 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's all about mental health. And something that can take a major toll on your mental health is relationships. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And yeah, I'm gonna do at least a few videos on this show, Love is Blind. A lot of you out there really enjoy the videos I make about relationships because I have plenty of experience being in terrible, insane, toxic slash abusive relationships before I found my beautiful girlfriend Tristan. But yeah, so many of you when this show started, I had so many messages. So many messages like you can talk about Love is Blind, are you gonna talk about Love is Blind? Chris, you'd need to make videos on Love is Blind. All right, and I finally decided to torture myself and watch this. So Tristan and I legit watched seven straight episodes. Yesterday and there's so much to talk about. But for those of you who don't know me, I try to see what we can learn from stuff like this. All right, but anyways, I was like, should I talk about Jessica and Mark and that hot mess of a relationship? Or should I talk about Giannina and Damien? And as you can see, as you clicked on this, I decided to go with Damien and Giannina for this very first video. Before we get started, I gotta vent a little bit. I need you guys to let me know if I'm crazy or if we're on the same page. So this show, Love is Blind, was promoted as like, almost like the voice, but for dating, right? And I love the voice, okay? So you put these people in a pods and they don't get to see each other. This way they can't be physically attracted to each other. In any way, you're just making this pure emotional and spiritual connection. But as you watch this show for like five minutes, you start to realize that literally every man and woman on there is like at least an eight or a nine, right? So like this whole like, ooh, you can't see him, like that doesn't even matter. Like on the voice, you legit don't know who it is. Like they've had blind people on there. They've had overweight people on there, right? They've had people on there who are not traditionally attractive and they are judged purely on their voice. Whereas in Love is Blind, like, a lot of these people would have been attracted to each other anyways, all right? So let me know if I'm crazy. Let me know your thoughts on that. Like I would have loved to see a mix with some like fours and fives in there, maybe some threes, you know, and all of that, right? Like just so there'd be more of this like, oh, are they really going to be physically attracted to each other, right? But anyways, anyways, let's dive into this. So yeah, we're gonna be talking about Giannina and Damien. And I wanted to talk about three major things. Obviously this show is in a setting that is not realistic, but it can be realistic if you're somebody who's like, I need to find a mate, all right? Because I might do a whole video on the psychology of when you get locked into that idea, how you make really bad decisions. But anyways, there's still a lot of things that we can learn about red flags and what they mean and what we should look for and all that. And I wish somebody would have talked to me about this when I was in my younger dating days, all right? So the first thing I wanna talk about is self-sabotage. So when Damien finally proposed to Giannina, right? She's like, I have something to tell you. I'm like, oh, girl, was she gonna tell him? And she ended up telling him that she has a tendency to self-sabotage. He's like, oh, it's okay, baby, it's okay, right? And they get engaged and you know, they go off to their little canker in vacation and everything like that. Check this out, okay? When somebody tells you they self-sabotage, okay? You have to ask yourself, what does that mean? Okay, what does that mean? Because the word self-sabotage almost sounds like the person is only doing it to themselves. And that could happen in, you know, maybe they self-sabotage, you know, work or school or whatever, but self-sabotaging relationships is a completely different ball game. And check this out. Not only have I dated women who self-sabotage relationships, this guy, this guy right here used to self-sabotage relationships. So first, let's understand the mindset of somebody who is self-sabotaging relationships. They typically, and at least from my experience, they typically don't feel good enough, they don't feel worthy enough of a relationship. So they try to push that person away as hard as they can, all right? And this can come in a variety of different forms, starting fights, right? Really dumb, stupid fights, okay? Doing things like that. