Psyched With Dr. D : Victimization and Dealing with Negative People, Keys to Avoiding and Preventing Negativity in Your Environment With Negative People.

The project Kuwait . Hey guys, welcome to this episode. Me and doctor d are sitting down talking about victimization and we hit on so many different topics within the victim card. Okay. Any other self fulfilling prophecy going into how we don't want to be around people that play the victim card. I think you summed that up really nicely. And people with locus of control, right? Internal and external, how to avoid to be a victimizer. That's right. And you gotta stick around to understand all these smart terms. That's right. Later in the episode. And I think it was awesome how you gave a lot of people different keys to look at when in a relationship, whether it's with your parents or someone around you so that they're not sucking the energy sucking lights. Right? So I mean, stay tuned and enjoy this episode guys is all this and morning today's episode is Dr Juliet.

That's the day. See, see how I chased my name. I love that. Yeah, I love it. I've been calling you Dr d since I was your student. But I liked Dr Jay actually. And a lot of people call me back today or Jay, you know, do to choose your [inaudible]. That's all we call it. That's why I call my niece, her name is Jude. So we call her Juju. And it was funny back when I played softball, I'd be like, yeah, you don't want any bad juju. And it's like, cause the magical term Juju like bad juju. And it's like now I can use that. Or it's like, but yeah, no, but I mean everyone are like, whenever I'm signing d yeah. So it's nice. And maybe because I feel like it's better than saying Dinka. You know, sometimes it might be longer. So when my friends call me j or two Oh [inaudible] oh that's awesome.

So yeah, it's a new show on the project. I know this is an awesome segment. I think it's something quite needs. Yeah. And I'm so excited actually, I think with needs and a lot of people need, and it's an opportunity to be able to talk about things that are related to psychology. And, and I want to emphasizing it to more people than things that people can really relate to. Yeah. But the t back and taboo. Yeah. T back in Deborah. That's very true. And, and it's so interesting because when I'm teaching there's certain things like you feel that people, my students, they're like very ambivalent about talking about or are we supposed to say this like just recently finished geno grams of family therapy class and people like I could see how like they're not really into deep because they know you talk about their family and this part of the region, everything is like so secretive and personalized.

No, no wants to say my mother's, my dad's cousin who is his sister. Who is that? That's right. No one wants to come out and say that, but it's part of our culture. You know, our second marriages are third or affairs, you know, because then they feel like they're putting themselves out there. And it's a good point. Is that a small country? So it seems like with one student is saying, you know, my dad is tree, this is this family, this is family. You always get one person or two from the class saying, oh you're related to me. Oh I know this. So in a way it makes it awkward for the person, but I think we really need to talk about it. These are psychological things or these issues. I think everyone has gone through. You are me 100%. My Dad's been married six times.

Yeah. I can't even throw a rock into a school playground. My brother or sister or even six times, I don't know. I lost count at six. My Dad, he was married to my mom for 18 years and we see the longest and he married my stepmom, Cindy, who is awesome. Really Nice Lady. They were married for a decent amount of time too, I think like 10 years or 15 years now. Cindy's American also? No, she was British Indian. Oh, okay. And then he married a Kuwaiti woman. Okay. They were married for eig

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

The project Kuwait. Hey guys, welcome to this episode. Me and d octor d are sitting down talking about victimization and we hit on so many different topics within the victim card. O kay. A ny other self fulfilling prophecy going into how we don't want to be around people that p lay the victim card. I think you summed that up really nicely. A nd people with locus of control, right? I nternal a nd external, how t o avoid to be a victimizer. That's right. And you g otta stick around to understand all t hese smart terms. That's right. Later in the episode. And I think it was awesome how you gave a lot of people different keys to look at when in a relationship, whether it's with your parents or someone around you so that they're not sucking the energy sucking lights. Right? So I mean, stay tuned and enjoy this episode guys is all this a nd m orning today's episode is D r J uliet.

