 What is up everybody? It's Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution And I'm joined by a very special guest. Dr. Mark Gulston Can you do my audience a favor and just kind of introduce yourself your background and all that good stuff? Yeah, I will be grudgingly because if you look behind my shoulder, I wrote a book called just listen and Actually another Podcast host said you know mark you're a terrible listener But anyway, I can't go silent and just listen to you. So what's my background? I'm a psychiatrist been a psychiatrist for 40 years and the first 25 I was a boots on the ground suicide Specialist, what does that mean? It means that other psychiatrists universities used to refer me their suicidal patients and and Nobody killed themselves and I never figured out what I did And but I figured it out recently and so that's why I'm excited to be on a mission to prevent suicide because you know, I'm sure you've noticed Chris We have all this suicide awareness. We've got all these programs. Why is the suicide rate? Going up and I have some idea about that because what would happen is universities professors other psychiatrists would refer me there their suicidal patients and And this is a little bit of my being passive aggressive towards the establishment because I would go back to them I'd say do you want to know what I do and they say is it evidence-based? No Do you have a control group? Well, my control group is your program where people do kill themselves and my program they don't and That was a little bit passive aggressive. It didn't win too many friends. Yeah, they would say no If it's not evidence-based if it's not control group, we can't even listen to it I said, why do you send me people and they say well because you have this reputation that when people come to you? They don't kill themselves. Yeah and I the challenge was I didn't know what I was doing until recently and I've dug into it because Suicides all around us and it seems to be getting worse. Yeah And that's it's interesting that you brought up that point because today We're gonna be talking about why these suicide rates are going up, but we have increased awareness So here in Las Vegas, I know they do this all over the country, but the American Foundation of suicide prevention They have the out-of-the-darkness walk and myself my girlfriend my son We've participated in the last three years the next ones in a couple weeks here but yeah, so I come from the addiction background being in recovery myself working in a treatment center and One of the things is is and I don't know if this is Calculated in the the statistics, but off like oftentimes when I look at drug overdoses For me for example, I was trying to kill myself with substances Do they calculate that at all because many people with addictions are suicidal, but they just use a different method I look I look I I'm not a statistician and I think some studies calculated in And of course what you'll hear the statistics and then people will say and we think this is a much under reported because there's a lot Of people who are dying by overdoses and we tend to call it accidental But really what it was is probably a Completed suicide, so it's the problem is much bigger one organization that I'm starting to get involved with there's something called Mission 22 for veterans mission 22 focused on the 22 veterans who kill themselves every day and Here's here's what gets to me So if you think the 22 veterans kill themselves every day, you could probably multiply that by tenfold Of the ones who make attempts, right? Yeah, and then multiply that another ten maybe fifty fold of those veterans Who wish they were dead wish the pain would go away and they can't go away So it's a huge problem, and I think what's happening is we have the awareness that we have the programs but my whole approach to helping people is Going to where they are in the dark night of the soul Why do you think that helps well because something I've written about which has gotten a Fair amount of coverage is I actually wrote an article after Anthony Bourdain Died by suicide and I said why people kill themselves. It's not depression So it got it got five hundred and fifty thousand views and seventy thousand reads in six days. Oh, wow and what I said is There's hundreds of millions of people maybe in the billions who are depressed who don't kill themselves There's many many people who ever go through a divorce lose a job, and they don't kill themselves It contributes to it and I said but one of the things that Nearly all the people who are suicidal or die by suicide have at the end is they have Despair and if you break the word despair into VES PA IR it means feeling unpaired with reasons to live Less without a future Less I can't help myself Powerless, I don't have any power over this useless worthless meaningless And so my view is that when you feel unpaired with all the reasons to live You pair with death to take the pain away What I discovered is when you pair with people in the dark night of the soul Underneath way way deep where they're hurting they'll pair with you So let me give you an anecdote that changed everything. It's actually in my book Just listen so my book just listen is about how do you cause other people to feel felt and Feeling felt is different than feeling understood now feeling understood is better than feeling misunderstood, but feeling felt it's different So uh, so years ago One of my earliest mentors was the leading pioneer in the study Of suicide. It was a psychologist named dr. Ed Schneidman and if you look him up, you'll find his name all over the place He founded the american association of suicideology He co-founded the suicide prevention centers in washington, los angeles and he was at UCLA as a professor when I was there in psychiatry And what would happen is he mentored me and he would re firm He would go up and do consultations to inpatients who were still suicidal, but they weren't acutely suicidal But they had to be discharged because you can't keep them there forever So he would go up to a consultation refer them to me And what I started to learn is when I would see them and I was checking boxes So I'm looking right into the camera now And so if instead of looking into the camera like I'm looking into your eyes, I was checking boxes like this So imagine you're looking out at me for hope And I'm How's your sleep? Yeah. Yeah, you have pills at home. Yeah, but what's your support structure like? Yeah Yeah, um Do you exercise? So what's happening is I'm checking boxes. You're looking at me saying I'm running out of time Yeah, you're checking boxes to cover your ass and I'm not gonna yell at you because I don't want to be thrown back in a fucking hospital And you're checking boxes Yeah, they don't say that. So what I learned Is to throw that away, but I learned it with one episode What happened is I used to moonlight at a state