June 20, 2025 • 20 mins
There were a lot of things I believed about manhood, control, friendship, and faith—or so I was told.
Most of it? BS
In this episode, I unpack the five things I wish someone had told me before the shame, the self-sabotage, and the silent suffering took root. We get into toxic masculinity, performative faith, the danger of being the “contrarian,” and why therapy cracked everything open. This one’s about unlearning the lies that kept me small and finally choosing something better.
If you’ve ever built your identity on someone else’s expectations just to stay safe, this one’s for you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Right now in my head there's nothing I want to rant on
because I'm pretty happy. Like personally.
Must be nice, yeah? Yeah, yeah, no, it is nice.
(00:22):
I'm going to Anime Expo this year.
Oh yeah, have you been? You've been before, right?
Three times no. Dang.
If not, this will be my third time.
It's at the LA Convention Center.
The LA Convention Center, I'm super excited.
I'm going to be there July 3rd soaking stoked.
Going to be there with a friend.Why are you laughing?
(00:43):
Gonna be there with a friend. Is it a newer friend?
No, I've been friends with this.I've been friends with this
person for a little over 2 years.
Oh yeah. Yeah, bro.
That's good. Yeah.
And they've never been before, so this is their first time.
That's crazy. So then they're not like a as
big of an anime fan as I am. So I'm really excited.
That's always fun when you have somebody who is like open to
(01:04):
your interests and you can just kind of like yap away.
When they let you yap away? When?
They let you yap away. Yeah, I love yapping.
What's the last thing you've like, really, when you yapped
about this thing and then you felt that like, elation
afterwards, Like, damn, I feel better now.
I talked about. I mean, every time I'm in
therapy, every time I have a therapy session, yeah, that's
(01:24):
what that is. I'm yapping away.
And then I feel so much better afterwards.
And I can't really talk about what I've been talking about in
therapy right now because it's alittle too personal, but.
Snap. If we're talking about like with
somebody else, yeah, I think onething I've been talking about
that makes me feel better is kind of like, no, it's nothing
too interesting. I guess it's just like.
(01:44):
What is it? It's not, it's nothing
interesting at all. It's just like my personal
beliefs on like, you know what closeness looks like, why I
don't necessarily seek out a lotof friends, like why I don't I'm
not always looking to like have a large circle of friends.
How it's kind of used to though.Did I really?
Kind of, yeah. So, OK, so that's what I was
(02:06):
talking actually last night. I was going pretty in depth
about how before I did have a pretty good circle of friends,
but it's nothing compared to thefriends that I have now, which
are like so much more in depth, like the vulnerability and like
the things that we talked about is so much more constructive, I
guess, authentic or transparent as opposed to when I was much
(02:28):
younger. That's not to say that like I
don't have, you know, fun, entertaining conversations now.
It's still a thing, but it's like the, the, the I don't know
if pretext is the right word, but the foundation or the
pretext of my new friendships has been like vulnerability some
because somebody was asking me somebody that person I was
talking to you last night was asking me like, how am I?
(02:51):
So how am I able to be so like open and just admit things that
seem really hard to admit? Like they were like, if I talk
about my past, if I talk about my shortcomings, I would be
really, it'd be really hard for me to talk about.
And I was like, well, when you hit like rock bottom, there's
kind of nothing else to lose. So it's like you, you have the
(03:12):
opportunity to build a new identity for yourself.
So it's like, it's really frank,like I don't have any secrets,
like I'm not hiding anything. So it's super easy because it's
like, oh, I love where I'm at now and I love where I'm going
and I love who I am. And because I'm confident that
like I am healthy and because I'm confident that I'm in a good
(03:33):
place, I can easily talk about my past mistakes, addictions,
you know, anything that would that people be like, oh, you
don't want to tell people that about yourself, like by your
past because it's like, why not?That's not who I am anymore.
Like that's that's you. Were less open before.
Absolutely. Yeah, 100%.
But did you know that at the time?
(03:55):
I I've, yeah, I knew it, but I was lying to myself because I
was so good at compartmentalizing things.
So pre divorce, like I definitely knew that, but I just
internally I was telling myself like, oh, once I have kids, I'm
going to get serious. Like once I have kids, I'm going
to like, you know, really focus on myself and like discipline
(04:15):
and not and be a truly be a better person.
But when the only piece you haveare the vices that you escape
to, you don't really have as much control as you think until
it's forcefully taken from you or until you be honest and ask
for accountability. But I didn't do that because the
shame of it all was way too burdening.
