I AM ACTUALLY HANDLING THIS PRETTY WELL - Therapist Plays No I'm Not A Human - 4

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Hello, and welcome back to Therapist Plays, No, I'm Not a Human. All right, it's time to continue our journey and um as bad as things are, you all, it's not all bad, okay? Because we've still got our cat.

[00:00:15]And uh having a cat is it's kind of been an immediate upgrade to our situation.

[00:00:22]Because it's given us something to care about, something to protect, along with the neighbor's daughter, which I think that that's probably what's keeping us going right now. Like I do think that the protagonist cares about not killing humans. Like I know I'm transposing my reactions onto the character because we don't really hear much from him except for in his dialogue.

[00:00:45]But he's not faceless, he's not a faceless character. I think that there are things in the way that he talks to people and the way that it's different when we talk to the neighbor's daughter.

[00:00:53]Like we humanize her a lot more than someone like Enerjak a man. We cared about the neighbor. Like there is evidence of a center of empathy for our character that is incredibly challenged at the moment.

[00:01:05]We are having to do a lot of things, make a lot of choices that we're not getting an immediate sense from the character because we don't like see him and we only know what he thinks when we talk to other people, but I think that it is distressing to him.

[00:01:21]Like as it would be to anyone in this situation.

[00:01:25]In the last episode I talked about what the therapeutic approach with um this poor soul would be. And what I want to add to that commentary now is that there is actually two types of trauma that I think we would be left with from a situation like this. And by trauma I mean intense distress that persists beyond the crisis. Like that it's probably going to come up later in our life because of what we've gone through here.

[00:01:52]And I'll expand on these two types of trauma as we go throughout the episode.

[00:01:55]Um but for now, we learn from the bald man, who is at least partially responsible for really the best thing I got going for me right now is this little creature, that we should not test anybody for at least 2 days.

[00:02:10]So, the previous strategy of whipping out the the shotgun on everyone in our house is uh is going to have to be put on hold right now. And it looks like we're just going to have to spend some time getting to know these people.

[00:02:23]So, that's what we're going to do.

[00:02:25]We're just going to chat him up.

[00:02:27]And uh I'm most curious about this gentleman because he made a very solid impression on me the first time we talked to him.

[00:02:36]Found him eerily optimistic.

[00:02:40]Which uh may actually be suspicious.

[00:02:43]Now that I think about it.

[00:02:45]Did you need something?

[00:02:47]Look at him, smiling.

[00:02:49]Is that the smile of an innocent youth plagued by a hostile environment forced into a survival scenario but maintaining optimism nonetheless?

[00:03:00]Or is it the smile of a man who wants to eat my face?

[00:03:04]Let's see if we can get >> [laughter] >> get a get a glimpse into that. You seem lost in thought. I was just thinking about a story from when I was little about bullfinches in a magic forest.

[00:03:16]Then a dragon came along, burned everything.

[00:03:19]The nests, the birds, everything.

[00:03:22]See, they were equals in a way.

[00:03:25]Both had wings, shared the same sky.

[00:03:28]Everyone lived peacefully, shared in the forest's bounty.

[00:03:32]He's got quite a way with words, this one.

[00:03:35]But the dragon's strength clouded his mind.

[00:03:38]He burned even that what he might have once loved.

[00:03:42]My father always maintained that there's a sleeping dragon inside each and every one of us.

[00:03:47]My sister and I never believed it.

[00:03:50]We'd just laugh. Dragons are huge, we'd say. People, so small.

[00:03:57]Oh, that's quite a change in expression.

[00:04:00]Then I grew up and I finally understood.

[00:04:02]It's a shame he'll never know.

[00:04:05]But every now and then I wonder, will I be able to slay my own dragon, [music] or will temptation consume me?

[00:04:13]Holy [ __ ] Bro is really He's really going through it.

[00:04:18]Okay, so uh yeah, I actually think that he's having kind of a similar existential crisis to us.

[00:04:27]And I'm going to say almost everyone in this world.

[00:04:34]I should clarify.

[00:04:36]The no I'm not a human world, but also yours and mine. Because one of the two types of trauma that I was talking about for our main character is the more classical sense of post-traumatic stress. Seeing violence, participating in it, um you know, under the constant threat of danger to your own life and life of others. And the texture of a trauma like that is based in fear. We go through something extremely distressing, and then later in life that same fear is activated >> [snorts] >> and overwhelms the nervous system in a way that psychologically brings us back to those same traumatic experiences and impairs our ability to function. So that's PTSD, okay? It's based in fear.

[00:05:22]The other type of trauma is something called a moral wound, which is a situation where someone is forced to either witness or participate in actions that they do not consider ethical and ask them to sacrifice their own values in the name of their own and So it is also a survival scenario, just like PTSD, but instead of being rooted in fear, which impacts the nervous system and does damage to our physiological and psychological health, a moral wound is a trauma of identity.

