Admitting you need help, realizing you have to help yourself.

a thought experiment when you come to a
dead-end in your life when you're facing terrible challenges ask yourself two questions at opposite extremes what if I tried to handle this myself alone and I didn't admit to anyone else there was a problem what if I took that path of refusing assistance from others refusing to admit to others I needed help even though I know I need help what if I gave it 110 percent and tried to solve this problem entirely myself then of the opposite extreme what if you said and did absolutely everything you could to get help from others from government agencies hospitals psychiatrists social workers university staff of university what if you went to the other extreme you abased yourself as much as possible and you told them whatever you needed to tell them to get as much help as possible right whatever diagnosis that might entail whatever social services or handouts you might have to come to and you know what in doing this thought experiment you might find out that both both are bad and you could take the experiment a step further easily enough and you can actually try as I've said in other videos where I talked about knocking on every door and trying to get help you might be surprised to find just how little will come of it if you if you take option two if you try to get all the help you can there may be no help for you at all okay I got a message from a supporter on patreon who is 23 years old I'm not gonna use his real name I'll call him Tom it's a 23 year old guy named Tom he is aware that he has a problem he has ended up kind of disabled by his upbringing partly due to bad parents partly due to bad teachers and bad schools but then both his teachers and his schools reacted this by taking him out of school and sitting down at a desk with a computer and letting him do online distance learning so he calls it going to cyber school so he was taken out of school at an early age and left completely unobserved to either do homework or not study or not and like most kids he was lazy and self-indulgent and he chose or not so he didn't just learn very little but he interacted with other people incredibly little today he has great difficulty making eye contact with people he's aware that his behavior is awkward and revolting to other people he says that he wears sunglasses pretty much 24 hours a day even at night because he can't cope with eye content people he doesn't merely lack you know what you might call social graces or social skills but he's ended up tremendously intellectually and emotionally stunted in his development and he knows that he knows he has a problem he knows why he does a problem understands the problem and again this is where we get into you know how disappointing it may be for you if you reach F rope he's reaching out to me right now for help he's asking what I think you should do you know if you go to even a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst would I have to go to a therapist they're very likely just gonna be interested in discussing with you analyzing with you why it is you're in this situation oh let's let's talk about precisely the way in which your parents were bad parents let's talk about precisely the way in which your school teachers were bad school teachers and the specific traumatic things that happened to you in school is good he doesn't need that he knows that he's done the analysis he understands the situation he understands the series of steps that led up to it doesn't need an analyst to help him talk it through he needs to change he needs someone to help him change and I think we could all say that if he just signs up and joins the army I'd say maybe the French Foreign Legion for example if he signs up and joins a military unit that'll be happy to have him because some of those that it's not an elite unit guys French Foreign Legion would be delighted to have someone who speaks English um hit the books now and start learning French you know probably if he joined the army and got military training and just interact with people every day that would probably feel much more benefit to him than going to analysis also it would be traumatic also it would be I wanted that Gress at this point just to say every so often I get questions of this kind and I feel in a very particular way that I'm getting too old for it in the following respect I've had problems and I've come on the internet and I've asked you people for help I've looked for help right here on YouTube and amongst my followers and subscribers on patreon and long story short ain't nobody ever gave me any help alright and let's be here clear let's be clear help can include advice at several different stages of my career in the last five years I really reached out to people really spokespeople and asked her advice about what I should do next in my career or lack thereof notably by the way when we had to leave baking college so my girlfriend and I enrolled together in baking coach we were both students into baking college I think tuition was over $10,000 for a very short program only lasted a few months and that ended dramatically primarily because we were vegan well ok you know what I guess I would say secondarily because we were vegan but primarily because the call which was absolutely awful the abysmally poor quality of education offered at that college that was the main problem the fact that we were vegan was also a major major problem look guys I wouldn't say I'm bitter about the fact that 8 nobody tried to help me after I went through that situation dropping out of baking school dropping out of a