402: Emotional Sweep with Merlin Mann

Emotional Sweep with Merlin Man

[00:00:00] Brett: Hey, you’re listening to Overtired. I’m Brett Terpstra. I’m here, as usual, with Christina Warren and Jeff Severance Gunsel. We have a special guest this week. I’d like to welcome Merlin Mann. How’s it going, Merlin?

[00:00:20] Merlin: It’s going great. Hi team.

[00:00:22] Brett: Hey, um, so we, we’ve been,

[00:00:26] Merlin: That’s not really abrupt. I’m trying to be efficient because we had a really nice conversation for 15 minutes before, and I have to act like we’re just starting. Hey, hey you guys, how’s it going? I’m

[00:00:35] Brett: we just talked for 20 minutes before the show, um, and we’re gonna try to capture some of that magic again. Um, uh,

[00:00:43] Merlin: in a way that’s really organic and nobody will

[00:00:45] Christina: Yeah, you’ll totally feel it. It won’t, it won’t, won’t be like recreating stuff. I don’t know. I’m

[00:00:50] Jeff: You’re gonna love this, everybody.

[00:00:51] Brett: we got Merlin to open Chrome today.

[00:00:54] Christina: Hell yeah.

[00:00:56] Merlin: Yeah. I think I just got some new credit [00:01:00] cards or something. I’m not sure. I, a lot, I opened Chrome

[00:01:04] Jeff: That’s on us.

[00:01:05] Christina: ARC.

[00:01:06] Merlin: I

[00:01:06] Brett: Yeah,

[00:01:07] Merlin: think it took a photo of my balls. Um, I’m not sure.

[00:01:11] Jeff: We meant to take that out

[00:01:13] On Podcasting with Video

[00:01:13] Brett: you’re on video, which is probably rare for you when you’re recording a podcast.

[00:01:18] Merlin: I’m going to tell you something. I used to be on a podcast a long time ago, and it was a pretty well known, like popular podcast. And at one point they stopped doing just straight up Skype and started going to doing like video, but for an audio product. And I just think that if you have video on, I get it.

[00:01:35] Merlin: But if you don’t release that as video. There’s a huge component of it that people are missing. And like, and it’s not, so like, that’s okay. But then the problem is you, you get so used to it that you start saying things that’ll, we’re doing things like some of the faces I’m making and like, I can partner Jeff while we’re here.

[00:01:53] Merlin: And like that kind of stuff, which will not go through the listener. And I think that makes a, can make a less good show, but this show I feel very [00:02:00] strongly about. This is, I’m happy to be on video at 10, 20 AM on a Saturday morning. Because I obviously, I was able to get to my stylist and pick my fourth favorite Roderick on the Line shirt, so.

[00:02:13] Christina: Yeah. I also got to a stylist. Uh, the joke here, uh, listeners is I’m just wearing like a, a North Face like beanie and, um, uh, a

[00:02:22] Merlin: that, it’s from that, uh, that, that Italian stylist. I think her name is, uh, Ilaria Hatt, I think.

[00:02:28] Jeff: Oh, man.

[00:02:32] Brett: I tried to convince these guys to record video and put out like a YouTube version of the show and it has not gone over well. They’re both shaking their heads right now. Um,

[00:02:42] Merlin: think as long as you understand it’s a different thing, it’s good. Like with You Look Nice Today, we did video and I thought it turned out pretty good considering it was the lockdown and, but like, as long as you understand the parameters, a phrase I use that I won’t go into, but in the world of podcasts, I call it the little world.

[00:02:57] Merlin: Each podcast I love tends to have a little world. [00:03:00] It’s got voices that I like in it. It’s got bits. It’s got stuff. I, yeah, I yell at it. I like, I yell it. I yell at the guys on Accidental Tech. Podcast all the time. ’cause they’re uniformly horrible. Like, but that’s their little world. You decide what comes into the little world.

[00:03:12] Merlin: But if you never get a beat on what your little world is, you never let it become the thing that it is. Like you just start throwing stuff at it for what you regard as metrics. See, now I’m holding Caulfield. It’s so nice to be here on video with you. And I’m, I’m not

[00:03:26] Jeff: of the show Holden Caulfield.

[00:03:28] Brett: I

[00:03:29] Merlin: my Twitter, but my bio on Neston for a while was, uh, lifestyle Holden Call Field.

