 Listen, if emotional abuse worked, then screwed up kids would not turn in to screwed up adults. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and what I like to do is pull different topics from the YouTube community, try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being but it's also about how to help others who might be struggling with some form of mental illness. So if you're into that, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So before I get started, I'm super excited because this video is part of a collaboration that I did with my buddy Ryan over on his channel Crimson Studios. I'm going to link it up in the info card and down in the description and in the pinned comments. We did a video together about Amberlynn Reed as well as eating disorders. Ryan himself has struggled with an eating disorder and has overcome it and I know not only do I have a lot of subscribers who have struggled with eating disorders, I think Ryan's perspective is really important because we don't talk that much about men who struggle with eating disorders. As Chris said, anybody can recover. However, you must first be willing to accept that change. Change will not come to you as I know far too well. The only person that could ever make a difference in one's life is yourself. So make sure you go check out the video we did over on his channel. Again, I'm going to link it and it's a video about Amberlynn Reed. So over here on my channel, I wanted to talk about shaming people who are struggling with mental illness and I wanted to talk about Eugenia Cooney. So big fact disclaimer, huge disclaimer on this video. When I talk about not shaming somebody like Eugenia Cooney, this does not. I repeat, this does not mean that you should enable somebody like Eugenia Cooney. All right? Towards the end of this video, I'm going to revisit this because a lot of this is about balance. When it comes to helping anybody who's struggling with mental illness, it's all about balance and learning the right ways and the wrong ways to help somebody. Okay? Another part of this disclaimer is, I do not know. I don't know and I don't think it's been publicly stated by Eugenia or her family that she is struggling with an eating disorder or anorexia. I've done a few videos about Eugenia Cooney. I try to make this very clear. She might be struggling from health issues as well. All right? At the end of the day, the one thing that we do know is that she is not healthy. All right? I do not know if this is an eating disorder, but I'm going to talk about it from a perspective of somebody who might be struggling with addiction and eating disorder or any other type of behavior such as like self-harm or binge eating or whatever. You know what I mean? The goal of this video, the goal of this video is to help people understand why shaming somebody does not work when it comes to, quote-unquote, helping them with their mental illness. So please, please, please do me a favor. If you find any value from this video, please share it with other people so we can spread some awareness about the right ways and wrong ways to help somebody who's struggling with a mental illness. All right. Those of you who don't know who Eugenia Cooney is, let's talk about it. I'm sure most of you do know. But anyways, Eugenia Cooney is a young woman who is a pretty big YouTuber. I think she has over a million subscribers. And yeah, there's a lot of shaming that goes on, all right? And eating disorders especially are something that a lot of people struggle with. I know when I made some of my first videos on Eugenia Cooney, I had a lot, a lot of subscribers say that they either were A, struggling with an eating disorder, or B, were in eating disorder recovery. I took a poll and I was absolutely, literally blown away. So I'm glad I get to do another video about this because it seems like way more people struggle with this than I thought. The problem is, is that you have a lot of people who try shaming Eugenia Cooney. So this fool on the screen right now, I'm not going to say his name because I don't like giving him any attention, but most of you know who this is. He does a ton of videos like talking crap about Eugenia Cooney and he disguises it as, oh, I just care and I'm trying to help, right? But he's doing this in the absolute wrong way, all right? We're going to be talking about how shaming people doesn't work. And the other thing is too, as I was doing some research for this video, this is actually something that my beautiful girlfriend Tristan and I checked out and it absolutely broke my heart, which is people who are like, I don't know, shaming her slash trolling her on her livestream with stuff like this. I'm literally like fully like attacking like my appearance. You know what I mean? Like, like the way like I do my makeup or like how my actual face looks. And it's like, I don't get how people like think that's like nice really, but whatever. Yeah, guys, how was Disney? All thanks for asking. It was fun. We had a good time. It was it was really nice and yeah, it was cool. Like, wait, like Disney's always fun. Like lightning or is it like electric? It's probably my favorite because I really love Pikachu a lot. Who's your smash fan? Um, I actually have not played that much smash, but I'm really excited for what the new one comes out. I actually just got a switch. Now, my personal background is in addiction. Not only am I a drug addict and an alcoholic in recovery for over six and a half years, but I've also worked in addiction treatment for over three years. And it's important to understand that addiction and eating disorders affect the same parts of the brain. All right. They are very, very closely tied together. So when we're talking about addiction recovery, and it's the same thing with self harm in most cases, like the same therapeutic methods that can work for addiction treatment can also work for eating disorders as well as self harm, but it's important to understand why shaming doesn't work. So the first time I learned about why shaming doesn't work is through the book Clean by David Sheff. All right. Those of you who are like David Sheff, that sounds familiar. I know a ton of you, a ton of you have asked me to do a movie review on that movie, Beautiful Boy, which I'm going to do. It might