Speaker 2: 0:59

That's the day. See, see how I chased my name. I love that. Yeah, I love it. I've been calling you Dr d since I was your student. But I liked Dr Jay actually. And a lot of people call me back today or Jay, you know, do to choose your[inaudible]. That's all we call it. That's why I call my niece, her name is Jude. So we call her Juju. And it was funny back when I played softball, I'd be like, yeah, you don't want any bad juju. And it's like, cause the magical term Juju like bad juju. And it's like now I can use that. Or it's like, but yeah, no, but I mean everyone are like, whenever I'm signing d yeah. So it's nice. And maybe because I feel like it's better than saying Dinka. You know, sometimes it might be longer. So when my friends call me j or two Oh[inaudible] oh that's awesome. So yeah, it's a new show on the project. I know this is an awesome segment. I think it's something quite needs. Yeah. And I'm so excited actually, I think with needs and a lot of people need, and it's an opportunity to be able to talk about things that are related to psychology. And, and I want to emphasizing it to more people than things that people can really relate to. Yeah. But the t back and taboo. Yeah. T back in Deborah. That's very true. And, and it's so interesting because when I'm teaching there's certain things like you feel that people, my students, they're like very ambivalent about talking about or are we supposed to say this like just recently finished geno grams of family therapy class and people like I could see how like they're not really into deep because they know you talk about their family and this part of the region, everything is like so secretive and personalized. No, no wants to say my mother's, my dad's cousin who is his sister. Who is that? That's right. No one wants to come out and say that, but it's part of our culture. You know, our second marriages are third or affairs, you know, because then they feel like they're putting themselves out there. And it's a good point. Is that a small country? So it seems like with one student is saying, you know, my dad is tree, this is this family, this is family. You always get one person or two from the class saying, oh you're related to me. Oh I know this. So in a way it makes it awkward for the person, but I think we really need to talk about it. These are psychological things or these issues. I think everyone has gone through. You are me 100%. My Dad's been married six times. Yeah. I can't even throw a rock into a school playground. My brother or sister or even six times, I don't know. I lost count at six. My Dad, he was married to my mom for 18 years and we see the longest and he married my stepmom, Cindy, who is awesome. Really Nice Lady. They were married for a decent amount of time too, I think like 10 years or 15 years now. Cindy's American also? No, she was British Indian. Oh, okay. And then he married a Kuwaiti woman. Okay. They were married for eight years. So it's like every wife time just got shorter and shorter. I think it's cause he got older and older so he can only tolerate certain things. Yeah. And he kept marrying younger. Yes, I was going to say younger women, his last wife was like my age. Wow. And he was like, yeah, call her you. I was like, hell doe Auntie. So yeah, that was, that goes back to like, you know, just like you're saying about your father man and these students and you know, we all have these family trees or genogram. And then when you look at it, you're realizing the trauma that this might have affected or how did this shape, I mean, why do we do these things in my class? At least it's like I want people to understand like certain things have happened in your life that have evolved you and have made you who you are. And if you look at it everywhere, everyone has had something in their life. I mean, you and I were just talking about it. You've had some traumatic experiences I have and it's really has shaped, back in the days I probably would have said, why God is doing this to me, why me? I'm such a good person. But then later on you realize it has really made me a stronger person because of these experiences. So that's why I let them. So whenever they're talking about their dad and you know that dad married another one or had another, had a girlfriend on the side and mom finds out, and the trauma that had caused these students, I always say to them, but from that experience, you've learned something else. Now some of them are saying, no, no, the trauma has caused me to never trust the man. I will never trust a man or I don't think love exists. And then these are fine. You know, they're still shapes your thinking about what to do 100% this brings me back to something I learned from you actually playing the victim card. That's right. And there's a silver lining in everything shitty that happened. You know, like there's always the silver line. You can either look at it as why me or this sox or whatever this happened, this happened in playing the victim role. Or you look at it and you play the hero, so to speak. Right? So as the victim role, the hero role, and there was something else I'm forgetting. I'm forgetting too, but the ideas is that a lot more people want to be victimized because that victimization gets people to feel sorry for you and it might benefit you at the beginning because then people can feel sorry for you and then they can help you out or, and maybe you want to act like, to me, I've never really wanted to ever have anyone feel sorry for me because I've learned that you have to be able, and maybe this is not right either, like they extreme, it's either that I didn't want anyone to victimize me and I always wanted to be strong. I always want people to think that I'm very strong and I can manage and I can do everything. But then on the other hand is like victimizing where you, you're going to enable them to be able to not do anything independent. I remember I used to say that people that are victimized are more at risk of becoming depressed because what they're going to do is act like they're helpless and hopeless and they're going to think they have no control over the event and therefore, if you think you have no control over the event, of course you're going to be depressed. And so we don't want people to engage in that victimization. To be honest, the patients that come there are victimizers, oh my God. Usually I can't last with them because ultimately I have to say to them, look, you're obviously here because you want me to teach you tools to how to take control back into your life. What they