[00:03:34] Merlin: Have you never seen so many phonies in your whole life?

[00:03:37] Christina: ha ha.

[00:03:39] Harold, you were right

[00:03:39] Brett: to make a correction at the top of the show. Um, I said last week that, um, Axeman was in Minneapolis, uh,

[00:03:48] Merlin: The Marvel comic?

[00:03:49] Jeff: And I let you say it.

[00:03:50] Brett: Ed, and, and our, our friend of the show, Harold, um, he let me know, uh, in no uncertain terms that Axeman was in [00:04:00] St. Paul. So forgive me for that.

[00:04:02] Jeff: I love that. My favorite thing of seeing shows in St. Paul is how many times the bands go. It’s great to be in Minneapolis. Harold.

[00:04:12] Brett: I don’t want to, I don’t want to call Harold pedantic because he would definitely tell me I was using the word wrong. Um,

[00:04:19] Merlin: it’s pronounced Pedant. Oh, Francais.

[00:04:25] Brett: well, like, uh, Merlin, you and Dan used to, uh, he had a funny bit about my last name.

[00:04:31] Merlin: we, and we stopped because I, it

[00:04:34] Brett: know, because I, I was, I was, I was somehow offended, and then, like, I, I was a dick about it, I’m sorry, like, it was actually an honor

[00:04:45] Merlin: little world,

[00:04:47] Jeff: What was the bed?

[00:04:48] Merlin: Well, like, we have, we have, we have, no, but we’ve got funny ways we say things. Like, for, like, anything that’s got B’s in it is always funny. We are like, Bluetooth, bunk bag. There’s just certain words [00:05:00] that are just funny. And, and every time I’d say, oh my god, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:05:02] Merlin: I have all these services and like, Brett, I mean. QED, sorry if it’s your first time tuning in, Brett runs my life. Like, whether that’s marked, like there’s just so much stuff in my life that is, is Brett stuff or Brett adjacent stuff. And I would constantly be like, Oh, but there’s a service that lets you just select some text and then that adds the kind of markdown bullets that you like to it.

[00:05:24] Merlin: And Brett Terpstra, Terpstra, Terpstra. And he’d say it like that, but he did it very percussively. Sorry about that. It, it was meant in love, but

[00:05:36] Brett: Yeah, no, I got that after, after you stopped doing it, I’m like, holy shit, I never should’ve,

[00:05:42] Merlin: It’s like people saying to me, like the magician, and I say, yeah, like the magician, which I’d never heard before.

[00:05:47] Jeff: Brett, do you want to regain your power and just speak your name to Merlin

[00:05:50] Merlin: Yes, thank you! Thank you!

[00:05:54] Brett: No,

[00:05:55] Merlin: They called me Mr. Terpstra.

[00:05:58] Mental Health Corner

[00:05:58] Brett: I abdicate, I abdicate [00:06:00] my power. Um, so we, at the top of most shows, we do a mental health corner, and for the last two episodes, that mental health corner has run like an hour, and it’s supposed to be like 15 minutes. Um, so, if it’s gonna run long, I want it to be Merlin’s fault, so, Uh, what we do is we check in on our mental health.

[00:06:22] Brett: All three of the regular hosts have their own diagnoses. And, and we talk about how things are

[00:06:29] Merlin: from some kind of an accredited professional, or more like I’m pretty sure I’m

[00:06:33] Jeff: we work

[00:06:33] Merlin: sure I’m OCD.

[00:06:35] Jeff: 1.

[00:06:37] Brett: So, so I would like to turn it over. Merlin, how are you doing this week?

[00:06:42] Merlin: Uh, me first?

[00:06:44] Brett: I, cause if this runs long, I want it to be your fault. Like, and if it’s short, great.

[00:06:49] Merlin: um, well it, it, this is almost all I talk about, so I’ll try to keep it brief, but, uh, my mental health pretty good. Pretty [00:07:00] good. Uh, I have an ongoing project that, uh, I’m, I’m gonna just go ahead and kind of, kind of mention just for context ’cause it’s, it’s something I’m trying to socialize, which is like, it’s just, just a whole bunch of stuff.

