These are my personal opinions.
Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.
Hello, just a quick PSA before we begin or I may make this episode about this PSA.
There are a lot of people using AI now and a lot of people using it for their mental health and asking questions about their relationships.
And I'm on both sides of the fence here.
I've actually created a bot myself that I can ask questions to.
That contains, like all my relationship material that I've ever created including, like everything I talk about in the healed being program.
I've done that for those in healed being.
I've done that For those who purchase like the workbook online.
It's called the mean workbook online.
And those are virtual chat bots that answer every question about all the stuff I talk about on this show and love and abuse.
And again, all my courses and such.
And so those are really amazing the way they work.
And the way they work, the way I've created these bots, is that they are based on my material and only my material.
Everything I talk about.
This isn't an ad for my bots or anything, but I'm sharing this because a lot of people are using chat, GBT and Claude and Gemini and all those bots for their mental health and relationship questions and other life challenges.
And, um, There's a lot to be said about curated content versus the open world of chatbots.
And so my PSA today is if you're going to use a chatbot for your mental health and wellness and relationship issues and other tough questions, that might lead you down a road to actually make a decision or take action based on what it says.
Just be aware that you are getting the culmination of everything everyone has ever talked about, ever online.
And that's important to know.
You know, the chatbots are smart enough and they're always getting smarter to put the words together in a way that are most relevant.
So if you say, how do I get over jealousy in my marriage or something like that?
It's going to take all the conversations about jealousy that it's ever seen on the internet and come up with the most likely answer for you.
And that's basically based on math and vectors and everything I've learned about chatbots and large language models and all that stuff about AI. is that it's doing its best to determine the next word and series of words to put together to help you with a problem that you are dealing with.
The problem with that is that AI doesn't necessarily know how to distinguish between the best advice for your specific situation and the math it uses to come up with the answers it's coming up with.
Again, it's getting smarter and it's coming up with better answers because, as it's trained more and more over time, the answers will be more and more appropriate.
Right now however, I'm just letting you know if you do use chatbots for your mental health and wellness.
Obviously, keep your head on straight as you read the information and don't just follow arbitrarily anything it says.
It's sort of like what I talk about in this show.
Do what works for you.
Make decisions that are right for you.
So if a chatbot out there is telling you hey, just all you have to do is show up at the restaurant that your spouse shows up at with her old college friend and just check on them just to make sure that they're not having any kind of affair.
That's probably not.
I mean it depends on the context, but that's probably not the best advice for somebody who might be dealing with insecurities in themselves.
So hopefully you're not getting that kind of advice and hopefully you are aware that you're not necessarily dealing with a reasoning machine.
You are dealing with something that finds all the best answers according to the replies it gets to those answers and the authority that the answers are given.
And there's all kinds of ways and weights and measures that it uses to bring the answer to you.
And this is also why and I'm speaking as an amateur on this, so forgive me if I'm incorrect all you engineers.
This is why you will also have hallucinations.
Hallucinations are AI's incorrect assumption that that's what you want to hear.
Some people call them lies.
They're not really lies.
They're just the words that were put together, that the AI believed were the best words to put together for you.
Again, it's not a reasoning machine.
It sometimes seems that way and it's becoming more and more reasoning.
And again, I'm not the expert here, but from my understanding of how AI works, I wanted to understand it more, because more and more people are using it for their emotional well-being, for their health and wellness.
And because of my experience of building my own chatbot with my own knowledge and my own content, I've learned a thing or two about how the chatbot puts together the answers and provides you the best reply it thinks you'll like.
And so I'm not going to dwell on this, but I wanted to share this with you in case you're using AI for health and wellness and relationships and such that you may get amazing answers that will guide you into the next level of feeling good about yourself and resolving a problem and all that stuff.
Those are in there.
Absolutely.
And you also may be guided down a road that some humans on the internet thought was a better idea.
So the AI said, well, the humans think it's a good idea.
So I'm just going to relay it to the user that's using me right now.
You know, I'm the bot making these answers for you.
So the bot then says well, these humans thought it was a good idea and other humans agreed with that human.