want is they want to come to a therapist so they can regenerate the same experience and that way you can also feel sorry for them. And then when they don't get that respond, they have a reaction that you're not helping them. But the truth about it, it has nothing to do. I'm not helping them, is that I'm trying to do something that other people haven't done and they're not used to it. I do truly think a lots of people want to be in that role of victimizing. My mother. Yeah, she plays the victim card. She's just the most negative person I've met and she always uses the victim. I'm the victim here, I'm the helpless person, Blah Blah Blah. And it's like till one and it's like how do you reverse that behavior though? It's so difficult. Especially when you get a woman in her fifties to sixties where that's just been their life of being the victim always and being negative. Like how do you revert that? Is there hope? The thing is is that my mother's the same way also and I think a lot of people after they get a certain age trying to be able to teach them, look, you stop needing to stop being victim and that's why I mean the thing if you think about it, I mean like your mom or whatever most of the time, like you're not that close with her. I'm sure your sister is not that close. You are okay, but you're not that close because if you are closed and that means she's going to be dependent on you. So a lot of times we don't like people that are victimizers because if they are in the victim role then they are going to be very dependent on us and they suffocate us and then we get really upset, especially if they people we love because what we're trying to do, like for example your mom, if she would have stopped being a victim then there are a lot of different things she could have made different decisions about different things including relationship or our life experiences or things that she wish she could do. Now that she's gotten older and usually they've done this so long, it is very hard to break now. Sometimes people you give them advice and say, look, you know you can be it. And I think sometimes maybe strangers should tell her that or tell other people, older people than us. But really to be honest, in my experience, a lot of times one out of 10 will get better. The other ones, the nine will not get out of the victim role. They're going to end up being alone. They're going to end up having stories and they're had this as, see, I raised my kids and no one wants to be with me. They're not appreciative. They'll create a scenario in their head that's really is going to convince them of why they need to be where they are. Right. So too, are we going to get them to get better? I probably not and the best thing to do is to realize that you've done the best. You can. Just learn not to be like them and be more independent and hopefully maybe one out of 10 it's very low, but there's no Tony Robbins for them. I always thought, how does that guy have so much energy? She's, I don't know. He's, I mean he's going to buy, apparently everyone goes to Dubai because they were coming to Kuwait before here. I've honestly, I never bought into him. I've never read any of his books. Neither have I actually, I just see some of the segments that he has on like Facebook. I think guys like has energy all the time. Right. But you know, I'm curious, does he ever have anyone that has moved from the victimizing role to the independent? Um, if you're younger and you catch it quickly, I think it's much easier. But most of the people that follow him are young. You know what? All chicken soup people, I'm not branding people, but I'm saying the people that are into the chicken soup of life and how to better yourself, they go with the Tony robins stuff, which is cool. I mean to each their own whatever you're doing to better yourself and if it's going to help you, it's fine. And you know, I don't know if it's just Tony. I think that there are so many of these people by the time they come to his workshop, wherever he calls them and they probably have read books. And I think sometimes it takes a lot of things before you can really make a move. And it's all fear, right? So I mean, why do people victimize themselves? It's all because they're afraid. They don't know anything better. And like I said, that scenario in their head, it feels so real that in their mind you can let go of something that's feels so real. Plus it requires effort, right? So if you've been a victimized person or you've taken the role of victimizer and then you have people helping you all the time, why would you want to give that up? I wouldn't give it up. Yeah, sure. You get all the attention in the world. You do, and then you get all people feeling sorry for you and everyone believes your story. And especially parents, like what really annoys me with parents is that they use this technique to get other people to feel sorry for them and to be able to give them credit for being great parents. But your kids were bad kids and that's not true. So often time is like these parents, they'll sit and complain to other people. Look what my kid did to me. I've done all these sacrifices and they're not appreciating. They're not around after they give them all these stories. They make the kids look bad that their kids are like either in America, like the immigrants do it all the time and then they act like the kids become Americanized and then they don't are so American that they don't take care of their elderly parents. And sometimes maybe it is neglect they don't want, but then other times I think it's because you are tired of hearing the same story and the same attitude. So these kids try to escape that negative environment by going into their own thing, creating something more positive and then they're looked upon as someone that abandoned their family and then take care of them. And they're selfish when they're thinking. There's a lot more to that. I don't know. I don't have a good relationship with my mom either. And I think it's because of that. It's constant as the murder. I've done this, I've immigrated for you guys, I've come to America, I've done all these things for you and none of you appreciated. But it's not true. All of us appreciate there. Certainly. I really hope my mom does. Thank God. I don't think we have other, we're like, I just get a lot of this stuff. I mean she's a great woman and she did too many things, but I feel like it's putting a lot of responsibility on your kids when you go around and just like feeling sorry for yourself. It does put a lot of responsibility on kids.

