We’ve done a few shows on Social Media and Mental Health but we do something a little different here. Chris and Craig started this show, stopped it, watched the “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix, and came back to give their thoughts.
Tune into this episode to see “The Social Dilemma” and Mental Health Through a Therapist’s Eyes!
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Episode #107 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] All right. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning, whatever time it is that you’re listening to this podcast. This is Through a Therapist’s Eyes where we invite you to see the world through the lens of the mental health and substance abuse therapist and a coach. I am Chris Gazdik. He is Craig Graves. I am a mental health and substance abuse therapist.
I do have a book available soon, Rediscovering Emotions, and Becoming Your Best Self, and Craig, the Unbeatable Mind coach can work with you anywhere in the country. And you know what I thought about that, Mr. Graves, can you actually work with anyone around the world? I would imagine, right?
Craig Graves: [00:00:49] Yes. That’s true.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:50] Yeah. It’s a weird world that we live in, right?
Yeah. I was looking at our downloads and the map and everything. And. Yeah. There’s people in Kenya and the Great Britain. And there isn’t any reason why they can’t reach out to you.
Craig Graves: [00:01:02] Yeah. It’s a global, I have a friend who lives in Germany who has a client in the U S so, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:08] Yeah. That’s pretty neat.
That technology brings us all kinds of neat things. So, we welcome you to the podcast. he has a website by the way, wininyourmind.com. Listen, you’ll find us on Spotify, iTunes, Apple, iTunes, Google play, wherever you find your podcasts. But the best way is our website throughatherapistseyes.com Where you can get counseling.
We have a nice link to the Better Help. More on that as they have become our sponsor. And we have show transcriptions, any book that we talk about on the podcast, you can find easily there. It’s another way to actually support the show, because if you clicked through our site to get the book, we get a little, financial, ticket from that.
And it really does help to keep our show free for everyone. So Mr. Graves, this is the human emotional experience. I’m excited about this show with you. Let’s figure this thing out together. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We’re going to do something unique and different today, guys. We’re coming to you, you know, mid recording time.
we had a little bit of some hiccup with, with a guest, honestly, and timing wise. So, I, you know, I experienced that in my creative mind. Got going. And, what are we going to talk about? What are we going to do? How do we want to address things? And, you know, we deal with current events, right? So we have a lot of current events and, I want to address those.
And so we’re going to talk about our perception or feelings or perspective Craig on social media. And I know you’ve made comments about the media and how things are in the media. And just the realities of today is just. I I’ve been thoughtful about this for a little while now and I really want to dig into it.
So what we’re gonna do is we’re just going to talk about our thoughts here very briefly on social media and the impacts that it has on the world really. And from a mental health perspective is what I want to try to focus my thoughts on. You can go where you want. But my thoughts, I want to try to focus on from a psychological perspective and a mental health perspective and the concerns that I really see happening.
And we’re just gonna talk for a couple of minutes and then we’re going to watch the movie Social Dilemma, and then we’re going to turn the mics off, watch the movie. I’m going to turn the mics back on, and we’re just going to give you our real and raw thoughts after we watch that, because it is a show guys that I have been told will disturb you.
It’ll bother you. It’ll make you very uncomfortable.
Craig Graves: [00:03:42] Have you seen it?
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:43] I have not. No, I’ve watched the trailer, but I’m trying to dramatically tell you, like, I just, I think that you need to listen and you need to watch the movie too, by the way, to get your own view on it. But I want you to listen from a mental health perspective because we talked about this once before.
When Dr. Paul Weigle was on the show. And that was probably what, like a year ago.
Craig Graves: [00:04:07] It’s been more than that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:08] It hasn’t been maybe so. I didn’t understand this stuff. I hadn’t thought about this stuff until I went to that conference on kids and he’s a national leader on it, and he was on our show, which cycled back, all listening audience to doctor, now my brain is just fried. What was his name?
Craig Graves: [00:04:27] His name is Paul Weigle
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:28] What Paul Weigle and the effects that mass media is in his view a lot like it is, you know, marketing kids that the big tobacco was doing in eighties and nineties and whatnot. They have purposefully, arguably some would say maliciously targeted kids for their product.
And I don’t know, man, I’ve been thinking about it a lot this last year to try to get, you know, grounded with it. I’m developing some pretty strong concerns, Craig, about what’s going on to where it creates anxiety. And has it been a big part of creating the national rifts and great divide that I think we all can kind of see and agree?
Is going on in our society, not just with this election guys, Trump love him or hate him, whichever side or whatever thing you’re on. I mean, dang man, Trump, this is not, this is not this election. It is not, I think, you know, a function of any one person, our topic tonight, my thoughts, and we will watch social dilemma this movie.
I think it goes way, way, way, way, way farther than that. I rambled a little bit and I want to give you a spot, Craig, and do that. And then I want to, I want to share a quote with you that that came to me. So what, what are you thinking, man? Mass media? What says Mr. Graves?
Craig Graves: [00:06:02] I think it’s, you know, if you listened to the show, you know how I feel about mass media, about the mainstream media?
I don’t know what else to say. You know, I think it’s terrible.
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:13] Yeah. Well, you can rail on it. You gotta mic. And honestly, we’re talking about social media specifically rather than also probably
Craig Graves: [00:06:24] I think social media is probably in bed with the mainstream media in a lot of ways. And, you know, I think it’s a threat to a, I was kidding you earlier about his show.
I was watching when you got here, but I think it’s a threat to our democracy. To be honest with you. I mean, the social media companies can show you. What they want you to see and they tell the stories they want you to hear. And that definitely shapes people’s minds. I mean, people start to believe the nonsense that they hear over and over again, and it affects the way they, the way they think the way they act, the way they vote, the way they treat their families and friends and everybody else it’s. So it’s very scary.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:04] You know, I was talking about this with, actually a client, I think who was I talking about this with? Anyway, we created a quote, you know, I like quotes and everything. Right? Listen to this and tell me what you think. Craig, “If you have a Facebook account, you are not a user. You are a Facebook product.” That stunned me. Now, let me say that again. If you have a Facebook account, you are not a user. You are a Facebook product. Think about that, man. What’s what’s that? What’s your brain do with that?