[00:06:01]And it's more related to guilt, shame, and mistrust.

[00:06:10]And the mistrust could be in ourselves, our situation, or any environmental or systemic things that contributed to us having to participate in that situation.

[00:06:20]So, for example, this term, the history of it, comes from describing the experiences of people like healthcare workers, like myself, therapists, um but also policemen and other types of like civil servants, who often have to make decisions that go against their moral code. And that starts to get into a deep discussion of politics and systemic issues, um which we may or may not end up delving into, but the short version, my experience, for example, being a therapist who has worked in a clinical environment, is that the bigger a system gets and the more dependent it is on things like federal funding, um the less it focuses on quality of care and more so focuses on efficiency.

[00:07:02]And there have been many times, unfortunately, where myself and other clinicians have to do things that morally feels like providing substandard care or even neglectful care.

[00:07:16]Because that is how the system is designed and what it incentivizes. Things like mandating session times and um needing to reach a certain amount of billing hours, things like not providing adequate enough staffing, but still wanting to maximize billing potential.

[00:07:34]So, for example, teaching, uh you know, a group therapy class, um but if there's 30 people who the clinic is trying to bill for the day.

[00:07:43]Uh it's highly unethical to have one clinician go in and teach 30 people.

[00:07:49]That class should be split into two classes of 15 and 15 with two different clinicians.

[00:07:57]But as long as you can pack enough people into a room, then uh why can't this one clinician teach that class? Is what an inhumane, but very common, unfortunately, directive in a clinical environment sounds like. And really 15 is even pushing it, because really after about 12 people, if you've done any kind of instruction, you probably know this yourself, but this is kind of the upper limit of how much you can even give proper attention and focus to the people that you're instructing, especially if it's in a therapeutic capacity, where you're trying to like attend to complex emotions. Because anything past this, okay, we see this in school environments, we know this from like the adverse childhood experience studies, beyond this, the clinician or the teacher or whoever is the authority figure in that environment, cognitively has to shift their perspective to compliance over providing adequate care or education. Because there's now so many people to manage and regulate and um it it just becomes harder and harder to actually deliver quality lectures or whatever it is, right? So, like whether we choose to or not, it starts to become about compliance and efficiency the bigger something gets. And so, yeah, like healthcare workers, this is something that we have to deal with, unfortunately, all the time. It's like we learn about this kind of stuff and then we go into the working world, and it's a very nice idea to say, well, idealistically, I don't support this practice. I'm not going to teach 30 people.

[00:09:28]But the reason this can become traumatic is that over time, it starts to become normalized, and you start to maybe not even notice the amount of sacrifice to your values that you're giving away in the name of your own survival. This time, the survival of your employment and like your economic survival.

[00:09:48]So, it's quite similar really to a more acute kind of stress trauma.

[00:09:55]But, this one affects identity.

[00:09:57]It creates intense prolonged feelings of guilt and shame and mistrust in those systems that make you participate in them. Now, think about the world that we're seeing here.

[00:10:12]Well, we've got FEMA who is now telling us that we have to, for the sake of our own survival and that of the greater population, send people away to a shadowy government entity to be assessed and that the alternative to doing that is assessing them yourselves on very shotty points of evidence like, you know, basic [ __ ] like dirt under their fingernails.

[00:10:39]And if you don't do that, you have to kill them.

[00:10:43]Or they will kill you.

[00:10:44]Like this landscape is going to create such intense moral wounding and the regular kind of trauma for our protagonist and also for all the people coming into it. And I think that's kind of what, you know, this young gentleman was talking about where he's getting at this idea of there's a dragon inside all of us. The dragon that burns down things that really it needs and benefits it, right?

[00:11:11]When he was a young innocent laddy, he believed that that wasn't a necessary component of himself that that perhaps there were things that you could do to prevent the dragon from emerging, from having to scorch that which we hold dear in the name of your own survival.

[00:11:30]But, that's exactly the kind of stuff that uh creates a moral wounding is our survival instinct is so powerful.

[00:11:37]That yeah, I've had to do that kind of [ __ ] I have had to teach classes of 30 plus people and I've done my best all the while knowing it's unethical. And when you have to make that decision over and over again, it it's really difficult. It wears on you a lot. I remember distinctly a situation that I was in where I was um mandated by my employers to forcibly discharge someone from our mental health program. The reason that they gave me that we needed to do this is because she had been in our program for too long.

[00:12:09]And uh that would be a bad look for the program because it looks like we're just continuing to bill her insurance. That's exactly what was going on.