[00:07:12] Merlin: in my life where I’ve had a reason to become more aware of certain aspects of my mental health. Something my friend John at Syracuse introduced to me, something called the XY problem, which has become like kind of instrumental in my life, is like, you tell, you want help from somebody and so you say you have a problem with X, but that expert would be in a position to tell you sometimes after minutes or hours that actually you have a problem with Y.

[00:07:35] Merlin: To paraphrase Stephen Covey, you have your ladder against the wrong wall in that sense. Um, and, Things like trauma, issues with authority, things like that. I’ve just realized I’ve only, I’ve really, I think that’s something I’m really turning over a lot right now is the role of shame in our lives and how at least I feel like we were, we’re all, I’m 57, so like the way I was raised, not in, Tensionally, I don’t think, but like, [00:08:00] there’s just so much shame in all of our lives and I’m starting to wonder, uh, about the extent to which that shame drives some of our lesser angels and how we, and how we’re motivated, how we talk to ourselves, obviously very importantly, but also like the kinds of like, we’re carrying water for gym teachers.

[00:08:19] Merlin: in 1978 sometimes. And so that’s something, pardon me, I’m getting over a cold. That’s something where like, I’ve been had a, I had a big health thing that I’ve been dealing with. And, and one aspect of that and having to be in the hospital for three days was for the first time, you know, ever was like just confronting this whole way of like, well, how much do you drink?

[00:08:39] Merlin: Did you know your blood pressure is high? Did you colonoscopy in too long? And it’s just like all these things that are meant to be. Even like, honestly, on the label useful things from a person are so often usually unintentionally grounded in shame, reiterating shame, and ultimately, at least in my, this is where I get real weird, [00:09:00] is in the way people unintentionally as a society, as a culture, as a tribe, teach us a certain kind of shame.

[00:09:06] Merlin: That we’re, we eventually learned to carry and put onto ourselves and consequently put on others. And if you’ve ever wondered about that, ask your parents why they’re how they were. And there’s a pretty good chance your parents were how they were because their parents made them ashamed about it. So now when we yell at our kids about screen time, whatever that means, like when we yell at our kids about stuff, we’re basically saying something that we hope impresses a dead parent.

[00:09:28] Merlin: So that’s something I think about a lot right now and I’m operationalizing. As a, as a project to, as I explained recently on another show, there’s like this two track approach of like, yeah, continuing to try and become a better person and a more wholesome person and a more kind person. And, and again, kindness is a lot of about what you don’t do in life.

[00:09:48] Merlin: It’s not stuff people see. A lot of the writing, a lot of your writing is writing you don’t do. People won’t see, realizing you don’t need to write. All those kinds of like those complex, like internal voyages we take. So my [00:10:00] mental health is pretty good considering. Um, but that, that’s a thing I’m thinking about a lot right now.

[00:10:05] Merlin: How are you guys?

[00:10:07] Jeff: Oh man, can I?

[00:10:08] Brett: Okay, go ahead,

[00:10:09] Jeff: Go ahead. I was going to say the thing about carrying the shame that is in a way carrying the shame of a parent. Um, there was a thing a therapist said to me a long time ago and it was like this, it was this thing to say, right? So it’s kind of funny to say these things out loud and especially in public, but it really hits there, which is like to find a way to hand it back in a way that doesn’t feel like resentful.

[00:10:30] Jeff: She was like, she was like, I have been carrying this for you out of love. And I return it to you now, with

[00:10:37] Merlin: Yeah, one of the numerous burdens we get from people that we love, whether that’s something that somebody regards as an heirloom, that’s been sitting in a basement for 10 years that you’ve been saving for some reason. There’s all these things that we give to somebody, but you’re right, but how do you, the turning back is such an interesting idea.

[00:10:52] Merlin: Like, I understand so much, I feel like, about, oh, it’s always an evolving understanding of why the people in my life are how they are, I think. [00:11:00] think in particular, my mom’s husband died when we were all pretty young, including my dad. And like, she just, I think could never bear the idea of loss of like losing me in particular.

[00:11:13] Merlin: Like I was the last thing she had apart from the Pontiac. And like, how do you, how do you do that without being a little bit of a nut? And sometimes the more we care about somebody in our head, The way I would phrase it, I would never say this publicly, but the way I would phrase it is like, no, and really, really just kind of talk yourself into being a nut about something, but because it comes from a good place, that’s who you are now.

