Social Media and Life Reality…and September Month in Review – Ep328

In this episode of Through a Therapist’s Eyes, Chris and Neil discuss the impact of social media on mental health, the importance of vulnerability in relationships, and the distinctions between OCD and OCD personality disorder. They explore how technology influences human interaction, the dangers of echo chambers, and the sensationalism of news media. The conversation emphasizes the need for intentionality in communication and the importance of adapting to rapidly changing technology while maintaining authentic connections.

Tune in to See the September 2025 Month in Review Through a Therapist’s Eyes.

Links referenced during the show: 

https://www.throughatherapistseyes.com/category/podcasts/monthinreview

https://www.throughatherapistseyes.com/category/podcasts/mentalhealthtips

Intro Music by Reid Ferguson – https://reidtferguson.com/
@reidtferguson – https://www.instagram.com/reidtferguson/
https://www.facebook.com/reidtferguson
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3isWD3wykFcLXPUmBzpJxg 

Audio Podcast Version Only 

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 Episode #328 Transcription

Chris (03:02.894)
Hello. Good evening. Good afternoon or good morning. Whenever you might be happening to listen to this right now in the Eastern United States where we are, it is good evening. You found us on episode three 28 where we are reviewing the September shows that we did. We call it the month in review of this first time you finding us on this platform. Uh, we fire up on about Thursdays, six 15 to six 30 on the YouTube live. It's a great way to interact with us, engage with us.

Normally so at the end of the month we have Kyle King is the new month in review co-host. He is traveling. Did I tell you he was out of the country? I tell you he was traveling. Where is he? forget.

Neil (03:44.183)
You just said out of town, so country's a lot bigger than that.

Chris (03:46.338)
I just said out of town. Okay. You might be out of the country. It's hard to say who knows, but, this is September the 25th. I am Chris, your ghost. we have Neil coming out behind the curtains to share his view, his opinions, his experience on the month in review. How are you, sir?

Neil (04:05.194)
I'm good, I'm definitely not distributing therapy services or whatever you say as far as that's concerned. I am definitely opinionated and my views do not correlate to anyone else's on this show. So if he's gonna say I'm sharing my opinion, I'm just gonna throw that disclaimer out there.

Chris (04:20.234)
I appreciate that we probably all just have it scrolling on the bottom or something, right? All right, this is going to be a little bit of a different month in review as well because of circumstances, scheduling and stuff. We did two shows in November. Neil, I don't know about you, but I really enjoyed that break last week. I did, I needed it. had some stuff going on, I'll tell you in a minute.

Uh, well, we're going to review the two shows that I kind of want to do it a little bit quickly. We'll tell you what we kind of got into with, uh, episode three 26 with, uh, OCD personality disorder. was a diagnostic show. And then we did episode three 27, the value of vulnerability, which I think was a fun conversation. I don't want to short the short either of those, but I really want to get to what has been on my heart to really spend a lot of time today on. that is kind of talking about the world.

Right. The world, we have so much going on Neil in, in, in the way of social media and interacting. And I've got thoughts about it from a mental health perspective that I want to get out in front of in sense in a way that I don't even know that my field, my whole field is doing. Because nobody's doing it. Nobody understands. I think exactly what the whole human emotional experience is. So.

So this is gonna be a little bit of a different month in review. We're gonna review those couple shows and then wanna really, Neil and I are just gonna really wrap on this and kick things around so that we can begin to, as the show really says, figure this out together. Because Neil, dude, it's killing us, man.

Neil (05:57.665)
Yeah, yeah, right now things are really rough. So.

Chris (06:02.51)
And I think they're getting, we're going to be a lot rougher. You know, this is not going to stop. If anybody's trying to be hopeful about that, I don't mean to be pessimistic or, you know, whatever about it, but, uh, uh, we are going in a direction as a human race that is really starting to concern me. And I want to really spend a little bit of time on why that is. And it has everything to do with human beings ability to adjust technology.

as quickly as we are really needing to. I don't think we can. That's the problem. And that's really it in a nutshell.

Chris (06:43.406)
All right. So this is a 92525. Like I said, I enjoyed putting it out on my notes today, Neil, 92525. Those numbers are cool to type in a little date field. I get my jollies off from that. This is usually where we have a panel of therapists where you get insights about mental health and substance abuse, knowing it's not delivery of therapy services. Neil clearly said a little bit ago very wildly. I got those books out through a therapist size. Not hard to find them if you

know the name of this show and you're listening to it, then you know the name of the books. One on marriage, one on self. I'm really proud of them. I think they can be really short reads for you. Each chapter is a real therapy moment that we kind of wrote out into a few pages to kind of give explanations and good thoughts about how to manage life on life's terms. they say, YouTube subscribe, click John gets upset. If we don't have five stars, I'll say it for him. Five stars, five stars, Neil.

Five stars. Yeah. Click Spotify. Leave us a review. All that stuff helps us out a lot. Contact at thrutherapistos.com is our email. We love to chat and interact with you. That's a great way to do it really and truly. Today's episode is going to highlight that this is the human emotional experience, which we endeavor to figure out together. That is the intro. and, man alive, Neil, I got to start out by saying, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm having my second cup of coffee today.

Neil (07:42.145)
Yes.

Chris (08:11.214)
Yeah

Neil (08:11.83)
Only is it, yeah, you don't do a lot of coffee, do you?

Chris (08:14.9)
No, I'm a decaf guy, man. I, I, I am now back to my decaf ways for the most part. just because when I need a hit, I need a hit today. need a hit. that was, that was a long day yesterday. I'm kind of happy to say, I.

Was able to have the honor of going to a Naval hospital and give a presentation about therapy and whatnot when therapy gets stuck. And I really enjoyed it, but dude, I went down there Tuesday night and I didn't sleep in the hotel, man. That's that sucked. man. It was a nice hotel. but I just, I don't know. And I wouldn't even feel that wired. But then I woke up at like, I did get a little bit of sleep, particularly starting at about 4 AM. and then,

Neil (08:47.906)
Rough Hotel?

Chris (09:03.534)
I got in there and you man to get on a Navy base. is not easy. That was like, you know, the day started at six 30 and I couldn't get through the gates. It wasn't enough time and the paperwork and all that kind of whatever. So the guys came and got me the presentation is supposed to start at eight o'clock. I literally walked in the room with my bags on my shoulder, holding my thing, putting my thing on the thing and boom, here we go. Eight six into the conference. Cause very, very tight on time.

No intro, no organization, no like who's the audience, kind of peer look around, take a breath. It's just, I literally walked in the room and started banging.

Neil (09:40.258)
Well that's good because you didn't have a chance to like psych yourself out or overthink it. It's like you just went for it right? That's like the best way to, you know, you don't even get like nerves or anything. just be like.

Chris (09:44.75)
Indeed.

Chris (09:51.346)
Right? Well, I was sitting there pacing on waiting to get the, to pick me up, cause I, you know, to escort me into the base. Uh, so that was like, ah, uh, and then, uh, they ended at five o'clock. I drove home from Jacksonville. didn't get home till 11. So I slept really well last night, brother, but I need like two or three more of those nights. Two or three at this point in my life, but it went really well. It went really well. Uh, you know, if,

Neil (10:10.453)
Yeah.

Chris (10:17.088)
If you have anybody that you want presented to you, you're part of an agency, a part of a group, man, I'm really kind of getting my chops for, you know, given seminars, whether they be shorter, an hour two or three, and, and, or, you know, a full day conference. I'm totally jumping into the pool on that end of the stick and, feeling more and more comfortable with it as you do it, you know, I mean, it's a long time to talk to therapists about how to do therapy,

Neil (10:41.666)
What do you do for six hours? how long like, cause I've seen your, I've seen your presentation and we've kind of gone through it, but how do you, like, how do you fill that time for that long? I mean, have you added that much to it as a presentation? Do you add lib a lot of stuff? Like how do you, how do you do that?

Chris (10:45.791)
I know, right?

Chris (11:00.522)
It's, funny. There's a lot of ad living. There's a lot of interacting to be honest with you. And that's, that's one of the things I really like about discussions. I mean, what I say on the show here, it's, know, this is the human emotional experience and we endeavor to figure it out together. And you know, it's amazing when you get a group of people together and you get some juices flowing and some of the things they say you play off of it, you engage. But I mean, there's a lot to present when you start talking about how do we get unstuck in therapy and you know, there's modalities, there's

Little tricks of the trade. There's little, ethical things. There's elements of like tools that we actually use. mean, there's, you know, what, what does our show prep, you know, a page where the notes, I mean, you you could talk about that for an hour and, know, we're usually screaming at the end to get things in. So, yeah, yeah. All right. That's, that's my whining meal. done. I'm done whining. I've got, I have the coffee in me. We'll get it affecting me here in about 15 minutes. I'll be hyper, maybe shaking a little bit. How are you, man?