college we were studying baking I wouldn't say I'm bitter about it alright but I would say it is a profound disincentive for me to play this one-sided role where people write to me and ask them to talk them out of suicide or write to me and ask them for advice about career education okay it is for me emotionally and intellectually my look on the present and the future and my relation with my audience it has profoundly changed since I started this this YouTube channel it's changed in terms of political activism has changed numbers the significance of you to my life I feel differently about getting this message and replying to it now not just because this particular guy Tom is never gonna do anything for me but because I now feel I would even say I know that not a single person out of mike 10,000 subscribers is gonna do anything for me not even on the level of advice not even on the level of care and concern and you know friendship know about having a friend and being someone's friend that's actually quite a high standard I think a much lower standard to talk about is having people who care about you that's much lower someone may not be your friend but they care they're concerned you guys already know I have an unbelievably high number of brothers and sisters because my father had nine kids he got a bunch of different women pregnant so you know I have a whole bunch of half-brothers and half-sisters so we want to put it man and you know when my daughter was born and not a single one of them sent me a single email said I'm never gonna forgive you guys for this never that's it obviously I don't feel bitter about it I don't feel resentful about it I feel kind of joyful about it I feel joyous in cutting those people out of my life and any of them get in touch to me now that's what I tell them I say you know what I had a newborn baby in my arms and I sent you a photograph of me holding that newborn baby and you didn't have a goddamn thing to say to me if you didn't care about me like it's not asking a lot it's not asking for a lot of interest it's not asking for a very high level of care we're not talking about friendship but just oh wow my brother had a baby alright I don't think I'm saying the standard do I there you know what yeah I get a message like this now from audience and it's not this guy's fault I think he just started watching my youtube channel quite recently he has nothing to do with the bizarre political history of this channel he has nothing to do with you know the circumstances on this channel that ended up dragging me into court and all the different sorro's and slings and arrows go he has nothing to that none of it is his fault none of it that's part of the reason I'm positive would have been mail to make this video and try to reach out to him and I mean he asked me he asked me for advice for what he should do and so on and you know I nevertheless have to be honest with him I have to be honest with you it's not his fault at all but my own negative experience my own disappointment when I've asked others for advice when I've asked others for help puts me in a tough spot now in giving advice in caring for others in giving help because for the last five years I got nothing back and for the next five years I expect to get nothing positive back okay so this guy tom 23 years old awkward as hell can't make eye contact with people he has a kind of inculcated laziness because his entire childhood in period of education just consisted of wasting time sitting and staring at a computer and not really learning anything so it's like he has an acquired learning disability at this point right what is he gonna do I would say that this is a case or if he could get it probably the golden mean would be neither totally denying he has a problem acting that he can solve this on his own not asking him with relevant then and then by the way on that same extreme giving it a hundred and ten percent working as hard as possible to solve their own problems nor throwing himself at the mercy of the state probably it is for precisely someone like this that theater therapy would be you know the moderate way to go theater therapy standing on stage memorizing a script performing a script making eye contact with the other actors the other people who are in that therapy program its routinely done with people who are recovering from a car accident they may have had a car accident that smashed in part of their face they really difficulty talking and then along with that they have difficulty with the self-confidence for speaking in public or speaking other people right all kinds of different injuries couldn't just physical injuries not necessarily brain injuries that people go in for theater therapy with but yes there are also people of a serious concussion have brain damage and go go to theater therapy I would say theater therapy is the more moderate course of action as opposed to signing up for the military signing up to join the French Foreign Legion but guess what Tom you're 23 years old and before you wrote this letter to me you already figured out the most important most crucial thing of all this is nobody's problem but yours you already have come to the mature conclusion and this is why no therapist can help you this is why psychiatry won't help you you have come to the mature and correct conclusion that no matter whose fault it was can blame your parents you can blame your teachers you can blame the education system that's all correct that's all factually corrected there are other people to blame and it's not your fault but it is 100% your problem and it's going to be entirely up to you to find the way out of it