hospital to pick up some extra money So when you moonlight you're there for 48 hours at a state hospital Doing the admissions and called to the wards to write up various orders So sometimes you're up for 36 hours. So there was one weekend When I was up for 36 hours and on Monday I was seeing a patient that I'll call Nancy and Nancy had made three or four suicide attempts before I started seeing her She'd been in the hospital three to four months You know every year for four or five years and I didn't think I was helping Nancy I thought I wasn't doing anything except, you know, she saw me and It was the longest she'd gone without a suicide attempt and she never made eye contact So if I'm looking at her like this, she's like this And so it's a Monday I go in there and she's like that and suddenly as I'm looking out at her All the color in the room turns to black and white. I mean, I'm looking out and go, oh my god What is going on? And it was black and white Then I felt this chill all through my body and I thought I'm having a stroke or a seizure Or because she wouldn't look at me. It wasn't rude for me to do a neuro object exam on myself So she's like this and I'm going like this Out my knees, you know And and then I figured I said I'm not having a stroke or seizure. I'm I'm all here Now remember I was sleep deprived And then I had this crazy crazy idea that I was looking out at the world through her eyes And feeling what she was feeling. So because I was sleep deprived, I blurted this out Something that I probably normally wouldn't say but you know, I was My inhibitions were and I said this Nancy, I didn't know it was so bad and I can't help you kill yourself But if you do I will still think well of you I'll miss you and maybe I'll understand why you had to to get out of the pain And then when I said that I thought I just gave her permission Yeah I just blew it and and she was like this And it was like something got triggered. So she's like this and then she looked at me. I mean, she looked right through me I looked through her and I realized I got it right and I got paranoid. I thought oh great great, you know She's gonna say thank you. I'm overdue Yeah And I said Nancy What are you thinking? And she said If you can really understand why I might have to kill myself To get out of the pain. Maybe I won't need to And then she gave that up and then what I said to her I said, here's what we're gonna do I'm not gonna give you advice or solutions that you're not gonna follow And then you're gonna have to come back and tell me why you didn't do that Is that okay? And then she opened up. She was she was in and I said what I am gonna do Because I'm gonna find you wherever you are and I'm gonna keep you company there as long as it takes Because I don't want you to be alone there anymore I'm a medical doctor and my view of deep trauma mental psychiatric trauma Is it's the same in my mind as physical trauma? So physical trauma you have a deep wound And you have to go in there clean out the wound and you put a drain in the wound And it naturally Granulates in it heals from the inside out if you try to suture the wound too quickly it becomes Infected septic My view is What I did or I'm teaching people now Is how do you go into the dark night of the soul? Right at that abscess in the middle of their Psyche soul and spirit And people in company there and you leave an empathic drain So that they're always pairing with you and it granulates in With hope. So can you follow any of this or is this all? No, no, it's absolutely Like something that I'm always thinking about, you know when when I was working in the treatment center Working with a lot of people struggling with dual diagnosis. They had addiction and some other disorder and I'm always been curious about like the root cause Of these issues. Is there is there anything that you've seen just from your experience? Where this comes from whether it's, you know, biological, you know, their environment how they were raised like when does that Disconnect happen. So here here again, nobody from a reputable University is going to listen to this. I'll listen to it mark. That's your listeners, Mike See, I think what happens is we're born into the world powerless vulnerable helpless and we're fed and we're closed but we're but also The environment around us has poured into us. So imagine you're there And you can't even see and all you know is you're hungry and you hear yelling You hear someone saying would you take the nipple already and you're thinking you don't even have language and you're saying Well, stop poking it in my eye And then imagine you're just lying there and you don't know what's going on because when you're in the room You know you wish was her command And then and then imagine this You hear in the background a male voice and you're thinking oh looks like I have two parents Oh, that's my mom and my dad and but what's she saying to dad? Uh, can you feed this thing in the middle of the night? Can you get up already? Get off those games of yours and take care of your kid and i'm thinking Holy s*** So what happens is if you're born into either anger or total neglect? Would they just leave you with s*** in your diaper? Yeah, what happens is there's a guy named Eric Erickson He talks about the psychosocial stages of development and the earliest one when we are born into the world is we're born either with Trust or mistrust And if you're born with trust You sort of go into the world and you're not tentative because you're born with trust If you're born and raised with an unsafe environment you develop distrust you're tentative So my view is that there's a lot of people who are born and they don't get that optimal Empathic connection. So what i'm doing with these suicidal people Is i'm giving them this optimal. I'm just in there with them I'm just i'm i have my finger in the dike of the abscess in their soul I'm keeping my finger there until it heals around it And so what i believe happens is when you didn't get that and most people haven't because even with even with the best Of intention parents now parents are in a rush Sometimes when i would see when i would see female Patients or mothers i said what are you here for and i look like this I Can't find my warmth I'll say what do you mean? I'm irritable. I'm annoyed. You know, i'm yelling at my kids You know do your homework can't find my warmth and women have told me, you know Even if we're high achievers a woman without warmth is not a woman And a lot of that is because a lot of these women do not feel supported. They feel that they're working They're having uh, you know, they're taking care of their aging parents Why take care of their kids and there and there's nothing left to give and so what happens is those kids Instead of internalizing Safety, what what are they internalizing at at at the very least an overwhelmed parent? Well, my view is that we get past that we