Neil (11:56.097)
I'm doing good. I'm doing good. It's been, yeah, we missed last show because of my wife's art thing, which was actually, it was interesting to go to, but then we found they did something really cool on Saturday with it. So it was, I don't know, anyone, whoever runs art guilds or anything, like try to schedule the receptions on a day besides Thursday. Like every single one I know does it on Thursday. And it's like, it makes my podcasting schedule very, very complicated. So.

Anyone in the North Carolina area that my wife might try to sign up for an event, please do the reception like a Wednesday or Tuesday. I know Wednesday is reserved for church and all that stuff, but do Tuesday. And anyone who runs an art guild or any art competition that my wife might enter into. So they're fun. They're cool to see other artists and stuff, but and that's great to support my wife. So.

Chris (12:36.024)
He's speaking to everybody now, across the world.

Chris (12:49.262)
You know what episode 326 did for me, Neil?

Neil (12:53.504)
What did 326 do for you?

Chris (12:56.032)
It reminded me of OCD personality disorder. Yeah, it really did. Diagnostic show OCD personality disorder with differential diagnosing. literally, I made the statement in that show that I don't remember or recall if I've ever diagnosed it. I'm trying to think in my mind right now who it was. And it's not even coming to me.

But maybe it'll, it'll, it'll come to me, but I was sitting there with this person, probably what was the next week after it wouldn't have been Friday. So was like, uh, maybe Monday or Tuesday after the show. And it dawned on me that this dude doesn't necessarily have OCD. It seems more like OCD personality disorder right in front of me. Yeah.

Neil (13:44.899)
So quick recap, what is the difference between OCD and OCD personality disorder? I know with bipolar versus mannodepressive bipolar, it's more of a borderline. Borderline, that's what it is. The borderline is a lot more closer waves, right? The mannodepressive is these longer waves of the same thing. So is that the similar thing with OCD personality disorder that you're... What's the biggest difference? Quick recap.

Chris (13:57.902)
Right, right.

Chris (14:11.648)
It's honestly, Victoria really did a good job of this if you're listening to this, tune into the show because she really actually nailed it pretty well. And that's why I said she was helping my brain kind of get into like what that difference is. it's like OCD, fundamentally when you have OCD, you're like, man, I got to touch the doorknob 12 times. I don't know why. I know it's stupid and this isn't making any sense. It's kind of like, you know?

You're trying to prevent yourself from doing something, you know, you really don't need to do OCD personality disorder. kind of skip over that. You're actually in a space where, no, you do need to touch the doorknob 12 times. That's being thorough. That's being on point. And also Neil, you better touch the doorknob 12 times too. Otherwise you're not doing it right. Just trying to help you, man. Just trying to help you. You see it's, it's the insight level.

Is like if OCD folks, they may or may not realize that they're being compulsive or obsessive, but they're not that difficult nagging boss who's not only micromanaging, essentially like putting you in a space where you need to do it the way I do it so that you can do it right. It's a personality flash.

Neil (15:25.826)
So I'm OCD, so you have to be too.

Chris (15:29.814)
Basically kind of yeah Yeah, it's a personality thing and it's These personality sorters are interesting. I whenever we do a show on them or I talk about them You know, they're they're really different than other Diagnostics that we do we used to call them on an access to Diagnosis and you know now They haven't changed it. We have DSM 5 are out now and then we had DSM 5

Neil (15:31.008)
Okay.

Chris (15:59.166)
I'm my brain's still mostly operating on DSM four or DSM four R revised. Those are the old diagnostic and statistical manuals. That's where we got all of our diagnosing in one big fat book that we have to read, learn and know. Well, they changed it forever. We were waiting on the DSM five to come out when it did. They never changed anything about those personality disorders. Not much is understood more than what we've known for 25 years essentially. And then D you know, five R came out and it changed it again. I'm like,

Do we not understand these things? And I think essentially we kind of don't. Remember my theory? You remember my theory is?

Neil (16:41.415)
which theory that would be that we really don't change a lot? Huh?

Chris (16:43.566)
Wow, dead air. Dead air, I was taking a drink and you were in deep thought like...

Neil (16:48.979)
I was trying to figure out, because I was thinking like, what is your theory, Chris? Because you said a lot, I'm not. Which theory is this one?

Chris (16:57.582)
I do think outside of the box and, and, and enjoy kind of trying to figure things out together with people. the endocrine system. Yeah. The fact of, of all of the hormones and, and, know, neurological systems, as a matter of fact, I hear, I was driving a lot the last couple of days. heard Neil deGrasse Tyson talking once again, neurology is the biggest field of all right now, as far as potentially new.

Neil (17:05.481)
I am.

Chris (17:25.694)
And exploratory stuff coming out. And he literally said, we're going to be able to zip into your brain in some sort of way and fix a lot of problems that we never were able to. And the mental health is right in the front of that because we have currently zero cures for mental health realities. Zero. Can't cure anything. We are in the stage of managing them. But I have a feeling that when we begin to identify neurotransmitter systems.

mineral elements of nutrition, connecting and combining with hormone production in the endocrine system and how all that stuff really works to drive the way that we feel, but what we're experiencing our bodies, we're going to literally be able to fix crap at that point. And that's exciting.

Neil (18:15.906)
I'm torn on that statement because I feel like there's a lot of stuff when you think about people who have had disorders or personality disorders or OCD or those things and you think about the mechanisms that have been developed over time to help people deal with that and them struggling with it creating new neural pathways and those things in their brain to help adapt and do it. Like, you know, knew a guy who had ADHD hyperfocus and in college he started failing classes because he didn't realize it. Well then once

the teacher realized that he talked to the counselors at the college, they gave him ways to cope with his ADHD hyper-focus, right? So then he created a new neural pathways, right? So it's almost like we've worked through times, like you said, where we manage it, where we almost create these neural pathways. Is it really exciting the fact that anytime you have an issue, you can just go to a robot and just basically fix your problem because you just don't like this feeling, so you just go fix it?

Chris (18:51.049)
yeah. yeah.

Neil (19:10.924)
But then you don't live life. It's that same thing of like taking some of the medications that numb you, right? So the question, right, when it comes back and if you rely on a robot to fix all of your problems, well, then do you actually ever learn how to deal with your process, right? It's the same thing of the people who take pills just because they don't wanna cope with reality. It's like, it sounds great, but then you lose the human factor of adapting to your resiliency and those types of things if you just go for quick fixes.

Chris (19:15.118)
So I see a little better now. Go ahead. Yeah.

Chris (19:41.034)
I that. And I, and I see your point a little louder. think my counter to your really insightful question, you know, about losing humanity. I don't think we'll lose humanity in that Neil. No more than, you know, the humanity of people and our dietary choices. If you're our diabetic and, and your insulin levels just don't work well, therefore your cells can't get the juice that they need from the food. That's what insulin does.

We have treatments that can fix that problem and help you to process food. And then you can do what you normally do. We're not taking away what the body normally does. Think about it. When somebody is depressed, we all experienced depression through grief. But if somebody is chronically depressed, something's going on in their body that we don't quite know where to zip or zap, nip or tuck. And when we figure that out, heck yeah.

I want a robot to give me new neuro pathways, baby, because I'm going to feel better and I'm not going to go back to the well every time that I'm having a bad day, but I certainly want something to be able to fix that neuro pathway. We figure out that there's a block that's there to take that block out so that then I can normally function. See the difference. I mean,

Neil (21:02.188)
Well, yeah, 100%. And I think that's the part you have to look at, because my concern is, once again, it's the Ritalin moms that take it because they don't want to deal with certain things, right? There's always that. It's the idea that there's always the major problems. I'm not going to take insulin because my blood sugar is a little off, because I'm fine, right? You have to find the people that actually need it and fix those problems.

Chris (21:13.036)
ORBITAL AND DADS!

Neil (21:28.916)
Right? A diabetic has an issue that has to be addressed. Someone who has depression needs to be addressed. You know, someone who has actual anxiety, you know, through those things, that's different than someone who just, I'm having a hard time struggling, dealing right now. Right? Or I'm sad for a little, like you're not depressed. You don't have anxiety. You're anxious and you're sad. Right? There's a difference between those things. And I think that's my biggest thing. I think it's exciting if we get to that point where we can really help the chronic problems.