[00:12:19]And so how can we justify keeping her in care if she's not getting any better? So what was the solution that the intelligent people at the top thought of? Well, we need to send her on her way, basically. I was told to go sit down with her. By the way, this is like also my client, someone I'm working with therapeutically, and tell her that she had to vacate the program in 7 days.

[00:12:43]This is also a mother of several young children, single mom. We're supposed to be an environment of care, something providing guaranteed safety, unconditional positive regard, all that you know, hokey [ __ ] I was talking about earlier.

[00:12:58]And I'm supposed to be this person's advocate and uh a safe person to you know, disclose things with. And now I'm being told I have to tell this person she's going to be homeless with her kids in 7 days.

[00:13:14]I haven't brought this situation up ever on the channel cuz it feels a little bit like I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't talk about it. But whatever, [ __ ] it. I don't work for these people anymore, so I don't care. Um I did not do that.

[00:13:27]I could not make this choice morally. What I ended up doing was speaking with some advocates outside the program who facilitated this person's uh treatment with us. And I let them know what was going to happen to their client and the negative impact on reputation uh that this would lead to for this client and uh others as well. And they were very unsettled by what I was telling them, rightfully so as was I.

[00:13:54]And um they told me that I better tell my employers that if we do end up discharging this woman that it would be not in our best interest for maintaining a healthy relationship between the clinic and these advocates who were a source of referrals for the clinic. So, what did I have to do basically?

[00:14:12]I had to make it affect the bottom line of the organization I worked for before it appealed to them at all why we should not do this. I had to make it clear that if we go through with this, it's going to affect your professional working financial relationship um with uh a a funding source that you depend on.

[00:14:35]Not because it was unethical to do it.

[00:14:37]And that allowed me some more time to work with her and uh help her get a little more stable and out on her own before this would just come up again down the line.

[00:14:47]I had to do [ __ ] like this all the time.

[00:14:49]You know, where I used to work.

[00:14:51]Uh thankfully I haven't worked there for a number of years now.

[00:14:54]But this was a regular occurrence, being put in situations like that. And um you may even be in situations that are similar that aren't necessarily health care related, but like I think any job, there's going to be things that you're asked to do that you don't feel comfortable with that break your moral code. And the more that they happen the more that they ask you to do things that threaten your personal survival, right? Your financial survival, your stability, your ability to take care of your family and everything, the easier it is to normalize and, you know, overlook those decisions and later in life end up feeling lots of guilt and shame about them, including the guilt and shame that you feel at presently with [music] them. I'd even hazard to say that almost everyone's got some form of this, but it tends to be quite accentuated in roles where you are in a helping capacity, therapists, teachers, nurses, etc. It's such a human thing to contend with this idea that I do have the capacity to do wrong, to make unethical decisions when I know it threatens my own survival, and I think that's kind of what our young lad here um is getting at, that he realized later in life when he grimaced, that yeah, he does have that capacity, as do I, as do you.

[00:16:23]We all have the capacity to allow ourselves to do things we despise in the name of our own survival.

[00:16:32]And so easy for someone else to look at that and say, you know, how dare you? I think >> [laughter] >> I think a lot of people are looking at um the United States this way at the moment where they're like, "Hey, uh why aren't more of you doing things to prevent, you know, some of these awful things that like your government is doing?"

[00:16:51]And so often you're going to find people say, "Well, I'm so dependent on my work, and we have a system where your health insurance is tied to your work, and you can't take off any time, and many states are at-will states, and so like you can be fired for any reason."

[00:17:09]And it's not that there's so many people who are uninterested in resisting things, or that are desensitized to it.

[00:17:18]They're in a situation like what I'm describing and it's creating moral wounding, uh psychological trauma.

[00:17:27]Um to know that you have the capacity to do something and choosing your own survival over that. It is a very awful feeling and I think it is endemic to um the human experience, which makes me assess this young man as a human. I think in fact what he's describing is one of the most human experiences, which is our capacity to experience this kind of moral wounding. So, that would be a big part of the healing journey, which, you know, we'll we'll kind of discuss as we go.

[00:17:58]>> [music] >> You have to work differently with this than uh this kind of PTSD. So, much of this is involving nervous system regulation and um new adaptations to what feel like revisited stressors.

[00:18:12]Whereas this has like more uh of kind of what I was talking about in the last episode, this reattaching of identity traits that get [ __ ] up when you have to do [ __ ] like this.

[00:18:24]So, um I think he's a human.

[00:18:28]I think >> [sighs and gasps] >> I kind of feel like they're all humans right now. I mean no one immediately strikes me as a visitor. Let's just kind of run through what they have to say today. Well, that's it. Run out of steam. So, what's the verdict? Does this place feel safe?

[00:18:46]Hard to tell. You give off this kind of calm domestic vibe.

[00:18:51]>> [laughter] >> Calm domestic vibe. I pointed a shotgun at you yesterday.

