A diagnosis is not an excuse: acne, emotions, hormones, true love, etc.
12 August 2019 [link youtube]
Vegan or not, sometimes acne is JUST ACNE… and while this video is primarily about the emotional consequences of the decisions we make (and our ineluctable accountability for those decisions) it does, also, relate to the failure of the Nina and Randa Diet ("the Clear Skin Diet") and the general fact (stated here bluntly) that sometimes a vegan diet will even make your acne WORSE…
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Youtube Automatic Transcription
those of you have been watching my
channel for a long time have heard me warn again and again about the dangers of medicalizing a problem in 2019 it's very easy for people to leap to a diagnosis when really all they've got is a description of a behavior or even just a complaint people want to leap to the conclusion that their parents are narcissists that their boyfriend has bipolar disorder they want to medicalize problems and then they think of the medical problem as something other than the person themselves oh it's not you it's your depression oh it's not you it's her bipolar disorder and this is ushered in a kind of very dangerous poetry into our society because these diagnoses they are no more medically real and they are no more scientifically valid than poetic memes than literary tropes but there are tropes that people cling to people develop various in my opinion unhealthy forms of self justification a justification for the behaviors of others coming out of these diagnoses and that the medicalization of problems and this does not exist within the spectrum of depression and formal psychiatry in psychotherapy only in our own lives here we got a diagnosis that proved to be false a diagnosis that you know suddenly spurred my girlfriend Melissa to change your whole life dramatically she packed up from Taiwan and relocated back to United States to get more tests spoilers the test she got in the United States proved that the first two tests were wrong but some we got a diagnosis that didn't just offer us the possibility of explaining her acne as something caused by something other than our acne that her acne wasn't just acne it also really provided us with the appealing possibility or the appealing illusion that a lot of the problem that our relationship had been caused by an underlying hormonal condition most likely PCOS which is polycystic ovarian syndrome or quite possibly even a thyroid problem so you know thyroid is really great if I read problems great mood swings also weight gain and hair and a lot of other symptoms that Melissa didn't have but um the I know it may sound ridiculous but in the same way that a lot of people think it's a relief to get a diagnosis of depression or even bipolar oh okay now I have an excuse now I have a peg on the wall I can hang my hat on sort of thing there was definitely a strange sense we were we were both aware of it we discussed it openly you know we said oh well if the problem is hormonal if the problem is PCOS or if the problem is a thyroid condition well maybe when we cure this problem we'll also cure a lot of the the problems this relationship so in terms of the jump in to the conclusion of this video sometimes acne is just acne there isn't an underlying hormonal condition you don't have a hormonal imbalance you don't have a fancy medical condition with an acronym like PCOS you don't have anything wrong with your thyroid sometimes your emotional problems are just emotional problems and they're not the result of a hormonal imbalance sometimes your bad behavior should be defined and addressed and discussed just as behavior just as ultimately decisions you make that you're responsible for and it's very dangerous and misleading to assign those decisions to a medicalised condition that you think of almost like somebody other than yourself almost as if somebody else is making those decisions because you think that's not me it's my depression or that's not me it's my hormonal problem or something and no I mean on the contrary there's a very real sense in which you are your hormones the difference being I mean if you really have a physical condition a physically real medically real hormone condition that could be cured but in Melissa's case she doesn't have a condition like that and she never did so I feel this is not long story short I think this is really a short story but it's one that really had dramatic twists in terms for us day by day we made a very quick trip from Taiwan to Thailand and even if you guys were watching every YouTube video you might not have noticed I mean the the background changed right now I'm filming in a hotel room you know briefly instead of being in one apartment I was in a hotel room but there wasn't a big impact here and there was my my social media presence or my youtube channel we went to Thailand it was a short enough trip that I didn't switch from studying Chinese - speaking Thai in studying Thai and so it was meant to be a short trip we went over and visited a hospital very elite fancy expensive hospital great architecture great interior decor and also extremely highly organized so we went to the hospital we saw one specialist they immediately referred Melissa to another specialist so we weren't there to inquire about the state of our acne they looked at her acne and said well you got to see the hormone specialist one from the hormone specialist - getting an ultrasound on