Craig Graves: [00:07:40] Hmm. I don’t know. That’s a good question.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:43] Is that not a crazy twist? You think you’re a consumer of the Twitter and the tumbler and the whatever, you know, you’re not a user.
You’re not consuming that product. You’re not necessarily even consuming that media or that news. You are a product of that company they’re selling you.
Craig Graves: [00:08:03] Wow. Yeah. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:06] They’re selling you and you don’t even know it.
Craig Graves: [00:08:09] Yeah. That’s interesting. I never thought about it like that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:13] And listen to this, honestly, when I texted you this, I texted you this quote so that I would have in front of me.
Right. When I texted you this seriously. I use my voice to text all time and bad for that. I just, you know, voice, text, whatever. So when you get it, you get a typo from me. It’s cause the thing changed the word around or whatever, you know, it’s sometimes that gets me in trouble Craig, but you know what this did when I voiced to texted it, it said spread ad instead of product.
I don’t understand how voice to text can change the word product to spread ad.
Craig Graves: [00:08:47] What does spread ad mean?
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:48] I don’t really know. Does Facebook sell spread ads?
Craig Graves: [00:08:52] I don’t. I have no idea what that is
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:54] That’s what my phone did with when I texted that to you. It said, if you have a Facebook account, you are not a user. You are a Facebook spread ad. I’m not even making that up, man. I can’t make that.
Craig Graves: [00:09:06] I don’t know. I don’t know what it means.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:08] We’re going to turn off the mics here. We’re going to watch social dilemma and we’re just going to get back. And we’re going to tell you a little bit about what they said. We won’t ruin it for you, but I don’t think you can ruin.
It’s not like a movie. It’s a documentary and just give you our raw take and our raw feel for what we just watched. Sound interesting. Stay tuned. It’ll be a click of a mic for you. We’re going to spend a half an hour, an hour and a half watching this thing. We’ll talk to you on the other side.
Man. I got you. You didn’t think I got, you said you didn’t want to do this we’ve you made fun of me.
Craig Graves: [00:09:50] Well, it’s not Friday night. It’s like Monday night.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:55] True, true
Craig Graves: [00:09:56] I didn’t mind and watching it during the week, I just didn’t want to waste a Friday night watching social dilemma.
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:02] Didn’t want to hang out with me. And Friday night do something fun.
Craig Graves: [00:10:05] We can hang out on the weekend sometimes just didn’t want to watch social dilemma on a weekend.
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:09] I do feel like I’ve been working like forever. Now. My brain is tired. It is
Craig Graves: [00:10:14] What did you think about the show, man?
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:17] You know, it’s funny. I tend to be an optimist in a lot of ways, you know, I don’t, I enjoy thinking conspiracy theories, you know, just because it’s fun to think about, I enjoy thinking about destructive things and then, but then I bring myself back right off the cliff.
It’s almost like a, you know, enjoy watching Friday the 13th and scaring myself, and then coming back to reality. So. I don’t know, being an optimist. I have a hard time buying into people that are going to say, you know, the world’s going to end, you know, one of the things at the end of there, they’re like, you know, this we’re going to be in a civil war.
I tend to not see being a positive thinker, the dramatic outcomes of negativity that people can get to when they’re talking about stuff. But that all being said, This stuff is disturbing.
Craig Graves: [00:11:15] I was going to ask you if you’ve turned on a news channel lately.
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:19] Yeah, I know it’s disturbing.
This is all just fresh. You know, the audience listening audience again, you know, of average, or having watched this movie for an hour and a half, and this isn’t really a movie review or not a, what are those famous movie reviews? And when we were working
Craig Graves: [00:11:38] Siskel and Ebert,
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:39] Not Siskel and Ebert thank you for that.
And I will say the movie’s a little dry man. I told you, I’m going to tell on you, man. Don’t watch it. If you’re sleepy,
Craig Graves: [00:11:48] I doze off for a minute there
it’s been a long day though. It’s been a long day
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:53] for a couple of minutes in the beginning, but, what did you think? What is your, what’s your take.
Craig Graves: [00:11:59] I thought it was very interesting. The Social Dilemma on Netflix is what we’re talking about. If you hadn’t seen it, I’d recommend it. I think it’s, it’s kind of frightening, you know, it’s, made me think about social media differently, I think because I’m a kind of a capitalist, you know, I think that the market should, you know, I think you should be able to do, I’m kind of more libertarian, I guess, in my views than anything.
I think that government should stay out of things, but. No, it’s almost like a, it’s like a detriment to society is the way they were speaking about it, especially there at the end. And one guy said, if it goes unchecked for 20 more years,
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:36] That’s the civil war comment, yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:12:37] Yeah. And you can see that
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:40] I can see it.
Craig Graves: [00:12:41] It’s only social media. I think that the politics and the media have a lot to do with what’s going on too. To drive division, but that’s definitely a huge player.
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:54] I don’t know. I struggle to avoid a bit of polarity here, meaning. Yeah, society’s changed. Society has always been changing. Well, think things are all different.
And when I was growing up well, okay. You know, you hear every generation saying that you hear, you know, one generation criticizing the next and criticized the next and criticized the next and on it goes. And I think it’s always been that way. You know, something that stuck out to me in the middle of it.
That I think is fascinating when they were kind of saying a belief that I fall into the same as well. We’ll figure out how to deal with this. It’s nothing new here to see. We’ve had new media come out. We’ve had new things happening, but the scale is different. And I think this is different.
Craig Graves: [00:13:51] Well, that’s the point that guy made.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:54] And I was, that’s what I’m saying, why he was saying that I was saying, well, okay, what is he going to say? Because that’s me. I believe we’ll figure this out. I think it’s just new to mankind. And I was wanting to see what he was going to point out to change my mind and he’s come close,
Craig Graves: [00:14:09] They didn’t say scrap the whole thing.
They said that, that you have to redo those algorithms to make things more manageable. The way they’re talking about folks is it just continues to feed you stuff that grabs your attention. And, so if you’re, if you’re, if you like a video about conspiracies, it continues to feed you. Videos and posts and pictures that, that drive you into this conspiracy rabbit hole and I’m to believe the stuff to be that way.
It doesn’t have to be that way. And one thing I will say is there was the term fake news was used a lot in that thing. We’ll did our media show. You said that you didn’t believe there was anything that was a such thing as fake news. And, so I thought it was funny that those guys kept using the term fake news.