Speaker 1: 13:15

It definitely does. And I think for kids to get out of it, like if you're around that your whole life, I mean it's only going to breed, I mean I remember this from the days of the psychology class where, I forget the theory, but I remember it was like your social contacts or your social life. There's a layer to every, so you have your house which instilled certain behaviors, then your neighborhood and then it was your town, then your city area. We go, there we go. And then what was your country? So when your bread almost in that type of, I mean you see people from the same town, they still kind of have certain innate behaviors. So it's like, I mean I've got five brothers and sisters. How many of us play the victim card? How many of us play the, I'm going to get out of a car. You know what I mean? And I think that has an effect. You can't blame kids for turning out to be shitty adults if you are a shitty parent to begin with. I'm not saying that about our parents or my mother. I'm just saying it in general.

Speaker 2: 14:14

No, no, it's true. And that's another thing is that, but these parents wonder if they really recognized that they were shitty parents because a lot of them don't recognize that the, because remember they're in the victim role. So the victim and muse, they weren't shitty parents that they were great parents. Yeah, they got influenced by their of it's the other parent. If they got divorced or they got influenced by their friends, I think got influenced by their schooling. So the ideas is that because they don't really recognize that they were not good parents. Do you have these kids growing up and you know to go back like so I had all these students, they're doing their genogram and then they have to write this paper and it's more confidential they can say. And so the ideas is that it's very interesting because a lot of them come from like few of them talked about abuse, like physical and verbal abuse and how much they have hatred toward their parents or disappointment. A strong negative feelings at least. And how that has really erupted their relationship with that particular parent. Especially when I had this person, I was reading the paper just last night and how she felt like she was always the one that got the most punished as she didn't understand why she was the one isolated. And then punishment, like severe like corporal punishment, hot water punishment being kicked out, punishment like when you're a kid and live in you. So it's interesting because then you wonder like so, but this person now, she was saying in her thing that despite all that I felt like my parents did the best they can for me and I'm going to be very different as a parent and I'm not going to do these things. And so I felt like, like all of us, like when we grow up in that kind of a negative environment and suddenly we've made a commitment. I'm sure you know, you and I have talked about that in the past too, and your wife was pregnant and you wanted to make sure that the environment for your kids could be very positive because you weren't going to have this kind of an environment because it affected you so much. And I think all of us do, we want to be able to provide for our kids something different. We felt like, but then I don't want to renege the idea that because I grew up in that type of environment, or you are even the students when they described it made you who you are. I mean, look, you, you're very high achiever. You're very self-disciplined, you're constantly trying to achieve something higher and higher. Now you're taking care of a family. So did the trauma or the way you were raised really affect the way you were or did it, was this part of your personalities or was it the way I was born? That's a question like, cause a lot of people say leadership for instance. That's the easiest thing to look at. You're either born with it or you're born without it. Is it a genetic thing? Is it a thing where we play the victim card? Genetic wise? I don't think so because my grandmother was sorta like my mother. Yeah. I think it's a learned behavior, right? You learn because the first time you get reinforced by having someone pay attention to you. And some of the times, like I've even seen it in my practice where the woman plays the victim part because she played the victim. It's the only time her husband gave her attention. And so the, it's apparent that she doesn't really recognize. But for me, being the psychologist, I start seeing it. So every time she wants attention he doesn't give it. But if she cries and she plays the victim and she plays the needy, the broken, when she starts making him feel like he is the source of all her heart, then he comes back to her and he starts to give her some of the attention. Now, despite if it's negative or positive, this is where we see it's a learned behavior. So from the beginning he started giving her an idea that I'm going to pay attention to you when you are a victim. She learns and she teaches the kids that and they know, and it's not like a class where you have to learn. Our kids just learn by our action, right? Yeah. They see what we do. Monkey see, monkey do, right. And sometimes it could be both. Like if you see your mom as someone that's very passive, someone that is needy, someone that couldn't do a lot of things by herself, then you could do it two ways. You could either learn to be like her or make a promise to yourself that I'm never going to be like that, that I'm going to be a very strong person. Someone that is assertive, someone that is not going to live in this helpless, hopeless kind of condition. Cause you know these women that I see that are a victim also staying in an unhappy marriages because they think they are not strong enough. No, that makes sense. No, I mean we've talked a lot about what is like a situation where we play the victim card versus playing the opposite. Like what's a situation of being a victim? Is it, oh I failed on my test. The teacher doesn't like me because that's a victim card. You know what I mean? Can you give a couple more examples or, well, I mean the thing is is that in my experience, I mean of course victim a role could be from small thing like I got an but because you don't like me. But I think in my perspective or how I've seen it a hurtful the most now sometimes we need to play that victim. Please help me when we're doing for our teachers. But the bigger part where it's really harmful is when you are starting to believe that everything is happening to you that is negative. Like as of like you've been targeted. So the idea is is that when I see these women in the clinic, for example, where she acts like things have happened to her and she's this poor woman who has been excellent housewife, excellent wife, excellent mother and doesn't understand why all these bad things are happening to me now when you fall into that kind of a mental trap, this is dangerous. So for me the ideas is that if I want to be a victim, because I'm trying to get a target of some sort, get my boss to feel sorry for me. It's a different story, but to live in this perspective that everything is against you. Every bad thing is this poor woman, poor victim. Everyone wants to take advantage of me. I'm so nice and I don't know why bad things happened to me. Then you starting to really worry because then this is a cognitive distortion. Something is happening in your thinking. Just set yourself up. Well, let me set myself up to be the victim so I can get all of this stuff like saying nothing good will happen to me. I just know. So the ideas is that self fulfilling prophecy, so nothing good is going to happen to me. Of course nothing is going to, I actually wrote that down. I actually wrote that down too. So it ends up like nothing good is going to happen to me or I'm always going to have bad relationships are my friends are always going to betray me. So these are comments that we say, especially if you're that type of a person who's negative and then what happened? You ended up sabotaging some sort of a relationship where you can get this person to either betray you, cheat on you, lie to you somehow somewhere you're going to get this to really happen. Sometimes like when you say this to like to my clients are like, what? That's not true. I want to be the happiest I want to be. That's not true. I mean who are they teasing. You can not want to be happy when you've lived 30 years of unhappiness. How is that possible? I love the way people like do. That's not true. I want to be happy. I want to be like everyone else. I just want to be happy. And then you realize really well what are you doing to be happy? And the ideas is that they don't know what they want to do to be happy. There's impossibilities to be happy unless you really start to break this negative thinking. And then when you tried to connect the two, they're like, no, I want to be happy. It just, God always gives me these bad people in my life. You know, people always betray me. People