never get over it There's a vulnerability There's a crack in the porcelain instead of us being solid and then we go through life And guess what some people discover achievement Wow, this is great. If I achieve something I make my parents happy I make everyone happy and this is kind of neat and that's kind of fun for about 30 years But what you discover is it's not fulfilling or satisfying Something that you thought it would fix didn't because it doesn't make that hurt and fear go away It is crazy mark because it's like you're describing my life. So You and I have been talking for about a week now But yeah, just everything that you're saying. So I'm the son of an alcoholic mom and you know, I read the book by doctor I'm forgetting her name right now But she she wrote the book adult children of alcoholics great book and like You know and it talks about some of those symptoms that I developed because I didn't have that trust Right, my mom was always drinking didn't know if she was coming home Didn't know what state she was going to be in my dad was working a lot So I kind of raised myself But yeah, this is one of the reasons why you know, I love the title of that book just listen and you know Even the other book I just finished talking crazy. Like I never felt heard right like when I was growing up I never felt that connection with my family with anybody like I was going through this by myself And it led to a lot of anxiety when I was younger I had a lot of trust issues and everything like that and kind of like what you're saying Like I had a lot of pressure on me just to graduate in high school because I was the first one in generations To do so and I was like yay and like there was you know, oh yay yay chris, right? But it's not sustainable, right if I'm constantly trying to achieve just to get the attention and make people proud and All those other things and well like in my addiction I kind of got a case of the the screw it and it wasn't until I found a 12 set program Where I finally felt heard where like somebody was willing to just sit there with me And just listen and have me pour all this stuff out and there was no judgment there There was you know, I finally felt heard for the first time in I got sober when I was 27 So the first time in 27 years I finally felt like someone heard me and like felt what I was going through and it was life changing for me I'm gonna do I always do a little bit of voodoo in these things. I'm gonna do the thing and I think you're game Always I'm gonna channel you right now But what I'm gonna channel is you as a five-year-old that is yelling to me Can you tell grown-up chris to just shut up and find me? Because he's running away from me, you know, he's not hurting me like I was But he's running away from me into this And I've been here and I've always been here and I'm just waiting for him to turn around and see me Because no one's seen me and I'm getting angry at him because he knows what it's like to be abandoned And run away from and I've been in here the whole time And mark I need you to get him to turn around And just see me to just see me Don't throw a solution. Don't be angry at me I need you to get him to do that and that's gonna lead me into i'm gonna tell you something that I call piano story You ready? I'm ready. I want you to play along with us It'll tell you more than you need to know There's a little boy named Jimmy and he's six years old and he lives in this really dysfunctional family There's anger. There's hurt. There's whatever but every day when he comes home from school He goes down into the basement and in the basement is a grand piano Nobody uses it and he goes under the grand piano and Nobody knows he's there and he just touches the brass pedals. He goes there because he also, you know Has siblings who aren't happy either and can be abusive or ridiculed And then one day as he's there and he's probably on his way to being a little bit autistic You know him and the piano like this looking at and one day a man comes down Not in his family And is looking through the basement And the man sees him under the piano and Jimmy gets a little bit nervous because the man comes over to the piano And Jimmy won't look at him, you know, because his recollection of people is they either let you down or they abuse you So he's like this with the pedals and the man leans under the piano Not intrusively just the right way and he doesn't say what's going on What are you doing down there? You want to come out? You want to go do some fun thing? The man looks at him and says mind if I join you And the man goes under the piano And they're kind of like, you know, their their legs are like, you know, 90 degrees and jimmy's Just there and you know, he's not pushing them away But he has no idea who this man is and this is like a nine month pregnancy So after three months jimmy says to the man, what are you doing here? You know and jimmy has the courage to make a little eye contact and the man looks at him in just the same way and says You look like you shouldn't be alone Jimmy goes, okay knock yourself out and And then three months Goes by and jimmy is looking a little bit more Like him and he says is this normal and the man says, what do you mean? He says, you know, I go to school come home. I come down to the basement I sit under this piano That's normal and again the man looks at him in just the right way and smiles and says It's not typical And so another three months goes by And at the end of this nine months Jimmy is just He's just looking at the guy. He's just staring at this guy He's just staring at him and then at the end of the nine months He looks at the guy and he says do I ever get better? He's looking with all the intensity of a lie detector test looking for any Kid to bulls*** And the man looks at him and says Absolutely And jimmy says How do you know that? And the man says Because I'm you and we got out Now I was jimmy under the piano Really? And the way I do therapy you getting it. Yeah So can you relate to any of this? Yeah, no, absolutely And and that's the little part of you. I mean, I wasn't just trying to do a gimmick There is a part of you that there's a part of you Wants to feel your vulnerability, but you still want to be in control And so you're racing ahead into activity But there is that there's a little jimmy inside you. He's been there And he's just waiting for you to turn around And this is this is something that is an ongoing process You know and uh things have been leaps and bounds like right before this We were talking about which we're going to mention in a sec the stay alive video that you sent me and like You know my you know my semicolon tattoo on my wrist and you know, it's this it's this recovery Right like this progression and there's still You know speed bumps and everything like that But I don't know I haven't felt personally that I've gotten back To the dark place that I was over six and