[00:18:57]Maybe cuz this is literally your house.

[00:19:00]Feels like you're trying to create a safe little haven or something. Not just letting everyone in and all that.

[00:19:05]>> [laughter] >> I've actually let in literally everyone.

[00:19:08]But, you feel it, too, right?

[00:19:10]Something's off.

[00:19:12]Well, the whole world's off, but here it's I don't know. I don't even know what I'm trying to say.

[00:19:18]Ah, whatever. Have an Energeca and forget about it.

[00:19:22]Thanks, Ren. No worries. So, when are you heading out or are you still running from something?

[00:19:28]I'm not running away, just moving on.

[00:19:30]Don't need any more trouble. Got plenty of that already.

[00:19:34]Stay in one place for too long and eventually someone will punch you, shoot you, or try to lock you up.

[00:19:41]That's kind of [ __ ] up.

[00:19:43]It's [ __ ] up that that's his default [music] perspective.

[00:19:48]It's probably been true for him. And who knows where that route ends? Sure, the more I wander, the higher the chance I run into some real creepy bastard. But hey, better that than trusting someone and ending up with a knife in your back.

[00:20:02]It's a good point. So, there you might see more of the signs of uh that more classical post-traumatic stress, which is you can clearly see he is accounting for his environment first and foremost.

[00:20:16]Um he's assessing whether this feels like a safe environment because so much of the nervous system's reactions are environmental. Like uh when you work with post-traumatic stress, it's often an environmental trigger that sets off that reaction. The person might not even be super aware of what the trigger was.

[00:20:31]It's a kind of subconscious detection that happens when you walk into a room or you interact with someone or you just get that sense that something is not right.

[00:20:43]If he's getting a sense that this is a safe environment, that's actually a good thing. It's a really a it's a positive mark on whatever we're doing to maintain that. I think he sees we're trying at least, which is another hint at like our character having, you know, kind of a source of empathy.

[00:21:01]And you can see that as he approaches closeness with people, right, he recognizes that like his lived experience, what he has learned from that is really not to get too close, to not stay in any one place for too long.

[00:21:16]In fact, it probably points to why he's on this Energeia stuff because he is surviving in part because he's so used to having his nervous system be like kind of overactive, that kind of threat detection that comes from, you know, adrenaline and being fearful all the time. And he's seen benefits to his survival from being like over-functioning, hyper-vigilant, perceptive, being able to move quickly, you know, um And so even when things are calm, it's very hard for the nervous system to pull itself down and to get used to that.

[00:21:54]So, the Energeia, constant stream of elevated nervous system activity. Interesting that that he says run out of steam, yeah.

[00:22:04]So, what's the verdict? Does this place feel safe? Okay, so we already talked [music] through that.

[00:22:09]It is interesting that we're asking that, though, right? That's kind of like our own curiosity about, you know, how are we doing? Are we Is this a safe environment? Are we creating a safe environment? I think that shows um that that is something that we care about here. Okay.

[00:22:27]So, I saw this guy.

[00:22:32]All right, let's hear more about those friends. Where are those friends from your list?

[00:22:36]When the debt collector mess started, I went around looking for help, >> [music] >> but of course, that's when the sun started frying people and the visitors crawled out.

[00:22:45]Things went from bad to bad.

[00:22:48]So, I went from one friend to another, found out one guy burned alive, fell asleep drunk in a playground, didn't wake up before sunrise.

[00:22:57]Another one got killed.

[00:22:59]You believe that? They thought he was a visitor. It's insane.

[00:23:03]The so-called signs are total [ __ ] They just killed my friends for nothing.

[00:23:08]Makes me so [ __ ] angry.

[00:23:11]I don't even know what to do with the feeling.

[00:23:13]Yeah, man. This is a very predictable response to the situation that you're in.

[00:23:20]It makes it all the more harrowing to know that like he's talking to us in this closet where I blasted away the cashier and like you can tell from my own response.

[00:23:33]Like this is a [ __ ] video game. It's not real.

[00:23:38]But it like morally wounds me.

[00:23:42]Like even as part of a role play like you know, games have a unique way of making us participate in the media that we're engaging with.

[00:23:52]And I think there's a higher emotional attached rate to the actions that we take and the decisions that we make than if we were just watching them, you know, on a film or something. Like I shot her.

[00:24:05]Like I took that action, you know, in the game and I'm going to deal with the consequences.

[00:24:10]It's not like making me actually lose sleep at night, but like for the purpose of this play through and like I really did feel bad. Like I in the pinned comment of the first video I'm like I wonder if people are going to be truly upset with me over this because you know, it feels like I made this decision that goes against my values. For this conversation to be happening here where he's talking about you know, the the unfair prejudice of killing someone that they think is a visitor based on [ __ ] signs.

[00:24:42]Ah.