are always negative towards me. And then you think what is wrong with these individuals that they don't want to see it again. It's an effort. People have to put effort into changing their life. They got to recognize that they're victims. So the first thing I think people should do, the first thing I let people want to know, okay, so which role do you want to play? Are you the victim? Cause if you wanna play the victim, we can continue. Or do you want to play the strong independent role and most people want to do strong, right? So they're like, no, no, I want to do a strong, I want to do strong. And then when you say, okay, let's write down what kind of things I want you to do this week and I talking about this time, let's do this week. But I want you to do is staff this behavior. When your husband says something, I want you to respond back in a nice way. I want you to write down every thought that you have so I can show you how you're a victim. They come back in a week. They don't want to do it because they like it. I do believe people get into the victim role because they like it. I know a lot of people say, no, that's not true. You're wrong. I know they like it because I find on like something, look, I didn't like being overweight. I lost weight, every card. I didn't like the way my relationship was going. It's gone. Come on. I mean, the idea is, is that people like need to get in the program. You can say to me, I don't like this and I don't like that. And then when you give them ways to do it, they're like afraid. I mean, you know, the first thing you got to get rid of is fear. What's the worst thing can happen? You're already a victim. No hundred percent nicer is there. What's the worst thing can happen? That's my motto for everything I say myself. Exactly. I say to myself, what's the worst thing can happen? And then I look for answers. Most of the time the answers, at least for me, they come to my mind. They're all things that already happened. So now I teach my clients the same. Ask yourself what's the worst thing that can happen? And then when they ask themselves that, and then as they come on, tell me what's the worst thing? What are you worried about? They give me, these things have already happened. And I'm thinking, okay, so what? Because change requires an action. An action requires getting rid of fears, right? It's a lot of work. That's what I love about why I switched sports and why I love crossfit is you trained to be uncomfortable and when you're doing things, you're going to be uncomfortable if it's new and if you're not uncomfortable, that means in my opinion, it's not very new to you. And it's funny you said that because last week I was with my boss and I was like, look, you need to pitch this to management because, oh no, I don't know. I was like, well, what's the worst that can happen? You say no, like what's the worst that can that you're not going to get fired, but what's the worst that can happen? They just say no. Right? But you never know if you don't ask. If you don't ask. And that's the idea is, is that most of the time people don't want to ask because they're afraid of rejection. Right. And like they said, I truly have this belief now other people can disagree with me. I think we picked the role to play the role that makes us the most comfortable. So this is why in the world we've got people that are independent. We have assertive people. We have passive people, right? We have passive aggressive people, we have victimizers. I think there are so many roles out there and for you to have this victimized role, there's a reason and I truly believe in that. The ideas is that if you feel that a victimizer has gotten you to some sort of a reward, people will continue doing it. Even if losing all your kids when you get older. No, 100% and it's just something that I think the older generation is screwed cause they don't listen to it. We might be the same thing when we're in their age. What do you think? I think that personally, I'm always like, I'm not a victimizer. Bagassi saw my siblings are, I could see the same with my siblings. I mean personally I'm like, dude, one thing that I've learned from my life is I can sit and cry about it or do something about it. And if I cry about it and nothing is going to get done, if I do something about it, something will get done and it's me. Who's going to lead the way to change? Not anyone else, but see, that's what it is. Me Too. I'm like that. But how did we become that way? That is the secret. So most of the time you wonder, I mean, you've got siblings, I have siblings, and then when you look around, we all had the same experiences. Please end the upbringing. Of course there are difference, you know, of course psychologists say there's a difference between the oldest and the middle and the middle children always that the victim and then the youngest. I understand all that. But you want to know, I always wondering, how did I get this personality? Like how did I become so independent? I'm strong. I'm a go getter. How did I do that? And my other siblings are average and they're okay, but I have this different personality and I always wonder what happened. I mean, simple. You chose the hero's journey, which is what I'm looking up right now.[inaudible] there's, there's 12 stages to the hero's job. And I mean every single theory theorizes it differently. But in reality, the hero's journey is just simply, you're not just going to sit and cry about it. You're going to actually do something, you realize what's going on and you're like, okay, well I have a choice. Do I turn to drugs and going to jail? It's simple. Like I've always found it weird because I've told people that I know that had been close to me. I'm like, dude, it's one plus one. You either do this or you don't. If you want to go to leading a normal life, then you have to take those steps to doing it. And you know, the thing is most of the time people will say, well, it's easy for you, right? It's easy for you to do that. Oh you know, because you're educator because you're a psychologist or because you're financially independent or whatever and it's not, I mean, this is what people don't really understand. It is not easy for me. It's not easy for you. I mean we might look like it's easy for us, but it's not, I have to work hard every day to be able to not feel sorry for myself cause I could wake up in the morning and say, Oh my God, I can't believe all the things that I've gone through and that I've gotten to this point actually being a victim or it probably suits me at that ball. But I had decided and maybe because I didn't want to look like the person who is vulnerable or I don't know. I didn't want to be able to get into that cause I felt like if I was the victim I was going to be weak. And if I was weak I wouldn't be able to take care of the things I needed to take care of. So maybe begin strong also has something to do with needing to be in control of our lives. There's people that are victimizers are not really in control of their life because they let other people be in control. And I was the person that never wanted anyone to be in control because I wanted to make sure my path, they here a path, the direction I wanted it to go. And I figured that's why. And plus my personality. I'm just like a strong person. I don't know if that victim role, I'm sure you've had things that have shaped me. When I was in the states, my dad shut me off from money. At one point I had to get a full time job and go to school and play baseball. And then I failed my classes. My baseball coach said, hey, you can't play anymore because you don't have the credits. Huh. So got my grades up so I could play baseball. Yeah. And then everything kind of worked its way around and whatever. And there was a period of two weeks where I lived in my car because I had nowhere to go and I was making like$250 a week, which is nothing when you're paying rent, you're paying your car insurance and whatever else. And it was very easy for me to probably just lie back and continue down the path I was going of just being an idiot basically, and not knowing how to manage my life. But then that taught me something. It was like, okay, I can't do this forever, right? If I'm in my thirties I'm not going to last. And I think that was my turning point. It was red bottom. I did, and I still thank him for this. My Buddy Patrick Fortuner, how's like depressed? I was definitely depressed and no one heard from me for like three days. Pat was scared. He was worried about me and I think I had written like some weird suicidal letter too that someone had found. It was something weird like that and I hadn't contacted anybody. Pat jumped through my window, he climbed up the side of the house, came inside, and he was like, dude, what are you doing? She was like, what are you doing with your life? That to me was a life changing moment. So that was kind of like the icing on the cake for me. But before that, I still play the underdog role in sports of