a half years ago where I didn't want to wake up anymore You know what I mean, but like what what are your thoughts like, you know Just for someone like myself who's in recovery from this thing and continuing to move forward and acknowledge the other things that might be Still inside of me. Well, I think what it is is you don't want to go back there and mess around So there's a part of you that says, you know coping ain't bad Yeah, it'd be nice to heal It'd be nice to be solid from the inside out But coping's a lot better than what I was doing six years ago So I don't necessarily want to mess around with it. And so what you have Yeah, there's something called PTSD. I wrote a book called PTSD for dummies and I'm trying to Change the diagnosis but because I'm an outlier, you know, I can't get in anywhere And I'm trying to change the diagnosis to what it really is which is retraumatization avoidance Can you explain that? So you ask anyone who's been through a terrible trauma and I've had a lot of veterans who just say holy That's it when you've been through a terrible trauma in the military. You've been raped or whatever it is You do whatever you can to survive But you know, you're leaving a piece of yourself there because you're doing whatever you can to survive So you you get past it and the way, you know, you're dealing with Retraumatization avoidance is if you talk to someone and they tell you about You know a rape or they tell you about something horrendous and you say to them Good for you. How courageous that you got over that and you look them in the eye They're gonna look back and they'll say I never got over it What do you mean? I got past it. I'm tentative. I don't put my I don't put two feet into anything Especially relationships. I'm no checking things and I don't really relax. I I know fun But I don't know joy. I Know exhaustion, but I don't know peace And and then if you ask them, well, could you go through that again? And if I said Chris, let's throw you back into the dark night of your soul six years ago We go back there and what they say is I don't know how I made it out alive the first time Yeah, pretty much, you know, the first you drop. I'm not playing russian roulette I'm doing okay for a person who's not solid. I'm okay Yeah, and so the feeling is if I go back the second shoe will drop and I will never come back So my whole approach is I've actually and maybe you'll show this video that I sent you from from stay alive It's called the seven words and I've come up with something that I call targeted Interventional Empathy I think that's it and the idea is let's say you're coping with having that core It wasn't solid because you were all alone in there. So And so what happens is it creates this? There's a word and you know, there's a word when you have a heart attack It's called the myocardial infarct. It kills part of the heart tissue So you're there with this emotional infarct because you didn't have that connection And so what targeted interventional? Empathy is is you go into the person And you touch the wound and you keep your finger there With warmth you don't abandon it You believe that if you you clean out the wound, but you keep your finger there and the seven words And I hope you'll put up the the excerpt from the movie. Yep Well, so here's the seven words and and see if you can feel the difference So let's say you're a person You know you've been through all kinds of treatment You know, you have depression you have anxiety, you know, and and you know, uh, you know, you know the usual things So if you're there with a professional who you know has to check boxes So, uh, how depressed are you? Okay on a scale of one to ten Yeah, they ever have thoughts of hurting yourself And I don't mean to be sort of Glib, you know, I mean they're doing the best they can plus they have a protocol that they can't read Yeah My good fortune is I never reported to anything other than the hurt in people's eyes Only thing I was responsible to so imagine someone's asking you those things and you're thinking, uh, when they say, uh, Are you feeling depressed? So there's a part of you who's been through so many treatments say no, I'm a happy camper. What the f*** do you think I'm here for? Right. Yeah. No, I came in because I'm euphoric. What is your problem? How do you spell euphoric? I know how to spell depression Yeah, so the seven words so you're there, but listen to the tone It's not checking boxes So if I were if I were to say to you, uh, chris and you're there feeling a sense of urgency like, uh, you know another another clueless person who's checking box and I say chris seven words and what you're thinking is What the f*** seven words and then I say it this way hurt frayed angry ashamed alone lonely tired Pick one and if you watch the you know in the movie I'm into you know I'm talking to kevin hines who jumped off the golden gate bridge And if you see the little excerpt he looks at me with a smile and he says, you know what he says all of them Yeah But he felt felt Yeah And so the whole thing is it's going in there and I'll throw a business term into this But anybody who's in business or in sales has heard the term the assumption clothes I'm there but with the assumption clothes you go in there assuming something so you don't have to ask So if you go in there assuming that people are feeling At least one of those you don't have to ask them. Are you feeling it? Uh And so it invites people if you're doing this with a person in your life and they say all of them you say Pick one pick the one that's worse. Tell me when it was the worst in the last week Take me back there And here's the magical thing when you can get someone to share An event with you so vividly that as they're sharing it you see it through your eyes And they relive it They relive the feelings the difference is they're reliving the feelings, but they're not alone this time Yeah, let me are you tracking with this? I am and it's bringing up questions. So so I just finished your book Talking crazy the premise of that book is to how to talk with irrational people But the last couple chapters are really about some like serious hardcore stuff the stuff that we're talking about right now And and you're you're you're talking from the the lens of a trained professional like a lot of my audience and most people out there Friends family members who might be in that dark place or have those dark places within them Like should should somebody reach out and ask them to go to those places or talk about these feelings that they're feeling like What is your recommendation on that or should that always be with a trained professional? Well, you can go on the internet in fact Without plugging the documentary you could you could go to the doc that we've divided it into eight chapters That'll be linked down in the description everybody So you can go on the internet you could you could check our documentary