(04:37):
And because of my career and my social, like my social standing
in the communities that I was in, it was like, if I were to
talk about any of this, I wouldn't have this anymore.
I wouldn't have these positions of power.
So yeah. So now it's like, yeah, man, I
(04:58):
used to this, this, this and that.
And I love my life so much more now because I don't feel chained
by all this shit that was eatingme alive every day of my life,
trying to hide and all that stuff and everything.
So your baggage no longer consumes you.
Yeah, I don't have any baggage. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean
I'm not baggage free because youknow, I'm still working through
(05:20):
baggage. But you're not a beholden
baggage. I mean, every now and then, you
know, if I'm triggered immenselybecause of like PTSD or just the
nature of the life that I've lived as a minor nobody, I don't
nobody is strong enough to overcome those moments.
So yeah, I definitely have thosemoments where I feel like there
is no hope and I'm just, I don'tdeserve like happiness or I
(05:42):
don't deserve peace or I don't deserve anything because of the
mistakes that I've made in my life, you know, and how shave a
person I was. But those never last more than a
day or never last more than a night or a few hours because
usually I have people that I canshare those thoughts with and
they can help me process those feelings.
(06:03):
Or I'm able to process those feelings myself because I've
learned ways to ways to process those feelings, like whether
it's through writing or through art.
Yeah. I feel like I've never under the
weight too long of the crushing mistakes of my past.
What are the top five things youwould say to younger you?
Top five things I would say to younger me is confess your sins.
(06:24):
Confess. Any religious sense or just.
Like no in in urging yourself ina general sense, just be honest
about what you truly struggle with.
And now I know it, you know, it seems so painful and it seems
like that direction is not an option, but it is the only
option towards like healing. Next I'd tell myself, stop
(06:46):
trying to fit a definition of masculinity that I think I need
to belong to. Elaborate.
The kids need to hear it. Because I was, well, first of
all, because I was like deeply religious, there was already an
image that I feel like I had to fulfill to be like a godly man.
So first of all, stop letting other men dictate how you should
(07:08):
be a man and Start learning moreabout equality and, you know,
carrying the load equally with all people everywhere.
This idea that because you're a man, you have to be like a
leader or you have to be like stoic or you have to be the one
to just say trust me. And, you know, just the idea of
(07:29):
being a leader as a man is so wrong.
That's not the case at all. You know, you should be leading
with others. Sure, some people are just
leaders. That's great.
That's fantastic. But yeah, like to equate
masculinity with like being a leader or being like a spearhead
in a relationship or. Can you think of a of an
(07:51):
instance where that was a problem in your youth?
It wasn't a problem in my youth because the marriage that I was
in, that was the dynamics that we were.
When I take it back, it was a problem because because truth
is, I wasn't a man and I was. I was sometimes selfishly using
(08:12):
those assumed roles that assumedrole to manipulate things in my
way. And it wasn't always like
consciously, it wasn't always like, I'm going to be evil and
do this. It was just like because of fear
in my own insecurity. It was like, well, you shouldn't
question me. Like just trust me.
(08:33):
Just believe me, You know what Imean?
Like, but I wasn't anywhere nearthe man that I thought I was.
And so those expectations of me were more harmful than they were
helpful because I wasn't focusing on just being not just
a good person, but just a healthy person.
Like all around healthy. I don't think you can be like
(08:57):
truly healthy if you're not accountable.
If there's no account, if there is no accountability in your
life, like real accountability, like somebody knows your vices,
then you're not accountable. You don't have accountability.
You're just building walls and you're just fashioning an image
(09:18):
that you want people to see because you don't want to take
responsibility, because you don't truly want to grow, you
don't truly want to to change. So I would tell my younger self
there is no image of masculinityfor you to feel.
Just learn to love yourself and to be respectful of everybody
(09:41):
and love people and stand up against toxic masculinity.
Preach against centuries of so-called wisdom that elevate
men above other men and women and just people in general.
That's only two. That's only two, right?
Yeah, Anything more? Third thing I would say would be
(10:04):
to make friends with people thatmake you uncomfortable.
Elaborate. So I wouldn't make friends with
people who were, you know, queer.
I mean, I would I would have. You consciously did not do that.
I mean, I wasn't seeking that out.