your ovaries and so very quickly Minh that were very very well organized referrals from one department to another I've never seen a hospital work that well but unfortunately the sense of which the hospital didn't work well was that all of the diagnoses were false so they were really quickly rushing ahead to a conclusion that she did have a hormone imbalance problem and that the homeless the hormone balance problem was most likely PCOS polycystic ovarian syndrome so that changed all of our plans we immediately booked a flight for Melissa to go back to the United States without me to go back alone that I would stay in Taiwan alone this was a huge you know twist in our relationship because I had only moved to Taiwan in the first place for Melissa for the good of the relationship and also as an educational opportunity for her to learn Chinese it wasn't what I wanted to be doing with my time I wanted Shivan with her time there were a few other considerations in relation to when I visit my daughter and things there were a few other things but really it was for Melissa that we moved to Taiwan the night that I made that sacrifice and now all of a sudden here I was marooned in Taiwan alone in an apartment we had just rented up with a brand new fridge brand new footage we had just bought and Melissa jump ship to go back the United States to get more blood tests done to visit all the same specialists and more visit a whole series of specialists at this point in ten states must has had every single possible test it's boring guys because the results for all of them were normal normal normal normal so it's not just the blood tests that we're normal some people want to leave the conclusion oh well your hormones can be linked to the microbes in your digestive tract it could be a digestive room nope the gestured is normal she got those tests done well you even had brain test she even a tab right she had an MRI she had MRI scan of her brain so brain blood bowels hormones absolutely everything God checked and the end of the story is sometimes acne is just acne her acne problem is nothing other than acne and in her case not only is her acne not cured by a vegan diet it was made worse by the vegan diet not only is her acne not cured by Nina and randa's special vegan diet which is a zero oil zero not zero seed vegan diet extremely low fat and then if it doesn't work for you at first it gets more and more extreme and it's low fat recommendations it starts off not that extreme then there are more and more restrictions as it goes that diet made her acne worse not better so as I say the most dramatic twist and turn at least for me I think I think for Melissa also was the emergence of an excuse for the bad behavior from Melissa that in the past has repeatedly torn this relationship apart so all of a sudden there was this convenient appealing possibility maybe it was a hormone problem maybe it was a thyroid problem and again whether or not you think about that in terms of excuse or blame oh wow if that could be cured then maybe our relationship would be able to proceed and B would be way better with that taken out of the picture so you had the apparition of such an excuse emerge and then you got the fundamentally good news I mean it is good news there's nothing wrong with your hormones nothing wrong with any of the organs of your body there's nothing wrong with your lymph nodes there's nothing wrong with your brain there's nothing wrong with your digestion there's nothing wrong with your thyroid system nothing there's nothing wrong with you but now you got even more direct responsibility guess what you are just an axle when you're mean to your boyfriend yeah it's on you guess what you just made some bad choices in life I'm adding the sin from a different camera angle on a second take obviously after watching the original the original footage factor plus it's good to laugh with the stuff it's certainly good if you can within a relationship you know to relax left for this stuff but there's no doubt that blame and personal responsibility is about the hardest thing for people to relax and have left out most of us develop excuse making habits of mind in early childhood we have some hilarious examples with my own daughter so a lone daughter at age five broke a plate and absolutely insisted that she wasn't the one who broke the plate it was the step there was a it was the step and you know I said yesterday uh you know you should apologize to the nice lady that you broke her plate no it wasn't me it was the step the step shut up it was a real reminder of how you no excuse making becomes a deep-seated behavior becomes a baby we're passionate about you know um at an early age and I think it's really difficult for people to unravel excuse making behavior in their personal lives even in their political lives I mean it at all levels the difference between excuses and what things really are look are there other circumstances that explain Melissa's behavior yes are they excuses no so just real quick like two quick examples well but I mean these really do well relate to these issues of like hormones and what have you you know I can remember a couple cases where Melissa was in brief abusive to me at an airport she treated me like [ __ ] an airport for no reason we weren't having a fight out of the blue tonight and you can look at that and say like well you know being in airports a stressful situation you gotta get you yeah it's part of the context but