[00:11:35] Merlin: And it’s the turning, turning it back part is so interesting, but like, I don’t know, it was a phrase I picked up somehow a long time ago, which is, uh, instrumental again for me. Stupid can’t stick to me. It’s like, I get to define the terms of my personal integrity and I get to decide. Who’s BS I’m going to carry around.

[00:11:53] Merlin: So whether that goes for news articles, I don’t need to see, you know, anger about Twitter or like whatever it is. There’s just all [00:12:00] this stuff where I’ve learned to become a little more reflective about that and go, I can understand that, but that doesn’t mean I have to eat a plate of it all the time.

[00:12:06] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:09] Brett: God, you sound like someone who’s been through therapy. Do you do

[00:12:12] Christina: I was gonna say, I was gonna say, this is, this is definitely sounding like therapy talk, which is, I don’t mean in a derogatory way at all,

[00:12:19] Brett: No, we all love therapy.

[00:12:21] Christina: all love

[00:12:22] Merlin: it’s, it’s so interesting and so ironic, ironic, because no, I don’t do talk therapy, uh, but, you know, I don’t have time to go into it, it’s a corner, it’s a very

[00:12:34] Brett: all this wisdom.

[00:12:36] Merlin: I do pick up a lot of wisdom, that’s true. The um, but like that book, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van

[00:12:42] Merlin: der Kolk. Has just, I think about it more than anything I’ve read since getting things done. If for people who know them, the Merlin podcast universe, like it’s, I think about the body keeps the score constantly and not because I’m a Vietnam vet, but because so much we understand or [00:13:00] think we understand about how we got, how we are.

[00:13:02] Merlin: is, elides some, not, I’m not gonna be like that guy who’s like, yeah, well it’s all like medical, and it’s all medical, but the problem is like your brain is trying so hard to help you, and the more we feed it the stuff that we think is helping, it’s like drinking salt water. It’s not actually gonna quench your thirst, you’re just a guy on a boat drinking the ocean, but that feels like the right thing to do, and that book, which is about trauma, and the way that trauma kind of leaves a mark on you in a, An invisible but very real way, uh, not just about trauma, but if I had one pitch to make, well, first of all, I’d say listen to that interview with Ezra Klein with Kolk.

[00:13:41] Jeff: Oh,

[00:13:41] Merlin: got me into it. Really good interview, like a life changing interview for me. But also that it’s, it’s, it’s interesting, one of the, part of the thrust of the book that I hate to spoil is that, yeah, I know you think you don’t have trauma. I know. That’s the point. The point is that your body and your mind, which are actually highly related, [00:14:00] your brain is doing everything it can to keep you from being sad, to keep you from being expelled by the tribe for pointing out that the priest touched your tutor.

[00:14:08] Merlin: Like, whatever it is, there’s stuff in your body and your mind that represent adaptations over, you know, millions of years. And, um, and so when we say we don’t have trauma, well, it’s because That’s because that’s, that’s how the body keeps the score. Is that like you, you teach yourself to believe that only people who are in Treblinka had trauma and you’re like, well, no, if you really accept that you’ve been re injured in the same spot thousands of times, sometimes without anything actually happening.

[00:14:34] Merlin: Anybody here ever been scared when the phone rings? I don’t know why you’re scared when the phone rings. I know that I am too, and I know that that is far from a unique thing that only

[00:14:43] Christina: No, we, usually what it is is that it, you know, it’s like any sort of, you know, um, uh, PTSD or whatever is that you’ve had like an event that was triggered, the really negative thing that was triggered when someone called you and you had that experience and, and like, so, and, and it’s

[00:14:58] Merlin: I’m about, I’m about to be evicted [00:15:00] or my mom is dead.

[00:15:01] Christina: Right. Well, I

[00:15:01] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

[00:15:02] Christina: I do, still sometimes have like, when my mom calls me to this day, I’ll never forget because when she, like the worst phone call I’ve ever received was when, um, my aunt and uncle died, um, two days after Thanksgiving and it was completely unexpected and, um, I’m going to get emotional even talking about it.

[00:15:20] Christina: No, you can’t. And in that case, it was the, the, the thing that I guess, like I have residual issues overnight and I’m again, like, you know, just, you have the emotional response, even like Thinking back all these years later is I will never forget the sound of her voice.

[00:15:36] Jeff: Mm.