And there is fake news. That definitely, I gave you an example when you got here tonight, but there definitely is fake news, man. That’s why I say, I think the media has a part in it too.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:06] Well, I think this is the media. That’s kinda the thing, you know, we’re not talking about politics tonight.
We’re not talking about, you know, the media and network media and all of that. We’re, we’re, we’re really talking about. The applications that the human beings interacting, the way that we do now with, with Twitter and Pinterest and you know, all, you know, all the rest of them. It’s this is not about technology.
I think it’s about human behavior. Fundamental sounds, psychological based human behavior.
Craig Graves: [00:15:41] Yeah. But,
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:42] manipulated
Craig Graves: [00:15:42] the, when I say media, Facebook is not a media company. Facebook only gives us a means to share the media that’s out there in the world.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:51] Right.
Craig Graves: [00:15:52] So it’s not. So
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:53] we’re talking about social media.
Craig Graves: [00:15:55] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The whole show is about social media and the way their algorithms sucks people in and the way it drives division and, and, dad gum, it goes, it takes a deep dive into some of the mental health issues to see, the girls who. The way, I think you said it started in 2011 ish when, the suicide rate for girls between 10 and 14 is up 175% since, since 2011 and in similar numbers in hospitalizations and girls who cut themselves or hurt themselves in some form or fashion.
And, they tied it back into the amount of likes, or, or maybe not so many likes that these photos are getting and comments that people make about their appearance and how that drives self-esteem issues and stuff like that. So, I mean, it’s really,
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:51] that was one of the points I wanted to bring up, which Paul Weigle talked about intently.
This confirms everything. If you remember him talking about specifically about kids. And it’s, the numbers are staggering. They’re staggering. They are clear. They’re clearly marked with things going up 100 and 150% is what they’re reporting. And I see it in my office with kids and being anxious and anxieties.
It’s it’s, it’s very real. I see it in my own kids. It’s very real. And something that bothers me about that is that we adults, you listening in your cars, driving. You’re an adult. This is not an issue that affects just kids. Can I say that again, right?
Craig Graves: [00:17:37] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:38] This is not an issue that affects just kids, you know, in the beginning of this, Craig, where is it?
I loved his quote. here it is. This guy talked about it being subconscious intermittent, psychological behavior modification, right? The standard behavioral realities, you know, that go unprecedented such that humankind has not known or understand how this works on us, subconsciously, you know, And I misquoted the quote that I wanted to read those, not subconscious intermittent, psychological behavior modifications, what it is, but he said, he explained it, the gradual slight imperceptible change in your own behavior.
Perception that is the product. The process that they’re just trying to make money on. No one’s maliciously trying to do this. I don’t think it’s, it’s all about money. It’s all about normal human behavior. And into gradual, slight imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception. That is the product.
That’s what they’re doing. And I think that in and of itself on the scale that we see with the subconsciously intermittent psychological reality here is what’s happening unintended by these guys and gals that created it. It’s unintended.
Craig Graves: [00:19:00] Yeah, that’s a good point too. It was unintended. So these folks had good intentions.
They were talking about when they created the like button. Yeah. They thought it was going to spread joy and they didn’t foresee the, a lot of the people in the show are pioneers in the field. People. One of them was a CEO or president of Pinterest. At one point, the main guy I think was, an employee of Google who worked on Gmail.
One of the guys was a Facebook venture capitalist. And so these are people in the tech industry, these aren’t psychologists and people who were talking about these are people in the tech industry. And a lot of them are pioneers in the field who actually invented the tools that we’re using today, who are the ones that are raising the red flags.
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:43] Absolutely.
Craig Graves: [00:19:44] So I don’t think the intent is malicious, but one of the points they did make is now you’ve got $20 billion of shareholder wealth and you can’t just cut it off. Right. You know, because it’s a money machine. It’s a for-profit system,
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:57] the genie’s out of the bottle
Craig Graves: [00:19:58] and the genie’s out of the bottle.
Yeah. So that’s what it is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:03] Let me explain
Craig Graves: [00:20:03] again, when I said earlier, I’m a capitalist, you know, I don’t believe in selling products that are harmful though. I mean, we basically, shut down tobacco, big tobacco because of the issues involved with the health issues involved with smoking. And, you know, I don’t see this any differently.
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:21] I see it the exact same.
Craig Graves: [00:20:22] They don’t change how they’re doing these algorithms. Yeah. And make this thing, and change it in some way. It ain’t going to be good.
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:31] My one big recommendation, a reality check here is, is that human greed needs to be regulated. And this is human greed run riot because they’re making a crap ton of money, man.
It is all about money, money, money, they’re making money. And you’re going to tell somebody who’s good at making money to stop making money is what we’re telling human greed is going to need to be regulated here. We need to regulate this stuff.
Craig Graves: [00:20:56] I don’t know about that either. I mean, that’s a slippery slope too, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:00] if it’s not regulated, it will run riot.
Craig Graves: [00:21:04] I think something needs to be done for sure.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:06] So let me explain the intermittent fact. This is, you’re all gonna understand this from Psych 101. Okay. Psych 101, Pavlov’s dog. You remember the Pavlov’s dog thing?
Craig Graves: [00:21:16] yeah, I think we talked about that here before. Right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:19] So Pavlov for those of you that don’t, those guys had a dog and he was doing simple behavior modification.
We learned about the psychology wise. We’ve known this for probably a couple hundred years, or whenever he’d done all this stuff. B.F. Skinner was a big guy in behavioral, inner psychology. Like we know psychologically how things work, and this is one of the big, big, psychological things that are purposefully, some could say maliciously designed to sell the product, which is your behavior change and your perception and your belief system. Pavlov was a dog who he wanted to train to salivate. And so you give the dog a treat. He salivates. And he, and you get this a smell and a dog salivates, and you give the smell and the dog salivates.
Well, what we understand about behaviors when you have a stimulus and you give a stimulus every single time, and then it then you stop giving the stimulus, the response will extinguish quickly. But when you give a stimulus that somebody loves and then you give the stimulus a second time and then a third time, you don’t give it to them and then you get it again and you don’t get it and you don’t get it.
