On Life: For a Suicidal Viewer.

this is a potentially depressing subject
but I'm not going to talk about it in a depressing manner let's talk about this with some verben tenacity as much as I can muster on this Friday night Victoria BC Canada I got a message from crazy cow man it's not an insult that's the name he uses on YouTube crazy cow man he may have some new comments below this video and he told me very matter-of-factly that he is planning to commit suicide and before you jump in and say seek professional help isn't that just like the ethical homily of our times isn't that the fig-leaf of postmodern morality in 2018 oh you have a problem seek profession oh you're coming to me for help no no I'm not gonna tell you to [ __ ] off I'm not gonna tell you I'm not addressed no care I'm gonna say seek professional help and the subtext is whatever your problem is I don't want to be my bro no before you jump in and say seek professional help let's just note he already saw professional help he already got the maximum amount of help that professional could give him he actually checked himself into a psychiatric hospital he engaged in counseling therapy and ultimately even SSRI antidepressant drug therapy even though he'd seen the criticism of this the presentation of scientific facts about this on my channel he was aware it was very unlikely to help him but as a last resort he even tried that and he reports the only effect he noticed from the use of Prozac was sexual dysfunction anyway he's looking ahead to suicide in the near future he is planning on it and he has sought professional help I'm gonna start this video not by answering his plea for help or advice but by addressing that homily itself going around telling people seek professional help um if somebody in your life comes to you wanting to talk about a personal or psychological problem and it may seem like a silly way to put it but let's face it personal problems can never be disentangled from psychological problems if you have a problem at work or does some extent it's gonna involve your psychological perception of the problems going to vote your feelings your thoughts in a some and so on uh hmm you have a problem with your girlfriend with your boyfriend but with your career with your education with all these things of course there's there's a psychological element I think the worst thing you can do friend to friend co-worker to co-worker talking to your relative your cousin somebody you've known for many years the worst thing you can do is recuse yourself the worst thing you can do is say oh no no I don't have a university degree in psychology I don't have credentials in psychiatry I'm not a licensed therapist therefore you should quote/unquote see professional help if you've known someone for 15 years you have advantages in talking them but their personal problems their psychological problems any of your problems you have advantages that a therapist will never be able to catch up with in a series of 45-minute sessions okay just you know your ability to hear their problem in the context of their past problems in the context of their past life your ability to challenge their assumptions their memories um they may be lying to you they may be lying to themselves they may be so upset that their misconstruing things in their own life while sincerely trying to be honest trying to be honest you trying to because themselves if you've known someone for 15 years you can say no no wait that didn't happen first you guys move to another city then you broke up right like that didn't this happen first and that happened you know if somebody says to you something in a personal conversation someone you've known for years and you just stop and say wait are you really telling me that's what Carol said look that doesn't sound like slang Carol say can you show me the email and they get out their phone and show you the email and then you look at the email it's like oh you see you you miss remember this or you read too much into this you misinterpreted it that kind of process is never going to happen with a therapist and again people may not lie down on the couch or may not sit you may not lie down in the therapists office intentionally wanting to mislead their therapist but in large part that is what happens um most people are not capable of giving an objective account to a complete stranger a professional but what their problems are and where they come from or even if they could it would be so many hours in so many months of therapy just to get a therapist to catch up to the level of knowledge of this person that a friend might have after five years of experience 15 years of experience would have you I mean the fundamental crisis here is that most people do not have friends they can go to with this kind of serious problem they don't have co-workers and they don't have somebody like a Buddhist monk who's known that for many years now look Buddhist monks may be the worst person maybe the worst people you can go to if you're contemplating suicide or dealing with personal and psychological problems but in some traditional communities a religious authority figure was someone who might have known you since the day you were born and may have been following the events of your life to some extent of what I have you might be able to provide this this kind of counseling right now what is the function of counseling I think one of the greatest misconceptions here is the idea that the detachment and objectivity of the therapist is essential and these are really terms to glorify ignorance and their lack of involvement is a huge problem also my father had trouble telling the truth and you know he really enjoyed lying I would say his condition could be described as storytellers syndrome there's nothing he enjoyed more than sitting down with a therapist and presenting a well-balanced symmetrical and pleasing story a story that had all the elements of well structured fiction because it only had a very weak and tangental relationship to the truth and I know for a fact but you know my father and I we basically stopped talking for 10 years during those 10 years we had a few e-mails back and forth I know that he sat down and talked to therapists or possibly psychoanalysts psychiatrists you know I don't know the