[00:15:37] Christina: was like,

[00:15:38] Merlin: And Christina, I’ll

[00:15:38] Christina: worst thing I’ve ever heard.

[00:15:40] Merlin: you never want that news again, but you also never want to hear your mom

[00:15:43] Christina: Well, that’s really what it is. It has, the news is, is, is the less, um, important aspect because the, the part of that that is still emotional for me is my mom’s reaction and knowing how she felt. And [00:16:00] so, There are times that, yeah, like, the phone will ring and it’s my mom and like, you know, I’ll do like a little deep breath because you’re like, okay, am I ever going because I, I do know, unfortunately, that I will probably hear her sound that way again. And, and so

[00:16:19] Merlin: it happens in your head or in life. It happens when the phone rings.

[00:16:23] Christina: Right. Right.

[00:16:24] Merlin: like, why is everybody, why is somebody weird about, like, somebody ringing the doorbell? You millennials are all avocado toast or whatever. And it’s like, well, no, that’s, that’s, I’ve, and I’ve very much been that person. I’ve very much been that person of, like, trigger warnings, like, grow up.

[00:16:37] Merlin: Like, I’ve been that person and I have become more vulnerable and open to the idea that But like, I, I just, I think there’s, there’s so many unnecessary negativities that inhabit our lives that we unintentionally, um, give to others, but also are constantly looking for a way to put on ourselves. And it, [00:17:00] a lot of us are having a pretty weird day before the phone rings and like, If there’s one way I try to describe the anxiety that I have, and probably as a component I think of my ADHD, is that I experience a lot of things much more deeply than other people, especially negative things, and more saliently, it sticks with me a lot longer.

[00:17:19] Merlin: And that’s why it becomes a very lonely journey to try and explain to somebody why you don’t like the phone ringing. And that turns into like, again, this thing of like, oh, Gen Z is however, but no, it’s like, It’s like we, you can’t really describe it to people, not least because we are not encouraged to interrogate why that is.

[00:17:34] Merlin: We are not encouraged to figure out. On the one hand, like it’s, and it’s things, it’s not an unalloyed good or easy thing to just have some journey and go like, well, I’ve decided this is, you know, it’s kind of like Irish version, Irish Catholic version of therapy where you like have an afternoon and then like, okay, no, go back to your craziness.

[00:17:51] Merlin: Like it’s, it’s very difficult to try and Locate that in yourself, let alone articulate to somebody that you care about.[00:18:00]

[00:18:00] Christina: Right.

[00:18:00] Merlin: it comes out as I’m mad at everybody sometimes. Like again, Van Der Kolk talks about this. Why are these Vietnam vets coming back? They’re so screwed up. But why do they have bursts of anger?

[00:18:10] Merlin: Why, you know, something I

[00:18:11] Christina: They’ve been holding it in, because they have to pretend like they’re okay for so long. And, and then,

[00:18:16] Merlin: totally, totally

[00:18:17] Christina: it can’t do anything else. So it just

[00:18:19] Merlin: But also like when I was, I heard fight or flight as talking about the autonomic responses. I’ve heard about fight or flight most of my life. You know, I didn’t hear until, until that book was Freeze. And I think Freeze needs a lot more widespread understanding

[00:18:33] Brett: I only learned about Freeze

[00:18:35] Merlin: happened to you and you were held, were held down, I’m not even saying it has to be that, but you know, that feeling of, I can’t escape from how this is right now.

[00:18:43] Merlin: And that’s pretty close to how I feel when I’m, I don’t have. Panic attacks per se, but that’s pretty close to how I feel when the phone rings is like, what is happening right now will be the worst thing that ever happened to me, and it will last forever. And I know I won’t be able to handle it. That’s how it is.

[00:18:59] Merlin: [00:19:00] And I bet more people are like that than they’d like to admit.

[00:19:02] Brett: I’ve probably talked about this before, but, uh, both of my grandfathers died on the same day. And,

[00:19:10] Jeff: That’s so crazy.

[00:19:11] Brett: my maternal grandfather lived with us in the house I was in when I was 12. Um, and I woke up to the ambulances carting him out after a heart attack. And, um, so my mom’s already I’ve seen her cry for maybe the first time ever, um, and then the phone rings and my dad picks it up and it is the only time I’ve ever seen my dad cry.