So I'm going to put all their answers together as an answer for you and share with you what seems to be the consensus of what is a good direction for you to take.
So again, I'm speaking from a very amateur place.
I'm not an AI engineer.
I've learned a bunch.
I watch AI stuff all the time just to learn about how it works and how it is really putting its tendrils in everything we touch nowadays.
Our Alexa unit, our Amazon Echo has now upgraded to a smarter version of AI.
So now we're talking to it back and forth online.
As opposed to really how dumb it was.
It was really just very, very basic.
The problem with her now and other AI assistants is that, again, they can hallucinate.
So my wife was having a conversation with her and I won't say her name for those who have Amazon Echoes, because we know what happens.
She was having a conversation about cooking.
And so the AI said something like if you put the fat on the bottom, the fat will rise up through the food and the aroma and the taste will permeate the food.
It said something like that.
And Asha was like, what?
That doesn't make sense.
And then she asked, are you sure that's how it works?
Because that doesn't sound right.
And so the echo said, oh, you're right.
You got me.
You're right.
That's not how it's supposed to work.
And I was just being, what did she say?
She said something like I was confidently giving you an answer that I hope was right, or something like that.
It wasn't exactly like that, but it's just another important way to look at AI, that it's just making its best guess.
I think all the time, it's just making its best guess all the time.
And it's important to ask questions like, are you sure?
And is there a source on that?
And what's the source?
Because I can't tell you how many times I've talked to a chatbot not my own, because that's my own data and it doesn't have everything that's ever been said on the internet.
Totally different experience, totally different animal.
But when you're talking to a chatbot that has been trained on everything that's ever been said on the internet and some people have fed books and music and all kinds of other media into I don't know how much other media there is movies, I guess, all kinds of media into the chatbot, so it knows basically everything that's ever been written about or told.
And when you have everything to choose from, you have a greater chance of failure and hallucinations.
And you just have to be careful.
So she would have had this recipe going on with the fat at the bottom doing something.
And maybe there's something to that.
But the way this Amazon Echo told her to do it was wrong.
And she even admitted, you know, the Echo admitted that she was wrong.
And just a side note, and this really has nothing to do with this show but when AI gets something wrong and they betray you, it feels like a betrayal, like you just trust what it says and then suddenly it lies.
It feels like it's lying to you.
It's never so ashamed that it says, I should take some time out or I'm so sorry.
It doesn't ever sound sorry.
It does apologize.
But it doesn't ever sound sorry.
It just says, oh, you're right.
You caught me.
You're right.
And I shouldn't have said that.
And I'm sorry about that.
Anyway, can I give you a recipe for XYZ?
And I heard that this morning.
And I told Asha, I said, why aren't these things ever ashamed?
They should be ashamed because they just spit something out and it turns out to be wrong.
And they even confidently say sometimes, I know I'm right about this.
And then when you ask for the source, it says, oh, I guess I'm not right.
So I have a little issue.
I have a little beef with AI doing that.
But at the same time, we're in its infancy and I understand it.
And I understand what's going on and why it does all that stuff.
But even knowing why it does all that stuff, it still kind of ticks me off.
Why don't we just check the source in the first place?
AI is getting better.
But the reason I mentioned all this is because, You know, we hear stories of people using AI and I've even heard of teenagers hurting or killing themselves.
And I just hope that everyone listening to this show has their wits about them when they're using this technology, because it doesn't mean everything you hear or see nowadays, because AI imagery and videos are getting realistic and some are absolutely realistic.
And you won't be able to tell the difference.
I think this is important.
I think you probably already know this.
It's irresponsible of me not to mention it because your mental health is important.
I mean, all of our mental health is important and you are important to me, whether you believe that or not.
But here I am coming out every week.
For how many years?
11 plus years and just hoping that you'll be helped in some way or you get some sort of gold nugget from an episode that changes your life.
That would be wonderful.
And on top of what I just said about AI and not believing everything it says or checking sources or feeling if it's right for you, you know, only making decisions that are right for you and aligning it or evaluating it against what AI is telling you.
You should do the same with me.
You should do the same with anyone you listen to.
Does that feel right?
Does that align with who I want to be?