particulars every time you got professional help and he talked about his relationship with me right but the therapist the professional never talked to me right the therapist the professional never actually read the email for me right the therapist would only hear my father talking about his feelings of hope they received from me and let me tell you my father like a lot of people maybe he's an extreme example maybe I was in common with other people my father was not capable of telling the truth not even if he wanted to he could not tell you the truth about something that touched his ego not even necessarily something made him vulnerable if he couldn't tell the truth was something that that that impacted his sense of grandiosity to be honestly he wouldn't have been capable of telling the truth if you wanted to and you may not have wanted to that may not be what you enjoyed and then from the therapists perspective what is this process very very briefly have to remember the therapists have their own biases built into these scenarios therapists don't particularly want to hear an honest but broken and incoherent narrative they don't really want to hear you break down or watch you break down they'd be much more pleased to have a seemingly you know erudite well-spoken and charismatic person present them with this with this well fashioned story which is exactly what my father could do but what the therapist couldn't do was interrogate him in return the therapist could not or would I maybe this will change in the future maybe in the future therapists will employ private investigators will employ detectives to go and check if their clients are telling them the truth or not because there are outrageous lies that people tell again sometimes the best of intentions sometimes it's because they're lying to themselves and sometimes the intentions are darker than that sometimes people want to fundamentally indulge their own sense of grandiosity they may go to a therapist just wanted to have their their notions reinforced but the fundamental service you can provide with no diploma in psychoanalysis or psychiatry or no licenses of licensed therapists the fundamental service you can provide is whatever depth of knowledge you have of this person you know them for five years 10 years 15 years you can challenge what they think they know you can challenge the they'll tell you what they feel you can challenge why do you feel this way you know and you can explore with them how they built up these assumptions in the particular age maybe how they built up these resentments or these feelings of anger or this sense of disappointment I mean sorry whether it's something professional or romantic whatever the personal problem is if I have known you long enough that I know what your assumptions were when you started the job and then your sense of disappointment now I can say to you well yeah you see that now but at the time this is what you told me that's invaluable and a therapist can't do that a psychiatrist or I said call just can't do that and a psychiatrist or psychologist also is not even just gonna open up your Facebook or go back to that email you sense it will wait you know what that was back in 2014 you said that no no that's you know you got it mixed up you know and get they may not be mixing it up intentionally but people do when they feel strongly so guys what professionals can offer above all else in 2018 professionals go for our prescription drugs and as we've explored recently on the channel the value of those prescription drugs is shockingly low now professionals can also offer you know what's referred to as mirroring in therapy they can offer to sit there with you and sympathize with you and empathize with you and listen to you you know they can offer a certain kind of detached perspective but what's gonna be utterly lacking are exactly all the things that an old friend can bring to the table so if you are someone's old friend do not fall into this trap do not repeat this excuse this homily what I think is ultimately an evil cop-out presented as a compassion gesture do not tell people to seek professional help you're saying two things one you're basically saying that this person is crazy that their that their condition is so bad they need a higher level of psychiatric care that they need to see a professional that they need to be institutionalized this needs to be treated as a medical problem right and you're also really saying your problem is not my problem I'm not I'm not gonna listen and I'm not gonna get involved and probably what they eat is not just someone to listen and someone to get involved but someone to challenge them someone to really give them a new perspective on problems that obviously they're already familiar with you know from their own perspective and yeah maybe the best therapists can do that maybe the best counselors can do that but I don't know I'm not a great optimist I think that is actually very very rare that you get that of counseling and therapy sessions on the contrary most of your time and energy if you go to see a counselor or therapist psych well psychoanalyst or psychologist is like just goes into trying to give them the backstory that a personal friend would already have from years ago not even a close friend maybe a co-worker I mean you know sorry I remember going to see a counselor or therapist of some kind with my ex-wife before we split up before we got divorced and like do you know how many hours it would take just to get someone in that position when you seek professional help just to explain to them oh yeah I was living in Cambodia this was the kind of research I was doing in Cambodia and the guy was interested he was fascinated for him this was great he was you know this was so much better than just talking to alcoholics about how hard it is to quit alcohol or talking to victims of childhood sexual abuse about how you know devastated they are by their sexual trauma you know for him this was wonderful I was his favorite client I could sit there and in a well-educated erudite way you know use up the hours and talk about you know philosophy and history and politics and what I was studying and what research I was doing we're living did it help our problems at the marriage absolutely not there was zero positive