But you can share that with people and uh and use it as a catalyst So you can you can hear the seven words I'm saying and you say oh I like that, but you might not be able to have that trained empathic tone that I have And so you might you might think okay. I'm gonna say the seven words that's this person. I'm worried about What were they hurt afraid angry? Well, the point is it's it's not inviting Yeah, but what you could do is you could you you're uh your viewers can go to that particular Excerpt and say look, I don't know how to say it the way that guy dr. Goldstein said Yeah, if I could say it that way, what would you say so you follow me use it as a Okay, yeah, yeah, and then that gets the conversation going right So I'm going to show you a video which I created and it's called what your teenager who won't talk to you wants you to know I created this to create what I just I can to create a conversation catalyst So if you're a teenager and you feel Your parents aren't getting where you're coming from or if you're a parent saying, you know, I'm just not getting through You could play this video and Tell your parents. This is why I don't talk to you or your parent can say to you Your teen parent can say your teenager. Is this why you don't talk to me? So it's only a minute, but I'm gonna play it for you, okay This is what your teenager who won't talk to you want you to know One of the reasons I'm quiet around you one of the reasons I don't tell you what's going on One of the reasons I don't tell you how I feel is I have little to no confidence that you can help me feel better And that's because as soon as I start to open up about something and you ask me how I'm feeling You cut me off and you interrupt and you give me solutions that won't work for me They'll work for you. I can't do it your way. I have to do it my way And I don't know what my way is and so what I really need is for you to try to find out and help Me understand who I am and you can't do that by giving me advice and solutions that I just don't want What I really need from you is to find out what's going on inside me I want you to be interested in Pulling out how I feel because I just feel alone with it I feel alone with it and I can't make how bad it feels go away So did you get that kind of yeah, no, absolutely and Yeah, I remember towards the end of just listen to you had that letter That the teenager wrote and like that was you know powerful and like it just felt like emptying out All of it and so like that was like what your teenager wants to say, right? But like do you think that's a lot of people like even people in their 20s and 30s? Just maybe even with their friends and things like that. I think it's the majority of people Which is why people run to escape and why the escape distracts you but then you have to come back to yourself And here's here's here's my gripe with the internet even though I'm on the show because you get a lot of eyeballs I think What's happened is the internet and social media has addicted us to adrenaline Adrenaline and dopamine adrenaline and dopamine adrenaline and dopamine and adrenaline is excitement Dopamine is pleasure what happened and you'll know this as a former addict The only thing more powerful than an adrenaline rush Is an adrenaline crash and people will do anything they can to stop the crash Because when you're on a crash and you're running on adrenaline That probably causes you to be secondarily abd And so you need the high adrenaline to be high at all just so you can focus So when you're in an adrenaline crash, you can't even think clearly because you're so used to running on adrenaline And here's the deal there's another Hormone called oxytocin oxytocin Is the hormone about being about bonding feeling close and intimate But we've sold out on intimacy to get intensity. You know excitement is great It's interesting, you know, my book just listed as the top book on listening in the world But I can't get arrested for it in the United States. Really? No, literally I I spoke and I spoke in Russia to the russian federation for six hours And it was translated, you know spontaneously into russian It was just me for six hours and they didn't even look at their phones. They were so engaged But americans don't want to listen They want to be listened to Well, I think the challenge is and I was on another interview I say you have to make closeness Which is satisfying equal to immediate gratification So there's a lot of people, you know, uh, you know, I'm pretty good at this I can open someone I can crack someone open And and I don't make them cry. Let them cry And as they cry the pus comes out and afterwards they said, uh, that was just that was so weird Is it okay? Yeah, I think it was weird good. It's interesting. I was a guest I won't mention the person's name, but I was a guest on someone else's podcast and he is just so articulate He's bright I I know him pretty well and he helps people with their marketing He thinks far he talks faster than I think in the middle of it I said to him I gotta tell you something because I know you're a good person And the last thing you would ever want to make someone feel is less than or stupid And I'm feeling both of them with you Wow You better believe it. You want what? I know the last I I know you come from a good place and the last place you would want to do Last thing you want to do is to make someone feel less than or stupid And I would be very hesitant to bear my neck to you And I and I'm telling you that because I know it would be safe if I did that I know you wouldn't ridicule me But that's because I know you and you might want to think about that And Chris I gotta tell you it's almost like his head flop back and he said I said What happened? He said I haven't felt what you just did to me Since four years ago when I almost died and that's when I decided I got to change my life And I've been slipping back And he said I he said I'm British. I'm getting emotional I said, well, we don't have to post this, you know, if it's stupid. No, no, no And it's here. Here's here's what happened. He said no, no, no I want to post this in fact. I need this. I cry. I can't cry. I get so much a cry over and I can't cry I need this and the guy's been avoiding me like the plague No, but you get it you get it it's kind of like and so the point is and I think what happens is He'll make his way back in my life because he'll get busy and then I realize what I really needed was that Connection that felt so real But it scared me and why did it scare because what I did is I gave him a taste of safety in the connection He started to get emotional feeling it But then what happens is it's surrounded by a sea of a cesspool of non-safety Kind of like if I got through to you you could say wow mark You don't know it mark, but you've already done that five times in our interview Yeah, but you're right. I'll get back after this after this