it's not an excuse and guess what I want a girlfriend who's capable of you know going to an airport without freaking well if it's me for no reason and if that's an unreasonable expectation on my part okay you know fine I'm still gonna break up with you and move on and find someone who can who can cope with that level of stress I mean was it wasn't an extreme losest you know you can talk about that one I mean the problem there is one of attitude you know like right we were at an airport understand that there's certain stresses involved but you still have to treat me with dignity and respect even though we're in this airport right now if yes hypothetically Melissa had a hormone problem and it's now interesting because we can talk about it hypothetically and we know it's false if the problem was that during these years Melissa had some kind of hormone problem then you see something similar like well look that may make it more difficult for you to behave in a way towards me that's respectful or so but guess what you still got to do it it's still on you it's still your choice it's still your responsibility it's still your fault it's still on you with whatever hormones you I thought hormones - everybody's got hormones everybody's got to cope with their own hormones everybody's got to cope with you know little situations like pulling your luggage around an airport and the point is to treat me with dignity and respect and of course I have to treat you with dignity and respect also which is sorry not just that dignity respect being loving being kind I mean love and kindness you know these things not just as abstractions but being loving being kind to the other person you know now for me at age 40 it's very easy for me to be like that towards Melissa and full disclosure I was not that good at it back when I was like 25 I wasn't you know I got better I've got better at all those skills with age and experience and what-have-you other girlfriend's didn't have quite so I was better looking when I was younger but you know in other ways other girl friends had more of judgment and look the ultimate set of circumstances the airport some of us never get out of is our experience being raised by our own parents you know I've met and spent time with Melissa's parents and it's very obvious that some of her behaviors and expectations and so on come straight out of that you know that childhood she grew up in and the way her parents act towards each other and the way they act towards her and what they consider a normal conversation you know okay but guess what you know now you're 26 years old and it's on you you don't get to blame the airport you don't get to blame your hormones you don't get to blame your parents it's not just that it's like 50% on you you're 26 years old you're an adult these are your choices and you are the one with the consequences it's actually it's actually a 100% on you you know so it hypothetically it doesn't matter if your parents were the worst parents in the world you know ultimately this is now on your shoulders and you at least have to take that attitude and I for my part in the relationship I also have to say look you know I have to make this decision I have to draw the line and say no you can't treat me this way if you cross this line I'm leaving you that's the end the relationship here are my expectations here's here's what I require in terms of human decency kindness love treating me with respect and you know if you can't do that you can blame your parents you can blame your hormones you can blame hauling your luggage around the airport but ultimately it's irrelevant ultimately that's just the childish the childish excuse making part of your mind that all of us all of us I think have an obligation to overcome as adults and that brings us back to the Big Lake motif in this video thinking about medicalizing your problems then using that as an excuse making motive mode of thought and action so since the last video you know discussing the state of the relationship we broke up again and we talked it through and we've now gotten back together again we're going to be separated for at least six months by the course of this you know medical treatment it's a real trial for for all participants [Laughter] you know I think this issue of wanting to believe in a diagnosis as something other than who you are I think the final irony is that people want to think about love itself that way - that's maybe the ultimate example of a literary convention of a poetic idea of a meme or a trope in literature that people come to think of as something other than than Who I am you know there's me and then there are my feelings for you or there's there's the fact that we're in love or there's the or even there's just the relationship thought of is something other than than Who I am and and the choices I make you know we've gotten back together again with the promise from Melissa that she understands who she is better than she did before that she understands the problems in the relationship other than she did before when we met you were 24 years old right now you're 26 no one could deny that the last two and a half years have been a period of intense growth and a lot of a lot of personal changes for you and you know again I've been convinced to to give you another chance but we're now gonna go into a very very peculiar phase the relationship where she's gonna be undergoing medical treatment for acne just acne in the United States and our relationship we may collaborate on YouTube videos together but it's going to be entirely via Skype it's gonna be entirely by email for at least six months for quite a long time this is going to be a long-distance relationship people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know