outcome for us and I mean unless you're someone who's in such a strange state of denial that it's liberating for you to describe to a detached outsider what your problems are you know certain type of characters like that I think stereotypically especially you know a century or two ago someone who maybe grew up in the Christian religion it might be liberating for them to basically have this form of confessional communication outside of the church and then just to hear what they're saying out of their own mouth when they describe their problems because they keep that bottled up and say oh wow now I have a new perspective it's just for that reason but most of us especially 2018 that's not the case so there's the lure of prescription drugs solving your problem there's the lure of a diagnosis that there may be a fancy latin term in a book that's gonna categorize and label exactly what your problem is but behind the door behind the mahogany door of professional health the seemingly impressive edifice of modern medical science as applied to our personal and psychological problems there is not a lot there and you know at age 39 I feel Continent saying those professionals have very very little to offer you not even in contrast to a close friend and a strange friend an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend or even like a work colleague who's known you for many years there would be advantages in talking to any of those types of people over seeking professional help so when you're in that position when you're the friend someone is talking to maybe even if you're the extra or her ex-boyfriend which can be very uncomfortable I'd urge you not to retreat behind us this well-worn homily of C professional no look the problem is situation is I think I've already foreshadowed my answer and why it's gonna be so brief I don't know this guy I mean obviously he sought professional help he has exhausted what professional help can do for him he has told me nothing about what his problem is what's brought him this point why he's so certain that he's gonna commit suicide so I am gonna answer in the most general terms possible partly because there's another youtuber who I'm not going to name I call him Dave Dave is not his real name there was no youtuber was talking about suicide and talking about his problems and I wrote to him privately in response to that with the following set of reflections many many many people in our 21st century english-speaking industrialized Western culture many people are what I would call objective oriented people they're motivated in relation to specific objectives like they have an objective they want to go to medical school and become a medical doctor etc that this is an objective and their desire for that objective resembles the desire to live but it is not in fact the desire to live and it's actually quite dangerous to confuse the two many people I think especially stereotypically heterosexual men set out at any given time a number of these objectives and the pursuit of those objectives becomes a substitute for the actual enjoyment of life or actually wanting to be alive or even actually thinking about or philosophizing about life and this has advantages and disadvantages obviously this provides with a certain kind of focus direction etc but because of this cultural background I think most people are gonna look at someone who's stereotypically suicidal now dealing with two examples crazy cow man and and Dave they're gonna look at someone like that and say well what you need is to be passionately motivated in the pursuit of some objective now this gets into the type of problem I discuss on my channel all the time perceiving weakness as strength wanting something wanting it is not a strength it's a weakness and it doesn't just create emotional vulnerability it is an emotional vulnerability so you know you want to be a medical doctor and you want it and you want to you want it and you know if you then flunk out of medical school you can't get your prerequisites you can't get the medical degree this can be a tragedy that reshapes your entire life you're suddenly cut off from that that sense of you know desire Direction motivation etc but moreover most people's desires are not that wholesome and not that finite so the YouTuber I was talking to he was talking about being fueled by the desire to be wealthy he specifically said to be a millionaire the desire to have Fame and he didn't say it explicitly but I think very much implicitly he was dying with a desire to be adored by women you know etc and he's trying to draw a strength of that he's trying to feel stoked up and motivated and there's a sense of being powerful from wanting something so much and even visualizing it and you know Fanning the flames of this desire of building up your sense of desire in your mind and he thinks of this as a positive motivation that overcomes suicidal thoughts or suicidal tendencies right and here's the problem wanting is not having wanting it I understand the sense where empirically it may feel like strength but this actually is weakness it's not just that this creates sorrow or leads to sorrow this actually is a form of sorrow that you're miss perceiving as pleasure because you're fantasizing about it and because also in the same way that extreme hunger can make you feel strong the desperation to eat when you've really gone hungry for too long that very desperation again it creates the illusion of strength you know you've you you feel well you you feel like you're moving faster you're thinking faster you're you're struggling to get food you know when it would as you whatever whether it's that you're fasting or something for some reason you're experiencing starvation like conditions you may perceive that strength in fact it is weakness right now the actual solution to this problem the specific problems I vote here is not to think in terms of wanting things I mean not to in this guy's case he was overcoming his suicidal thoughts or his you know his despondent sorrowful thoughts by trying to visualize how much he wants to be a millionaire or how much he wants to achieve fame and these things someone else's case maybe how much they want to become a medical doctor go to med school or some of this and then visualizing and thinking