That's super, super powerful, super awesome, right? But my concern is from monetary, from people's no lack of delayed gratification, those things. think if we find these fixes, they're gonna become quick fixes and all this other stuff, right? I'm 20 pounds of a weight, I take a Zempeng. No, just think of that.

Neil (22:23.042)
Just follow your own just poke you with needles when you don't expect it like, yeah.

Chris (22:27.566)
that's my adrenaline kick. Thank you. Now I can function. No, it's a OCD personality disorder. The traits to kind of get back to that, Neil, you have perfectionism to the point of dysfunction, preoccupation with rules, orders lists. Like I said, just imagine your micromanaging boss on steroids to use that phrase rigidity and moral or ethical matters. Like you really, the biggest thing is you see your way as the right way and your myopic.

There's a, there's a layered egocentrism in there to use a big word. It's basically like, you know, you're kind of self-driven, self aware and not compassionate or able to connect into other people. There's a reluctance to delegate because you know, people won't do it right. All of that is like personality interactions. One of the ways I think of this is classically when, when now, now let me preface this by saying.

Parenting and parents are not likely to create this issue. However, socially can maybe feed into it. When I'm working with parenting and OCD, I always use the example of like little Johnny going to bed. know, nighttime routines are difficult in any family to a large extent, right? And so, so, so what happens is with, with a kid that has OCD, they get layered into a pattern.

You have to walk into the room, say, good night, Johnny, I love you. I'll see you in the morning in that order. And then you can walk out and all will be well. Guess what happens if you don't say good night, Johnny, I love you. I'll see you in the morning. You know, if you don't say that, Johnny's losing his mind, right? He's, he's, he's stuck. This has to happen in his world. Otherwise can't, you know, the world's going to end its way. It feels, it feels so desperate with, with, with, with OCD. So Paris don't want that battle.

They don't want that battle. And so they'll just say, yes, good night, Johnny. I love you. I'll see you in the morning. So I can have peace. I can go to bed all as well.

Chris (24:32.898)
Problem is what Johnny is learning is that what I need the world conforms to and that's what I begin to expect and That's a problem

Neil (24:44.286)
sense. Okay, yeah that makes a lot more sense. When you expect people to follow what you believe because yeah that makes a lot of sense because I mean that goes back to the same idea where we have with parenting and helicopter parents and the things going around where you know parents are stepping in and helping their kids more than they should when they get older. It's that same basic idea but there's a more rigidity I think you said from the person with OCD right? There's more...

Chris (25:09.976)
Rigidity is the key. It's an element that just, you know, it's so difficult to deal with people. I'll leave this diagnostic and then we'll move on to the next and get to what I really want to get to. is like when somebody gets under your skin, that tells you like in therapy, when I miss something and somebody starts getting under my skin and they start irritating me, I find myself like just with an edge. I'm like, yeah, personality disorders.

I think I forgot that. You know, I didn't see that, but now I know why I'm feeling the way that I feel. I'll ask some diagnostic questions, kind of get to it. And usually like, yep, there it is. I didn't see it.

Neil (25:51.791)
Does that help you when you deal with your patients or just people in general? When you do diagnose people with something, it helps you kind of how to better interact with them.

Chris (26:01.208)
With personality disorders, well, no, I didn't interact. helps me to identify something that I missed. I mean, you know, I, I love all my clients work with them. I don't really get bothered by them, even if they're upset with me or whatever. I mean, it's, it's a professional relationship. But what I'm saying is the indicator to myself is that if I get irritated and I didn't previously see personality disorders, that gives me a bump in awareness. like, missed it. Now I know why I'm feeling this way.

Neil (26:28.192)
Makes sense.

Makes sense.

Chris (26:32.79)
Yeah. Well, let's move on. again, we can get to what I really want to get to, which is the discussion in the chat about. The freaking world, man and life. All right. Episode three 27 was the value of vulnerability. The three questions here was when was a time you felt vulnerable with someone and how did it impact the relationship to do you tend to see vulnerability as a weakness or as a strength? Why? And I think we.

Mostly see it as a weakness generally. And then three, what risks and rewards come with being open about your struggles, especially in therapy or, or relationships. Like does, does, does, does that feel like a risk? Does that feel like a reward? And I think probably vulnerability generally feels like a risk. I think that was a really important topic so much so that you wanted to jump on with it with us, didn't you? You, didn't want to, you didn't want to get back. You, you rode that whole show. Do I remember that correctly?

Neil (27:25.888)
Yeah, I was with that one because Victoria couldn't make it and I was like, you know, this is the show I think is super important to hear right now. And I wanted to say my two cents about it because I think vulnerability is underrated nowadays with a lot of the stuff with social media and all the other stuff. You know, we talk about the reality and all the other things that are tied to it. But I think vulnerability is. Yeah, exactly. But I mean. Yeah, I think vulnerability is so important right now. And so I thought that was very important.

Chris (27:45.08)
We'll get to that.

Chris (27:52.888)
can interrupt you and just say, know what Neil, you're absolutely on point. And this little review show will lead to a nice segue into what we're talking about. I'll look at my show notes in the very first line. Listen to the very first line in my show notes I'm preparing. Vulnerability is the gateway to authentic connection. Personally, professionally, and in therapy. And I didn't remember that I had done that, but dang. When we start talking about world events and social media and stuff, I don't think it's very authentically connecting.

Neil (28:20.514)
That's another statement.

Chris (28:22.509)
Right?

Neil (28:24.17)
Yeah, that is definitely one of the idea of authentic and a world of social media, let on authentic connection. that's just, those things don't tie together right now. When it comes to social media, there's absolutely nothing authentic about our connections we make with people. know, lot of the people when it comes to social media, they have an authentic connection before they got on social media or they get that connection after they leave social media to then meet in person, right? Social media,

in all of its greatness. It's really great to connect us, but it doesn't really allow us to really get connections with each other. It's their sisterly nature.

Chris (29:00.014)
Pretty great.

Chris (29:07.118)
All right, we're going to get there, We got it. We got it. think we're itching to get to that. Vulnerability matters in a lot of ways. think that, you know, I enjoy doing that show and it really kind of touches on a fundamental, I don't think we talked about it, but would we call it a skill, O'Neill? You know, a skill in being vulnerable.

Neil (29:33.238)
I think it's something you have to practice. think if that's the case, does become, you know, being vulnerable is a skill you have to hone. It's also, it's also a, being vulnerable is like, is like practicing like public speaking, you know, you, you, some people are good at, some people are, some people can open up and it's not a problem, but like for most people being vulnerable with someone is, is about as scary or more so that as public speaking. And so it is a skill you have to hone because you have to be able to read cues to know,

when you can open up, what are you opening up about? Are you open up to the right person at the right time? Like there's a lot of stuff you have to learn. And until you either start opening up to more people, you really don't know. You're either socially awkward, you just blurt something out that's, hey, TMI right now, we're not really that part of the relationship, or you never open up and it's just a closed relationship. And so it is, honestly, I agree. Being vulnerable is a skill that you have to acquire.

You have to build.

Chris (30:34.05)
And it's a strength, obviously, in our question is, do you interpret this as a weakness or a strength? got to tell you. Yeah. Playing off what you're saying there, Neil, I had a really weird experience when I wrote that book and I was coming up on the first publication date and, and, and when I held the book in my hand for the first time, I was kind of like, wow, you know, there's a lot of me in this book and it is.

permanently written.

And it's different than I think what we even catch into the social media when we type in the keyboard. don't, I don't know that we really connect with the fact that when you post something on Facebook, it goes out to the world, but I really connected it in my psychological brain when I wrote that book and I went through a little bit of a freak out. I don't know if you remember that or if I even let on Neil, you know.

Neil (31:26.466)
I don't know if I was really like, yeah, you didn't let that on. I don't remember that freak out from you. So if you were doing that.

Chris (31:34.252)
It was really, really a weird feeling to think that this is going to go out and anybody in the world can literally read my thoughts. They can have my head in their hand and they can say anything they want to about it. They could be nice about it. They could be mean about it. You know, they can, they can love it. They can hate it. I don't have any control over that. It's written. You already have it. I'm done. What am I going to do with it?