Like, you know, I'm not going tospend intimate time with a queer
(10:26):
person. I had gay friends, but only to
kind of like show people that like, oh, I'm friends with gay
people. Not in the sense that like I, I
think I truly cared to learn about their life, their, their
struggles, their passions and things like that.
I believe too much in stereotypes, way too much of
(10:48):
stereotypes. And I listen too much to older
people that I just thought were smarter because I've always kind
of been, I've always had this like spirit of countercultural
when I was young, I very quicklydeveloped in my 20s this like me
against the world mentality where it's like, if anything is
mainstream, it's essentially evil.
So it's like there's something evil about LGBT.
(11:11):
There's something evil about Black Lives Matter.
You know, the focus. Like, not that I was.
I was that kind of person. That was like, all lives matter,
you know what I mean? Like was it?
Like a contrarian kind of thing.Yeah, contrarian thing.
That I figured, yeah. I didn't get it.
I didn't get it because I didn'twant to get it.
And I wish I would have made Black friends and more, more
(11:34):
queer friends and actually spenttime with them, because I would
have learned that they're actually really loving people
and they do have real fears and they do have real passions.
And they're just like me in thatsense.
But wouldn't also the problem bethat you were?
How do I word it like there wasn't a logic for you to be
like confrontational with all these things.
(11:55):
So as you said, anytime somebodybecame mainstream, you were like
anti that thing. I say this because I see this
with a lot of people. You develop that mentality
usually in high school, but now that I've been out of high
school long enough, some people never leave that, which is kind
of sort of like there's factors to everything.
But that's how we get like, likethat's how we get insults.
So we get like Trump supporters,they never leave that mentality.
So no matter how positive something is there, whatever
(12:19):
logic they have in their mind that everyone likes this thing,
I'm gonna do the opposite. It's simple.
Like mind fucking be simple. But because they have that in
their head, they can't. They kind of build this wall
around themselves. They don't allow new ideas to
come in. No new perspective.
Yeah, they don't. What I mean, they don't expand
their worldview at all. Their worldview is incredibly
(12:40):
small. Like the joke is like the
dumbest person you knew from high school is happy about this
thing that just happened. And the worldview is incredibly
small. And they would rather stay
ignorant, you know, and blissfulthan to expand, make themselves
uncomfortable, expand the worldview and find out that
there's a whole lot more beauty than what you're trying to
(13:01):
protect. And I think a lot of people are
trying to protect their own ideaof what safe and beautiful is
because they're they're yeah, they refuse to, they refuse to
just accept, you know, that beauty and truth lies outside of
their own personal experience. I didn't feel that until I
(13:24):
started to become uncomfortable and make friends with, you know,
make, start have relationships, friendships with people that are
nothing like me. My personal convictions.
Yeah, ironically, I would end upfinding out that they had the
same convictions that I do. Yeah, 'cause his thinking isn't
founded on like logic. No, it isn't founded on logic.
It's. Almost like a childlike thing.
You know, like pride. Pride.
(13:44):
It's also just the, the joke is like, you cover your ears and
you go no, la, la, la, la. Like, you just don't want to
hear. Yeah, whatever that thing is.
Like Kanye West is a good example.
He would go out of his way to bethe opposite of whatever was
going on on a social level. So he started his career in the
mid 2000s. This is when acceptance for gays
was reaching a new peak, but it wasn't normal yet.
So he was one of the first, or not first, but one of the few
(14:06):
people in pop culture that was saying that's preaching
tolerance. Like, have you seen that video
that goes viral every once in a while?
Yeah, he did. Yeah.
And when you look back, he's done that a lot, where the
seemingly positive things he wasdoing was.
It's a contrarian thing. Everyone thinks this way, I'm
gonna do this. And then he did it again in the
mid 2010. So when Trump was president, by
this point, things are very different socially.
(14:26):
In the simplest terms, everyone's more accepting.
So he went the other way again. That's part of the reason why he
started, like, endorsing Trump and then quickly even went
further right. And he got into his weird era.
Yeah. So people like to pin the blame
on his, like, mental health. And obviously that's gonna be
part of it. But a lot of it, like, was there
from the beginning. So all that all I have to say is
that, like, it's a very, like, childish thing to do.
Well, it could. And it's an easy fix.
(14:48):
Like if you have someone in yourlife who can keep you in check
and, like, smack you when you'relike, you're wrong, that would
fix most of that, that contrarianness.
Yeah. Yeah, it would.