And then you get it again and you get it again and you get it again, then you don’t get it. And then you get again right
Craig Graves: [00:22:34] Now I think I’m confused
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:35] That behavior will not extinguish for a very long time because of that intermittent pattern. Right. Again, if you get the stimulus and you get the stimulus and you get the stimulus over and over and over again, and then you stop, we won’t be looking for it very quickly.
But the psychological reality of this intermittent pattern of getting notifications and getting information and getting feedback, it literally fires your amygdala, your not your amygdala, your limbic system, and the pleasure centers in your brain intermittently so that you don’t get it all the time. And that means you’re looking for it and you’re craving for it and you’re just lingering for it.
And then you get it, like you see that’s brilliant advertising. Cause I’m really going to give you what. You want, but you don’t know when I’m going to give it to you. That’s what we did to Pavlov’s dog. And you’re sinked in for a very, very, very long time. Any dog trainer will tell you that that’s the way you train a dog.
You don’t give them a treat every time. You don’t do that. You intermittently give them that. That’s just basic psychology that these brilliant companies are using. And we don’t even know it. And they do. They do know that. That is very purposeful. It’s a purposely designed tool to do with notifications and pop up news flashes and, you know, crazy.
Crazy crazy. Tell you I was very disturbed at, the way the Facebook, search engines for geographical areas.
Craig Graves: [00:24:12] Well, that was Google.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:13] That was Google. Yeah. Tell him about that because that’s scary.
Craig Graves: [00:24:16] Oh, you know? Yeah. When you type something into Google, you’re doing a search and it auto-fills, it said it would provide different auto-fill results based on your location, your geographic location.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:31] So if you’re in. Well, let’s just go political. I don’t want to just do that
Craig Graves: [00:24:35] too. Right. They give different headlines from different parts of the country. I think that’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:39] well, they’re covering that part of the country.
Craig Graves: [00:24:41] The same story with a different headline. Is it? Yeah, I think newspapers do that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:46] Okay. Is this a scaled up pretty big time. Yeah. This is pretty big time scaled. And that really, to me explains a lot of the polarization that you know, that we’re going to be seeing and that we see now and all that’s going on. I don’t know. listen, I think you ever hear the, you ever hear the expression?
Okay. Boomer.
Craig Graves: [00:25:09] I think I have it. I don’t know why. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:11] because you’re a boomer. Okay. Boomer says these technology natives, they hear this kind of conversation. They hear, well, you’re not a baby boomer, but neither am I, but people, hopefully you’ve stuck in this conversation to stick with us because I think this is a very serious conversation, really serious about how society is working.
But a lot of the technology natives have already tuned us out. They’ve turned to show off,
Craig Graves: [00:25:37] Could be, you know, it could be that one guy said that. I think you said this generation is growing up now, gen Z. Yeah. He said, you know, how do you know, what do you say? How do you know you’re in the matrix when. You don’t know what not in the matrix looks like or something,
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:56] something about being in the matrix.
You don’t need to
Craig Graves: [00:25:58] know this generation and they wouldn’t even know any difference.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:01] Oh, he said, how do you get out of the matrix when you don’t even know you’re in the matrix? That’s what he said. And that’s true. Yeah. Listen, you were, I was going to invite your 17 year old son to be on here and I want to watch this show with my kids.
Yeah. You know, is it okay to say what he said? Yeah. Yeah. Shit. It scared him. And I was surprised that he said that. Of course, I know he’s a pretty well thoughtful young man. He’s very responsible. I mean, I’m very impressed with him, but to hear a young person be aware that this is doing it to him, instead of saying, okay, boomer.
Somebody told me that recently. I think it was a client.
Craig Graves: [00:26:35] Kids are listening in. Maybe I hope so. Maybe people haven’t tuned out.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:38] I hope so I really do because okay boomer minimizes what we know about psychology and it says basically all you guys is you’re stupid. Do you think this is a big deal? It’s not a big deal.
No, one’s controlling my mind.
Craig Graves: [00:26:48] Yeah. You know, it’s and it’s funny, you know, if any young people are listening, the world, didn’t used to be this way. You know, I can remember. I remember being in college and, Jeez, who was running for president back in those days,
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:00] Reagan or
Craig Graves: [00:27:02] it would’ve probably been George HW Bush.
And, who did he run? He was, who did he run against?
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:12] Walter Mondale was in there somewhere.
Craig Graves: [00:27:14] I can’t remember what, who was running, but I remember we all went to the voting polls up at Western County. And, I don’t remember who anybody voted for. And we all went and voted and then we all went and got drunk somewhere.
You know, it was like, it had a great time. Yeah. And these days, dude, I mean, it is down. I have fraternity brothers from that time period who won’t speak to each other because one’s conservative and one’s liberal and it didn’t used to be this way. No, it wasn’t, it wasn’t this way.
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:45] And I don’t put that on the politics of today.
Listen, I know we just came out of a very difficult election. Well, we’re coming out over, still in. I should say. A very difficult election and people would blame that on Trump or blame that on Biden that guys. Yeah, no, we have had very different views for a long time in this country on how to move forward and decisions that need to be made.
This is not a function of any one person or group of people I would like to make us understand that this is a function of a psychological pattern that has been scaled way up on a big scale. How’s that for a statement?
Craig Graves: [00:28:27] It has been scaled way up. And that’s the point I wanted to make is it has definitely ramped up past, I guess, in the past a, yeah, that makes sense.
About 2010, 2011 is what he said. And I think absolutely back in 2000, when was it 2000 when Gore and Bush ran
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:44] it? Absolutely.
Craig Graves: [00:28:45] Yeah, there was a, there was a close race. It was very divisive. I don’t remember anybody getting mad. I don’t remember any protests in the street. Remember anybody getting beat up or anything like that?
Just wasn’t. And, Florida was the big state. Al Gore filed some lawsuits and stuff like that to make sure that all the votes were counted correctly. Nobody got pissed off because
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:07] he did that
Craig Graves: [00:29:07] because he did that. It was just part of the process. We all waited. I think it took until December the 12th. I think that’s what I heard on a good months.
Yeah. And, and when they figured out that Bush was gonna win, Based on the court Gore conceded and that was it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:22] That’s it?
Craig Graves: [00:29:22] That was it. Now today. Trump’s holding up democracy, Trump’s threatening democracy by not, not conceding that election he’s holding up the transition. It’s putting national security at risk.