And the same thing is I just did a full day conference yesterday. You know, I'm presenting to somebody and like you said, how do you feel an hour or a day? How do you feel that? Well, you know, I'm presenting a lot of thoughts and honestly, I've had comments to some extent that people will roast you. And if you, if you don't have thick skin, the ability to tolerate vulnerably, somebody giving you feedback about something that you just said like a day ago and they're roasting you.

Man, that's an emotional ride. It really is. And when you're in the middle of doing it, it's kind of like, you're not fully aware of it, but then you begin to experience it.

Neil (32:36.386)
Mm-hmm.

Neil (32:44.006)
And I think that book is a lot different than a social media book, right? You've legitimately spent six months a year really curating your thoughts and you put everything into this. What is a social media, right? know, 250 characters or whatever and blurbs that you can say, I want people to hear this now and then that's it. And then you do another blurb. It's not the same. They don't really get to know you or they don't get the depth part of what you're really saying, right? Your book is...

so much.

Chris (33:15.938)
they are.

Neil (33:17.974)
Yes, they are.

Chris (33:19.09)
They are. And I think that's the conversation that we want to get to here. It's funny that you're saying that because when we really get the focus here in a couple of minutes on like what's going on in the world, what is the human race experiencing? I think that gets to it. And you didn't mean to do that, Neil, but look, I wrote a book. Yes, I curated it and it was touched up. That should make that actually easier to tolerate.

You know, people reading it because I spent a lot of time on it. also had an editor that made it sound a lot better than I write. Okay. That's, know, Courtney is awesome. She is amazing. So, but when I'm popping something on a Facebook post, I'm doing the same thing. I am putting this out to the whole world. And, yet as you just went through people, humans don't even realize it, but, but.

Neil (33:55.951)
Courtney's amazing.

Chris (34:18.446)
but they are feeling the feelings of

And it's like subconscious. mean, how many times have you posted something and then, and then realize like, God, I shouldn't have said that. Now you can maybe go and delete it somehow, sometimes, but you now know that that's out there or somebody says something about your post and you get all up in arms. Like, I'm going to block that person. mean, all of that, we'll get into it, but this is all very, very different experience and our psychology doesn't know how to handle it.

Neil (34:53.29)
Yeah, I think because I think the biggest part, think like you said, once you post it, it's out there, right? If you do, you can try to delete it, but there's always someone that snaps it. There's always a bot that does it. I mean, I there was always that joke, like imagine when we were kids, if we had cell phones, how much stuff we, our parents would have seen or like, if you think about this stuff we used to do, it's kids. And now it's like everyone records everything and puts it out there. It's like, people really don't understand that.

Chris (34:59.533)
ever.

Neil (35:20.704)
those moments when you hang out with your buddies and you do something stupid, know, jump off of a bridge into the water, shoot BB gun. Have you, have you seen the water tower that's like it's Conway Twitty or whatever, some country star, and someone legit sniped it and shot a hole like right in his right between his legs. So looks like he's peeing out the water tower. It's one of those things that we would do as teens or kids. And you just, no one knew those things, but now every time you do something, it's always out there. And when you

Chris (35:41.678)
No!

Neil (35:49.152)
And when you post something out of emotions or feelings, it's out there. Like if you get mad at someone and you yell at them, okay, well, you yell, you get it out, they get hurt or whatever, you deal with it, go there. Now I post it, say something that's offensive to someone because they took it out of context or I meant to hurt them. Well, now it's there for them to see. So when they go back to your page, they see that comment again. And it's really hard.

Chris (35:55.01)
FOREVER.

Chris (36:13.432)
FOREVER. AND TO EVERYONE.

Neil (36:16.374)
And that's the thing, right? That's the reality, that's the part of it, right? And that's the fear. you talk about going back to the statement of vulnerability, right? It's easy to be vulnerable with someone that you've built a relationship to. But in reality, on social media, when you expose your raw feelings, you're actually being really vulnerable to the entire world. But now in this case, instead of being a curated relationship with someone that you know, that you trust, it's anyone can see it. That's...

Chris (36:46.158)
FOREVER.

Neil (36:47.028)
If you think about it, that's super scary and super risky.

Chris (36:51.074)
Really is man. I, I have a sneaking suspicion. We're obviously falling out of the review of vulnerability episode three 27. Cause we want to talk about this. It's, it's driving our experience as a human race, Neil, I think in the way that we're not even conscious of, and we're going to talk about some of the outcomes of that because our psychology is aware of all of

our subconsciousness. We don't even have the comparative analysis of how our parents dealt with this because they just didn't.

Neil (37:34.53)
They didn't have to deal with this stuff.

Chris (37:37.462)
And it's massive, massive, massive overwhelm. It just doesn't stop. just, it's, picking up steam in the influence of how the algorithms call us out. I was talking to somebody, maybe it was you, we were talking about a topic in their Facebook stream started sending them all these things on the topic that they had never really been interested in, but they looked it up for me because we were talking about it. And now they're like doomed to look at whatever the topic was for quite a while.

Neil (37:41.356)
Mm-hmm.

Neil (38:06.71)
My wife gets weird stuff on her from the different clients I work with. I'll literally she'll be on her Facebook and I'll be over the show. I'm like, Hey, I know those guys. work with those guys. I'm doing email stuff with them. Like, but then there's the crazy stuff is when you talk about it and then it shows up on your stream. It's like, how did this like you didn't even talk on the phone. You just talk it's, but that's, that's a scary part of itself. But I want to, I want to go back to one more thing in the third question. said is what risk rewards come with being open about your struggles, especially with therapy or in relationships, right?

Chris (38:14.03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Neil (38:35.638)
I'm gonna say this when it comes to it, if you're in a good relationship or you have a good therapist, there really shouldn't be any risk to you getting vulnerable, especially from a therapy standpoint. If you really are in therapy and you have a good relationship with, there should be absolutely no risk when it comes to getting vulnerable. And that's just, that's what kind of relationship you should have. Now, when it comes to your other relationships, there's a lot more variables tied to, but as a therapist, if you don't feel comfortable with your therapist, you think there is a risk that you can't get vulnerable with them,

Chris (38:35.918)
Okay. Yeah.

Neil (39:02.784)
you need to either talk to them or find another therapist. And we've talked about that in other shows that if you can fire your therapist if it's not working out, find someone that works for you. that's, the reward should wholly outweigh from a therapy standpoint the risk, because there should be almost zero risk and everything should come from as a reward. That's just my take on

Chris (39:03.246)
Get a new one.

Chris (39:12.28)
Gotta have good connection, rapport, and safety. All about emotional safety,

Chris (39:24.984)
Super well said. We're, we're halfway through our time. And so we're going to transition. you know, we're not trying to short these shows, but, you know, recently we, as a panel kind of sounded off and I, I, I think it's interesting because, in the United States, we have the, the very public slaying murder shooting of Charlie Kirk. And I, it's like, you know, Neil, when Columbine happened,

You know, that was an experience that the United States had when we figured out that, somebody can walk into an elementary school and start, you know, popping off an automatic rifle. And we were shocked by that. And we haven't really been shocked by things as as much because it is so commonplace. You know, we have hangings and shootings and lootings and protests.

and fraud events and all sorts of things that are going on in human behavior. Some are new. Many to your point, Neil, aren't exactly new totally in human behavior. Craig, the old, old co-host, not that his age is old, love Craig, but you are an old man too, but the old co-host of the show. You know, and I loved to make the point when we...

started trying to talk about mass murder events, that these aren't really a new experience. We have had Little House on the Prairie with kids coming into school houses and, you know, knifing to death through four kids. That you can look at a history of events and you would be surprised. So it's not that the human behavior itself is new. Shoot, in the Middle Ages,

There was some brutal, brutal realities that human beings would do for punishments or attacking others and various things. You know, they would lay your body down on a couple of rocks and put it in your mid back section and they would cover your chin and your shoulders and your pelvis with rocks and basically slowly crush your spine. Did you know that that's a real reality?

Neil (41:42.53)
There's a lot of torture stuff out there. I probably know more than I should, but it's amazing, yeah.

Chris (41:45.594)
Nuts. the human behavior isn't new. And I really, really want to hear this loudly. We are so myopic and egocentric in these United States to think that we have a major problem with political systems. The left hates the right. The right hates the left. My tribe hates your tribe.

You're against us. So we're biting you. We're going to attack. We're going to defend. I hope this guy who just killed 10 people in a church is not a Republican. that would be so bad. See, it makes sense. They were a liberal. You guys are wrong. We are right. And vice versa. All of that crap. Like this is not the United States of America and an exclusive problem. Neil, I hope you understand.