It would, absolutely, because. It's not always rooted in, like,
bigotry. No, like, sometimes it is, But a
lot of the times it's rooted in just like, yeah, that like,
childish mentality of like, you can't tell me what to do.
No, I don't want to hear it. You do one thing, I'm doing the
(15:09):
opposite, which can lead people to, like, do the dumbest fucking
shit. Yeah.
Which is why Kanye loves saying whenever he's, like, contested
about something, he'll be asked about, like, well, this person
you like collaborating with, they have different opinions
than you do. Like, they hate Trump.
How do you feel about that? He likes to do this thing where
he says, well, they have different opinions, and I love
that for them. I'm like, what does that even
mean, bro? Yeah.
(15:30):
Or sometimes you use that for himself.
Like, I just have different opinions.
I'm like, what? And his fans love using that,
too. So whenever he's under fire
about something, they'll sing. You know, music's cool, But, you
know, he has different opinions.But what does that mean?
Like, explain that. Yeah.
There's never a straight explanation, but, yeah.
So all that all that to say is that in this scenario, this is
the one time where like if you had someone just like set you
(15:50):
straight, you like the collective view, that would fix
problems. It would have helped.
Countability. There you go.
Countability. True accountability, which kind
of ties in with the first thing about like confess your sins,
essentially that I'm just mean like keep yourself accountable,
truly accountable. So that's three things.
The fourth thing would be I would tell myself about the
binary. So I'd be like, the world isn't
(16:12):
as black and white as you think.There is a lot of nuance in in
the world. There's so much nuance.
You can't truly grasp that untilyou, you, you, you widen your
worldview and you have those relationships with people who
don't like you and you start to understand that everything in
this world is multifaceted. And essentially those in power
(16:37):
have conditioned you to believe that there are only two options
or two ways of thinking. That all boils down to two camps
of thought. So I would use that to segue
into like, dude, don't fucking trust the government at all.
Like they're just the same thing.
It's literally the same thing. And the culture wars and all of
(16:59):
this, It's just a distraction, man.
It truly is a distraction because those in power, the
chasm is just going to grow moreand more because they're
stocking the fire to get all of us fighting each other as
opposed to realizing that those in power are truly the ones
exploiting us. Yeah, they they want you to
believe in the binary. They are stocking the fires of
(17:21):
polarity. So reject the binary, reject
polarity. And the only way you're going to
do that is the fifth thing I would tell myself is you had a
fucked up childhood, so you needto go to therapy and process all
that shit. Go to therapy.
Go to therapy. Like #5 I think none of what I
(17:41):
told you, none of the four things I just told you are not
going to take root in you unlessyou go to therapy because you're
not as smart as you think you are.
And therapy is going to help you.
Therapy, learn accountability and become accountability to
someone who whose job is not to judge you or to make you feel
ashamed, but to help you processall the hurt in your life and to
(18:04):
help you really take the steps and to do the right things to
grow healthier and healthier every year.
So number one was #1. Confessor sins.
Number one confessor sins AKA take true accountability #2 make
friends with those who make you uncomfortable.
(18:24):
I'm not talking about like they cross your boundaries or they do
things without your consent. I mean people whose lifestyle
you think are wrong because an institutions told you they're
wrong. So expand your worldview, make
more friends with people who don't look like you, and
understand their struggles #301 of the ones about masculinity,
(18:45):
number. 2 is masculinity. #2 is actually masculinity.
Sorry well I'll just pretend like I didn't know #3 stop
trying to fit this idea of masculinity.
It's wrong. It's based off of a structure
that has been put in place for centuries by those in power to
(19:06):
keep themselves in power. Be yourself, like learn how to
love as a person in general. Look past gender, look past
these ideas of roles and let yourself feel the spectrum of
emotion that you possess. Get that idea out of your head
that you're not a man. If there is no more of a false
(19:26):
statement as a cisgendered man, then you are less of a man.
If fill in the blank #4 reject the binary #5 none of these four
things are going to make sense to you until you start going to
therapy and process your past. You have been hurt.
You did not grow up in a healthyway.
(19:47):
What you went through, no child should go through, no teenager
should go through has literally affected the way that your brain
developed. So go to therapy and process all
that shit. Dang, that's crazy.
Those are the five things. What are the five things you
would tell yourself? We would love to hear it.
So leave a comment down below wherever you're listening, or
(20:07):
you can DM me. Or you can head to the link in
my bio in my main page, therapist Kirby, and head on
over to speak pipe and leave a voicemail.