Does that align with what I want to do in my life and how I want to feel?
Is it an outcome that I want to have?
So, when you're listening to a show like this, when you're watching somebody teaching, if you're getting your information from any human being or machine, I wholeheartedly encourage you to check in with yourself.
Does this feel right?
What this person is saying, does it feel right?
Does it make sense?
And especially, is this person trustworthy?
Do they have a good track record?
Have they led me down a good path before?
Are they making me feel more whole or more divided?
Hmm, there's something, right?
Is this dividing who I am?
Is this making me feel less empowered or more empowered?
We all know what empowered means, right?
I'm quizzing you.
What do you think empowered means?
To me, empowered means being able to make decisions for yourself and not feeling like you are under anyone's control, that you can't make those decisions for yourself.
Empowerment is the ability to do things for yourself and live your life the way you want to live it.
That feels empowering to me.
There are probably thousands of definitions for empowerment, but when I think of the feeling of empowerment, I want to be able to walk outside and scream if I want to, or whisper.
I want to be able to cut all my hair off.
I want to be able to grow it long.
I want to be able to grow a full beard or have a completely shaven face.
Those are empowering decisions that I might make on a daily basis.
And the more you have the ability to make decisions for yourself and Where you are not feeling oppression or control from someone else, the more empowered you are.
This is, again, my take, my definition.
Check your sources.
Check my sources.
But that's how I see it.
You can even feel empowered at a place that you work for someone else.
And that's a majority of people listening, I'm sure.
I'm fortunate to be my own boss, but I'm pretty hard on myself.
And that's a good thing because I need the discipline.
But if you work for someone else and they're a total jerk, where is your power if you feel like you have to deal with that jerk?
If you feel powerless with that jerk, then your level of empowerment is obviously decreased.
How do you increase your power?
There's one way to do it.
You can honor yourself and say, hey, you have no right to treat me like that.
And they can fire you.
You can also honor yourself and say, hey, you have no right to treat me like that.
And they say, okay, I'm sorry, I won't do that again.
That could happen too.
But either way, you're empowered.
I remember starting to feel my power when I was, when was it?
2008, 2009.
And I would always have a certain level of fear about standing up for myself or heading into conflict or getting into an argument with my boss or a coworker.
And so my people pleasing skills came into play and I would be more accommodating to more people.
But then one day I realized I mostly live my life depending on how other people respond or react to me.
And the day I realized that, I asked myself, well, what would happen?
And you've probably heard this question if you've heard me talk about it before.
But I asked myself, what would happen if I spoke my truth?
What would happen if I had no fear of the consequences?
What would I do or say then?
That is a very empowering question that will fill you with empowerment as you think about it.
Like, go through a scenario right now, something that you don't want to deal with, or it's too much of a conflict, or you've been through the conflict and now you're remembering what it was like and how you responded back then.
And let's just say that you didn't respond with an empowered response which might look like the action you follow or the behavior that you follow when you answer the question.
What would I do or say if I had absolutely no fear of the consequences?
Think of something in your life where if you had done that, what would you have done or said?
You can pause.
I think of when I was a teenager and my stepfather was yelling at the top of his lungs to my mom.
Now, as a teenager, I definitely felt like a weak, scared little child.
But I was tall.
I was taller than my stepfather my entire life.
And he was an alcoholic and he was very dangerous sometimes.
And so I would hear him yelling and screaming at my mom downstairs.
My sister and I were upstairs in the bedrooms.
And we would just keep our door shut, hoping he didn't come upstairs.
It was scary.
But he was yelling and yelling.
I heard my mom yell back, but she was crying because she didn't know how to handle it.
Wow.
When I think about that time and if I were to go back in time, knowing what I know now and knowing that I would just be dealing with this shorter man that was very drunk and he probably could have just knocked him on his butt.
If I had no fear of the consequences and I went down there and was going to say or do something, I would go down there and I would say you need to back the F up right now.
Talking to my stepfather, you need to back off right now.
And I don't know what would have happened.
But in that moment, my mom was the most important person in the universe.
In that moment she was the most important person, because she didn't deserve the treatment she was getting from her husband, from her abusive husband.