It’s just, it’s unbelievably insane.
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:35] It’s an echo chamber
Craig Graves: [00:29:37] differences between those two timeframes. They were very, very similar. The reactions were different, but the circumstances were very similar.
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:45] And one of the reasons why I wanted to do this show, Craig is because I, for the first time in my career, okay, I’ve been doing this I’ve said. 20 plus 25 years give or take. And I have never had the experience in my therapy office of having a full session length conversation about the emotions people are having over this stuff. And I’ve had it multiple times in the last couple weeks, the last few weeks entire sessions it’s been being held on this.
That blows my mind. It really does.
Craig Graves: [00:30:20] Yeah. How does, how does watching that show change how you might hold a therapy session?
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:29] It’s an excellent question. And it’s an excellent question. And I don’t know that I know the answer to it. I think I’ve been going through this for the better part of a year or two since having my brain being binged by Dr. Weigel and the others on the panel. Honestly, that, that day. Changed my awareness of the psychological aspects of this. And since then to now, today, and was watching this and seeing what’s going on, I’m absolutely kind of going to be thinking about how do we, how do we combat this? And I think, I think the answer is some of what we’ve been talking about.
I mean, people are talking about, turn it off. You know, control your emotions. Can, you know, control your behavior. Understand when somebody is coming after your behavior. You control yourself. If I’m trying to make you think about Snoopy, I can, you, nobody in this listening audience has thought about Snoopy until I just said it.
Well, if you know that I’m playing a game with you and I want you to think about Snoopy when you’re going to bed tonight. It may pop back in your brain, but realize, Oh, wait a minute, Chris is being malicious. He’s really screwing with me. And he wants me to think about Snoopy and I don’t want to do that.
I just don’t. And so you purposely change your thoughts to something else you purposely, you know, eradicate it. You purposely go through a process to manage your emotions. Right? Don’t think about Snoopy. Now. I guarantee half the listening audience will think about Snoopy at some point before they are done with the day.
Craig Graves: [00:32:01] Oh, they already have.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:02] That’s how powerful that is though. Understand that you asked me how it will change therapy. For me, I think shining a light with insight is something that I believe makes therapy work. Let me say that again, shining a light with insight about your emotions and your mental health makes it work.
And so can’t be insightful about something I didn’t even know now I’m beginning to know, so I can help people be insightful about it. That’s my answer.
Craig Graves: [00:32:34] Yeah. That’s interesting. I mean,
it’s really, it’s really interesting.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:40] It’s disturbing.
Craig Graves: [00:32:41] It’s disturbing. Yeah. That’s a better word.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:44] It’s like I said, his thing, the gradual slight in perceptible change in your own behavior and perception. This is why they’re making so many billions not millions. They’re making billions of dollars over there.
Their find on platforms, how to gradually and slightly and imperceptibly change your own behavior. That’s what’s selling. Now, some people are going to do that for good. And some people are gonna do that for bad, and most people don’t care, which one. And you think about that just came to me talking.
Some people are going to do that for good. Some people are going to do that bad, but you know what? Most people they’re just making money. They’re just doing a sales pitch.
Craig Graves: [00:33:32] You know, there are people though that care what they’re doing and they want to provide value to the world and provide a good product and lead people down the right direction.
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:40] I’m going to care less. If I’m going to change what I do and not make $25 billion.
Craig Graves: [00:33:48] I don’t know, man. I don’t want to sell my soul.
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:50] Greed man. So
Craig Graves: [00:33:51] my soul bro. That’s what I’m saying. I think there are people out there who, we want to do the right thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:55] That’s who made the show.
Craig Graves: [00:33:56] A lot of people don’t yeah, those guys definitely want to do the right thing to show the tech and they’re talking, they’re talking, Hey, we need to make a change here.
Yes. So I, but there are a lot of people out there who don’t care. You’re right. You know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:08] And while I was going to say, and don’t know that they’re doing it, but you know what, man, nah, this show really kind of did convince me of that too,
man. It’s hard to say, but they know what they’re doing. They really know what they’re doing. And I think a lot of people are not in a decision making role at Pinterest or Tik TOK or wherever, but they’re not comfortable with it. But they’re not speaking up, moral courage if you will.
Craig Graves: [00:34:39] Yeah. Yeah. Our products and money, and we’ve been talking about politics and it did make a point about how countries can manipulate other countries, how democracy is under attack because of these, because of these social platforms, you know, we all, we all know that Russia.
Evidently mettled in our 2016 election with some stuff, but, it gave an example about an app. Was it an African country?
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:08] Totally. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:35:08] Well, Facebook was pre-installed on these phones, which gave everybody in the country access to Facebook and then the government used it to manipulate or to manipulate the attitudes towards this Muslim group.
And they were actually killing these people and driving them out of the country based on the manipulation that the government was doing through Facebook,
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:35] in the hands of an autocratic. Yes. Intending to be solo, powerful entities, controlling people for decades, like a King or a czar or something like that.
Yeah. And that’s okay.
Craig Graves: [00:35:50] Like a genocide, if you will. And you know, we also know that like people will get on there and they’ll, you know, they’ll schedule a Trump rally on the left side of the road and an Antifa rally on the other side of the road. And you know, what’s going to happen when that happens.
It’s going to be chaos. So we know that kind of thing happens here in our country too, is people are using manipulate social media to create situations like that. That forwards their agenda. Yes.
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:16] Yeah. Smart people are figuring out how to use social media. And I want us to be aware that that’s happening because I think if we’re aware of that’s happening, we’re going to have different conversations in the kitchen table over, you know, the political agenda, thoughts of the day.
Yeah. And if we don’t even know it, you and I are going to be fighting each other, if we have a different view, because you got your information and I got my information and that’s exactly what you know, they were talking about. We’ve got your dog ticked off, man. She’s with us, man. It’s okay. Hey. Okay. Here’s another thought that I thought was pretty interesting.
Oh, first of all, while you’re dealing with a dog, this is not addiction. I stand by that you know people. Talk about it as addiction. if you follow the show, you’ve heard me talk about that before it bothers me how people, you know, make the mistake because of, you know, the compulsive behaviors of this creates and stuff,
Craig Graves: [00:37:19] I was gonna bring that up a minute ago when we were talking.