interview. I'll go back I'll go back to my burly burly thing and here's see here's this is gonna be fun I'm channeling you know mark. I don't think I can help you with this because you're what my listeners need But you're not what they want because what they want is bbb because it keeps the excitement going the adrenaline going Yeah, you know, but I am here to say you have what my listeners and I need But we all chase after what we want until it's empty Yeah, that's absolutely true in so many cases. I actually at the time of recording as just this morning I released a video on digital minimalism I finished a book by cal newport on that and how I've deleted a bunch of social media apps off my phone because Like you said, it's that it's that rush and as a youth like this is my primary job You know, it was constantly like refresh refresh refresh. What's going on? Right, but I was noticing This disconnect from a lot of things and that lack of personal connection and now Just doing it the last three weeks and kind of slowing down and just really enjoying the time when I go out to dinner with my girlfriend When I'm spending time with my son, you know, we went out to dinner He just got a cell phone for his birthday on New Year's eve and we even have him put his phone down and we get to connect You know what I mean? And I I absolutely love that and it's just something I didn't realize was so lacking in my life Like right now in 2019 where we're all just doing that stuff. How old is your son? He just turned 10. You may get away with this But uh, and I wouldn't do this right out of the gate So I would do it while you're driving with him because kids take face to face, you know, hard to hard conversations You know, they you know, they feel like, you know shooting themselves But but but what but when you're in an activity like driving Feed this into the conversation. You could say what what's his name? What's his first name? Dylan say Dylan Have a weird question to ask you. What is something that you don't feel either I or your mom understand about you what he says and say What is something that you feel that nobody in the world? Understands about you Have them say that and then you say to him, uh, what's that like? Listen to him and then and then say add it's worst What's that like? and you may get lucky because uh And then if he opens up about something, uh, you can say, uh, Dylan I have a favor to ask you just because your mom and I get too busy with all our squirrel brain I can't allow you to feel so alone in something like that And my favor is you do whatever it takes to get my attention. Yeah You know, I might be distracted. I might not immediately give it to you But I but as your dad who loves you as your dad who has felt really alone in places I can't allow you to be there alone. Yeah. No, I'm man. I'm glad that came up because we we used to be super tight Like I've been teaching him like meditation and things like that and he's kind of he's at that age where he's You know kind of separating. He's getting his new friends and everything like that But I know a lot of my hurt and pain when I was around his age and through my teenage years was I never felt like I could talk to my parents or adults about that. So I'm gonna try that I might even make a video about me trying to say tell everybody how it went But I actually just spoke at a high school for two days Like I went to two separate days and they asked me a bunch of questions about mental health and the stigma And how to get help and something I've noticed, you know through my own recovery working in a treatment center We we dealt with you know, uh adults so but a lot of our clients were like 18 to 24 And one of the number one things I hear is that youth is afraid to tell their parents about when they're going through something Like do you have any recommend like a side like is that the best Recommendation like is that like just to let them know like tell me like talk to me like Yeah, I would try it But uh, well, I'll share an anecdote. This is a very personal anecdote, but I'll share it anyway I dropped out of medical school twice and I think I had untreated depression and I had my father passed away 93 94 But he was pretty critical and he could be shaming and I remember when I was going to drop out Second time dropping out because I thought if I continued something bad would happen I wasn't going to hurt anyone else and I wasn't thinking the s word But probably wasn't that far away from it and I remember I said to him I'm leaving medical school and what he said is what'd you do flunk out? I said no and I'm passing. So why are you dropping out? Well, I'm reading stuff and it's not going in Yeah, but you're passing. Yeah, but I'm reading stuff and I'm not holding on to it Yeah, but and we got into this you know this sort of banter and he said we can get tutors And so there was a point at which I just looked down like this And he just kept talking and he said uh, so we're agreed You'll go back and I'm thinking I go back something bad's gonna happen I don't know if you saw any of the rocky movies Many years ago many so there was a movie rocky 2 Where burges meredith is trying to get rocky to focus on fighting Apollo creed and rocky is there because his wife adrian is sick and uh, burges meredith just doesn't get it You know, he'll not get it tomorrow rock That was an excellent impression and so burges meredith doesn't get it. My dad was like that Just didn't get it. Well, you're passing whatever and I'm looking down and there's a point My dad was probably the most challenging person in my life because he could be you know, you know intimidating And so I'll try and recreate it, you know because I can look right into the camera So I'm looking down like this and there's a point which I say I'm saying to myself I can't go back and I look up at to his eyes and I say you don't seem to understand I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I didn't make a case for it and I just stared at him He lowered his eyes and he clenched his fists And what I realized that was is he was like burges meredith. He was saying I don't understand, you know What you're saying. I don't understand why you're uh, why you're not going back I don't understand why you're not doing what I think you should do But I get that you're afraid and he said, uh, do what you need to do Yeah, your mom uh, and I'll try and help. So here's my here's my message to Teenagers if you could now it's very scary. He could have said stop being weak But you're taking chances and and it is russian roulette because if they Yell at you or they say you're weak you could go up to your room and do something bad But the point is I think when you can so purely show Fear and pain and vulnerability. I didn't make a case. I didn't know whether I had the right to be afraid It was and I believe that if there's any part of your parents who cares about you it will get