[00:24:44]It's kind of brilliant, really. Like storytelling to put him in here where she was. Like if you happen to have the story that I'm playing out for those things to line up.

[00:24:56]Anger mixed with helplessness just freezes you.

[00:25:00]Start hating everyone around you and yourself.

[00:25:03][ __ ] those scum pigs.

[00:25:07]Oh, the signs of a moral wound.

[00:25:12]It's too relatable. Too real.

[00:25:15]Yeah, I think that almost everyone in this scenario is going to be dealing with some version of what I'm talking about because everyone's now having to judge like their own friends or just the average person in a way that they normally wouldn't have to.

[00:25:30]Having to put things on extremes because survival's at stake.

[00:25:34]There's either guilt in overlooking the potential for someone to be a visitor or there's going to be guilt in judging someone for acting on that, right? Like the This is all like a a very few ways to avoid coming out of this without some kind of trauma.

[00:25:51]>> [laughter] >> It's like This is guaranteed trauma, the game.

[00:25:55]I don't know what he's saying sounds pretty human to me.

[00:25:59]Not that like being able to be traumatized is like the mark of a human.

[00:26:05]I think that visitors can be traumatized, too, as evidenced by the cashier and uh the cold person.

[00:26:13]I think this game just does such a good job of like challenging your natural inclination to look at things in uh a semi black and white perspective. Like we're not usually all that clear-cut extreme, but th- it's playing in some serious gray areas here, which is it feels morally right to try to sympathize and empathize with anyone who's gone through something difficult.

[00:26:42]I don't think that's a uh a controversial thing to say.

[00:26:46]It feels morally right to try, right?

[00:26:49]Um with anyone, regardless of what they've been through. And yet this is asking us to sort of separate, like, well, if they're a visitor, then you should not try to sympathize.

[00:27:04]And in fact, you should see them as a threat because in some cases they probably are a threat. But you don't know who is and who isn't. And so, to have the most optimal response to your scenario, you should assume everyone is a visitor. Like, you should suspend your uh natural source of empathy for everyone in favor of your own survival instincts. Because if you get it wrong, right, it's life or death. Like, it is so complicated, the the situation that our character is in and all of the people in the house as well.

[00:27:40]Uh, okay.

[00:27:42]Let's do some phone calling now.

[00:27:46]I realized that in my own disregulated state, haha, >> [laughter] >> I was having a hard time reading these numbers correctly.

[00:27:54]Because uh I was just typing in ones as sevens and thinking that they were the same.

[00:28:01]Which just goes to show you how, like, you know, our perception is impaired when we're kind of [ __ ] up, even just in a role play. And here I'm like getting all paranoid about, like, you know, they don't want me to call the psychics.

[00:28:15]Okay, let's try and uh call the psychics.

[00:28:18]Let's see what they say.

[00:28:21]Could use a bit of a fun conversation.

[00:28:25]What?

[00:28:26]Am I actually an idiot?

[00:28:33]777460, right?

[00:28:41]Okay, I guess not.

[00:28:44]What about about Forest?

[00:28:48]1 8 Ah.

[00:28:56]Thank god.

[00:28:57]Contact with the outside world.

[00:28:59]Hello, you've reached For Rest food delivery. Would you like to place an order?

[00:29:07]Uh yes, I would like two cans of cat food, please.

[00:29:12]Thank you. Your order has been accepted.

[00:29:13]Please expect your delivery to For Rest.

[00:29:17]Ah.

[00:29:18]No moral wound.

[00:29:20]No moral wounding from feeding the cat.

[00:29:23]That's that's a clean decision. That one just feels good.

[00:29:28]Okay. Uh that was a win. Let's call Phone Roulette.

[00:29:38]Hello, you've reached Phone Roulette.

[00:29:40]We'll connect you with your perfect conversation partner shortly. Please hold.

[00:29:52]Hi. Hello.

[00:29:55]Hello.

[00:29:57]I I need to talk to someone.

[00:30:00]So much has happened recently.

[00:30:01]I tried reaching out to friends and people I know, but nobody answers. Is this um just kind of like we're cold calling someone else calling the line and we've just been paired up?

[00:30:13]Then I found out about Phone Roulette.

[00:30:16]Maybe it's not the best place for me to be pouring my heart out, but I don't have much choice.

[00:30:21]I know it's not right to burden a stranger with my problems, but you have no idea how much just talking to someone will help me. It would make me feel so much better.

[00:30:33]Man, uh yeah, what an opportunity for the protagonist, you know, if we choose to play him as someone who is trying his best to adapt to the situation which I'm deciding to do in this instance.

[00:30:50]And if we were looking to reattach some of the positive identity features that could be uh impaired by elements of the moral wounding and um having to make these difficult decisions, then this would be an opportunity to elevate in the process of therapy like how we proceeded from here. Like at a moment where we could have connected with someone and provided them some comfort, did we do that?