channel for a long time have heard me warn again and again about the dangers of medicalizing a problem in 2019 it's very easy for people to leap to a diagnosis when really all they've got is a description of a behavior or even just a complaint people want to leap to the conclusion that their parents are narcissists that their boyfriend has bipolar disorder they want to medicalize problems and then they think of the medical problem as something other than the person themselves oh it's not you it's your depression oh it's not you it's her bipolar disorder and this is ushered in a kind of very dangerous poetry into our society because these diagnoses they are no more medically real and they are no more scientifically valid than poetic memes than literary tropes but there are tropes that people cling to people develop various in my opinion unhealthy forms of self justification a justification for the behaviors of others coming out of these diagnoses and that the medicalization of problems and this does not exist within the spectrum of depression and formal psychiatry in psychotherapy only in our own lives here we got a diagnosis that proved to be false a diagnosis that you know suddenly spurred my girlfriend Melissa to change your whole life dramatically she packed up from Taiwan and relocated back to United States to get more tests spoilers the test she got in the United States proved that the first two tests were wrong but some we got a diagnosis that didn't just offer us the possibility of explaining her acne as something caused by something other than our acne that her acne wasn't just acne it also really provided us with the appealing possibility or the appealing illusion that a lot of the problem that our relationship had been caused by an underlying hormonal condition most likely PCOS which is polycystic ovarian syndrome or quite possibly even a thyroid problem so you know thyroid is really great if I read problems great mood swings also weight gain and hair and a lot of other symptoms that Melissa didn't have but um the I know it may sound ridiculous but in the same way that a lot of people think it's a relief to get a diagnosis of depression or even bipolar oh okay now I have an excuse now I have a peg on the wall I can hang my hat on sort of thing there was definitely a strange sense we were we were both aware of it we discussed it openly you know we said oh well if the problem is hormonal if the problem is PCOS or if the problem is a thyroid condition well maybe when we cure this problem we'll also cure a lot of the the problems this relationship so in terms of the jump in to the conclusion of this video sometimes acne is just acne there isn't an underlying hormonal condition you don't have a hormonal imbalance you don't have a fancy medical condition with an acronym like PCOS you don't have anything wrong with your thyroid sometimes your emotional problems are just emotional problems and they're not the result of a hormonal imbalance sometimes your bad behavior should be defined and addressed and discussed just as behavior just as ultimately decisions you make that you're responsible for and it's very dangerous and misleading to assign those decisions to a medicalised condition that you think of almost like somebody other than yourself almost as if somebody else is making those decisions because you think that's not me it's my depression or that's not me it's my hormonal problem or something and no I mean on the contrary there's a very real sense in which you are your hormones the difference being I mean if you really have a physical condition a physically real medically real hormone condition that could be cured but in Melissa's case she doesn't have a condition like that and she never did so I feel this is not long story short I think this is really a short story but it's one that really had dramatic twists in terms for us day by day we made a very quick trip from Taiwan to Thailand and even if you guys were watching every YouTube video you might not have noticed I mean the the background changed right now I'm filming in a hotel room you know briefly instead of being in one apartment I was in a hotel room but there wasn't a big impact here and there was my my social media presence or my youtube channel we went to Thailand it was a short enough trip that I didn't switch from studying Chinese - speaking Thai in studying Thai and so it was meant to be a short trip we went over and visited a hospital very elite fancy expensive hospital great architecture great interior decor and also extremely highly organized so we went to the hospital we saw one specialist they immediately referred Melissa to another specialist so we weren't there to inquire about the state of our acne they looked at her acne and said well you got to see the hormone specialist one from the hormone specialist - getting an ultrasound on your ovaries and so very quickly Minh that were very very well organized referrals from one department to another I've never seen a hospital work that well but unfortunately the sense of which the hospital didn't work well was that all of the diagnoses were false so they were really quickly rushing ahead