They used the word addiction a lot.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:24] Yeah. It’s compulsive. It’s not addiction. This is very, very different than that. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that tonight because in our addiction shows, we have talked about that a lot, but it’s bad though, because it’s, we’re not all addicts, but we’re all compulsively engaged.
How can I make that statement?
Craig Graves: [00:37:49] We’re not addicts, but we’re compulsively engaged
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:51] Almost to a man and woman. Yeah, I think we are. We tend to be compulsively engaged if you engage.
Craig Graves: [00:37:59] Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:00] let me say that again. I think that’s a true statement, man. If we are engaged, we are going to be compulsively engaging. Remember when that Pinterest guy on the show talked about that he’s like, I know that I’m not supposed to be doing this so much, but I cannot control own behavior
Craig Graves: [00:38:20] More than one of them did that more than one of them said that. There’s a couple of them that said, yeah, I know I shouldn’t be doing, but I’ll, I’ll do it anyway. I can’t stop
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:29] it because it’s not listen. I’m a therapist. I got a lot of good ideas.
I got a lot of good practices. Do you think I implement them at home all the time?
Craig Graves: [00:38:41] No,
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:42] No. No, I wish I did. I try. I really actually very purposely and purposeful about trying to practice what I preach and I do to a large extent, this point, people know me. They’re going to start screaming through the microphone in the air.
I know you don’t. That’s the thing. It’s compulsive because it’s designed on emotions that we struggle to manage. Even if you are insightful about it. You will struggle with this. So if you’re a user you are compulsively using, I think we can say that because of the way that this stuff works, made this point as well, wrote it down wonderful developments that were positive in so many ways.
Technology. This is not to bash technology show.
Craig Graves: [00:39:30] It’s not, no, it’s not. And even on the show there, they said, you know, The guy used Uber as an example, he can, that’s wonderful. Tap a button on his phone and a car shows up to his house in five minutes based me where he wants to go.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:42] Literally.
Craig Graves: [00:39:43] Yeah, he called it magic. There’s lots of good. When we talked about this before and on the show
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:48] Technology Anxiety
Craig Graves: [00:39:49] It’s not all bad. I mean, there are a lot of good things on your phone.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:55] But we have got to understand, and I think Adrian in technology anxiety made that point. When, when we were talking about that, if you recall, it creates choices, you have so many choices.
And when Neil, our producer was talking about that very recently on a show, When you have all those choices, it creates anxiety. Not because you’re weak or you’re being manipulated or you’re stupid, or you’re a poor emotion manager of yourself just because it does. And if you think this only affects kids, then you’re naive and blind.
Craig Graves: [00:40:30] That’s right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:31] It’s just what happens when you engage it. Know that and then manage that. Okay. Human futures. I thought that was an interesting part, too. You talked about how this stuff sells. So let’s look at that. The companies and social media are selling to advertisers is a big moneymaker. It’s a lot of the way they make money and they made a big psychological point that for years, and you’re going out for a lifetime, probably died back in the middle ages.
When we were advertising with a piece of paper on a wall, in a cave. If you could tell me, I will guarantee you success with your advertising. How much would you pay me,
Craig Graves: [00:41:15] Man that’d be, I guess it depends on what kind of product I had
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:18] social media, as much as it took social media can tell you if you advertise this national product with me, I will guarantee you this many likes in this many clicks, in this many responses to your website, you don’t have to pay me.
Unless you get that number of traffic on your site
Craig Graves: [00:41:36] as powerful, a little bit of a hard time following that too, because I’m advertised products, we’ve advertised, we’ve done advertisements for the show here,
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:45] Right.
Craig Graves: [00:41:46] That haven’t resulted in downloads and those, and those kinds of things. So I was a little bit confused when they said that they guarantee that your advertising is going to work and that’s, that’s not necessarily the truth.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:00] We got likes on our Facebook page. When we were doing that
Craig Graves: [00:42:03] lights, we didn’t get likes, not all those likes, turned into downloads. And, you know, I’ve tried to sell products with other businesses that I’ve been engaged with. And haven’t had the success that they talked about on there. If you advertise, we guarantee it’s guaranteed sale.
I’m questioning that. I’d like to hear more about that. That’s the truth.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:25] The algorithms and the statistics and the numbers might show otherwise, but you’re right. I don’t know. I understand what you’re with that skepticism. I think that they idea they were reporting is that they can predict human behavior and that’s human futures.
This many people are going to be worried about social media, climate change in this geographic area. So advertise there. That’s where you’ll get your dollars met.
Craig Graves: [00:42:47] Yeah. And when you create a Facebook ad, it will say. Excuse me. I forget what it’s called, but there’s an option in there to let Facebook modify your audience the way it sees will benefit you more.
So you go in, let’s say we want to advertise, this show. So we go to Facebook and we say, we want to advertise this show to men and women in the United States. You know, ages 40 to 50 who have kids and who were interested in social media and mental health. And so we did find that audience, see that.
So that’s who is going to show it to based on what we just said but there’s an option that says in Facebook will modify your audience, as it sees fit to get you more of what it is you’re trying to get.
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:44] There it is right there.
Craig Graves: [00:43:45] So I know they do some manipulations there to that. The algorithm is working in the background
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:52] and it’s predicting human behavior and
Craig Graves: [00:43:54] human behavior.
And if it thinks that 35 year old people. Maybe more interested that it’ll include them. If it thinks that you’re interested in psychology and mental health, that may include other people. So yeah, it’s working, it’s working and doing his magic,
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:10] trying to help you. It’s magic. You know, it’s funny audience, he’s the marketing person, him and Neil start talking about this and they, but it’s funny because that’s what this is doing.
And we have tried to do that. And we’re a small scale. I think big companies are doing that in a big way with Coca-Cola. They will sell their Coca-Cola product. I mean, we know that TV advertising works. We know that we know that through deep psychological studies, just on your television, that’s why people pay literally $5 million for a 30 second ad on the super bowl.
Craig Graves: [00:44:46] Yeah. Yeah, I get that. But you know I’ve had successful campaigns on Facebook. I’m not knocking it, but for them to make a statement, like if you advertise on the platform is going to work, I’d be rich. If that were the case.
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:57] Yeah. Yeah. Social media is a drug and it’s optimizing connection to other people.