[00:31:17]Do you mind listening to me?

[00:31:19]Yeah. Okay.

[00:31:21]Thank you so much. Thank you.

[00:31:25]I think it might be easier if I tell you a little bit about myself.

[00:31:28]Anything in particular you'd like to know? Ooh, this this is where I thrive.

[00:31:32]>> [laughter] >> We get to be a therapist, basically.

[00:31:36]Although yeah, we're not going to get to ask therapist questions, but that's okay. I'll take it.

[00:31:41]You said your friends wouldn't answer.

[00:31:44]Well, not to take them to, you know, a dark place, but I'm curious.

[00:31:49]I'd love to try calling them again, but I don't know how.

[00:31:53]When the cataclysm started, I started I decided to leave my hometown, fly as far as possible from the heat. I promised everyone I'd call regularly, check in with each one of them, and see how they're doing.

[00:32:04]But when I got here, I couldn't reach them.

[00:32:07]Later I found out why.

[00:32:09]Their phone lines have been cut.

[00:32:11]The whole city is cut off from the rest of the world.

[00:32:14]Now I'm here, safe.

[00:32:16]All my friends The thought of never seeing those I care about again terrifies me.

[00:32:24]Miss the quiet days when life felt simple and the future was something to look forward to.

[00:32:28]>> [sighs] >> What a relatable experience, the feeling of isolation.

[00:32:33]And the uncertainty of you know, are the people I care about safe? I don't know if we have any of those people out there, but well, considering what happened to the neighbor and we don't know what's going to happen to his daughter um even after the crisis. We should never minimize the impact that something like this can have.

[00:32:54]Which is it's not going to solve a crisis like relating to someone or being there to talk to them.

[00:33:00]It's not going to like you know, restore to this person contact or friends. Like it's not a problem-solving thing, but it is this universality, which is an awareness that the experience you're having is shared by someone else.

[00:33:15]And the inherent comfort that that can bring.

[00:33:18]Um simply by talking to this person we're providing that and also receiving it. So there's a mutual benefit here.

[00:33:26]Do you miss your hometown?

[00:33:28]I miss them.

[00:33:30]Not so much the city, but the people who stayed. Most of all, best friend.

[00:33:35]He wanted to come with me, but couldn't.

[00:33:38]I promised him we'd keep in touch.

[00:33:40]I call him, but I think he was in love with me, you know.

[00:33:45]Cared about me so much. Always supportive, always ready to listen.

[00:33:50]Eventually I realized we liked each other.

[00:33:54]I wanted him to confess his feelings first, but he just couldn't find the right moment.

[00:33:59]And then cataclysm started and wasn't any time for that anymore.

[00:34:07]Regret not telling HIM FIRST. OH, >> [groaning] >> IT'S SO PAINFUL. IT'S SO PAINFUL.

[00:34:15]AND THERE YOU have the perfect example of what I talked about in the last episode. This presence of rationale that this individual has to say, oh, I I knew back then that I loved him and I should have told him. You didn't know back then that your time together would be so short.

[00:34:35]It was a very fair assumption to make that the romance between you could grow naturally and spontaneously over time.

[00:34:45]There was no evidence to suggest, no signals, no signs that this was an urgent matter. And it would have been overly anxious to apply that sense of urgency when there was no cause for it.

[00:35:00]This is a tragedy. It's a tragedy to lose someone before you have this opportunity, but it is unfair to characterize yourself back then as someone who was naive, short-sighted, or didn't care enough about the relationship really to go through with it. Cuz that's all the kind of stuff that we're left with, you know, after the fact.

[00:35:22]Well, you know a little bit about me.

[00:35:24]Now it's your turn.

[00:35:28]I don't even know where to start.

[00:35:31]Don't worry. There's nothing wrong with talking about yourself.

[00:35:36]Well, I don't have anyone I consider close.

[00:35:40]I'm lonely. Well, these are kind of the same idea.

[00:35:43]And um yeah, lends a lot more specificity to our character here.

[00:35:50]Not to mention the first time that we have had a lot of contact with people. We're literally in this like nightmare situation.

[00:36:01]S- uh you know, deepens the moral wounding that you know, we have to do all this crazy [ __ ] Kind of like more information about uh this.

[00:36:10]Don't have anyone I'd consider close.

[00:36:15]Mm. On this side we got like really strong emotional statements. I'm lonely.

[00:36:20]I hated my father. And this is a little more descriptive and a little more historical and a little more objective.

[00:36:27]Um probably what's more realistic is that we would lean over here. Like I don't know how much our character like expresses so emphatically things.