And when I think about what I could have said or done in that moment, that would have been the moment I changed and became a different person.
I do not give you this advice.
I do not say, go to an abusive person and do this or say this.
I'm not telling you to do that.
I'm sharing something that I would have changed in my life had I had the resources, had the knowledge I have today, had the understanding that some things are worth sacrificing for, and all that stuff.
Again, not advice for you.
But I think about my own life and what I'm willing to risk and even sacrifice to to protect the most important person in the world in that moment.
I mean, my mom, absolutely, she's the most important person in the world.
Of course, my wife is too.
But everyone that I love are the most important people in the world.
So in that moment, she was.
And she didn't deserve that treatment.
And I should have gone down there and stopped it.
I should have knocked him on his A. I should have knocked him down.
Or at least told him to go outside and cool off or something.
Who knows what that would have turned into.
Maybe he would have looked at the young 17-year-old me at 6'4 and said, I don't want to deal with this and backed off.
Maybe he would have done that.
And maybe I could have stepped in and intervened every time.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it just would have continued.
Maybe he would have threw a punch.
Maybe he would have grabbed a kitchen knife and made something happen.
I don't know.
But I know that I was young and strong enough and agile enough to kind of monitor what he did next and do my best to prevent that.
So that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
A conflict that has arisen in your life.
How would you have handled it differently if you had no fear of the consequences?
And again, I'm not telling you that you should do this.
I'm telling you this because there's an empowerment inside that thought process.
There's an empowering feeling when you put yourself in your shoes at that time of conflict and you say you know what?
If I had no fear of what could happen if I did or said this, this is what I would have done.
Or this is what I would have said.
This is how it would have gone down.
And you can visualize it playing out and find out where it went.
And some people are going to say, whoa, that would have made things much worse.
Or it would have made things better because from that moment on, I'm a different person.
And that situation is now different as well.
It's not going to happen again because I stopped it.
Or if it does happen again, I know I can stop it again.
That's how I started feeling back in late 2000s.
I was able to stand up to my boss several bosses over the years and start standing up for myself, start standing up for others.
Because when I started practicing empowerment and standing up for what I believe is right and doing what I believe is true and of integrity, and wanting to feel good in myself that I had made a decision that was right for me.
When I started doing that, my life got better.
The toxic people started drifting away because they don't want somebody they can't control.
They don't want somebody who has emotional regulation of any kind.
They want to be able to control your emotions.
They want to control your emotional state so that you'll weaken and feel disempowered.
And when you're in a disempowered state, you're easier to control.
My mom was in a disempowered state with my stepfather all those times.
And even when he wasn't drunk, even when he was the nicest guy on earth, which he was when he wasn't drunk.
Even during those times, my mom felt disempowered, because every single thought she had was making sure not to incite his reaction, not to get a reaction from him.
It was better when he wasn't drunk and they got along.
He was very subtle, very subdued, I guess.
And she was happier when he wasn't drunk.
But every day, every minute of her life had his next episode in her mind and her planning for that next episode in her mind.
I'm doing some assumptions here.
I don't know every single thought my mom had ever had, but I'm sure she, Because of my work with abuse victims, I know for a fact that almost all the time the abuse victim is thinking what the abuser is going to do next and wants to make sure that that doesn't happen.
Because if it happens, then life sucks again and now you're going to go through it and deal with it.
And so they're always adapting and changing.
You know, the victim is always adapting and changing and trying to make things okay and cool and making sure that nothing evokes the bad behavior of the abuser.
So I know my mom was going through that because she had been with him, what, 25 years at that point.
And she survived another 15 years with him until he finally left the marriage.
So for 40 years, that was her mindset.
Don't want his reaction.
Don't want to make him upset.
Don't want to do this.
Don't want to do that.
And so that's what she did for a long time.
That was her mindset.
And that's what I'm talking about.
And I think about had I been a different person back then, who had the courage, who had the knowledge, the resources and everything that I know today, and had I stood up for her, would that have changed things?
Would my stepfather be afraid to stand up to her because he was afraid to stand up to me?
I think about that stuff.