That's all we have for the rest of this episode, but we will be
posting the second-half of this discussion at a later date, so
be on the lookout for that one. And until then, we'll see you
(20:29):
guys.
Right now in my head there's nothing I want to rant on
because I'm pretty happy. Like personally.
Must be nice, yeah? Yeah, yeah, no, it is nice.
(00:22):
I'm going to Anime Expo this year.
Oh yeah, have you been? You've been before, right?
Three times no. Dang.
If not, this will be my third time.
It's at the LA Convention Center.
The LA Convention Center, I'm super excited.
I'm going to be there July 3rd soaking stoked.
Going to be there with a friend.Why are you laughing?
(00:43):
Gonna be there with a friend. Is it a newer friend?
No, I've been friends with this.I've been friends with this
person for a little over 2 years.
Oh yeah. Yeah, bro.
That's good. Yeah.
And they've never been before, so this is their first time.
That's crazy. So then they're not like a as
big of an anime fan as I am. So I'm really excited.
That's always fun when you have somebody who is like open to
(01:04):
your interests and you can just kind of like yap away.
When they let you yap away? When?
They let you yap away. Yeah, I love yapping.
What's the last thing you've like, really, when you yapped
about this thing and then you felt that like, elation
afterwards, Like, damn, I feel better now.
I talked about. I mean, every time I'm in
therapy, every time I have a therapy session, yeah, that's
(01:24):
what that is. I'm yapping away.
And then I feel so much better afterwards.
And I can't really talk about what I've been talking about in
therapy right now because it's alittle too personal, but.
Snap. If we're talking about like with
somebody else, yeah, I think onething I've been talking about
that makes me feel better is kind of like, no, it's nothing
too interesting. I guess it's just like.
(01:44):
What is it? It's not, it's nothing
interesting at all. It's just like my personal
beliefs on like, you know what closeness looks like, why I
don't necessarily seek out a lotof friends, like why I don't I'm
not always looking to like have a large circle of friends.
How it's kind of used to though.Did I really?
Kind of, yeah. So, OK, so that's what I was
(02:06):
talking actually last night. I was going pretty in depth
about how before I did have a pretty good circle of friends,
but it's nothing compared to thefriends that I have now, which
are like so much more in depth, like the vulnerability and like
the things that we talked about is so much more constructive, I
guess, authentic or transparent as opposed to when I was much
(02:28):
younger. That's not to say that like I
don't have, you know, fun, entertaining conversations now.
It's still a thing, but it's like the, the, the I don't know
if pretext is the right word, but the foundation or the
pretext of my new friendships has been like vulnerability some
because somebody was asking me somebody that person I was
talking to you last night was asking me like, how am I?
(02:51):
So how am I able to be so like open and just admit things that
seem really hard to admit? Like they were like, if I talk
about my past, if I talk about my shortcomings, I would be
really, it'd be really hard for me to talk about.
And I was like, well, when you hit like rock bottom, there's
kind of nothing else to lose. So it's like you, you have the
(03:12):
opportunity to build a new identity for yourself.
So it's like, it's really frank,like I don't have any secrets,
like I'm not hiding anything. So it's super easy because it's
like, oh, I love where I'm at now and I love where I'm going
and I love who I am. And because I'm confident that
like I am healthy and because I'm confident that I'm in a good
(03:33):
place, I can easily talk about my past mistakes, addictions,
you know, anything that would that people be like, oh, you
don't want to tell people that about yourself, like by your
past because it's like, why not?That's not who I am anymore.
Like that's that's you. Were less open before.
Absolutely. Yeah, 100%.
But did you know that at the time?
(03:55):
I I've, yeah, I knew it, but I was lying to myself because I
was so good at compartmentalizing things.
So pre divorce, like I definitely knew that, but I just
internally I was telling myself like, oh, once I have kids, I'm
going to get serious. Like once I have kids, I'm going
to like, you know, really focus on myself and like discipline
(04:15):
and not and be a truly be a better person.
But when the only piece you haveare the vices that you escape
to, you don't really have as much control as you think until
it's forcefully taken from you or until you be honest and ask
for accountability. But I didn't do that because the
shame of it all was way too burdening.
(04:37):
And because of my career and my social, like my social standing
in the communities that I was in, it was like, if I were to
talk about any of this, I wouldn't have this anymore.