[00:36:35]Um not to say that this has some benefit over this, but this is the first reference to the father that we've gotten since we looked around the house, which I'm going to guess the relationship has a big role to play in the kind of shame and guilt that our character likely feels that impairs our ability to attach well to others.

[00:36:57]Let's see. I had a tough relationship with my father.

[00:37:01]I'm no longer a part of that family.

[00:37:06]And one day I stopped being his son.

[00:37:10]Interesting.

[00:37:12]I would have assumed that because this is the kind of the house we grew up in that parents might have passed away.

[00:37:20]But it seems like there was some kind of decision. Maybe it was a decision Why how did we stop being his son?

[00:37:28]This would be really crucial in the reattaching of parts of our character's identity that could have some therapeutic benefit. So I'm very curious about this.

[00:37:40]One day I stopped being his son. Now all that's left of them is this house.

[00:37:46]Now [music] I have is this damn house.

[00:37:48]So we don't like the house very much.

[00:37:56]I'm sorry.

[00:37:57]Sounds like you're not too thrilled about the house ending up with you.

[00:38:03]It would have been better if it had burned down.

[00:38:08]My god.

[00:38:10]This is the place that we're defending and living out our life and you know, making our last attempt at survival is this place that we have so much negative attachment to. And yet, despite that, despite how horrible this environment is for us, we're still able to access empathy and self-preservation and protectiveness of other people. Like, that's that's actually quite incredible.

[00:38:38]It points to an endurance of the protagonist's spirit that I don't think he would be agreeable to. Like, I think that he would describe himself as a broken man, but my goodness, look at the things that you're doing despite what you've been through.

[00:38:58]Pretty much.

[00:39:00]I I can't even imagine what you went through.

[00:39:04]Thanks again for talking to me.

[00:39:06]Goodbye.

[00:39:07]Stay strong, okay?

[00:39:09]Aw.

[00:39:11]Uh that was that was very nice, actually.

[00:39:16]Ah, what a human morsel. Ah, just a crumb of humanity. There was my crumb.

[00:39:21]I got a crumb of positivity. If nothing else, a reminder of the fact that being human is special in some way. And that despite everything, you know, our character has gone through and the person on the phone and so many people out there, there's a continuous effort to if not make the best of things, to make something of them. I don't think that we're thriving in this environment, but we are Well, we are surviving in it.

[00:39:54]We're not thriving, but we are surviving.

[00:39:56]And for someone deep in a depression with a trauma history like this character, which it's really just piling on at this point, you know, in addition to the family trauma, sounds like an abusive situation, you know, likely belittled, neglected, etc. On top of that, like, how does someone who lived through that stuff didn't have a positive role model to demonstrate uh empathy and caring and and to make complicated interpersonal decisions.

[00:40:30]Where are we getting the information to do those things now? Well, potentially they're innate, right? To us, like that that they are a part of us in spite of the traumas that we've gone through.

[00:40:44]But my interest would actually be not in saying, "Well, they're just part of your personality." But they're things you had to do to preserve those.

[00:40:54]If you recognize that they were important, you had to do things to preserve them because there's all kinds of reasons and opportunities you had to discard them.

[00:41:03]And that's why I said at that moment where he talked about "I'm no longer part of that family." Or I'm I one one day I was no longer his son. Maybe we were excommunicated, but maybe we also decided. And if there was a decision involved, then that's your key.

[00:41:18]That's your key to attach to the person that there was a knowing of a conflict of values and a registration that what I went through was not justified. Like, I am not a broken child who deserved this much abuse.

[00:41:34]But I am someone deserving of more respect than this, and I decided to create those boundaries and part ways and do whatever to separate myself from that and give myself an opportunity to you know, maybe not love myself, but no longer endure this uh relationship.

[00:41:52]If there was any decision involved in that, then it's not just an innate personality trait, and you're just naturally positive, and and someone could easily minimize that in the course of their therapeutic work.

[00:42:05]But no, this was an act of choice.

[00:42:08]And we have kept positive things about our self despite all of that. A willingness to take care of a vulnerable child like the neighbor's daughter.

[00:42:20]We didn't learn how to do that from dad.

[00:42:21]We didn't learn that from anywhere else.

[00:42:24]A willingness to take in strangers despite not really liking people very much.

[00:42:30]A willingness to take responsibility to assess their safety, you know, and and the safety of the kid in the house. And a willingness to open up to a random person in a moment where it would be very understandable to be extremely guarded and paranoid to disclosing information to other people.

[00:42:51]Like I know I characterized this individual as uh a highly depressed person and I do think that that's occurring.