to a conclusion that she did have a hormone imbalance problem and that the homeless the hormone balance problem was most likely PCOS polycystic ovarian syndrome so that changed all of our plans we immediately booked a flight for Melissa to go back to the United States without me to go back alone that I would stay in Taiwan alone this was a huge you know twist in our relationship because I had only moved to Taiwan in the first place for Melissa for the good of the relationship and also as an educational opportunity for her to learn Chinese it wasn't what I wanted to be doing with my time I wanted Shivan with her time there were a few other considerations in relation to when I visit my daughter and things there were a few other things but really it was for Melissa that we moved to Taiwan the night that I made that sacrifice and now all of a sudden here I was marooned in Taiwan alone in an apartment we had just rented up with a brand new fridge brand new footage we had just bought and Melissa jump ship to go back the United States to get more blood tests done to visit all the same specialists and more visit a whole series of specialists at this point in ten states must has had every single possible test it's boring guys because the results for all of them were normal normal normal normal so it's not just the blood tests that we're normal some people want to leave the conclusion oh well your hormones can be linked to the microbes in your digestive tract it could be a digestive room nope the gestured is normal she got those tests done well you even had brain test she even a tab right she had an MRI she had MRI scan of her brain so brain blood bowels hormones absolutely everything God checked and the end of the story is sometimes acne is just acne her acne problem is nothing other than acne and in her case not only is her acne not cured by a vegan diet it was made worse by the vegan diet not only is her acne not cured by Nina and randa's special vegan diet which is a zero oil zero not zero seed vegan diet extremely low fat and then if it doesn't work for you at first it gets more and more extreme and it's low fat recommendations it starts off not that extreme then there are more and more restrictions as it goes that diet made her acne worse not better so as I say the most dramatic twist and turn at least for me I think I think for Melissa also was the emergence of an excuse for the bad behavior from Melissa that in the past has repeatedly torn this relationship apart so all of a sudden there was this convenient appealing possibility maybe it was a hormone problem maybe it was a thyroid problem and again whether or not you think about that in terms of excuse or blame oh wow if that could be cured then maybe our relationship would be able to proceed and B would be way better with that taken out of the picture so you had the apparition of such an excuse emerge and then you got the fundamentally good news I mean it is good news there's nothing wrong with your hormones nothing wrong with any of the organs of your body there's nothing wrong with your lymph nodes there's nothing wrong with your brain there's nothing wrong with your digestion there's nothing wrong with your thyroid system nothing there's nothing wrong with you but now you got even more direct responsibility guess what you are just an axle when you're mean to your boyfriend yeah it's on you guess what you just made some bad choices in life I'm adding the sin from a different camera angle on a second take obviously after watching the original the original footage factor plus it's good to laugh with the stuff it's certainly good if you can within a relationship you know to relax left for this stuff but there's no doubt that blame and personal responsibility is about the hardest thing for people to relax and have left out most of us develop excuse making habits of mind in early childhood we have some hilarious examples with my own daughter so a lone daughter at age five broke a plate and absolutely insisted that she wasn't the one who broke the plate it was the step there was a it was the step and you know I said yesterday uh you know you should apologize to the nice lady that you broke her plate no it wasn't me it was the step the step shut up it was a real reminder of how you no excuse making becomes a deep-seated behavior becomes a baby we're passionate about you know um at an early age and I think it's really difficult for people to unravel excuse making behavior in their personal lives even in their political lives I mean it at all levels the difference between excuses and what things really are look are there other circumstances that explain Melissa's behavior yes are they excuses no so just real quick like two quick examples well but I mean these really do well relate to these issues of like hormones and what have you you know I can remember a couple cases where Melissa was in brief abusive to me at an airport she treated me like [ __ ] an airport for no reason we weren't having a fight out of the blue tonight and you can look at that and say like well you know being in airports a stressful situation you gotta get you yeah it's part of the context but it's not an excuse and guess what I want a girlfriend who's capable of you know going to an airport without freaking well if it's me for no reason and if that's an unreasonable expectation on my part okay you know fine I'm still gonna break up with you and move on and find someone who can who can