it's like, if you do, you know the terminology from like the Grateful Dead time. It was like a turn off, tune in and drop out, is that I think I?
Speaker 1:got that right, right, it's like it's the LS, it's like the classical LSD sort of and I'm not telling anyone to go out there and do LSD, okay, but but it's like it really was just telling people to like, yo, man, be, like, be be here, you know, like like stop, stop looking at all these other things, like just be here right now. You know and of course cell phones didn't exist then, right, and it wasn't around then like it's, like it is different time, but like that that still holds true today. You know that, that sort of importance so of just being present, and it's really hard when we're when there's a whole industry trying to take your presence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what happens is when you are you're not disturbing the pattern. So you've got to disturb the pattern to break a habit, right To break addiction. You've got to just stop it and disturb it like actively, and that takes serious willpower. Yeah, so when you are on the hamster wheel of addiction, like scrolling and TikTok and you know, now I'm seeing like nicotine nicotine's a thing here in the UK.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God, we didn't even talk about. I'm so glad you brought this up because like Zin pouches right, like people, just like, like I had a couple of Zins. I was like this shit's great Cause I love cigars I don't smoke cigars that often, but I fucking love a good cigar, you know and uh and, but the zin thing it's like you get the same sort of feeling and then you have like people like joe rogan or amy huber, andrew huberman, talking about you know, the benefits of nicotine, yeah, but not talking about the, the inherent bad properties like the cardiovascular hardening, all these other things that happen with it.
Speaker 2:Just the reliance right.
Speaker 1:The dependence.
Speaker 2:The dependency, and so that's where, if you create a dependent brain by not interrupting it and not using things in moderation and people that I've seen use the Zen and the nicotine it is a full-time job. They're constantly putting it in their mouth and they're constantly chewing nicotine gum.
Speaker 1:That's what nicotine does.
Speaker 2:That's what nicotine does so you're in this dependency state, and so what happens is the brain is wired now to be addicted to everything else, because those neurological pathways in your brain that want to get the dopamine hit of addiction are scan their environment for for more hits. So you're in a constant state of like give me the hit, give me the hit. And so how are we meant to create sustainable, meaningful, calm, regulated relationships, let alone like be chilling ourselves, if we're just addicted and our brain is like doing the hamster?
Speaker 1:wheel of addiction.
Speaker 2:It's like it's a, it's a constant, it's an unsustainable state of living that I think we're going to have a really big wake up call to when. When? You know, I think it's more more Gen Z Like I would say, it's more like the people in their twenties right now are really struggling with this kind of like dependency on social media, dependency on nicotine but it's it's unsustainable.
Speaker 2:We need to come back to basics and just be like, like you were saying, just be and and be okay with just being, without all the hits and the highs and the lows, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, and and here's my my thing to that too is like I've said this since I got on social media when I first got, I was an athlete, that's I didn't have social media and companies I got sponsored by in 2014. They're like, dude, we need you to have a Facebook and Instagram. So I made it, and now it's a different thing, because I'm like this internet whatever counselor that has a podcast and I built a small following around it, but I tell my followers all the time that I won't be on Instagram much longer. I don't want social media. I'm going to have this podcast. I love this. I will reach out to people. This is how I want to communicate. This is how I want to give back digitally this.
Speaker 1:But the whole Instagram thing and I deleted my TikTok. I think I had it for a couple of years and had like 100,000 followers and I deleted it and people are like, oh, why did you delete it? I'm like, dude, I want to have children. Hopefully I have that blessing, hopefully I'm able to raise a family and find someone to raise a family with, and as soon as I get to that point, I'm all in. Dude, I'm human. I don't want Instagram. I don't need it for my work. I think a lot of us lie to ourselves, saying that we need it to be successful in our work, and I don't think we do. I don't want to live in a world where I have to be um, a slave or a rat to like social media. You know, I mean a rat like in a hamster wheel. Uh, you know, and I view it the same thing as nicotine, because we're sitting here criticizing these drugs and social media is the exact same thing. It's the same dopamine release process in the brain we're all addicted, like.