I wouldn't have these positions of power.
So yeah. So now it's like, yeah, man, I
(04:58):
used to this, this, this and that.
And I love my life so much more now because I don't feel chained
by all this shit that was eatingme alive every day of my life,
trying to hide and all that stuff and everything.
So your baggage no longer consumes you.
Yeah, I don't have any baggage. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean
I'm not baggage free because youknow, I'm still working through
(05:20):
baggage. But you're not a beholden
baggage. I mean, every now and then, you
know, if I'm triggered immenselybecause of like PTSD or just the
nature of the life that I've lived as a minor nobody, I don't
nobody is strong enough to overcome those moments.
So yeah, I definitely have thosemoments where I feel like there
is no hope and I'm just, I don'tdeserve like happiness or I
(05:42):
don't deserve peace or I don't deserve anything because of the
mistakes that I've made in my life, you know, and how shave a
person I was. But those never last more than a
day or never last more than a night or a few hours because
usually I have people that I canshare those thoughts with and
they can help me process those feelings.
(06:03):
Or I'm able to process those feelings myself because I've
learned ways to ways to process those feelings, like whether
it's through writing or through art.
Yeah. I feel like I've never under the
weight too long of the crushing mistakes of my past.
What are the top five things youwould say to younger you?
Top five things I would say to younger me is confess your sins.
(06:24):
Confess. Any religious sense or just.
Like no in in urging yourself ina general sense, just be honest
about what you truly struggle with.
And now I know it, you know, it seems so painful and it seems
like that direction is not an option, but it is the only
option towards like healing. Next I'd tell myself, stop
(06:46):
trying to fit a definition of masculinity that I think I need
to belong to. Elaborate.
The kids need to hear it. Because I was, well, first of
all, because I was like deeply religious, there was already an
image that I feel like I had to fulfill to be like a godly man.
So first of all, stop letting other men dictate how you should
(07:08):
be a man and Start learning moreabout equality and, you know,
carrying the load equally with all people everywhere.
This idea that because you're a man, you have to be like a
leader or you have to be like stoic or you have to be the one
to just say trust me. And, you know, just the idea of
(07:29):
being a leader as a man is so wrong.
That's not the case at all. You know, you should be leading
with others. Sure, some people are just
leaders. That's great.
That's fantastic. But yeah, like to equate
masculinity with like being a leader or being like a spearhead
in a relationship or. Can you think of a of an
(07:51):
instance where that was a problem in your youth?
It wasn't a problem in my youth because the marriage that I was
in, that was the dynamics that we were.
When I take it back, it was a problem because because truth
is, I wasn't a man and I was. I was sometimes selfishly using
(08:12):
those assumed roles that assumedrole to manipulate things in my
way. And it wasn't always like
consciously, it wasn't always like, I'm going to be evil and
do this. It was just like because of fear
in my own insecurity. It was like, well, you shouldn't
question me. Like just trust me.
(08:33):
Just believe me, You know what Imean?
Like, but I wasn't anywhere nearthe man that I thought I was.
And so those expectations of me were more harmful than they were
helpful because I wasn't focusing on just being not just
a good person, but just a healthy person.
Like all around healthy. I don't think you can be like
(08:57):
truly healthy if you're not accountable.
If there's no account, if there is no accountability in your
life, like real accountability, like somebody knows your vices,
then you're not accountable. You don't have accountability.
You're just building walls and you're just fashioning an image
(09:18):
that you want people to see because you don't want to take
responsibility, because you don't truly want to grow, you
don't truly want to to change. So I would tell my younger self
there is no image of masculinityfor you to feel.
Just learn to love yourself and to be respectful of everybody
(09:41):
and love people and stand up against toxic masculinity.
Preach against centuries of so-called wisdom that elevate
men above other men and women and just people in general.
That's only two. That's only two, right?
Yeah, Anything more? Third thing I would say would be
(10:04):
to make friends with people thatmake you uncomfortable.
Elaborate. So I wouldn't make friends with
people who were, you know, queer.
I mean, I would I would have. You consciously did not do that.
I mean, I wasn't seeking that out.
Like, you know, I'm not going tospend intimate time with a queer
(10:26):
person. I had gay friends, but only to
kind of like show people that like, oh, I'm friends with gay
people. Not in the sense that like I, I
think I truly cared to learn about their life, their, their
struggles, their passions and things like that.