cope with that level of stress I mean was it wasn't an extreme losest you know you can talk about that one I mean the problem there is one of attitude you know like right we were at an airport understand that there's certain stresses involved but you still have to treat me with dignity and respect even though we're in this airport right now if yes hypothetically Melissa had a hormone problem and it's now interesting because we can talk about it hypothetically and we know it's false if the problem was that during these years Melissa had some kind of hormone problem then you see something similar like well look that may make it more difficult for you to behave in a way towards me that's respectful or so but guess what you still got to do it it's still on you it's still your choice it's still your responsibility it's still your fault it's still on you with whatever hormones you I thought hormones - everybody's got hormones everybody's got to cope with their own hormones everybody's got to cope with you know little situations like pulling your luggage around an airport and the point is to treat me with dignity and respect and of course I have to treat you with dignity and respect also which is sorry not just that dignity respect being loving being kind I mean love and kindness you know these things not just as abstractions but being loving being kind to the other person you know now for me at age 40 it's very easy for me to be like that towards Melissa and full disclosure I was not that good at it back when I was like 25 I wasn't you know I got better I've got better at all those skills with age and experience and what-have-you other girlfriend's didn't have quite so I was better looking when I was younger but you know in other ways other girl friends had more of judgment and look the ultimate set of circumstances the airport some of us never get out of is our experience being raised by our own parents you know I've met and spent time with Melissa's parents and it's very obvious that some of her behaviors and expectations and so on come straight out of that you know that childhood she grew up in and the way her parents act towards each other and the way they act towards her and what they consider a normal conversation you know okay but guess what you know now you're 26 years old and it's on you you don't get to blame the airport you don't get to blame your hormones you don't get to blame your parents it's not just that it's like 50% on you you're 26 years old you're an adult these are your choices and you are the one with the consequences it's actually it's actually a 100% on you you know so it hypothetically it doesn't matter if your parents were the worst parents in the world you know ultimately this is now on your shoulders and you at least have to take that attitude and I for my part in the relationship I also have to say look you know I have to make this decision I have to draw the line and say no you can't treat me this way if you cross this line I'm leaving you that's the end the relationship here are my expectations here's here's what I require in terms of human decency kindness love treating me with respect and you know if you can't do that you can blame your parents you can blame your hormones you can blame hauling your luggage around the airport but ultimately it's irrelevant ultimately that's just the childish the childish excuse making part of your mind that all of us all of us I think have an obligation to overcome as adults and that brings us back to the Big Lake motif in this video thinking about medicalizing your problems then using that as an excuse making motive mode of thought and action so since the last video you know discussing the state of the relationship we broke up again and we talked it through and we've now gotten back together again we're going to be separated for at least six months by the course of this you know medical treatment it's a real trial for for all participants [Laughter] you know I think this issue of wanting to believe in a diagnosis as something other than who you are I think the final irony is that people want to think about love itself that way - that's maybe the ultimate example of a literary convention of a poetic idea of a meme or a trope in literature that people come to think of as something other than than Who I am you know there's me and then there are my feelings for you or there's there's the fact that we're in love or there's the or even there's just the relationship thought of is something other than than Who I am and and the choices I make you know we've gotten back together again with the promise from Melissa that she understands who she is better than she did before that she understands the problems in the relationship other than she did before when we met you were 24 years old right now you're 26 no one could deny that the last two and a half years have been a period of intense growth and a lot of a lot of personal changes for you and you know again I've been convinced to to give you another chance but we're now gonna go into a very very peculiar phase the relationship where she's gonna be undergoing medical treatment for acne just acne in the United States and our relationship we may collaborate on YouTube videos together but it's going to be entirely via Skype it's gonna be entirely by email for at least six months for quite a long time this is going to be a long-distance relationship people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know