be later this week or when I get back into town because I'm going to Los Angeles for a week. But anyways, the movie Beautiful Boy is based on a book which is based on a real story by David Sheff. OK, so this book Clean, I highly, highly, highly recommend it. It is the best book that I've ever read about addiction, addiction treatment and all this other stuff. Like I never went to a formal rehab. The only thing I went to was a sober living house. I also went through a detox, but I never did like a 30, 60 or 90 day rehab. So I never got that education there. A lot of my education started with this book Clean. If you're interested in it, please, please, please check out the description below, get this book. Best book I've ever read. He did 10 years of research on his own. And like I said, he has a lot of experience with this because he is the father that Beautiful Boy is based on, right? But anyways, some of the things that he talks about in that book is why shaming addicts doesn't work. So way back in the day, way back in the day when, you know, addiction was becoming a problem and treatment centers were nowhere near what they're like today. They did a few things to try to get people clean, right? So one of them was one of them, which was very dangerous, was forcing people to do a cold turkey detox, right? Without any medications to help minimize the symptoms. Their goal was to make people feel so terrible and so crappy that they never, ever, ever, ever wanted to do it again, right? But it was quickly found out how dangerous this is. All right, withdrawal from certain substances like alcohol can kill you when it comes to like benzodiazepines, like Xanax, volume of things like that, you can have seizures. OK, so it is very dangerous to do that. So they were trying to make people feel terrible in order for them to never want to do it again. Now, me, I did a cold turkey opiate detox, not my choice. And luckily I didn't have any major health issues with it. But for me, it kind of did work because I don't want to go through that again. That's something that keeps me clean whenever I'm like craving an opioid. I'm like, man, I never want to go through detox or withdrawal again, right? But I have a lot of other medical supervision, which is why I was safe. So I never recommend that you do that. So if you're somebody who is trying to get clean, make sure you talk to a doctor, talk to a physician, get something like Suboxone or whatever it is to help get you off of it. Right. But the other thing that they did was what they call attack therapy. There is surprisingly, surprisingly, there is not much information online about this. And I was blown away. I was just doing some research. I wanted to find you guys some like articles and studies on it while you can't can find some like it's not it's not as prevalent as it should be. So this is kind of like a military based method to treat people who have addictions or eating disorders or whatever. And it's it's about breaking the person down psychologically, breaking that person down to get them to a place where they can build themselves back up. All right. So like sometimes what they would do is like the counselor to think about how crazy it is. The counselor just like screaming at them, telling them that they're useless. They're a piece of crap, that all these other things to break them down. In some cases, they did this in in a group style, right? So like one person would sit in the middle and then all of their peers who are in treatment to would just scream at them and tell them all this terrible thing, things about them. Right. But research has shown that that is not an effective way to treat people. OK, so I found this article from Psychology Today from a doctor. And basically, this article is titled Why Shaming Doesn't Work? It's by Christine Bacho. I think I'm saying that right. I'll link this down in the description below. But anyways, I just want to read the last paragraph to you. Shaming is not necessary to guide someone's sense of what is acceptable behavior. Acting with clear knowledge that a behavior is unacceptable is often accompanied by feelings of guilt, unlike shame, which can relate to one's entire self. Guilt is associated with a specific behavior and by itself is not likely to be associated with psychological distress, such as depression or post traumatic stress disorder. As with other forms of punishment, aversive methods are generally less effective than positive approaches. It is important to reward and praise desirable behaviors than to react negatively to unwanted ones. All right. Let me repeat that for the people in the back. It is important to reward and praise desirable behaviors than to react negatively to unwanted ones, encouraging a person's ability to enjoy self-affirmation and self-pride will help them internalize healthy attributes and to become a person deserving of admiration before reacting to someone who has annoyed you or offended you. Remember that the specific incident provoking your disapproval may fade in memory or significance. While the shame they may feel may endure as part of who they become. Shame doesn't motivate pro-social behaviors. It fuels social withdrawal and low self-esteem. Wouldn't you rather nurture the kind of person you would enjoy sharing a relationship with? This is very true. I'm going to make a video pretty soon about this book. I just finished where they talk about how, you know, people who say, I don't want to be like my parents or I don't want to be like my mother. I don't want to be like my father. They are more likely to become their mother or father than a person who says, this is the type of parent I would like to be. All right. It's the same thing here. All right. The way our brains work, it can latch on to the negative. It can latch on to the negative so bad. So what she's talking about is it is better to put the attention on positive aspects. OK, and this is extremely, extremely important. So let's dive into the solution. What's the solution? I think a great example is talking about 12 step meetings, right? Like you celebrate people's small victories. So when people get 24 hours, 24 hours of abstinence from substances, everybody claps, you get a coin or you get a key tag or whatever it is, this helps build people up. So rather than saying, oh, you only have 24 hours. What I often teach my clients is like, you know, in the rooms, we clap and give you hugs or whatever. But out there in the rest of the world, people are like, oh, really? You haven't snorted a line and 24 hours is good for you. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of support when it comes to 12 set meetings. I remember my sponsor told me or asked me on my first step, he's like, why do we clap when people get a chip? And I'm like, I remember saying like, if you're an addict like me, if you can even stay sober for an hour, let alone a day, like that's a freaking miracle. All right. So build people up on their small successes. All right. So in the case of somebody who might have an eating disorder or somebody who might self harm, you know, congratulate them on a day of healthy eating, congratulate them on a day of avoiding self harming behavior. Right. Celebrate those small successes. Build them up. Focus on what they did right rather than what they did wrong. OK. Like if I had to put this into percentages, focus 80 percent of your energy on what they did right, 20 percent on what they did wrong. Now, what do I mean by this? Like I said at the beginning of this video, OK, not shaming somebody does not mean you enable them. OK. Here's my personal experience with this. Here's what I'll share. Here's what's helped me the most. So one of the issues that I had is specifically with addiction and relapses and my clients and stuff. So I had a work Facebook and we started Facebook groups and everything like that. And one of the main issues that I would see is that people would relapse and announce it and then everybody would be like, it's OK. It's all right. We still love you and that's enabling. That's enabling right there because think about it for an addict or somebody who's struggling with an eating disorder or somebody who's struggling with self harm or one of these toxic behaviors. It could be binge eating, whatever it is, OK, and everybody just saying, it's OK, we still love you and that's all they're saying. This makes the person think because anybody who struggles with an eating disorder or addiction or self harm, right, we justify and rationalize our behaviors. So when everybody's saying, oh, I'm going to love you no matter what, it's OK, it makes them think, huh, I can keep getting away with this. I can keep getting away with messing up as much as I want, right. So where's the balance coming with this? OK, so here's a story. A couple of years ago, I was on vacation for my job at the Treatment Center and I went to Seattle for my first time. Absolutely love Seattle. I went up there and on my last day there, I got a phone call because I had a work phone that I carried with me all the time and I got a phone call in the morning and it was a terrible phone call. One of my former clients told me that this young woman who had just left treatment not too long ago, her roommates found her dead in her sober living. She overdosed from heroin and it really, it really got to me. Like when I tell you guys, like I've had seventy six people die in the last three and a half years, that girl is one of them. All right. And it was really sad because there were certain clients who like I got to know really well or they would always come into my office and talk and this young woman, she had been sober for years before and she had a relapse and just couldn't, you know, get back. Right. And so I got that call that this young woman passed away. I swear to you, within an hour later, I got another call from one of my clients and she calls me up crying her face off and she had a year sober and she's like, Chris, you know, I relapsed on heroin and, you know, I'm a mess and I said, hey, I'm glad that you're alive, but now it's time to get your act together. All right. So that's how I look at it when people slip up or screw up. OK. Like I have to call them out. I have to call them out. I cannot enable their behavior. I can't say, oh, it's OK. It's OK. So what I always tell people, especially when it comes to relapses, hey, I'm glad that you're alive because remember just an hour before I found out about the young woman who passed away. So I say, I'm glad that you're alive, but now it's time to get your act together. And then that's when the tough love comes in. You see what I'm saying? So we have to call out that bad behavior. And by the way, that young woman who relapsed after a year, she's doing phenomenal now. We still stay in touch. She just had another baby and, you know, things are going great for her. So that's awesome news. So just just know, you know, if you're somebody who struggles with addiction, like, don't relapse, don't relapse. But if you're someone who is a chronic relapse or like I used to be, there is still hope. All right. So when it comes to people, like we've got to focus on the positive. We have to focus on the positive while still calling out the bad behavior. That's where that balance comes in. All right. So anyways, anyways, if you are somebody, if you're a viewer watching this, again, please share this with people so they know why shaming people with mental illnesses or disorders does not work. OK. But also, if you're a viewer, like, quit it, cut it out, man. Cut it out, quit going over to people's channels who are clearly struggling with some kind of illness, you know, like I said, I don't know if Eugenia Cooney is struggling with an eating disorder or health issues or whatever, right? But don't go over there doing stupid stuff and trying to shame a person. All right. And like I said, please go check out the video that Ryan and I did over on his channel, Crimson Studios. It's going to be linked up in the envelope card as well as down in the description and pin comment below. And let me know down in the comments, has people shamed you for your mental illness? How did that make you feel? Did it help or did it hurt? All right. So anyways, let's have a conversation down below. OK. Anyways, if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And don't forget, we have our first group call this Thursday. Information is going to be posted up over on Patreon. All right. If you want to become a patron, click or tap right there. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.