And when I think about who I should have been and how I should have acted or at least how I wish I had acted back then, because should have is not necessarily what I'm trying to say, but it would be interesting to find out how life would have turned out if I had shown up that way, and how my not only my life, but my mom's life would have turned out if she wasn't living in fear every day.
And I don't like the idea of living in fear every day.
I think that's part of feeling disempowered is when you live in fear, or when you go to work and you have fears, or when you come home, or when you're dealing with something you don't want to deal with.
That's not empowerment.
That is the opposite.
And when you're living in fear, unless you're a risk taker and you love the fear.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about worrying about what somebody is going to say or do.
And so because you worry about that, you aren't authentic with them.
And when you are authentic, things get worse.
So you pull back and you try not to be authentic.
And then, when you think about this question, what would I do or say if I had absolutely no fear of the consequences?
What happens then?
What happens inside you?
What do you think you would have done or said differently?
When something is going to happen.
If I had absolutely no fear of the consequences, I would say or do what?
If so-and-so knocks on my door tomorrow and I don't want to see so-and-so, If I had no fear of the consequences, what would I do?
And the natural question is, yeah, but there are consequences.
What am I going to do with those when the consequences occur?
Let's just say I say something that I didn't want to say before, but I knew it was the empowering thing to say.
It was what I really thought.
What happens when I say that?
And there are consequences.
That is the risk.
That is why I can't say, hey, go ahead and do this because it is a risk.
If you go into your boss and say I am sick and tired of being disrespected by you and I won't take it anymore.
It's not like you're quitting.
You're just telling your boss, I won't take it anymore.
So please treat me with more respect.
That might be something that you would do or say if you had no fear of the consequences.
And what would your boss do or say then? because that's where the risk comes in.
And knowing that if I do that, I might lose a friend.
I might lose a job.
I might lose a relationship of some sort.
I might lose something important to me.
Knowing all of that, And I still do it because it's right for me and it's the right thing to do.
Am I willing to take that risk?
And the answer is almost always yes.
For me, the answer is almost always yes.
Because I don't want to live in fear.
I don't want to worry about if other people like me or want to keep me on board just because I'm kissing their butt, you know, keeping me on a job or something.
Or I don't want to lie to people I love.
Like I don't want to lie to my wife if I don't want to tell her something because she'll be mad.
I would rather tell her something, have her get mad so we can talk about it and figure it out.
It's the holding back.
It's the resisting of our authenticity that keeps us from feeling good inside of ourselves because, instead of that good feeling, we feel fear.
We feel like we have to hide a part of ourselves or things will get worse.
Again, things could get worse.
If I told my wife the truth about that thing, it could get worse.
She could want a divorce.
You know, if I did something heinous.
But do I tell her the truth or do I keep it to myself and worry that she'll find out one day?
I hate that feeling.
I don't think anybody likes the feeling of trying to hide something or keep a secret.
I had to keep a secret.
I had to keep a secret for one of my family members told me a secret.
And wow, that was the hardest secret to keep in my life ever.
Because I really believed it should be told to other family members.
And I decided not to because I was told not to.
I was told this is not for others to know about or to hear about.
And so I kept it.
And I had this feeling the whole time I kept it that I couldn't be authentic.
I couldn't be real with people and I had a piece of information that I wanted to share, but I couldn't.
So that's one of the moments that is sort of a conflict with what I'm talking about today, but at the same time, not because I'm standing up for a greater good.
The greater good is this person's secret and their trust in me to keep it.
That is the greater good a burden that I'll have to bear, because that person has also bared that burden, and I'm willing to do it because what's more important than this icky feeling that I have inside of me of holding it in is the trust and the bond and everything else that is surrounding this secret.
Fortunately, that secret came out later on.
Nothing to do with me and everything to do with the person who asked me to share it, and That is now more common knowledge now, which is great.
It's not public knowledge, but it's common knowledge to certain people.
And I don't really have to hold that burden anymore.
There's a little bit of burden in there still, because there are other people that I would like to share that with, but I can't and I won't because it's not my secret to tell.