I think I can totally fall beyond that fall under that, that was a note that I made when watching it, not addiction. Many people can take drugs and not be addicted to it. We all, a lot of people drink alcohol and not alcoholics. You’ve got to understand what it’s doing to you. And if you think of social media as a drug that is messing with your limbic system, messing with your anxiety and your euphoria, both intermittently, let me say that again.
If you understand that social media is messing with your limbic system. And that’s a pleasure center and your anxieties. That’s a deterrent emotionally to understand that then use it, but we cannot continue being rational, adults consuming this product or being the product of the product and not know that that has got to change in society.
You cannot minimize the realities that this is as drug and that’s, that’s what he’s saying. How do you get out of the matrix when you don’t even know you’re in the matrix? That’s exactly what he, that’s what you’re saying. It occurs to me as I’m talking right.
Craig Graves: [00:46:18] Yeah. Yeah. And that, and that point I made earlier telling younger people what it used to be like, you know, They’d never know what it used to be.
Like. They’ve never experienced that, you know? So if all of a sudden let’s just say, Uncle Sam said, look, Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. You’re out. No more. Detriment to society. What would all those guys do? They wouldn’t know how to act.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:40] They wouldn’t
Craig Graves: [00:46:41] because I’ve always grown up that way.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:43] That’s the disturbing scale of this for anybody that is 17 years or younger, you have never not had this. 25 years and younger maybe.
You’ve never, you’ve never had not
Craig Graves: [00:46:59] That’s pushing it
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:00] 25 yet. It is, I guess. Yeah. When does it come out to 2010, 2000? No, we’ll call it 20. You know, I mean, that’s where and if they’ve grown up being affected by it and don’t know they’re affected by it, and that’s all they know, then Holy cow, that can’t be allowed to continue. Made a note that conspiracy theories sell. People, love them.
Craig Graves: [00:47:27] They do.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:28] And I think that’s bad. I think we need to be aware of major problems that can come on. Hitler took control of a society in a diabolical way, using media to a certain extent. We have to be on guard, but dang, can we let some of the conspiracy theories down a little bit?
Craig Graves: [00:47:49] Why do you think they’re bad?
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:52] Because they. They’re bad if they’re not true, but the conspiracy theory,
Craig Graves: [00:47:59] you don’t know if they’re true or not believe they’re true.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:02] Therein lies the rub though.
Craig Graves: [00:48:03] Yeah, I know, but I mean, what did they, what, what harm is it?
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:06] Wow. Think about that, Craig. Okay.
Craig Graves: [00:48:08] Because I’m genuinely curious.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:10] Let’s stay there for a minute.
How does, how does a conspiracy theory make you feel?
Craig Graves: [00:48:15] Intrigued and interested? I guess? Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:17] very much so.
Craig Graves: [00:48:20] You know, di d Oswald shoot Kennedy by himself? I don’t think so, but it doesn’t matter, you know, the sun’s going to come up in the morning,
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:28] It breeds, anxiety, it breeds distrust. It breeds disloyalty it tears the fabric of whomever is engaging in the conspiracy apart.
Craig Graves: [00:48:39] Yeah. But don’t you don’t, we need a level of distrust.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:42] Yes.
Craig Graves: [00:48:43] Yes. So we need that. And that’s the problem. I think that we have a lot today is people would just blindly trust.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:49] You know, it’s a scale on the one hand you have naivete. On the other hand, you’ve got distrust and disloyalty.
So we don’t need to be naive, but he can’t be walking around thinking. You know, people that don’t agree with us are against us.
Craig Graves: [00:49:08] No, I’m not thinking that either, but I mean, I think you need to question things. I don’t think you just take things right out, you know, as gospel,
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:15] I’m a centrist guy.
What is the word that is between naiveté and distrust? Or disbelief? I don’t know.
Craig Graves: [00:49:24] I don’t know that either.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:25] That’s where we need to be, whatever word that is like passive and aggressive people do not understand the word assertive. That’s where we need to be. And I’m going to think about this naive and disbelieving or distrusting what’s in the middle.
I don’t have an answer, but I’ve got to think about
Craig Graves: [00:49:41] Questioning though. Questioning is good.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:44] Maybe that’s middle.
Craig Graves: [00:49:45] I mean, I was listening to Jamie Dore yesterday and he’s like, Man he’ll call them all out. He don’t care if they’re Trump or they’re Biden or whoever. He just, he tells me, you know, he calls out, he tells, he says, what’s on his mind.
So we’ve heard this vaccines coming out, right. 90% success rate
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:00] 94 today, a different one
Craig Graves: [00:50:02] 90% success rate
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:04] or something,
Craig Graves: [00:50:05] putting out the, you know, who’s producing the vaccine. Pfizer, Pfizer.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:09] Yeah, boy,
Craig Graves: [00:50:10] you know, who’s claiming 90% success rate Pfizer, how much money they’re gonna make on this vaccine? You think they might be.
Stretching the number a little bit.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:18] I don’t know. Maderma has got another one now. And I guess somebody told me another, the country over in Russia, somebody’s got, I mean, there are different vaccines that are going to be out there.
Craig Graves: [00:50:27] Right. Let me say this then. So let’s say, Joe’s pharmaceuticals and, it’s, you know, I pulled the paper out and I say, Holy cow, or I pulled up my smartphone and I say, man, Hey Chris, it looks like Pfizer’s got a 90% success rate with this vaccine, 90%. That’s gonna, that’s gonna hurt our profits. Hey, John down in research, how’s our vaccine doing? 94%. Yeah. Okay. Hey listen. 94% on our vaccine.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:01] Yeah, we got it. You see what I’m saying? Absolutely. And that’s where disinformation and weird things start happening. And as a psychologist, we have
Craig Graves: [00:51:09] been throughout history and governments and pharmaceutical companies.
And I mean, you name it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:16] let me tell you about the blue whale challenge. You ever heard. I asked you when we were watching show, have you ever heard of the blue whale challenge? You said no.
Craig Graves: [00:51:23] No. I never heard of that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:25] Please do not even Google this. Audience. Really, and I hope that doesn’t sew interest in show.
You know, give more credence to this. It’s it’s disturbing Craig, it’s scary. It’s disgusting. It’s an absolute terror on society. That’s why I don’t even want it to get any more algorithms on there. So please just don’t don’t Google this.