through But as soon as you start making a case for you you invite a debate And as soon as you invite invited debate, you'll shut down you'll get frustrated You'll you'll say to yourself. Why do I even tell them? I knew that's what they would say It's my own fault. See I can't talk to them This is now. This is very chancey, but the point is It's like cutting diamonds and I think if you can show that beard vulnerability raw, you know Unveneared by sarcasm Or whining. I wasn't whining. I just looked at myself. I'm afraid I wasn't whining or complaining And here's the irony. I've done a lot of stuff. I've trained FBI hostage negotiators for 25 years I was the suicide expert. I've been you know, some pretty dicey things the most powerful moment of my entire life Was that conversation Nothing comes close Because it was like speaking your truth totally bare, you know, I could have been swiped down Now some of the people listening would say I can't take that chance with my parents because they're judgmental, you know, they never listen Then what I would say is go out and hear someone recently I've been speaking a lot on the father of the sandy hook student who killed himself recently And the two parkland students and what I would say to you if you're going through that You got to find people who are going through the same thing Because you will listen to them everyone else you won't listen to because you'll think it's easy for them to say it Didn't happen to them years ago I was seeing a woman her only child daughter was viciously murdered and I mean vicious The ex-boyfriend took a shotgun and blew her head up into a tree That's pretty vicious her only child and he escapes to canada And there's a whole big thing because they can't extradite him because The state that had happened and was capital punishment So they couldn't get a get him back over into the states and then the fbi and Canadian agents made some deal and they they shepherd him across that and I was seeing this woman And I didn't think I was helping her at all, you know, she would just sob or she would just say I can't go anywhere. Someone says do you have any kids? I can't go into a supermarket And there's nobody there that's going through what I am and even my husband He has step, you know, he has kids from his first marriage And the only thing that helped is I got her into a group called parents of murdered children and the la Chapter had a Sharon tapes mother in it dars tape that was the Charles Manson killed Sharon tape And so these are more often mothers of kids who have been killed and I went to I may have even been on one of the advisors But I went to some of the meetings. You don't want to go to these meetings All they relate to is how their kid was killed and where are they in the apprehension of the murder? It was horrendous. But what happened is over time newly minted Parents whose kids had been murdered would come into the group and they would see her like their mom And so so what am I getting at when you're trying to connect with other people who haven't been there no matter what they say You're going to think well, it's easy for you to say you haven't been through it Or if you're stuck in it, it's you can say and they say well, I went through it and I got better Well, it's easy for you to say because you got better. I'm not getting better But what I would say after these things is you have to find people with the identical trauma It's it's difficult and we'll wrap this up in the next 10 minutes But you just got all my emotions just rise and mark and I could talk to you all day long But there's been I don't know part of the Uproar surrounding my channel is, you know, I use a lot of my own personal experience I encourage people to do what you're talking about But I get it like working even at a treatment center Therapist would shepherd clients to me even though I'm not a licensed clinician Because they're like they're not in recovery. I'm like chris. I can't get through to this guy or this gal Can you just talk to him and they would just sit in my office and we would talk for a long time And they would you know stay in treatment some of them wanted to leave and stuff like but like That's where that connection came from and you know, I I encourage people to find like support groups Like you're talking about where people get it and you're being so kind as to have me as a guest on your podcast But that's that's something that I've been struggling with with my own experience right now is you know, just having the internet Just come at me. It's very hard for me to find somebody who has been through that exact same experience You know what I mean and I have a therapist who I work with and she doesn't even really understand youtube You know, so half the time I'm explaining what youtube and social media the internet is and I'm like You know, so I feel that disconnection all over again. Like I first found the connection in 12 step programs, but now I'm like Here's your new tagline. Okay. This is what you're gonna say to people Look at all me And the point is and you need to change your tone I mean, I love your tone because it's friendly. It's in your face. It's the opposite It's the anti whining tone Here's what you say whatever someone says to you take the hit and then what you say is you're absolutely right I am professionally and technically Somewhere between under qualified and and unqualified. I plead no contests What I am qualified as Is someone who causes people to feel less alone My main qualification is I don't know exactly know what happens I have conversations with people and they lead feeling less alone And that's that seems to result in they're feeling better. You know, what would I call that? I don't know less alone counseling. I don't know what to call it And and the main thing is and what qualifies me is knowing what it's like to feel what they feel I would never do anything to take advantage of them hurt them Exploit them now. That's it. I am a youtuber, you know the following So I'm not above getting my uh, you know my numbers up But someone comes to me hurting and scared and feeling any of the pain that I felt They couldn't be safe for anywhere and plus I'm not going to check boxes While they're running out of time and white knuckling it And so I don't know what that qualifies me to do But I'm I'm going to keep doing it and uh, and you know, and I respect the fact that you know, I don't seem to meet your criteria Damn it. Mark. How do you put these words so eloquently? It's like I need you to just follow me around and speak for me I need that. Well, here's an interesting thing to end it on so All right, so any of you who don't keep journals keep journals I got my right right here. Well notebook slash journal So we'll end on this because it's kind of fun So it took me six years to get through four years of medical school because I dropped out twice And when I finally finished and I