Speaker 1: 29:42

being the shorter guy, the batter guy, the one who couldn't run as fast as everybody. I liked the underdog role. Yeah. So I mean, yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:49

So you lived that role and then you decided, this is not gonna work out for me, but you know, see, this is what it is. And so the ideas is that we all need some sort of a drama. I mean a trauma or something that we have to had bought him in order for us to appreciate it. I tell my student that and they're like, oh, you know, I hope I don't go through. I needed that. Some of my students want to go through life without having some sort of a traumatic experience. And I tell them, just like I tell everyone else, it is important that we do go through something that makes us feel uncomfortable. Yeah. Now of course you're, I'm not wishing that people go through extreme trauma like homelessness or war or death or whatever, but sometimes we do. So at the ideas is that most of the time I tell people you should be able to experience. So hit bottom, it caused you to believe now you could have chosen to path one path would have been like now you're going to feel sorry for yourself, you're in the car and let me just go and drink or do drugs and numb myself. Yeah. Well you had decided that no, I need to reshape. I need to get my act together. I really like baseball. I really need to get an education. So the ideas is that, why did you not pick drugs and alcohol as an escape? I asked myself that question everyday. Maybe personality does play a part. I mean of course there's not, it probably does play a part in this. But see for you the same thing. Like I wonder there are people that drop out of college and they don't continue and they become depressed. You didn't, yeah, I'm a psychological anomaly. No, but I know a lot of people like this and then I also know a lot of people are the other sirens. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:21

More to the story. I mean like we started the episode, we were going to talk about trauma and it turned into like