Craig Graves: [00:51:48] This is on social media.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:49] It’s everywhere.
Craig Graves: [00:51:50] So now we’ve said. I know blue whale thing, don’t do it
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:53] and people are going to do it.
I know. And I don’t want that to happen. That’s why I’m taking a big minute here to say that. And the reason being is because what the blue whale challenge is predatory thing towards kids, where they have kids take a challenge and it’s a 50 day 50 challenge thing, and it starts small. It grows and grows and gets bigger.
And you know what? The last challenge is. Commit suicide. Wow. And kids do it.
Craig Graves: [00:52:21] Wow.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:23] And there are others like it. It’s terrifying. It’s absolutely the way this works. Psychologically getting you a little bit lumped in. Let me read it again. What he said, where is it that he said the gradual slight in perceptible change in your own behavior and perceptions?
That is the product. And you think that it’s only kiddos that are susceptible to that you are wrong. That is where the naivete and the blind ignorance comes into play here. And things like that I just mentioned and only want to say it be honest with you. That’s where predatory little tricksters come on and get kids invested sexually, sex trafficking.
And all the other stuff that feat people fall prey to. And we’re talking about 22 year olds, we’re talking about 17 year olds. We’re talking about adults as much as 12 year olds and seven year olds. That scary, yeah? That’s something that I saw on a TV show on like 20/20 or something.
Some point after my, I think my wife told me about it at one point Hmm. Terrifying. It’s awful. And it’s precisely how this stuff gets embedded deep into our neural complex brain that we don’t even know is happening, man. It’s just so bad.
Craig Graves: [00:53:46] Let me just say, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe it’s, but I do believe it’s good to ask questions and trust.
People are flawed. Chris human human beings are flawed. Donald Trump is not the savior. Joe Biden is not the savior. They’re human beings, man. They’re corruptible. You know what, you know what I mean?
Chris Gazdik: [00:54:05] Absolutely.
Craig Graves: [00:54:06] And so
Chris Gazdik: [00:54:07] they’re also emotional.
Craig Graves: [00:54:08] You talked about greed earlier, you know, there’s a lot of money on the table for, coronavirus treatments and vaccines.
Could those go through without being 90%? Could that be a stretch? Absolutely. It could be, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:54:23] I liked how they end it up towards that. The end talking about technology is not the existential threat. And he said rather the ability of technology to maximize the worst of human behavior. And I think one of the primary things I’m talking about here is disloyalty and distrust as a polarized reality.
When we’re talking about a group of people. And, you know, for instance, just these United States, but a group of people around the world, when you’re a group of people, you’re a group of people. And particularly during this terrible election cycle that we just went through, it’s red States and blue States, and it’s just awful to see the divide that has just exploded.
I don’t think it’s going to go to a civil war. They reported that, but dang man, you know, I mean, Please don’t go make a believer out of me, everyone, you know, like,
Craig Graves: [00:55:16] I don’t know man,
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:17] it’s scary. It’s scary.
Craig Graves: [00:55:20] They’re not the only ones I’ve heard say that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:22] I know. I agree. I’ve heard that I’ve had conversations with friends and colleagues alike and that, that is something to be concerned about as a watch item, you know, we have to understand psychologically what’s going on with us inside us.
Now what’s going on inside Craig Graves. That’s not my job. My job is to understand what’s going on inside Chris Gazdik and we tend to suck at that.
Craig Graves: [00:55:51] And that’s right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:52] We really do.
Craig Graves: [00:55:53] That’s really the topic of this conversation, right? Gradually changing your behaviors. You don’t even know what’s happening.
You’re just getting all these inputs and the next thing you know, you’re an extremist. Yeah. Left or right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:05] No extremist thinks they’re extremist. Ooh. How about that for a quote? Is that, is that not true? Yeah, that’s true. There’s probably not one extremist out there that believes he’s an extremist. Yeah.
And we get polarized. Oh my God. I’m getting disturbed, man.
It’s disturbing. Oh gosh. How do we get out of here? Let’s sum us up, man. you know, I think that. Maybe one of the big things to figure out is that that scale being naive or being distrusting and disbelieving is the middle. Maybe being curious, being inquisitive as a trait,
Craig Graves: [00:56:47] curious, inquisitive,
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:49] seeking information.
Craig Graves: [00:56:51] What did I say earlier? Not distrusting, but questioning
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:55] that that’s right. Yeah. That’s why I said inquisitive.
Craig Graves: [00:56:58] Yeah. Yeah. You have to question man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:01] Be quizzical, but don’t be naive, man. This stuff is out there on us.
Craig Graves: [00:57:06] I don’t think you’re any good guys. There are good guys, but.
I mean they’re far and few between.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:14] No. What were you thinking there? You looked like your brain did something.
Craig Graves: [00:57:17] I just think, you know, I think that we think that our, that we get on teams, you know, I’m on the Republican team or I’m on the Democrat team and we’re the good guys. That’s not there’s no good guys.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:31] Well there’s no good bad guys or bad guys. There’s just all guys and gals. That’s right. Yeah. How about that? As a summary is no good guys. There’s no bad guys. There’s just guys and gals that are around and we need to understand that and understand that we will get through this. You know, we will understand this better, but honestly, man, if we don’t wake up to the fact that we need to understand something it’s going to be, it’s going to drive us into a deeper hole of despair and anxiety and distress at least.
So be aware, check out the movie on Netflix, Social Dilemma, and here’s a good time for our plug at the end of the show. After we talked about all this, we do have a counseling button. It will take you to Better Help. it is an awesome online counseling service. you’ll see more about that in the shows to come.
We’ve partnered with them. It’s a great way to support the show. If you go through our website at, throughatherapistseyes.com. You will be able to see that there’s a counseling button to now take you through the system. It’s really, really cool to be able to get online counseling, more on that kind of as we go, Craig, let me get your last thoughts before we click the mic’s off. Social Dilemma.
What did we title this? this show is a, what do we say? Social media, mental health downfall?.
Craig Graves: [00:58:50] Indeed it is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:51] Is that the conclusion
Craig Graves: [00:58:52] I say so,
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:55] All right, guys, we’ll be talking to you next week. Have a great week. Know to take care of yourselves. Be well, stay well.