wasn't a writer I was you know, I was a med student probably couldn't put two words together And so when I get out I get a crappy little notebook because that's all I thought my words were And I write on the notebook. I can't believe I made it through. They've released the madman I swear it's my first entry and I didn't know I was going to keep journals if you look at this This is volume 247 Oh, wow I have 44,000 pages The problem is since I'm a doctor I can't read my writing What are you writing about just like thoughts feelings experiences? What's interesting because I think at the beginning I'll I'll have to go review them You know, maybe I was journaling about something but now what I'll do is I'll have a conversation like this And I'll write down something that I want to think about more Maybe two words like I'm going to check if I use the right words I think it was targeted interventional empathy, but it could be something else But what happens is I'll write down something that I want to think about later But what's interesting is and by the way, I never look back at my journals I rarely do but what'll happen There's something about in my mind If I thought it and I felt that even if no one in the world sees it That was worth the action of writing it down There's something about actually writing it down that said my thought my feeling is at least worth this And then what happens themes come back And so I and then the themes can turn into an article the themes can turn into a book And when my kids were younger, I remember they and I used to have really, you know Bigger journals that I don't like to carry them like so I put them in the back of my pants And I take them while I'm walking I remember my oldest daughter Who's 38 and just irreverent outrageous and I love the heck out of my kids and actually I think I'm gonna check with her on this because when she was about Six years old. She said, you know dad if we had a garage sale and you died and we had to sell your journals We can only get 25 cents a piece because they're used Now I know it'll happen. I'll say, you know, you once said that to me. What do you think of my journals? She's so irreverent. She'd say inflation 75 cents. Yeah I might I might try that strategy because I have like all these separate notebooks and idea here idea there and Like yeah, maybe I just need to get it out. That's something with my brand and we can talk about that at another time But anyways, um, thank you so much for joining me mark and we'll be doing More in the future and I'm gonna link down below To the stay alive documentary or video what's called stay so the the site stay alive video dot com and And it's called stay alive an intimate conversation about suicide prevention It's 75 minutes, but because nobody has an attention span like that We've broken it down into eight chapters And please do a link to the uh chapter seven, which is the seven words. Yeah, please also show the uh the music video That was created by reiko. She's in the documentary. She's this japanese pop singer And we're hoping to go into the gaming animation and pop world because the darkness and suicide there is huge Oh, absolutely And then I hope we'll visit uh, I have a podcast that you're going to be on called my wake up call I'll share one last story. Okay, you can you can add it whatever lay it on me My most recent podcast is with a guy named jason reid and he did a tedx dot called the most important conversation You can have with your kids and he's a serial entrepreneur. He talks about he said Oh, I was in Mexico with my life and we're just talking about a great life and everything that's going to happen with our Kid, but we're just enjoying things and it was such and such time at night And I get a text from my son ryan and it says don't blame yourself I forget the second thing he said, uh, uh, you know, I I'm I have to do this. Goodbye So he's on vacation with his wife He gets this text message. He screams He calls home the mother-in-law's in the home and he screams or go find ryan and ryan goes up to the uh Attic and then she calls him and she's screaming he hung himself And and he's just distraught and ryan left two notes First note was with the passwords to his computer stuff And the other note was tell my story. So he's now doing a movie called tell my story So even though he's an entrepreneur very successful a couple thousand employees This is kind of he has a mission and teenage suit of teen suicide by 2030 What was interesting in the podcast and you can find it at my wake-up call. I think it's episode 18 He's an entrepreneur and you might be able to relate to what i'm about to tell you So he can go and feel really grief-stricken And then he switches into his entrepreneur mode and this is what we're going to do and this is what we're going to do And so he's doing that in the podcast and I said, uh, jason or j I said I need to stop you I want you stop and you know, even though it's an audio It's a video thing the call we're doing I said, I want you to go into the deepest pain that you felt Going to I said, I won't leave you there and he goes into it and I said, okay, you're there He said yes I said if I gave you advice and tell you what we're going to do and this is how we're going to fix it Is it reaching you and he said no and I said is that because what you're really screaming out at me You haven't said it is mark. I can't make the hurt get out of my head. I can't get the hurt out of my head I don't know what to do about and you can see as I said it He felt and the point I was making Is this is the conversations we need to do with our kids? We need to be able to get them to open up so that they can say I can't get the hurt out of my head And then when we can't rush in with solutions, we have to go deeper into the abscess. How bad does it feel? Tell me about it at its worst. You know while we're swimming around on the abscess. Let's go into it Tell me about it. It's worse. What happened that caused it What was your immediate impulse? Well, I felt it. I'm so glad you didn't do that What did you do? I got drunk. I did such and such. Wow. And then what happened? Well, you know, you woke up the next day and You know back to my so-called life or whatever, but do you follow me? That's not solutions That's going in there and and staying with them in the dark night of the soul Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, I look forward to you going into my My soul when I become a guest on them I'm worried, but I I need to have a good conversation about all that stuff And yeah, I'm gonna link all that stuff down below the podcast the video the music video And your books too because I just started just listen I read talking crazy first and I I absolutely love it. I love it Thank you so much and we'll do this again some time and then I'll let everybody know when I am over on your podcast But yeah, thanks again for being a guest Thank you