[00:19:37] Brett: Like, to this day, it is the only time, uh, when he found out his father was dead, also of a heart attack, on the same day. Um, it was,

[00:19:46] Merlin: And, but you’re, you’re, it’s interesting how some of these stories, including Christina’s, including yours, a lot of mine, and this, this comes up, I think, in, in some of your better media, is like, yeah, I don’t want crappy things to happen to me. Like, I don’t want it, for example, there’s, I watched something [00:20:00] recently where somebody was very brutally beat up, and The, the thing about it was like the thing that made it difficult for them and for the kid who saw it was the, the kid eventually understood the kid, that guy, he didn’t want to get beat up.

[00:20:13] Merlin: My dad didn’t want to get beat up. But what he really didn’t want was for me to have to see it, to see him in that state. There’s something about seeing people we love in a, in a very vulnerable and being hurt and vulnerable and us knowing there’s nothing that we can do about it. How that’s a kind of a form of freeze in some ways, I feel like.

[00:20:34] Brett: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I only, like, I started talking about Fight or Flight to my therapist, and she clarified that it’s Fight, Flight, or Freeze, and that was, that was news to me at the time. I’m like, actually, that explains a lot of what I go through when I talk to my parents, when I get it. You know, triggered by religious stuff and things that have caused me trauma in the past.

[00:20:59] Brett: Um, I [00:21:00] freeze. I do. Yeah. Shame. For sure. I, like Merlin, you haven’t listened to the show for a while, but I was recently diagnosed with PTSD. Oh, should I just, can I just do a quick mental health corner? Um,

[00:21:12] Merlin: Well, I wish you would. And also, you know, this is probably not for the show, but you and I had a nice visit not too long ago, where I reached out to you because I knew that you were,

[00:21:24] Brett: yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[00:21:25] Merlin: we had a, we, you know, we had a call.

[00:21:27] Brett: Yeah, we did. We did.

[00:21:29] Merlin: And like, it was, it was really, it was really something to get to chat with you, but I, I wish you would share that with your listeners, you know.

[00:21:35] Brett: so, yeah, so, well, I was recently diagnosed with PTSD, which is the DSM version of what I actually have, which is Complex PTSD, which is PTSD that stems not from a single event, but from repeated trauma, and, um,

[00:21:51] Merlin: yours especially localized to religion? Wasn’t there, isn’t there like a name for

[00:21:55] Brett: much, it’s very much what is known as Religious Trauma Syndrome, [00:22:00] um, and, uh, that’s also not a DSM term, which we talked about last week, but, um, they are recognized, kind of, maladies, if you will, and the, when you talk about shame, when you talk about, so like, The only people I can blame directly for that kind of repeated trauma are my parents.

[00:22:22] Brett: Um, but I also have to recognize that especially my mom came from a deep south, long line of, like, Baptist

[00:22:31] Merlin: were probably both doing their best every day. And that’s the problem.

[00:22:34] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and I

[00:22:37] Merlin: We always assume that we’re, we’re, we’re good at stuff and everybody else sucks or isn’t as smart or isn’t as careful or isn’t as pious. But like, this is something again from, that I wrote in this thing that I’m working on, which is like every day, everybody’s doing their, this is so annoying to people to say this, but every day, everybody’s doing their best.

[00:22:53] Merlin: And that’s the problem. Like when you say, Oh, do better. Well, like, that’s like, why don’t you just be

[00:22:58] Christina: Fuck off.

[00:22:58] Merlin: Well, it [00:23:00] is what, it was what it was to paraphrase the cliche, which is like, if you could have done better that day, don’t you think you would have?

[00:23:07] Christina: Most

[00:23:07] Merlin: And that’s, that being a parent is a lot, I mean, like, not just me, but like everybody is like, Oh man, I wish I could redo that.

[00:23:13] Merlin: I wish I could retake that. I wish I could have avoided saying like, again, I don’t want to trigger anybody, but like stuff like, you know, why didn’t you finish your dinner? Which seems like such an innocuous, we’re from a family, we worry about people in China who are starving or whatever. I’m like, yeah, but you also might be giving your kid a little bit of an eating disorder because of how often you point out that you don’t realize this.

[00:23:34] Merlin: Because you can’t realize this. You don’t realize how often you’re telling your daughter you think she doesn’t know how to eat and how to be healthy. And you mean it in the best possible way. You’re doing the best you can every day. But again, you’re trying to impress your dead mother when you do that.