Neil (42:41.025)
you

Chris (42:44.172)
and can see and agree with me that this is all across the world. It's not specific to us.

Neil (42:48.769)
I mean, yeah, I mean, historically you hear the warring tribes of the warring countries where there's them versus them. mean, there's, mean, for us, you can go back to the Hatfield and the McCoys, right? That whole story, right? You those types of things. But yeah, it's definitely not, this is not really us for, this isn't a US thing. I mean, like I said, you hear countries and you go over to Europe or other countries and one country hates the other just because of something that comes from it, right? There is a,

we do as a human society, we build our tribes of those that we agree with and those that we like, right? That's how we work. And then if you're not in our tribe, you're in a different tribe. if you're not in our tribe, we don't really like you. This is not new, right? We've just adapted it different from, and right now our case is politics. used to be, know, civil war was North versus South, know, civil rights, you black versus white, right? We've always had these metrics, you know,

U.S. versus California because California should be its own country, but that's a whole nother thing, right?

Chris (43:52.056)
So let's look at what the problem is, Neil. We don't like mass murder events. The United States has more of those than around the world. That's actually a true thing. We don't like political unrest. That is going on in France, exonified. Germany. We won't even go to dictatorship lands, but you've got major political realities with Brexit and how people are processing that information. The decision, do we tax, do we not tax?

You, you, have elements of family functioning, estrangements in families over silly topics of things we cannot control. We have what, what else is the problem that you think technology is highlighting? You know, it goes down to daily living, right? Neil, goes down to, not just the United States politics. goes down to like how human beings are interacting with people.

So what is the problem that spend a moment on it to be clear? What is the problem in human interactions that is either created by or proliferated by our current mode of communication in the computer world? How does it affect?

Neil (45:08.921)
I think the biggest part when it comes to how it affects us is the fact that with the algorithms that have been created, when we find our tribe, when we find what we like, we get fed our tribal information more and more and more. There is no echo chamber for us to actually have other opinions or other sides to it. Once again, if we lean one direction or another,

you're fed that information over and over and over again. it basically builds you on an island that anything below you is not equal to you. The idea of actually arguing your side versus someone else's side, it's a lot harder than it used to be because we don't know how, because we do see so much that we agree with, we don't really know how to take when we don't agree with it, right? And then that becomes a major problem. And I think that's the biggest issue with social media is not.

social media itself is the algorithms they use to feed you what they think you need and you just feed into it. I mean, how hard is it if you believe in stance X to go out and spend even five minutes listening to the other side of that opinion without getting some sort of a, I've done this on my side where it's like, try to go watch other stuff and because my logic is a certain way, I'm like, I can't listen to this because it doesn't make sense to me. I don't wanna deal with it, right?

Chris (46:33.742)
There's an avoidance, there's a shutdown, and you're touching there a lot on dehumanization.

Neil (46:35.692)
So.

Neil (46:39.458)
And that's the issue, right? That's the problem. It's not about, know, Chris, you and I are guys that live near in Gaston County and we have kids and, you know, we like to be outside and, you know, you have feelings like I have feelings. No, it's me versus you because you voted for this way and I voted that way, which makes you less human than me, right? That's, but you would, you know, in the other way, you'd be the same way. Instead of looking at how we're common, how we have similarities, it's...

what's different about you and those differences is what makes me not like you. know, downright even say hate you.

Chris (47:14.862)
Let's talk about money for a moment and to demonstrate how technology influences that. Okay. The emotions. I just had an experience the other day that was really cool. Long story short, my kid has a big truck. He's got these tires and he, and and he wanted to sell the rims. know how the kids do. They want to look sharp. They got all their rims, tires, sizes, whatever blades. It's nuts. I don't enjoy that world. I don't know that world, but I was selling, I was selling the rims for him because he had them at my house because he has an apartment. Right.

So he sets up this sale, Neil, and this kid, this awesome little kid, he comes to me and he agrees to buy them. It was $1,400. He's got a handful of $100 bills and he counts them. One, two, three, four, five, nine, 12, 13.

14 now, I obviously skipped some numbers because it's taking too long He he experienced the emotion of that money in his hand. I experienced him counting those $100 that needed to be counted so that they were correct and and I was excited for my son that he was getting $1,400 maybe 1300 because I need a commission Joke, but not really because I was excited about that for my son

Neil (48:38.081)
Is it?

Chris (48:41.442)
That kid was really kind of happy about his rims, but he felt and made the decision to give $1,400, counted it out for me, and we exchanged that. He took the tires, I took the money, and we had an emotional engagement. How different is that emotional experience if he would have just zipped me that money on a phone? Here's a button push. You don't feel it. You just.

Neil (49:07.649)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (49:09.502)
Psychologically, you cannot feel it. When's the last time you had $1,400 cash in your hand? I'm asking you, the listener. That is a very different experience than seeing digits on a computer screen and popping that electronically to an account or paying off a credit card or something. You see what I'm saying? Okay. That is very, very important to then transcribe that.

Neil (49:27.84)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (49:39.084)
conveyed reality to literally what we are experiencing on a waaaay wider scale.

where it becomes possible to go outside public with a rifle in a major crowd, take a spot on a roof, pull a trigger that you have shot bullets that you've written on messages to someone like Charlie Kirk's neck. How does that happen?

It's anger, it's fear, it's emotion run riot. It's an inability to connect and understand and even see that person as a human being. We're getting so out of touch and it's creating massive changes in human behavior that we are not catching up to. And it's devastating to human relationships. It's devastating to a man and a woman in a marriage.

Neil (50:39.775)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (50:44.77)
partner of choice. is devastating to your relationship with your child. It is devastating for the relationships that you have with your family through estrangements, conflicts, avoidance, all sorts of things, your neighborhood, your schools, your state, your country, all told. We are losing the ability to vulnerably be seen outside of a freaking keyboard.

engage with the person that might be your neighbor and have a conversation and convey and experience their compassion and perspective and opinion. The TV was an amazing change in human experience. And it took a lot of years for us to adjust to having that be in our life.

You know, Neil, how long was a TV functioning when TVs first came out in somebody's life?

the evening news that an hour. You know you pop on to watch the show. And then there was.

Neil (51:56.595)
Yeah, it's something like that, I mean, you had what? had the what? Like three channels, maybe? Maybe five? You know?

Chris (52:04.046)
Three channels, nothing but snow after nine o'clock or whatever.

Neil (52:07.97)
You get that, you get the BEEE, you know, after. Yeah. I mean, you, would go from like 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., 10 p.m. and that was it, right?

Chris (52:10.382)
the line yeah right

Chris (52:18.298)
And we went off the air, you're back to normal and you didn't watch that the whole day long. There was no such thing as watching a soap opera every single day, three or four hours of content when you watch it. Like we adjusted to the use of a TV that dramatically changed the life that we live. I could see somebody that was in another country delivering a talk, you know.

I figured out what was going on in World War II by like a movie kind of thing. And I saw video, but it was so slow. It was so grainy. It wasn't invested in our life for hours at a time even, or the content wasn't even available. You said three channels. Did we adjust to using a TV, Neil?

Neil (53:05.634)
Yeah, of course.

Chris (53:07.18)
Human being.

We adjusted to a phone.

Chris (53:15.544)
going from a telephone to a microphone. You've seen those lines of technology increases, right?

went from a wheel and it took us like 200,000 years to build a spear, I guess, you know, it was like major gaps in early human technology game, right?

Neil (53:35.5)
Yeah. Yep.

Chris (53:37.932)
We have a millisecond now with new technology gains because it exponentially gets greater. My whole premise is that we are killing people literally.

because we cannot handle the technological advance in the way that we engage through computers.

And the computer itself has dramatically changed the way that we interact way more as human beings than any other technology has. We can't handle it, Neil.

Neil (54:13.826)
Well, there's two big problems with computers when it comes to interacting. One, I don't know if you've ever noticed this from younger kids. Younger people, feel like unless they go through certain things, they can't even tolerate being in the presence of other people. The anxiety, the pressure, like all of like, so that's one thing. Like they don't even know how to just be in the room with other people to add how to interact, right? When you have a computer, the computer doesn't give you back anything as far as vibes.

pheromones, whatever, right? So you get a lot of young people that have social awkwardness, anxiety, those anti-social behaviors because they don't know how to be in front of someone, right? The other part too is a computer really doesn't disagree with you. Once again, they don't know how to get that pushback, right? From a computer, it's I'm looking up stuff and it's feeding me back that information. If I wanna find out why this party is better than that party,

it will give me all of the pros of that party I wanna look for, right? Or why this country is better than that country, right? The problem is with computers, it's a glorified yes man that doesn't really give you the overwhelming presence. You and I talked about therapy remote versus therapy in person, or talking to someone in person versus talking to someone over the phone. I mean, that's the difference, right?