Speaker 2: 31:26

victimization. I like this. It's amazing. This is, I know so many people are. Yeah, I think I know more people have victimizes and then people that are independent. Yes, you can be a hot topic because everyone should relate to it. Like I have seen people, my relatives who are victimizers, I had people close to me. I've seen it in my clinic, I've seen it with my students. I think we see it so much and there is, people are annoying because after a while, especially if they're close to you, you feel like you're trying to ignore them or at least avoid them because you feel very burdened. They suck your energy out, they take energy from you and then not only do they take energy from you, but they also make you angry. I mean, I don't know if you've ever felt like that like with your, around your mom, but whenever I'm with someone that's very close to me you're assume it's like my mom are like[inaudible] the same way is like, you know, after a while I was like no, no, no and I'm angry. I used to think why am I mean? Of course I'm not angry now because you know, I feel like there's no hope with the ideas is that I used to get really angry, especially when my mom starts repeating the same stories of how much she has done and how little we are doing. So felt like this idea of like that she was playing this victim role but she didn't even know is a victim of, she just really seriously thought that she was just talking the truth about how she has not been appreciated. And I used to be angry. No, I was still like, sometimes I would be like angry. They have to leave cause I'm usually not that disrespectful kind. Sometimes I would like fed up or I would avoid her when I was younger and I lived in the Chicago area, I used to avoid her because I was like, no, no, no. It can be like, and then when my dad was alive, there were two of them doing the same thing. He was doing it Thursday. He was doing it too. So I felt like, because you know why? Because when you love the person in front of you and you want them to make better decisions in life, you get angry because you could see them really harming themselves with this pattern of thinking and you can't do anything about it. And then people like people like, well, you're a psychologist, why haven't you helped her for? It doesn't work that way. It's because it's a commitment. And I think it's two things. One person have to realize, I don't want to be a victim. These people that we're talking about, especially older people, they don't recognize that they're a victim. They just thing this is the way of life. This is God created it, or Karma, whatever it is that they're believing in. So they truly believe this is a role that they're playing. That is an actual role. So to sit there and say, mom, listen, this is negative. You are doing this. You don't feel sorry for yourself. Nothing is wrong with you. And people are feeling sorry for themselves. There usually nothing wrong with them. You know, it's not like they're homeless or they're bad or whatever. So I'm like, there's nothing wrong is fine. It doesn't have to look this bad. And they're looking at you as of like you just from another planet and you're not understanding their emotions. Right? So it's like whatever. Seriously, because you do it. And the reason why I used to get mad, and I'm sure lots of people about their experiences because I wanted to be able to just change everything, make this person independent, make this person strong, make this person, make decisions that are so positive and it didn't work. And then I finally realized like it's not gonna work. Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you say that because when I look at how like my parents are so to speak, I'm just like, fine, I can't talk to you guys if I have other shit going on in my life. Yeah, that's true because it just, it angers me more and it's like then it affects how I am as a father and a husband and that's why like for me personally, when I'm around people of that nature, not just my parents. That's true. I have friends that are the same exact way. I got to take a step back and be like, yes, I need my break right now because I don't want to sit here and take it out on my kid or my wife because I'm getting pissed off at the situation. I know you get charged up. That's why I was saying like, I get angry. You get charged up and then I go home and then I vented on my family or my kids or whoever and then I realized, but this also happens with a lot of clients. I see. To be honest, I just feel, because they suck your energy out, you're sitting there explaining to them, listen, what you're doing is called a, B, and c, you really need to get your life together and instead of blaming me that your situation hasn't changed, why don't you blame yourself that your situation hasn't changed you because you haven't done anything about it? Because most of the time they'll come, they'll dump on the therapist and then they'll blame the therapist that you haven't done anything to help me when really the truth to be fact is like I've given you tools and you haven't used them, for example. So, and then you go home and you're exhausted, you are tired and you're angry because these people, you've just allowed these people to take your energy out. They suck. You are of your energy and then you feel like I don't have energy for the people that I do love her. So what I've decided is like, do you know when the changing came is when I decided I have no control over this, especially if it's family members. Right. I have no control over them. I have no control over their thinking and the only thing I have control over is me and my reaction to them and that's when things changed. Sorry, this might be off topic. Locus of control, right? Love is, how could you remember all this stuff? It's been 10 years. I could go back and Redo it. I would be a psychologist.[inaudible] screwed up. But it's great because sometimes I see that's what it comes down to, you know? Thank you. But I mean sometimes like I see students are like, where did you guys learn? They're like, oh, but you know, most of the time I'll say like a few would learn nothing in my class. I want you to learn with some things. Like on my Instagram, my students like yourself, I've graduated for years that I've kept in touch with or whatever. They'll send a message and say, look, I just remembered you remember you mentioned it's amazing, it's great experience, but it is locus of control and it's for interesting because whatever I teach about locus of control is like there's still like 30% of the class beliefs that they have no control over their destiny and they have no control over life in general. Well, I mean if you have that kind of a mentality, but then other students are like, no, I have an internal locus of control. I know I have control over my destiny. I have control over my, what happens to me. So the more you can really emphasize that internal locus of control, the more you can see your successes. Now you're not everyone's going to be a millionaire because they have internal locus of control. But I know that what has happened to me, I'm only responsible for, and that's what made it gives you power. Exactly. Even the mistakes I've made, I've made many mistakes and I've made a lot of positive things and I've helped a lot of people. I know that it has something to do with my internal law because it was me that did it. While people that have external locus of control constantly thing, they have no control, so they let everything happen to them without having any saying in it. And that's what the difference is. When you're running a race, who wins? Usually it's the person, of course, the one that practiced the most, but is the person that truly believes that they are going to win. If I'm going up to a lift, this is for like the other listeners who who are into the sports of it, but if you're going up to a lift, if you're going up to squat 200 kilos, if you walk up to the bar thinking you've already failed the squat, you're not going to lift the damn bar. You know? It's just, that's just how it is. And it happened to me last week. I kept thinking to myself, I did a competition in January with something called a bar muscle up. All right? It's a, it's a difficult gymnastics movement. So then a couple of weeks ago I had to do a ring muscle up, which is a little bit more difficult in my opinion, and I kept thinking in my head, I don't want this to turn to flare and flare. I failed so many times, just kept falling off the bar, falling off the bar that when I went into do this workout, the first time I got one, I got two and then I kept falling off the ranks. Now did I set myself up for it? Possibly because I was thinking from the day before that I was envisioning what was happening to me at flare when I kept falling off the bar. Barris meant just failing at, it sucked. So I kept feeling that feeling and low and behold, the first time I did the workout, same thing happened and then the next time I did the workout I was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm just doing this to try and get a better score. Low and behold, I did much better than the first one. Yeah, I got 60 in the first one and then I got 90 so I improved a decent amount. But when you talk about, look, I take control that I controlled my screw up the first time around actually. And that's what makes it wonderful is that what happened with these people have external locus of control, all the negative things that happened in their life. They blame outside sources on it and then they're winning. They give credit to themselves. So the idea is is that it doesn't really work that way. As soon as you know, I have control over what happens to me. Even your behavior changes, your mentality changes, the outcome changes. It's because you have told yourself that I am in control. I mean, look how powerful that is to say that I am in control. And then you know, you say that to people and they're like, yeah, but my like I had this adolescent and I'm like, no, you are in control of these decisions. She's like, how can I be in control? My parents wouldn't let me like go out the house or travel abroad. And there are some things of course when you're a minor, there are some things that parents have to make the decision, but again, people are missing the point. I have an internal locus of control. How I view this situation on how I feel about this tuition. It doesn't always have to be an action like I didn't study abroad because we are parents, but it's about how I viewed the idea of staying here. For example, how I viewed not participating because my parents told me I can't be experience. Maybe understanding what they are saying, maybe realizing that I'm going to do it when I get older. So you know what people really need to realize is that it's freeing to know I'm in control versus people that have external locus of control are the victimizers. They're never going to be free with their experiences from what happens to them and it doesn't make sense. Why would I want to live like that? I think they've used, they chose it because they've done it for so long and they don't know anything different and it's comfortable. Like I said, all of us, we look for places that we are comfortable. I remember I had a professor in university when I was doing my graduate work and my doctorate program always used to say, you got to leap into the uncomfortable as how is this thing? Why? If it's uncomfortable, why don't I just stay where I am? It's comfortable and I realized what he's saying is that you got to do the things that are uncomfortable. It brings you a better satisfaction. You empower yourself, you feel much better and I so ever since then I realized it might not be that bad. If it's uncomfortable. Hundred percent you should try crossfit. Yeah, I should. Somebody telling me I should actually you should, but I heard it's hard. Somebody told me after 20 minutes you feel like you're dying. No, honestly it depends on the coach. Is it really have a good coach. You're not going to get hurt and it will be a brisk exercise session. Really. It's not an hour, right. Cross fit. It can.