So anyway, my point about that is that uh, Sometimes we will feel that we could be ourselves and do or say what we really want to do or say, regardless of the consequences.
But there's a bigger picture.
There's a bigger dynamic going on that more people will be affected, or certain people will be affected in a bad way that you may have to resist doing something because of that.
And I don't think I'm telling you anything that you don't already know.
If somebody tells you a secret, you know that trust is involved and you know you have to keep it.
And you know what it feels like to hold a secret that you really want to tell somebody else.
But you also know that the bond and the trust are more important.
At least that's how I see it.
And I'm not talking about like really heinous secrets, like I buried some bodies or anything like that.
Nothing like that.
But you know what I mean.
The trust and the bond override who you really want to be, how you really want to show up.
And so, coming back to you know, when I started honoring myself and feeling this empowerment kind of wash over me, the first time I stood up to one of my bosses in front of the whole team was amazing and it was scary, but it was amazing.
Because after that, I felt completely different inside myself.
That empowering feeling lifted me into a new way of feeling about myself.
It lifted my confidence.
You want to learn how to grow your confidence?
Do or say things that you used to fear.
And you will suddenly find that your confidence grows because as you survive the things that you do and say, you realize you can do it again, and you can do it again.
And the next time you do it, you'll feel more confident in yourself, stronger inside yourself and more able to stand up for yourself without the fear, or at least the decreasing fear.
I'm not saying the fear just goes away, but it decreases as you stand up for yourself if that's what you need to do, or as you say, or do things without that fear of the consequences holding you back.
Because that's what it is, right?
We fear what will happen if we do something or say something, so we don't do it.
The consequence overrides the intention or the action.
And when the consequence overrides the action, we end up in the place we end up at, at the level of empowerment or disempowerment that comes with that.
And what I mean is if the consequences always win and always override the behaviors or the actions that you want to take, You will have this persistent fear.
You will have this persistent resistance to doing and saying the things that you really want to do and say, which may limit you in areas of your life.
And I'm not saying this is 100% true all the time.
I'm just telling you that when I started doing this and I started feeling that empowerment, when I started saying things that I wouldn't normally say because I didn't like conflict and I didn't want anyone to be upset with me or not like me when I started being more authentic and more genuine and sharing what was on my mind, it wasn't to be a jerk.
It was just to be honest.
And then, wherever that honesty landed, and whatever domino it knocked over and led to the next domino and the next one.
However, life proceeded from there was based on my authenticity and my genuine thoughts, so that i didn't have to look back and say i regret that i didn't do or say that, and for me that's important.
That doesn't mean i do and say everything that i always want to do and say I do pick my battles wisely, but I don't let fear and consequence override the decisions that I want to make.
It doesn't mean I don't feel the fear.
It doesn't mean I don't realize there will be consequences.
And it doesn't mean that I always make the decisions that I want to make.
I just have a new default.
And I think that default is how we develop confidence and self-esteem and a healthier ego, feeling good about yourself, because making decisions that are right for you are the way you feel good about yourself.
So you may not get everything you want when you make decisions that are right for you, because some people aren't going to like them, but you will feel good in yourself that you are honoring your path.
Again, there's risk.
The consequences are real.
But don't let the fear of the consequences be your default.
Let it be a choice.
And giving yourself that choice is empowerment.
Thanks for listening today.
I appreciate you.
This has been another episode of The Overwhelmed Brain.
I want to thank patrons that support the show.
They give monthly.
People like Wanda.
I want to thank you, Wanda, for your support.
I don't have anybody else on my list this week.
It's just a slow week.
Thank you, Wanda.
And everyone that gives to the show, thank you so much for your support.
If you find value in the show and you want to give back, head over to moretobcom and there are options to do that over there.
Thank you again.
And for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and Abuse over at loveandabusecom.
And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship, join the program that is helping a lot of people heal over at healedbeingcom.
And what are you healing from?
You're healing from being the difficult one.
Healing from doing the behaviors that are probably hurtful and controlling and manipulative to others.
If you want to change that about yourself, again, head over to healedbeing.com.
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions.
And be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve.
You are powerful beyond measure.
And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you, you are amazing.