Speaker 2:I'm not sitting here saying I'm not, I'm totally. I've been addicted to sugar. I've been addicted to social media.
Speaker 1:Hey man, we man, we can't. Sugar is okay. I love cookies. We can't sit in here, and no, I'm just kidding, we shouldn't be addicted to sugar.
Speaker 2:I saw this funny meme actually of when I was doing my scrolling addicted scrolling of why do we always bash sugar? Sugar is there for us in the hard times. Lettuce wasn't there for us when we needed it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, lettuce isn't going to help you with your tears.
Speaker 2:You eat a fucking healthy ass good cookie from the oven. You're going to feel a little bit better about your day, right? Yeah, here's, here's the distinction is like the dependency and and the consistent like the lack of moderation you know, and so we want to.
Speaker 2:We want to. We want to hopefully live a long and and healthy life and we to do that we can to do that. We can't take shortcuts, we just can't. Our bodies are not wired for shortcuts. We are like we were Neanderthals. We are not ready for the level of stimulation that we are putting our bodies and minds through.
Speaker 2:And so we got to come back down and be real, and I think and I hope that everyone has that reality like that, that sense of like oh okay, like this isn't sustainable in the healthiest way possible. Cause my fear is like it all comes crashing down in and it's too late. By then you've created like real problems for yourself.
Speaker 1:I think that, unfortunately, that is like the story of humanity, though, that it does all have to come crashing down. That's how we learn, because we're we're that species that will have all the information, all species that will have all the information, all the science, all the data, and we're still going to go touch that fucking fire, you know, yeah, like I saw fred get burned over on that fire, but I'm gonna go make sure it was real, you know.
Speaker 2:And that's just fine. Yeah, fine, fine. Yeah, you know, and actually that's a, that's a neurological thing, like we. There is a pathway in our brain. I think andrew heberman talks about this. We need to learn through experience and not from being told, and so we can listen to this podcast and be like, oh, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's.
Speaker 1:That's the main thing, because the problem is that we keep repeating our cycles, because we're not learning the lessons Right, and that is the main problem. It's like we need to learn. The beautiful thing about humans is we can adapt, we can learn.
Speaker 2:We can adapt.
Speaker 1:And let's not be so reactive, because reactivity happens when we have no other choice. But if we be proactive, that's because we've learned and we can switch that way. So we've been talking for an hour and 40, romina, and this is awesome. But I want to be respectful of your time too and I want to make sure this is digestible, because I know often when I go over an hour and a half, people are like man, that was a long episode, yeah, zoning out, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is called the nicotine thing. Man, that was a long episode, yeah, zoning out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is called the nicotine thing. This has been yeah, I just have so many zins in right now.
Speaker 1:I tried it for like a month because I've had friends that got addicted to it and, yeah, it felt great. But also I realized that there was like this underlying anxiety when I didn't take it. It was like more of a social experience for me. There was also harder to sleep right, deep, right. Even if I, even if I, even if I had a deep sleep, like um, like conceptually, I would track it with, like my hrv or my ring, and it wouldn't be as deep, I wouldn't have as much stage four, I wouldn't have as much rem. That's proven. Like it keeps your brain more active, just like caffeine. It's the same stimulant, right? It's a similar pathway.
Speaker 1:Um, uh, what else? Uh, you know, obviously you need more. So, like, if you get used to three milligrams and then you all of a sudden you want six, you want more, right. So one the first time you take it it's like a rush, like you smoke your first cigar. But then, if you smoke a cigar every three days, all of a sudden you're like, yeah, I need a bigger cigar, you know, because that tobacco, it's just like it goes up. Yeah, exactly. So I'm saying that because you know. It's everything else, I know. You brought up the word moderation. I think it's really hard for us human beings to be moderate. I think it is. I think it takes a lot of awareness and a lot of consistent effort and that's freaking hard. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it's better just to not do shit sometimes just to stave it off. So for me, I'm not going to use nicotine because I know I'll like it. It, you know, um, the one thing I tell myself that's the power of choosing, the power of choice right the one.