Speaker 1: 42:37

The sessions that I've been to are the classes that I've been to. There's usually a strength element for like 1520 minutes and then it goes into the workout of the day or the wad and sometimes it's in teams, sometimes it's so low and everyone's like, oh I can't do this movement. It's too hard. I don't know what this is, but if you have a good coach, it used to be like, all right, we'll scale this down and you're going to do a, B, and c instead of doing a clean or a snatch or whatever. Whereas some other coaches though just be like, no, this is the movement. Go ahead and do it. That's why you hear people get hurt. Yeah. Cause that's what a bad coach does. It's like, yeah, here you go. Do it. It's your first time and go ahead and do it where, hey, you should try it. I think

Speaker 2: 43:13

I Sudan and you know, to be honest, a lot of people have said it is difficult, but I know how I am and I know that if I try anything because I'm so self-disciplined that I probably, I might not be best at it, but I know that I probably can manage it and do it. There's an internal voice that I have that says no matter what happens to me, I'll always be okay. And so, and I don't know where they came from and I think I trained myself for years to say this to myself that finally I, so I know that if I wanted to try the crossfit or do anything that's new, I'll probably be okay with it. Yeah, you're right. But I, you'll have to tell me about a good coach because I don't want to do it and do it wrong. You don't want to get a bad experience the first, that's what somebody told me. I have a colleague at the university says, Oh, you should try it, but it's so hard. You sweat first 20 minutes. And I'm like, it's good cardio. It's really good.

Speaker 1: 44:02

Yeah. I mean there's so many things that are great about crossfit and so many things that are wrong about it. Yeah. Like if I, before I used to hate crossfit, I wouldn't even step into a crossfit box, but once I started and tried it and I wasn't associated with all the jerks, because right now there are a lot of egos in it. There's always egos in sports, but for teenagers especially, I think it's good because right now we don't have things that pushed me when I was a kid. It's nonexistent. Crossfit kind of offers that, right? Crossfit offers you to find that self resiliency pushed through a workout to the, I don't quit mentality, which is something we don't for kids.

Speaker 2: 44:40

Genetic is something they have to learn. Right? Yeah. The thing is is that it's true and I think because this internal locus of control is not genetic and self-disciplined, we do need these kinds of activities because these activities are teaching our kids to be self-disciplined, to push beyond their comfort zone. And so if we can put them in all these activities, I think we can create people more people that are independent and less people that are victimizers for example, we can get more people that internal locus of control versus external looks.

Speaker 1: 45:11

I love it. I just gave the awesome psychologists a tool with crossfit.

Speaker 2: 45:15

Yeah, because I was thinking like even with my kids or my friend's kids or even kids we see at the clinic is like most of the time parents bring them because they feel like they're not self disciplined enough. The other day, last week I did a podcast or an interview with individuals that use martial arts. Oh, flow park. Yes. Right. They're great. Yeah, they're great. And you know, we were talking, I actually, it was supposed to be half an hour. We talked for an hour and he's a great guy. But the ideas is that, you know, we need more of this stuff because if the parents, for example, we don't want to act like it's dead end. If your parents are victimizers and they're negative, does that mean your kids are going to be like that and they don't have to be. If we can get them into activities and sports where it can train them for discipline that we need empowerment. So that's why I was telling him last time is like you want to get your kid to feel confident, try to put them in these all these programs. They should have a curriculum that kind of has that component.

Speaker 1: 46:10

Yeah, no a hundred percent I want to get you to a psychoanalyze my crossfit coach. Oh okay. He's someone that I haven't been able to like put the pieces together. Yeah. Yeah it's good you said. Oh he's great, great, great crossfit coach. I mean he's taken me from like I didn't know anything to where I am now. Like a huge jump, like to the point where I trained with very high level athletes last week and I was worried about my technique and they were like, no, your technique looks pretty good. You've been telling me the same stuff for six months, but you know like it just takes hearing it from someone else. Something that's you know, but all right to sign out on this episode. What little tidbits, little quick like pieces of advice can you give? Let me throw you on the hot seat for a second. It seems like a hot seat. You know you're going to want me to, do you want me to tell you what mine is? Yeah. Tells me what's yours is just if you fall, get back up. That's the only way you learn and have an internal voice. Convince yourself from now. I mean I swear to you, this is what has helped me in all these years, which I won't tell you my age. That point was 27 28

Speaker 2: 47:11

I've been telling my kids that too. I did. I felt like I always have this internal voice. Nothing will ever happen to me. If you truly believe in that a, you'll always be empowered. You know they're going to be crisis and you're going to stress. Now, this is done to say that I won't stress and I haven't lost some sleep thinking of a certain event, but ultimately, deep down I know I'll get out of it. Nothing is going to happen to you, and so if you believe in these things, you know that. And remember, if you know someone who is older than you, they are victimizer. You stop trying to change them, they're not going to change, but your perspective of them should change. What do you think about that ending? Awesome. All right guys, thanks and head over to the Instagrams and check us out if you have any questions. You're just a DM and yeah. Yes. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please head over to iTunes to subscribe rate and leave a review. You can also find us on Instagram at the Project Kuwait. Thank you. And join us next time.