I believe too much in stereotypes, way too much of
(10:48):
stereotypes. And I listen too much to older
people that I just thought were smarter because I've always kind
of been, I've always had this like spirit of countercultural
when I was young, I very quicklydeveloped in my 20s this like me
against the world mentality where it's like, if anything is
mainstream, it's essentially evil.
So it's like there's something evil about LGBT.
(11:11):
There's something evil about Black Lives Matter.
You know, the focus. Like, not that I was.
I was that kind of person. That was like, all lives matter,
you know what I mean? Like was it?
Like a contrarian kind of thing.Yeah, contrarian thing.
That I figured, yeah. I didn't get it.
I didn't get it because I didn'twant to get it.
And I wish I would have made Black friends and more, more
(11:34):
queer friends and actually spenttime with them, because I would
have learned that they're actually really loving people
and they do have real fears and they do have real passions.
And they're just like me in thatsense.
But wouldn't also the problem bethat you were?
How do I word it like there wasn't a logic for you to be
like confrontational with all these things.
(11:55):
So as you said, anytime somebodybecame mainstream, you were like
anti that thing. I say this because I see this
with a lot of people. You develop that mentality
usually in high school, but now that I've been out of high
school long enough, some people never leave that, which is kind
of sort of like there's factors to everything.
But that's how we get like, likethat's how we get insults.
So we get like Trump supporters,they never leave that mentality.
So no matter how positive something is there, whatever
(12:19):
logic they have in their mind that everyone likes this thing,
I'm gonna do the opposite. It's simple.
Like mind fucking be simple. But because they have that in
their head, they can't. They kind of build this wall
around themselves. They don't allow new ideas to
come in. No new perspective.
Yeah, they don't. What I mean, they don't expand
their worldview at all. Their worldview is incredibly
(12:40):
small. Like the joke is like the
dumbest person you knew from high school is happy about this
thing that just happened. And the worldview is incredibly
small. And they would rather stay
ignorant, you know, and blissfulthan to expand, make themselves
uncomfortable, expand the worldview and find out that
there's a whole lot more beauty than what you're trying to
(13:01):
protect. And I think a lot of people are
trying to protect their own ideaof what safe and beautiful is
because they're they're yeah, they refuse to, they refuse to
just accept, you know, that beauty and truth lies outside of
their own personal experience. I didn't feel that until I
(13:24):
started to become uncomfortable and make friends with, you know,
make, start have relationships, friendships with people that are
nothing like me. My personal convictions.
Yeah, ironically, I would end upfinding out that they had the
same convictions that I do. Yeah, 'cause his thinking isn't
founded on like logic. No, it isn't founded on logic.
It's. Almost like a childlike thing.
You know, like pride. Pride.
(13:44):
It's also just the, the joke is like, you cover your ears and
you go no, la, la, la, la. Like, you just don't want to
hear. Yeah, whatever that thing is.
Like Kanye West is a good example.
He would go out of his way to bethe opposite of whatever was
going on on a social level. So he started his career in the
mid 2000s. This is when acceptance for gays
was reaching a new peak, but it wasn't normal yet.
So he was one of the first, or not first, but one of the few
(14:06):
people in pop culture that was saying that's preaching
tolerance. Like, have you seen that video
that goes viral every once in a while?
Yeah, he did. Yeah.
And when you look back, he's done that a lot, where the
seemingly positive things he wasdoing was.
It's a contrarian thing. Everyone thinks this way, I'm
gonna do this. And then he did it again in the
mid 2010. So when Trump was president, by
this point, things are very different socially.
(14:26):
In the simplest terms, everyone's more accepting.
So he went the other way again. That's part of the reason why he
started, like, endorsing Trump and then quickly even went
further right. And he got into his weird era.
Yeah. So people like to pin the blame
on his, like, mental health. And obviously that's gonna be
part of it. But a lot of it, like, was there
from the beginning. So all that all I have to say is
that, like, it's a very, like, childish thing to do.
Well, it could. And it's an easy fix.
(14:48):
Like if you have someone in yourlife who can keep you in check
and, like, smack you when you'relike, you're wrong, that would
fix most of that, that contrarianness.
Yeah. Yeah, it would.
It would, absolutely, because. It's not always rooted in, like,
bigotry. No, like, sometimes it is, But a
lot of the times it's rooted in just like, yeah, that like,
childish mentality of like, you can't tell me what to do.