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, there's also this fear of abandonment. So what a person will try to do is put you through hell, put you through the ringer to be like, will this person put up with all of me, right? And from the outside looking in, you're just like, oh, maybe they'll just test you a couple of times, but this is an ongoing issue and something that's gonna be a focal point of this video is therapy, okay? This type of behavior usually doesn't get fixed unless there's therapy or for me, it really became to the forefront of my mind and me realizing what I was doing in 12-step programs when I first got sober, but now I'm in therapy. Like it takes a lot of inner work and introspection to work on this self-sabotaging. But like I said, you may hear self-sabotaging I think it's only this one person, but you see from Damien's perspective, like when it comes to a relationship, this is them yelling at you, fighting with you, poking you, starting these little relations, these little, not relationships, starting these little fights and everything and it can drive the other person absolutely nuts. For me personally, I stayed single for over a year and a half to work on these things because I knew how selfish it was to get somebody in a relationship with me when I knew I was going to do those behaviors. So if you are somebody who self-sabotages, check yourself, go to therapy, work on this thing before you keep jumping into a relationship to see who could put up with you at your worst, right? And if you are somebody who is about to get in a relationship, if that other person says that they self-sabotage, you need to sit down and ask yourself, what does that mean? What does that look like? All right, because it typically means they are going to possibly verbally and emotionally abuse you, okay? So the next thing that we need to talk about is black and white thinking, okay? So there was this scene that I was like, oh, damn, when Giannina and Damien, it was right after they did the little birthday party for Barnett and the next morning, because Giannina and Damien got in this huge fight, the next morning there was still that kind of tension, right? And I could do a whole thing about resolving conflicts and relationships too. As I spitball here, let me know down in the comments if you want me to make videos on this stuff. But anyways, out of nowhere, out of nowhere Giannina brings up that he always says this is the best sex he's ever had, but she's like, you ever notice how I don't say that? Like, ugh, okay? Typically, this is something that you see with people who suffer from black and white thinking. And by the way, don't get me wrong, like there are plenty of faults on Damien's end, right? But I think I can relate more to Giannina, so I wanted to focus on that for this video. But anyways, for those of you who don't know what black and white thinking is, it's where you categorize people as either all good or all bad, right? And in relationships, the way that looks like, what that looks like is, I love you, you're the best thing to ever happen to me. Oh my God, I can't imagine a life without you. But then it goes to the other side where it's like, I hate you, you are the absolute worst person on the planet. You are evil, you are the devil. I can't handle you, right? There's no in between. There's no in between. And typically, this is a result of poor emotional regulation, right? Where you're putting somebody as all good or all bad. It's this extreme version of attraction and aversion. So what you're seeing right there is she's not just kind of saying like, oh, and that was a real jerk thing you said to me. No, she wanted to hit him right where it hurt where it would be the most painful thing. And this isn't just some relationships, like intimate relationships. You see this stuff all the time, probably in your everyday life. It might be with a friend, it might be with a family member, it might be with somebody online where they try to attack something that's gonna hurt your pride the most. So what Giannina was doing, she was attacking kind of his manly hood, how he's able to please a woman. She went straight for the jugular with that stuff, okay? So if you do struggle with black and white thinking, something that helped me get out of it was aside from therapy, mindfulness, meditation, because what that does is it strengthens your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for emotional regulation, right? I used to be all over the place. And in the next thing we're gonna talk about, in the scene I'm gonna talk about, Giannina actually mentions a couple times in the scene about how she has these emotional roller coasters, all right? So although you hear that emotional roller coaster, what that means is a problem with emotional regulation, all right? So the way I used to teach people in the rehab is if you look at this thing on a scale, right? Zero in the middle, plus 10, minus 10, okay? Whereas some people get happy, people with poor emotional regulation get ecstatic, right? Whereas some people start to like somebody, people with bad emotional regulation, they fall in love. But on the other side, it's normal people get a little upset, people with poor emotional regulation, they get pissed, right? And that's kind of the difference. So we need to work on ourselves to get us back towards that middle, okay? How quickly we bounce back to that average state of emotions, okay? So the last thing I wanna talk about, and by the way, we just finished episode eight, so I'm not even done with the season, might have some more stuff to talk about, but I have a pretty good idea of what's gonna happen. But anyways, at the scene where they talk over dinner and Damien is airing all of his grievances with Giannina. Well, there's a point where Damien says, I need you to try. I need you to try to not pick so many fights, to calm down, I need you to try. And then she makes that commitment. She makes that commitment, right? So aside from my clients at the rehab, who would talk to me about their relationships, I've also had a lot of friends throughout my life who talked to me about this. And they're in these