I would much rather spend time with my wife in the room with me than being on a Zoom call with her if I was traveling the country. I want to have that physical connection or even with my kids. I would rather, I talk to Mason. I get that vibe from her and I like that vibe. But if you're not used to it, the vibe is scary. That presence is scary. And if you feel like you're gonna say something that's gonna offend them because the computer has said, if you guys don't agree 100 % of the time,

Chris (55:45.784)
She's real. She's real.

Neil (56:04.67)
it's going to be this big explosion. Well, you're never going to talk to anyone. You're never going to learn those things because so-and-so, I think he's this type of person or she's this type of person. If I say this, they're going to get mad at me and then I don't know how to deal with confrontation. Once again, this is the algorithm.

Chris (56:21.248)
It reflects us. It reflects our emotion, our hatred, our fear, our lack of vulnerability, our confusion, our overwhelm, and actually personifies it or builds it up.

Neil (56:32.258)
And the reality is most people aren't like that way. When you talk to someone, if you and I, mean, you and I, we've had discussions and we disagree. I mean, I'm right more than you are, but in that case, I still, we don't get mad at each other. think there's been a few times we've been annoyed.

Chris (56:40.334)
We're not.

Chris (56:49.678)
Getting little irritated right now, be honest with you.

Neil (56:52.274)
But but the reality is is we've learned that in through society. Yeah, we disagree, but it doesn't mean that We're neither one of us a horrible person It doesn't mean that the other person's the spawn of Satan and like everything's gonna go bad Like the reality is is no one's gonna agree with everything you say and in reality You can have disagreements and be fine with it You can have that falling out and then get back together You can even just have a civil discussion and yell and then two minutes later be hugging

Chris (57:20.878)
But here's the thing, like intellectually, I think people are probably able to listen to our conversation, Neil, and agree. But emotionally, the way that we feel when we're actually in it, we're not catching up to, we're not really connecting the dots. We're not realizing what effect that's having on our emotion. I can't imagine how somebody gets radicalized. You know, I've thought about that a lot, Neil, this whole topic of

You know, computers and social media and how it's influencing our interaction styles. How is a kid that lives in Louisiana or, know, Zimbabwe or, you know, Prague, you know, gonna listen to these things on a computer, interact with this person through a video scope and begin to get information from them and radicalize that into taking a bomb and blowing up a building.

How does that happen? It happens by this interaction. You would have to get a spy that weaseled their way into Belgium in order to talk to a high schooler in whatever city is in Belgium and begin to develop a full relationship with Bob the Belgian to get them in order to be able to blow up a building.

Now we have Bob sitting in his house alone, probably going through emotionally developmental normal human things, reaching out, talking to a predatory person in another place in the world, quickly developing a relationship because I can reach out and talk to anyone at all times, permanently placing my thoughts on this computer. And somehow they get into my emotional space at the time that they do.

where I will take a bomb and blow up a train in France.

Neil (59:20.162)
And the biggest problem going back to technology is once you start thinking about that path, technology then diverts you that way. If you looked up something about something, you know, once again, Charlie Kirk, if you look up something about Tyler Robinson, it's like that can take you down a path based on what he said and you don't, before you realize it, this can happen, right? If you research something, you know, maybe you're doing some really class project, you know, the

you know, Ireland bombing, right? Lord knows where that takes you or groups that could put you in that you then start interacting with and then things happen from there, right? That's the problem with technology. Technology serves what you search for, good or bad. Now there are safeguards that are supposed to be in place from some of these searches that if there are, you know, the anarchy cookbook or anarchist cookbook, you're not supposed to get that anywhere because it's horrible, right? But the reality is, is if you wanted to, if you...

Chris (01:00:08.27)
to hear.

Neil (01:00:14.398)
spend 30 minutes, you could probably find someplace to download it, right? Because it's out there. Once again, it's permanency. But the problem is, is from a radicalization standpoint, it used to be that it was the people you hung out with, your family, your friends, and that friend knows a friend that, all of a sudden now you're looking at this activism or radical nature. Like you said, now, as soon as you start it, as soon as you start going down that path, you get recommended a Facebook group or a, you know.

Chris (01:00:41.218)
proliferates it.

Neil (01:00:42.408)
It just makes it so much worse. so the problem is, is then once you start that looking at that part, you become isolated within that environment. If you're not leaving that environment to have conversations with people to, for you to express it, you know, one of the things, know, Charlie Kirk said, all speech should be free. You should be able to say anything you want. It's like, what about hate speech? I don't care. Anyone should say anything they want to say, because what happens is if you say something that is that extreme,

Society should knock you down and be like, no, that's not right. You need to stop, right? But when you start dictating what's good and bad in speech, that becomes heavily weighed based on who's ruling at the time or who's dictating those pieces, right? Just because I say something.

Chris (01:01:24.92)
Yeah, but pause there. Pause there, Neil, real quick, because what we're talking about is how computers change that. You have hate speech and should be able to say it, but when you say it online in some way, the algorithms come in and you don't hear society knocking your thought down anymore. Like, think about that and what you just said. You say something crazy, you get more of that crazy, and you become crazier.

Neil (01:01:43.489)
Right.

Neil (01:01:48.162)
Crazy.

Chris (01:01:53.792)
In that crazier state, it exponentially continues to grow because you're not hearing the world knock down your crazy thoughts.

Neil (01:02:00.397)
Well, because you're going over here to this part, because the non-crazy is in their silo and the crazy is in their silo and then they never talk to each other. It's like missile silos. They're in the ground. They're not up above where they can look out and see the other crazies. They're in the ground. They don't know what's going on.

Chris (01:02:17.912)
And what's wild is human beings then on the other side are doing the same thing and getting crazy also. To not overuse the word crazy, but when we get a kid that we love and care about and we want them to be safe, we get crazy consumed with it and we track a little dot on a phone to watch where our kid is at all times. What does that do to the emotion?

of a parent and a child relationship. We could go on and on and on with so many examples of finances, of parenting, of marriage, of tracking, technological advances that are exploding exponentially faster. I had an article from John that said, you know, she, a title, she thought she was flirting with her favorite celebrity, a heartbreaking, deep fake scam cost her everything. And it's like the stories we were talking about recently with Rod.

You cannot have those kinds of experiences in whatever before computers were here. You would have to take a picture of some famous guy to somebody's house and leave it in a mailbox and try to convince them that somehow this famous actor came to your mailbox and was literally at your street. How believable is that that that would happen? But yet somebody can get an email from a bot and buy into and fully be in love with Burt Reynolds.

thinking Burt Reynolds really loves me and give Burt Reynolds, who's actually a bot, $500,000. We could go on and on with these examples, Are we getting it hopefully helping people see not the news flashes and the headlines, but the human emotional experience and how that's been affected by computers?

Neil (01:04:12.576)
I hope so. mean, the computers and the technology is causing our disconnect across the board. I think that's, you know, the number one thing I would say with that process is, you know, I think, and that's the term I've heard from a couple of people, go out and touch grass, right? That's what I, one guy said that, yeah. We had, heard someone LinkedIn do it. And then David said, I was like, that's funny. But yeah, I mean, that's.

Chris (01:04:29.794)
Yeah, our buddy David, yes. Get in barefoot and touch grass.

Neil (01:04:37.526)
Really, that's the idea, right? It's getting out of your own silo to go see what's going on, right? know, take the stairs up to the ground floor. This isn't fallout. It's safe to be in the public, right? You can leave your missile silo and you can go visit other people, right? Because it just becomes that whole situation, right? That's the important part. And once again, technology, and as you stated from Human Natures, technology is advancing a lot faster than we can.

And we're a human, human body, human brains, everything. It's an amazing machine. It's amazing function behind it. But technology, because it has no empathy, no compassion or anything, it's just moving forward and learning and growing and adapting. And it's just, we can't keep up with it from the human nature side. And that's why people are better than technology. We have the human nature. We have the emotions and the feelings and we have so many other things. We just, it's just hard for us to keep up.

Chris (01:05:09.976)
Really is.