[00:23:47] Merlin: And you just don’t know it. It’s my opinion anyway.

[00:23:49] Jeff: You’re trying to stay in the tribe.

[00:23:51] Brett: my mother once told me and I talked to her about this. She doesn’t remember it, but I was, I was home from college and I was talking about, I, I [00:24:00] had, I was after college. I had been recently diagnosed as bipolar. And, um, she said to me that she was sorry. And I’m going to paraphrase because this isn’t how she said it, but what I heard was, I’m sorry I had you.

[00:24:18] Brett: I’m sorry I birthed you and passed on all of these defects that run in my family, like her mother had clinical depression, her brother was bipolar, um, like there’s undiagnosed ADHD, and she felt like she was responsible for where I was at, and her response to that was to apologize for bringing me into this world, and holy shit, that is like, Honestly, the only thing I could feel was sympathy for her.

[00:24:50] Brett: The fact that she felt responsible

[00:24:52] Merlin: think she meant it as, I’m sorry, you, I mean, like, like it’s, it’s become very occurrent to go, okay, how can anybody have kids today in this world with the environment and the [00:25:00] blah, blah, blah, blah. But once you’ve had a kid, you never say, oh boy, I really wish I hadn’t had this kid, I really want to help the environment.

[00:25:05] Merlin: That’s just

[00:25:05] Brett: and that’s not what she meant. That’s just what I heard, and that’s not the way she said it. She said it in a very, like, Kind of apologetic, loving way, uh, like, I’m sorry I’m responsible for, I’m sorry I passed all of this on to you, um, yeah, which is its own form of, well, honestly, I think I got my ADHD from my dad’s side, and I’ve learned that both ADHD and bipolar are symptoms of complex PTSD, so

[00:25:35] Merlin: dude, I

[00:25:35] Brett: maybe I

[00:25:36] Merlin: every conversation we’ve had for 15 years. I can’t even tell you, like, let’s just one word, lemictal. I can’t tell you how many people I know who got whatever, they started however they are, nobody would help them because they thought they were weird, and they had a brain problem, and that’s a whole thing when you go to a doctor.

[00:25:50] Merlin: Like, oh, no, no, I’d rather just treat your strain from pickleball. I don’t want to deal with your brain. That’s like for a different, that kind of dog. Fucking pickleball. You’re wearing the wrong pickleball shoes. [00:26:00] I just learned about pickleball shoes, which to me is like a video game chair. I just don’t understand it.

[00:26:03] Merlin: But like, but, but, but you go like, I, you know, I, everybody’s trying to help. Everybody’s trying to be decent, but also everybody is, is unintentionally walking around. And I’m not going to get into a political thing that causes problems here, but just. Insert once this idea that, that what if, what if you look to people and I’m not saying it means you have to like people.

[00:26:24] Merlin: I’m not saying this just, but like the first step toward a lot of things is understanding and understanding something on its terms rather than yours. And if all we ever do is choose to see our world through our own terms, maybe the secondary thing that sucks is the world won’t get better. But a primary thing that sucks is you won’t get better because you are so.

[00:26:43] Merlin: Cleft to these parameters, these, you know, ice cube, paper thin walls of like, that have, that have like formed who you are. And I, I think there’s a way to handle that in a way that’s. muscular and assertive and is not [00:27:00] just merely about going, I’m mad at the world and want to do primal, primal scream therapy.

[00:27:04] Merlin: Not saying you shouldn’t, but it’s, it’s really complicated. But like, I can’t tell you how many friends I have now I’ve learned are, have taken Lamictal. And like, first they were just another screwed up person. And then they, Oh my God, you have depression. Okay, cool. Thanks. As my shrink told me the first month that I was with like, there’s so many problems with people.

[00:27:24] Merlin: Depression being the thing that they’ve identified in the client and then not realizing that it is actually a bipolar and maybe not even the bipolar that you thought. And guess what? If you, we’ve talked about this before, if you treat somebody for chronic depression, MDD, like any of the depressions, there’s a pretty good chance that the thing you’re using to treat them will actually harm them because the depression is just one aspect.