about it and building up this this this feeling of wanting really what I claim here is that what you're building up is sorrow and what you're creating is emotional bitterness non emotional strength there is a different approach to this which is to instead try to cultivate detachment and detachment is I think one of the underrated virtues in modern Western culture believe me it's also underrated within modern Asian Buddhism you can have detachment about things you want and what they mean that you you can regard these things in it now I actually I had a specific illustration of this the difference between wanting something powerfully and being detached in your pursuit of it which was you know relationships between heterosexual men and women men pursuing women you know romantically I think again maybe the majority of men when they're young and inexperienced they think that the way to do this is to build up their passion is to want something so much to be over overcome with emotion and desire and then at some point they have to mature and learn no the way to talk to women the way to approach them and the way to even evaluate women if women are approaching you women are the way to evaluate the offer think about starting the relationship relationship is from a position of detachment and sorry if you just think about this detachment isn't indifference detachment isn't not caring but it is certainly a situation where you are thinking rationally and you have some kind of separation between that rational process and your emotional process so that you're able to evaluate the things themselves and you're able to evaluate your own emotions your feelings about them and you're able to evaluate even your own process of evaluation this is the situation we want to be in whether you're trying to start a new romantic relationship or whether you're thinking your way out of you know maybe a career dead-end like you wanted to be a medical doctor you can't be or you're thinking your way out of whatever the impasse is in life that leads you to be suicidal so this is an interesting train of thought advice that came up when I was looking at another youtuber who'd been suicidal lately who I'm referring to here as David the problem is here with crazy cow man I suspect that he may be in the opposite situation that his problem isn't that he's burning with these desires with motivation with wanting someone but that he feels no desire at all that the problem is simply because I get no description of what this is why it is that he simply wants to die which is simply that he he has no desire it's not he doesn't want to become a medical doctor he doesn't want to achieve fame and fortune or any of these other kind of shallow things um there's he doesn't want to achieve anything intellectually or what-have-you and you know look ultimately I respect all tomato juice to die however with all these Cavett's have misstated I don't know you I've never talked to you I don't know you as well as a friend who's known you for five years and I recognize you've already sought professional help and you've exhausted what counseling can do for you I really would recommend that you try to engage in one of the most basic instincts we have from birth and that is curiosity if you can try to Kindle your sense of curiosity for almost anything if you can try experimentally to challenge your own ignorance of other things whether those are tidbits from history you never understood whether that's sir there's an example that's become an internet meme how do magnets work if you can go around if you can keep a notepad if you can start noticing things and start investigating things and start challenging yourself and trying to cultivate curiosity itself I think that curiosity is the the kindling out of which you know that kind of objective oriented motivation sparks right why live I mean ultimately why live I don't think that we live for the satisfaction of our desires for the pursuit of our of our desires I don't think we even believe we live for the pursuit of happiness to use a well-worn phrase the meaning of life or the process of finding meaning in life ultimately its most basic rudiments must begin with curiosity so the encouragement I can give you is to try to exercise that most childlike and most infantile and most pure part of your mind the part of the human experience where for the first time you looked at letters on a chalkboard and didn't know what they were or probably wasn't on a chalkboard you probably saw a sign through a window and and you wondered what things were and wondered how they worked and I mean this sincerely it could be anything it could be plumbing that you never thought of it before how to fix a tap anything whether you do with your hands more than with your your brain if you can encourage yourself in weather in the most childlike way or in the most scientifically pretentious way possible to try to exercise your sense of curiosity I think that will that will not put you back in touch with your humanity it will not put you in touch with any kind of profound mystery about the beauty of a few in life it will start to put you back in touch with the material reality of what this world is and of what your relationship to it is which is ultimately the relationship of an infinitely ignorant investigator and that is what makes day-to-day life so dynamic and so rewarding and what makes us want to keep living as we get older and older is not the pursuit of one desire after another not one fantasy after another building up our sense of desire not disappointment and disillusionment and overcoming those things and in my opinion not social status or a sense of wanting revenge against others or trying to prove others wrong or something like this you know if you can get back to that working up from the bare rudiment of curiosity that instinct that so rarely is even given a name I think that's a first step that I can recommend wholeheartedly without even knowing what the second step might be for you live or die for you the question of whether or not you can find a meaningful life a meaningful way to live or a new attitude towards living that makes your experience of life meaningful for you right now its life in that struggle so literally and figuratively back to the chalkboard