Chris (01:05:13.674)
way way more

Chris (01:05:34.51)
You know, we got comments on, on YouTube and stuff already and Carolyn, Hey, girl, you know, she's saying, yeah, good content and as much, much needed because another, I want to keep trying because you're right. We just can't keep up with these things in our, in our subconscious human beings aren't designed to move emotionally that fast. need to sit, meditate, be mindful, right? Before we make take actions and move. We, might, we might meditate and decide on something for years.

before we decide to tell our husband that we're going to leave the marriage. Years, not seconds. That's the way human beings operate. So think about when the United States was in World War I, and I hope I don't offend anybody using these terms, but we would create these terms, right? The Japs, the squinty eyes, the squids. We would have like,

cartoons and newspapers sort of depicting these people as monkeys and stuff. You know I'm talking about, Neil?

Neil (01:06:40.065)
But yeah, there was a lot of stereotyping that was done back then based on the different characteristics, right?

Chris (01:06:45.1)
Why? What purpose emotionally in relationships does that serve?

Neil (01:06:50.229)
You try to dehumanize the enemy, right? You try to make them feel better about killing them, not feel bad about it. Let me phrase that. Maybe not feel better, but not feel bad, right?

Chris (01:06:52.878)
so we can kill him.

Chris (01:07:00.984)
We want to be able because we know we need to kill this group of people and we don't want to feel like we're killing humans.

Neil (01:07:10.177)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (01:07:11.086)
And we did that through a mass campaign. And I don't even know, to be honest with you, that when countries do that against other countries, I'm sure the Russians are saying the Ukrainians are just evil people. In fact, we know they are. Their propaganda kind of puts that out there. And I just use the word propaganda. Is that propaganda? Is that purposeful? There may be a cabal out there. I have no idea. People get into conspiracy thinking, try to gain control emotionally over what we don't understand. But here's the deal. Like, is that purposeful?

I don't know that the United States America made horrible depictions of Japanese people on purpose so that we as a society would feel better about killing them. I think that probably happens a little bit naturally because we defend from the horrible feelings that we feel. Now I'm sure there's some intention behind it.

Neil (01:08:01.922)
Well, yeah, and just so you know, the Japanese weren't involved in World War I, it was World War II. But that's okay. But I think it's sort of like I said, just like a lot of the propaganda things, it's you're building your nation up to one, to feel better about it, but then two, you're tearing down your enemies, right? It's the same thing, right? It's that when it comes to the Ukrainians and the Russians, most of the soldiers out there,

Chris (01:08:02.36)
But there's a combined just experience behind it.

Chris (01:08:08.398)
Thank you.

Neil (01:08:29.313)
They don't want to be there. They don't want to be involved in this. You you see the stories, you know, on World War II, there was like Christmas Eve, both lines basically had a truce to do a Christmas Eve dinner or something like that. Like there was some story about that. Yeah, there was something where like Christmas Eve or something, they both, and they actually did like a communal Christmas thing to celebrate the, to bring back humanity. Of course, once it was all part of, between.

Chris (01:08:42.296)
For real?

Chris (01:08:51.074)
Between the battalions?

Neil (01:08:53.309)
opposing sides that have to go find the story, but there was legitimately something in there that there was a ceasefire long enough that they celebrated Christmas and then afterwards they're back to enemies, right? It's that the people that rule the countries, they don't want their enemies to be seen as human because that means their soldiers aren't going to fight them without a valid reason, right? There has to be something. Either there's a valid reason because they're trying to do something for the betterment of their country.

Chris (01:08:56.034)
Wow.

Chris (01:09:03.811)
Wild.

Neil (01:09:20.351)
You you think about what, you know, the Nazis and Hitler and Mussolini and all those, like those were horrible people that had to be stopped. Or if it's not a legitimate reason, you have to make a reason. And if you're going to propagate it, once again, like with technology now, technology propagandizes anything that you don't agree with and it dehumanizes you. that's when you are, that's when you do feel disconnected and you do attack and lash out and you, you're okay with that because that person's

bad and horrible and because they don't agree with I agree with then it's okay if I'm violent to them or something bad happens to them, right? Those are those things that happen. It's that same basic idea. Technology is just making it so much worse.

Chris (01:10:02.862)
From a mental health perspective, we need to look and understand how these modes of interaction are happening and causing us to have these types of things, not from one country to the next, but from my cousin to the next aunt in my family. The proliferation of this human interaction is very, very fine in personal and close relationships.

just as much as mass events in mass murders or in wartime where groups of people are battling. We need to understand that human experience. It's literally doing this in your family. How are people so estranged over wearing masks during COVID where they hate feelings towards their uncle?

And that's the stuff that's happening, Neil.

Neil (01:11:03.967)
because their silo said they were right and if others didn't agree, then they're horrible people.

Chris (01:11:10.774)
Uncle John becomes a horrible person. I'm not talking about John on the panel of through their size. I'm talking about your uncle John in your family becomes evil and stupid and a horrible person. Like, wow, wow. That's what our human experience is up against. And we better figure this out, Neil. I might start sounding off on this because human beings need to be figuring this out.

Neil (01:11:31.201)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (01:11:39.052)
We need to catch up emotionally to what's going on because we haven't even seen the proliferation of new technology yet. You know, when we get quantum computing and AI, you know, I went down a rabbit hole with that. This is going to start happening faster and faster and faster. That's what technology has always done. And that's what it's going to continue doing. And I'm really starting to wonder if we're going to be able to survive it, man. Like literally as a human race, I wonder if we're going to be able to survive that.

I know that sounds dramatic. know that sounds a little over the top. My new line is, I know I'm extra, but I'm not better than being lesser than that's my new life motto. But I am really beginning to his face on the YouTube live. Everybody. When I said that I am really beginning to wonder if we can, if we can, if we can withstand and survive this proliferation.

Neil (01:12:30.369)
We do adapt, but the question will we adapt fast enough?

Chris (01:12:34.382)
I mean, that's the point. you know, ain't got a good track record right now, man. mean, President Donald Trump is not near the lightning rod that we like to make him out to be. We've had other lightning rods before in humankind. You mentioned Hitler. That was a rough, rough time. You know, we had a guy named Richard Nixon that, man, people

really did not like that guy. We had major differences with Vietnam and whether we should be there as a country. Joan of Arc was a lightning rod. Now revolutions have happened. Massive world events have occurred over this type of thing, but not as rapidly as it's happening now, I would maintain. And we're on an emotional reason on why that is.

Neil (01:13:29.835)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think part of it is just because of how widespread things are now versus before. Because even when you look at, you know, World War II with that, there were still time things had to propagate. Now it's like, if, if I'm just trying think of like, if you go back, like, like you think, think about what our world would have been like if like Abe Lincoln was around right now, or even George Washington, right? What would have happened to our society if we tried to dismantle from British, right? The Britons and those like,

It's just there's things that happened because we didn't have technology that we have these great foundations and these different things. But yeah, just think about what things would have been like with the US politics back when it started back in the turn of the 18th century, what that would have looked like and where we'd be divulged now. Think about the dark ages and those things with kings and stuff. Imagine if everyone in the countryside knew about what the king did because he had his eighth wife beheaded and

Everyone knew that, right? Even those, like, it's just amazing, like, the things that used to happen. And the lives of what we live because we didn't, they didn't know what was going on, which was, there's times I'm like, I wish I didn't know. I've said this many, many times. One of the downfall of our society with a lot of these stuff that happens, it's the news and the media, you know, someone does something horrible. talked about Columbine. How many times do we have school shootings after Columbine because now the news is spreading it, you know,

Chris (01:14:54.35)
Let's not blame the news. That happens way too much. The media outlets across the world have gotten crazy in the way that they operate. I do not disagree with that, but we need to get beyond that and look underneath about the why. They are just doing their job. They are able to follow... Huh?

Neil (01:15:14.818)
They could do better. They could do better with their job. I'm sorry, but, and I've said this before, something like Columbite in Colorado, that does not need to go all over the world. Something in Maine, Maryland doesn't need to go all over the world. That's a small thing. These mass shootings, they're localized. For them to sensationalize this and send this everywhere, it's just a way for, it's clickbait, it's sensationalizing, it's...

There's a lot of people, when you look at the history of violence acts and things, there's the insane people that start trends and there's the copycats that follow. That's the problem. The problem I have with news media and those things is, does it really matter to me if something happens in Colorado if it was localized? Do I really need to see a horrible act of violence somewhere that doesn't really affect me when it's very localized? Charlie Kirk's different because he's a national figure, right? Everyone knows him.