[00:27:49] Merlin: I mean, if you keep putting gas in your glove box, your car’s not going to go. And if that’s somebody whose job it is to put gas in the glove box, which sounds [00:28:00] like a line from a Steely Dan song, but if that’s that person’s job, they’re going to be very, is there gas in the glove box? Like they’re going to be very resistant to going, well, I don’t understand.

[00:28:07] Merlin: Why would you want gas in the tank? That, that seems like a fire hazard. I don’t know. It sounds silly, but like, it’s.

[00:28:13] Brett: I know what you mean.

[00:28:14] Merlin: But then on top of it all, I have two friends that I co host podcasts with, who started out that way, and we’ve gone through the first two, third one, oh guess what, you’ve actually got, I don’t know how we phrase this, but bipolar, a diagnosis of being bipolar.

[00:28:27] Merlin: And then in each instance, both of them got a subsequent diagnosis of Say it with me, Brett.

[00:28:32] Brett: ADHD.

[00:28:33] Merlin: ADHD. And guess what? That makes all of those preceding things so much more complicated.

[00:28:39] Brett: Mm hmm. Oh my god, yes. That is, that is the tightrope I walk, is how do I treat my ADHD without triggering manic episodes, um, and Like, when I’m in a depressive state, ADHD meds don’t do anything for me. [00:29:00] Um, when I am depressed, I can take all the stimulants I want, it’s not gonna fix it. Um, and

[00:29:06] Merlin: Can I just guess that, and if you get too much of the ADHD when you’re

[00:29:10] Brett: you’re manic.

[00:29:10] Merlin: when you’re the other, well, you know, do we say manic? When you ride on the trains in Chicago a lot all weekend, for example, a friend of mine, but like when you’re having an episode, if you were to pop an Adderall or a Vyvanse or like a whatever, that might even further escalate the

[00:29:26] Brett: so I, one of the things, um, for a long, and I know that you have been on Folklin before as well, Um, when Uh, when I switched back to Vyvanse after a long time, uh, my, the driving force was, I would get Manic, and I would, I would love my Vyvanse, uh, my Focaline. Like, my Focaline would extend my Manic episodes to a point where it was problematic.

[00:29:55] Brett: And I was basically using the Focaline,[00:30:00]

[00:30:00] Merlin: in a movie? In a movie when somebody does cocaine, they don’t do a little bit of cocaine and then stop.

[00:30:05] Jeff: yeah, yeah,

[00:30:05] Merlin: It’s like, and certainly you could say to that person in a very lucid way, Hey, you know, uh, Al Pacino in Scarface, I think you’ve had enough cocaine for now. Like, you’ve got the cocaine you need to do your work.

[00:30:16] Merlin: And now maybe don’t have all of the

[00:30:18] Brett: problem. I know how

[00:30:19] Merlin: know what makes you want to do cocaine? In part, is cocaine. And, and, and like, I know the way I’ve described this in a way that I imagine is controversial to some people is that like, I got off Adderall because it was, long story, but like, there’s never been anything that made me feel more like myself than Adderall.

[00:30:37] Merlin: 22 minutes from I wake up to I’m writing and like, let me get my hands around life in a way. It ended up that the side effects or the results of being on Adderall were not always good, but like, you have to, I feel like you have to be so careful because if you’re looking at your life in terms of.

[00:30:58] Merlin: Integrity, by which I don’t mean [00:31:00] brand, but in terms of wholeness, in a more, like, kind of Buddhist way. If you look at your life as having, like, a contiguous series of events and thoughts that represents you, it’s the triple dip cream dream to find whatever it is that helps you be who you want to be, to become who you want to become, or a Similar thing, it’s like, to feel like how I want to feel.

[00:31:20] Merlin: Now those all are very related, but those can, you have somebody who’s doing just a butt ton of cocaine going, It helps me be who I want to be. To quote the now discredited Bill Cosby, you know, uh, a great bit. No, I grew up on Bill Cosby. I’m not going to

[00:31:32] Jeff: Oh man. Why is there air? Why is there air? I played that record. I mean, as much as

[00:31:36] Merlin: Oh, for me it was my brother, brother Russell, whom I slept with and um, but there’s one where he’s talking, there’s one in, in Bill Cosby himself, the special where he’s talking about drugs and talking about people who do cocaine and people say, Hey, you got to do the cocaine cause it makes you, you know, more of however you are and you flip this.

[00:31:54] Merlin: I said, well, what if you̵