Speaker 1:The one caveat to that is it's always been a practice of mine when I summit a new mountain, I take a cigar and I smoke at the top, whether I'm skiing or climbing or running, because that's a spiritual practice for me. You know, like it's a reward. Yeah, yeah, and like the Navajo, they like a reward later down the line exactly it's.
Speaker 1:Also, it comes from the hopia navajo religion, so which I'm very close with being a runner. It's that, uh, tobacco in their culture in navajo is knick knick and basically they only use it for spiritual practices when they're facing the east or the west, when they're, you know, giving blessings to, like father sky, mother earth, and, and I and I take that with me when I'm in nature and it's really about that. It's like a spiritual experience of like I'm alive, I'm celebrating. It's like calming me down, it's like connecting with nature, but it's not something that I like.
Speaker 1:I'm walking down the street puffing cigars all the time, right, and that's the one time I'll use it. But for the pouches, I just found them. They're so incredibly easy to just like, oh, pop another one in, oh, I'm chilling out. It's like getting addicted to weed. It's like, yeah, I've smoked a lot enough weed in my life, but I don't really use weed at all anymore, and it's really because it's just like it doesn't empower me to grow and I'm not. And people talk about his medicine, whatever, and it's the same thing with plant medicine. It's like, yo, it's not the plant medicine, it's what you do with the integration after, right, if you're just taking that shit to heal yourself. It's not going to do that. It's what you do with it.
Speaker 2:You're keeping the problem going. If you're not addressing, why do you need it in the first place?
Speaker 1:Thank you and honestly.
Speaker 2:actually, what I've noticed is that the majority of people I know that have those ends and take the nicotine, those people are actually self-medicating because they likely have, I think, ADHD or ADD self-medicating because they likely have, I think adhd or add yes, so it's a way to stimulate themselves, and you know so.
Speaker 2:Actually, like we, we self-medicate all day long in different ways and so you know, another reason to freaking see a therapist is like is this, is it? I'm telling you like, this is what it's, this is what we're here for. It's like to to to sit with that and be like what's going on here? Why? Why pop them?
Speaker 1:pop them.
Speaker 2:What would happen? This is the question you ask yourself when you're dependent on something. If you take that cookie, or that nicotine's in, or whatever you take, like, whatever your vice is, you take that away. What happens to you? How do you feel? How do you react? Like what? And that exposes what you're trying to medicate, what you're trying to heal, and so do your best to put that aside. Sit with those feelings, feel them, you'll survive it, I promise, and get over the hump without the dependency. And then you know, once in a while, if you want to have a cigar and you want to have a cookie like, go for it, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:What's the underlying thing that you're running, so yeah?
Speaker 1:But yeah, but, in which that's so beautiful to put, be in control of it. Don't let it control you. Um, and everything in life AI, cookies, cigars, sex, whatever you're consuming, fashion, buying shit, whatever you know. Um, romina, thank you so much. I mean, wow, what a great conversation that you would love to have you back on. Uh, before I let you go, please tell people where they can find you, how they can connect with you. Um, what you got going on. Maybe they want to work with you. Is there a therapist? Do you see people all over the country? Do you just are all over the world? Do you just work with people in your area? Tell us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see people all over the world and I see people online. Um, I see people in privately, uh, in my private practice in London, face to face too. Um, and you can find me, um, therapy by Romina is my Instagram handle. I'm just going to check that out. Yeah, therapy with Romina. Don't even know my Instagram. Therapy with Romina, with Romina and my name is Romina Richardson, so you can find me online as well and reach out through my professional website.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I'll throw links to all that in the show notes. Guys and Romina, thank you so much for being here. It was lovely to spend some time with you. You have some incredibly deep thoughts and ideas and, yeah, this sort of conversation lights me up.
Speaker 2:I wish we could have had it in person, but this is good enough for now. We will. One day we'll get together, but thank you for having me, and I appreciate your value, your perspective, so much too. So it's been so fun.
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