A school in Columbine doesn't need the sensationalism that now other people are mimicking it because it became this thing. That's the problem I have with news because a lone shooter up in Maryland that happened up there, Delaware, wherever that was earlier this year, he killed like three coworkers and they made it a big national thing. why are we sensationalizing these types of things?

Chris (01:16:32.056)
Here's the thing though, bud. I don't want to take responsibility off of these groups. I totally agree with most everything you just said. But what I'm trying to get us to think about in a different way is underneath of that. Yeah, because Neil, Neil, listen, if I told you, you go on to through a therapist eyes and you click and you put a title out there that says,

Neil (01:16:38.39)
Yeah.

Neil (01:16:45.558)
Why are they showing those things?

Chris (01:16:59.348)
New therapist wrecks the world with his new ideas about why we're having our time or whatever the hell would get that clickbait. And you know that you're going to make $157,000 off of creating that title and putting it on our website. You're telling me that you're not going to do that? Now, actually, I believe that you have integrity and I think that you wouldn't do that because you know you're doing harm. But human beings don't have that ability.

particularly if your job and your livelihood is based on that. The podcast people, the thought leaders, the content creators, the executives at Disney, the crazy stuff with Jimmy Kimmel and all the things that we see with what's the other guy from Fox that got fired and all this stuff. Like I'm not absolving those things. I agree with everything you said, but we got to get into like looking at why is that happening? CNN was an amazing channel.

Neil (01:17:30.608)
100%.

Chris (01:17:56.502)
It was the leader of news.

Neil (01:17:58.627)
that actually did real news, right?

Chris (01:18:00.77)
Right. now, not because of bad people. I really want to switch our thinking and say, and I love that we're on this, Neil, because you're so right. And that's the way people think about it. You are on point. And I agree with you. But that change happened because the way that CNN can deliver information in overwhelming fashion. And then other networks picked up on that. And now you got your silos.

Neil (01:18:21.719)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (01:18:29.42)
with words that seem crazy, news that seems hyper-focused. I don't know that people did that on purpose, completely.

Neil (01:18:36.962)
It was an organic shift based on the way things were trending. That's the thing, right? Once Columbia rocket blew up, once Columbine happened blew up, and the news people saw, look at our ratings now because we're talking about stuff, right? But then once again, the reality is, just as a human nature, we start getting sucked into TV and then we get more information, they want to learn more. There's so many things that, once again, this was not a single activity that led to this.

But organically, we got there and then technology just is that curve, right? We're like here with this little bit and all of a sudden it went from like TV getting your nightly news to 24 hours a day. You've said it before, right? You get inundated from the time you get up to the time you go to bed and usually you're staying up three hours past it because you're stuck on YouTube scrolling, right? We've said that before. but yeah, that's.

Chris (01:19:28.44)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm watching YouTube now when I should be sleeping. And I'm choosing to do that.

Neil (01:19:33.846)
Yeah, I'm cutting out YouTube shorts and all my stuff because I knew I was wasting my time. I was spending so much time wasting and it's been amazing.

Chris (01:19:40.696)
We talked about that recently and you're not a bad person, Neil, for doing that. What my thoughts are, and I'm going to move more with this and try to be somewhat of a leader to help us figure out because there are solutions. You're falling into a trap. The executives at Fox News that present completely ridiculous highlighted on one side and nothing of the other is because they're falling into an emotional trap. It's a silo.

Neil (01:20:07.477)
Bye,

Chris (01:20:10.464)
It's almost like, you know, if there was a grand cabal, they did a hell of a good job in developing and highlighting and creating a computer because that is what is doing this to all of us. I love my technology, man. I got an awesome microphone here. looks awesome. The phone is tracking the time a computer that I'm talking to you and you're not even in this room. It's amazing. But it can do so much higher in some of the ways that we're talking about it. And I think we're blaming other people. Those people at Fox News are lovely people.

I don't like the way they talk sometimes. They're literally talking about murdering through injection the schizophrenic person who stabbed the beautiful Ukrainian woman on the bus. That's not going to happen. He's not going to stand trial because he's never going to be found sane enough to do that. But they're saying he needs to be killed. These are beautiful, wonderful people that are saying this about somebody in some way that they don't really even understand, but they're saying it in such a cruel way.

You know, I'm saying like, how did I get, yeah, I could hate that person for saying that about somebody that's in my community, by the way, that as a mental health person, maybe I had the opportunity to treat. is very conceivable that that dude was on my caseload and they're wanting to crucify him because he had a psychotic break. And we, as a society didn't give him the treatment that he really needs because that guy is loaded full of mental health issues.

wild to think of the way we transpose with each other. So I've been thinking a lot about this. I really think that there are some things that we can do, like turn the Facebook off. The kids call it death strolling. Don't death scroll. You've stopped your YouTube shorts. I am not going to be watching YouTube at 11 o'clock at night much anymore if I can help it, but that's hard to manage. have to manage ourselves.

Neil (01:22:05.537)
You have to be very intentional.

Chris (01:22:08.984)
Go with that, we'll wrap up because that leads into a lot of the ideas of what's going to help, intentionality.

Neil (01:22:14.175)
Yeah, everything you do, you have to be intentional with your actions. It's whether you purposely open up your YouTube stream, your Instagram thing, who you're talking to, who you're not talking to, who you're engaging with, what are you reading, how are you letting that cause your reaction, right? There has to be intentionality in what you do, which means you have to go back to understanding what's triggering, what's processing it. Everything we do,

If you don't become intentional, you become reactive and that's the last place we want. That's the first thing technology wants because technology feeds on your reactions. It's the knee jerk, it's the click baits. To combat that, we have to be intentional. Is this real? Is this true? Am I upset because of this or this? Is that person really bad or am I just in a bad place when I read that article? What's going on, right? It's just something we have to be, we can't live our life haphazardly.

Letting technology dictate what we see, and interact with. We have to be 100 % intentional.

Chris (01:23:15.502)
And the damning thing about this to the human race is that you're on point and went well with that to say that we need to be intentional, but people don't even know it's happening to them. They don't even know. They don't even know that they need to be intentional. Do you know that you need to be intentional about not watching the little dot on your phone that represents your kid trying to track him?

Neil (01:23:29.931)
Nope.

Chris (01:23:44.302)
That could be a helpful thing, you know, in some regards. And it also can make a parent freak out when they're simply going to the prom.

Neil (01:23:51.541)
I have a story behind that, we'll talk about that after I'm of air. But yeah, that's it.

Chris (01:23:56.418)
have a feeling that we're going to discuss this more and more because I'm really kind of feeling a need as a mental health person to begin helping us understand what's going on and kind of getting into like, how do we manage this? What do we do about it? We have no time to do that today, but I think today is really about, you know, and I know if you're still listening with us, I appreciate you hanging longer because I, and share this with your friends, man.

Share this with you people that you know, because I think this is more of the conversation that we need to be having than why are we not doing gun control? Why are we not, you know, getting the right person elected in office? All that nonsense is just...

Neil (01:24:35.553)
And when you share it with someone, call them or go meet them in person, say, hey, I have someone to share with you. Don't just send them a little thing and send it through that. Actually really make a connection and share with them. hey, Joe, I got this great web podcast that I just listened to. It's really good. You should listen to it. Here, I'll text it to you now. Or when you guys meet for lunch or breakfast or something, spend some time with people. Go touch grass. Go back to that idea, right? Don't let technology take you.

Chris (01:24:45.931)
I love that!

Chris (01:25:02.862)
Because you're saying this Neil, I'm going to make a direct challenge to anyone who hears this show to have a conversation with somebody and highlight something that you heard on it and then, then and only then, you know, connect them to it. That's a direct difference than the way this crap tends to work in computer world. Neil, that is all suddenly said man. I think that's where we need to stop today. We'll continue developing this.

The whole goal of Through a Therapist is to dispel myths and stereotypes and disseminate information on mental health and substance abuse. Man, I can't think of more of an existential crisis to the human race that this topic represents for us to make that a focus of. Really and truly. We're going to figure this out together, guys. Okay? Really and truly, I think that we can.

I have a belief in humanity. I have a belief in how and what we were created and that we can catch up to this rapidly evolving world and emotionally get grounded again, settle down to get some equilibrium. Let's have more conversations about that side of it as well. All right. Take care, be well. We will see you guys next week. All right. Bye.