No, I don't want to hear it. You do one thing, I'm doing the
(15:09):
opposite, which can lead people to, like, do the dumbest fucking
shit. Yeah.
Which is why Kanye loves saying whenever he's, like, contested
about something, he'll be asked about, like, well, this person
you like collaborating with, they have different opinions
than you do. Like, they hate Trump.
How do you feel about that? He likes to do this thing where
he says, well, they have different opinions, and I love
that for them. I'm like, what does that even
mean, bro? Yeah.
(15:30):
Or sometimes you use that for himself.
Like, I just have different opinions.
I'm like, what? And his fans love using that,
too. So whenever he's under fire
about something, they'll sing. You know, music's cool, But, you
know, he has different opinions.But what does that mean?
Like, explain that. Yeah.
There's never a straight explanation, but, yeah.
So all that all that to say is that in this scenario, this is
the one time where like if you had someone just like set you
(15:50):
straight, you like the collective view, that would fix
problems. It would have helped.
Countability. There you go.
Countability. True accountability, which kind
of ties in with the first thing about like confess your sins,
essentially that I'm just mean like keep yourself accountable,
truly accountable. So that's three things.
The fourth thing would be I would tell myself about the
binary. So I'd be like, the world isn't
(16:12):
as black and white as you think.There is a lot of nuance in in
the world. There's so much nuance.
You can't truly grasp that untilyou, you, you, you widen your
worldview and you have those relationships with people who
don't like you and you start to understand that everything in
this world is multifaceted. And essentially those in power
(16:37):
have conditioned you to believe that there are only two options
or two ways of thinking. That all boils down to two camps
of thought. So I would use that to segue
into like, dude, don't fucking trust the government at all.
Like they're just the same thing.
It's literally the same thing. And the culture wars and all of
(16:59):
this, It's just a distraction, man.
It truly is a distraction because those in power, the
chasm is just going to grow moreand more because they're
stocking the fire to get all of us fighting each other as
opposed to realizing that those in power are truly the ones
exploiting us. Yeah, they they want you to
believe in the binary. They are stocking the fires of
(17:21):
polarity. So reject the binary, reject
polarity. And the only way you're going to
do that is the fifth thing I would tell myself is you had a
fucked up childhood, so you needto go to therapy and process all
that shit. Go to therapy.
Go to therapy. Like #5 I think none of what I
(17:41):
told you, none of the four things I just told you are not
going to take root in you unlessyou go to therapy because you're
not as smart as you think you are.
And therapy is going to help you.
Therapy, learn accountability and become accountability to
someone who whose job is not to judge you or to make you feel
ashamed, but to help you processall the hurt in your life and to
(18:04):
help you really take the steps and to do the right things to
grow healthier and healthier every year.
So number one was #1. Confessor sins.
Number one confessor sins AKA take true accountability #2 make
friends with those who make you uncomfortable.
(18:24):
I'm not talking about like they cross your boundaries or they do
things without your consent. I mean people whose lifestyle
you think are wrong because an institutions told you they're
wrong. So expand your worldview, make
more friends with people who don't look like you, and
understand their struggles #301 of the ones about masculinity,
(18:45):
number. 2 is masculinity. #2 is actually masculinity.
Sorry well I'll just pretend like I didn't know #3 stop
trying to fit this idea of masculinity.
It's wrong. It's based off of a structure
that has been put in place for centuries by those in power to
(19:06):
keep themselves in power. Be yourself, like learn how to
love as a person in general. Look past gender, look past
these ideas of roles and let yourself feel the spectrum of
emotion that you possess. Get that idea out of your head
that you're not a man. If there is no more of a false
(19:26):
statement as a cisgendered man, then you are less of a man.
If fill in the blank #4 reject the binary #5 none of these four
things are going to make sense to you until you start going to
therapy and process your past. You have been hurt.
You did not grow up in a healthyway.
(19:47):
What you went through, no child should go through, no teenager
should go through has literally affected the way that your brain
developed. So go to therapy and process all
that shit. Dang, that's crazy.
Those are the five things. What are the five things you
would tell yourself? We would love to hear it.
So leave a comment down below wherever you're listening, or
(20:07):
you can DM me. Or you can head to the link in
my bio in my main page, therapist Kirby, and head on
over to speak pipe and leave a voicemail.
That's all we have for the rest of this episode, but we will be
posting the second-half of this discussion at a later date, so
be on the lookout for that one. And until then, we'll see you
(20:29):
guys.
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