relationships where they're constantly fighting and all these other things. And they'll either express that they want the other person to try, or they'll tell me that the other person said they were gonna try. And kinda like what we talked about with self-sabotage, this is where I want you to think about this. What does trying look like, okay? Just sit on that for one second. What does trying look like? All right, for me and what I would talk to other people about, or the advice I give people when they ask me, what trying looks like to me is going to therapy. That's what trying looks like to me. What trying looks like to me is a person having a regular meditation practice. What trying looks like to me is a person starting to journal and do some self-reflection. But typically when someone says they're trying is they basically had that conversation and then they go back to their normal behaviors. So even though I haven't watched the rest of this season, I guarantee I would put money on the fact that Giannina trying literally means nothing. And that's what we gotta look at in relationships, especially if you're in that early kind of part of the relationship where there's not a huge investment in the relationship, like you've only been together a month, two months, whatever it is, if you are constantly fighting and that other person says that they are going to try, ask yourself what that looks like. Hell, better yet ask the other person what that means, okay? Have them make a commitment on what trying actually means. Because if trying just means I'm gonna try not to get so angry. Like what? Like what are the steps you are taking? Like I can try to be a pilot, but unless I take lessons on how to be a pilot, me trying is just a pie in the sky dream, you see? So if your partner says they're going to try, see what that means. And the last thing I'll talk about which really just popped into my head is you see this a lot in abusive relationships where there is worst case domestic violence, but typically a lot emotional verbal abuse where it is very toxic, it is destroying your mental health and the person apologizes and they say they're gonna try to do better. The reason why I try to really drill this home with people is when the other person says that, what does trying look like? What does trying mean? Okay, because most of us, we have this false belief that we have this willpower to just control our emotions, but if you're not practicing taking care of your emotions, that trying doesn't mean squat. All right, those of you new around here I like to pull a comment from the last video, share it in this video, discuss a little bit and then leave you something to leave a comment on in this video. So the comment from the last video, the number one comment actually is from, God, I hope I don't butcher this name. Tazit Dewey, sorry if I screwed up your name. Sound like Jarvis Johnson. But anyway, just says, bro, I was an heroin addict just a few months back doing, during cold turkey period, your videos helped me a lot. Thanks, I appreciate you. That is why I do this, but I'm gonna tell you, as well as anybody else who watches my videos, the same thing that my sponsor used to tell me. I used to thank my sponsor all the time and say, dude, you saved my life, you saved my life. And he would remind me, he's like, nah, man, you're doing the work. So to Tazit and anybody else out there, just remember like, if you are getting better, like I'm only here to plant seeds, right? Like I just wanna encourage people to go get help and start working on themselves. You know what I mean? But in order to get better, like we have to put in the work. So Tazit, congratulations on your recovery. Like you have put in this work and that is awesome, okay? But for this video, down in the comments below, let me know if you have struggled with self-sabotage, what you did to overcome it or if you're still working on it. If you can relate to anything that we've talked about as far as relationships, drop it down in the comments, let us know what you learned from this, okay? I want this to be a community where we can learn from each other's experiences. I'm just one dude sharing my experience, my thoughts, my opinions, all that, but I want this to be a team group effort, all right? Anyways, I forgot to mention, if you need therapy, if you have insurance, talk to your insurance provider, see who's covered in your network. You could talk to your primary care doctor, they might be able to refer you to a therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, if you might need meds. But lastly, I personally use better help online therapy. If you would like to check it out, it is affordable online therapy, which I personally use, I have an amazing therapist, and they actually help support the channel, so there is an affiliate link. Down below, basically what that means is that you get affordable online therapy with an amazing therapist, and a little bit of it comes back to help support the channel, all right? Anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I will be making a few more Love Is Blind videos, all right, and I want to send out a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon, as well as everybody who buys my mental health books at therewiretole.com, and everybody who supports the channel by buying the merch, you're all awesome, all right? Thanks again for watching, I'll see you next time.