[00:43:00]And on the continuum of their mental health, I think that they are doing some remarkable things to survive this horrible situation. And that is the stuff that you want to try to reattach to a person after a trauma like this. Not have them relive it, not have them talk about how it made them feel, but make sure that those things are captured and integrated into the parts of the identity that are wounded from everything else that we have to go through here. And this is not a process of just telling someone nice things and saying, "Oh, you did so well. You were so resilient." That's a nice instinct for people to do is if I'm able to say, "Oh, but look at all these good things that you did." The problem with that is it doesn't first acknowledge the immense cost to the person to go through this and survive it. You can't just say, "Oh, but you were so strong and resilient." That the person's going to reject that.

[00:43:59]That's That's me offering an identity trait to you um before you've been willing to accept it. We have to walk through and uh reattach those things through a narrative that both acknowledges what the cost on the person was and starts to include those moments of adaptability. Because at the end of that process, it's not me saying you did a good job, you're so resilient.

[00:44:24]It's me saying, given all these traits that we've surfaced and the process we've identified and how you got through that, how would you characterize yourself based on that? And it is the person themselves saying I did a good job. I did the best I could. I I'm very resilient. And now it is not a lending of my interpretation or a compliment or a validation at all. It is a self-discovered uh reattachment of things that were there. They They really were there.

[00:44:53]Things we actually did well in a situation like this that are just usually left behind because of all the the trauma.

[00:45:05]Well, that was a nice conversation.

[00:45:09]But it's time to call FEMA.

[00:45:16]Hello, this is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Medical Division.

[00:45:20]We're now able to provide consultation services regarding official visitor screening procedures.

[00:45:25]Please state your question.

[00:45:27]Uh I think we already asked them all this stuff. I'm just going to double-check.

[00:45:32]Mhm, but maybe we didn't ask them about the armpits. that underarm tests are accurate, you must avoid any contact with water. Refrain from showering and washing yourself.

[00:45:44]Yeah, okay, we did we did see these.

[00:45:45]Okay, this is a waste of our time.

[00:45:48]>> [snorts] >> Thank you for cooperating. I just hate everything about the way they talk.

[00:45:53]What happens if we call the neighbor?

[00:46:00]Yeah.

[00:46:02]I'll tell you what happens.

[00:46:03]We get more depressed.

[00:46:06]Okay. Well, um still got a couple people to talk to here.

[00:46:11]I'm going to talk to the stoner guy.

[00:46:12]Sup, dude?

[00:46:16]What were you doing before the cataclysm? Oh, bro. I was just chilling, you know, watching flicks, hanging with the homies.

[00:46:24]But [snorts] now, no more movies, no more hangouts.

[00:46:28]Real bummer, dude.

[00:46:29]>> [snorts] >> TV just loops the same thing. Panic, commercial, panic, commercial.

[00:46:35]My homies don't even pick up anymore.

[00:46:37]Heard some big shot saying, "Now's not the time for fun.

[00:46:41]This is a crisis."

[00:46:42]Man, screw that bore. Fun never ends in Fun Town. Boo ya.

[00:46:47]So, I think that this guy's doing quite a bit to um preserve well, a different kind of optimism about his circumstances.

[00:46:58]I think we need to learn a little bit more about him before uh we unpack his [ __ ] I think the only other person is the little girl. Let's see how she's doing a day later.

[00:47:09]I want my ma- mommy.

[00:47:13]How are you holding up? Do you like it here?

[00:47:15]Um it's okay here.

[00:47:18]Wish I was at home. When can I go home?

[00:47:23]Oh, jeez.

[00:47:27]I can't lie to her.

[00:47:29]This is tough. Yeah.

[00:47:33]I I want to be honest, but I I don't know if we're also going to be able to do the consoling that we need to.

[00:47:39]I'm just going to shoot straight.

[00:47:41]Not anytime soon.

[00:47:43]Your house burned down.

[00:47:46]Daddy's okay, right?

[00:47:48]What about my room?

[00:47:50]Did that also burn down?

[00:47:52]Mommy's not coming?

[00:47:53]Is there anyone left?

[00:47:58]Oh, jeez.

[00:48:00]It's such a bind because not telling the truth, like saying your house is being renovated, like we are delaying the suffering.

[00:48:14]You're inducing just a different kind of traumatic response, which is well, the shock of it and maybe even the mistrust of, you know, me not telling her.

[00:48:27]Obviously, if you just tell her as well, then that's its own kind of shock.

[00:48:33]I'm just going to put my faith in the national endurance of the human spirit, which actually I think we're seeing quite a bit on display in this episode.

[00:48:42]This is like a great episode. Like nothing terrible has happened so far.

[00:48:47]Um I haven't had to blast anybody. I feel like we're noticing great qualities of our protagonist and you know, the people in our house aren't all that scary right now and they're actually kind of showing a lot of great um evidence of human adaptability.

[00:49:01]Um it's kind of fantastic and uh I'd like for it to stay that way.

[00:49:06]You should stay here for now.

[00:49:08]I'm not going anywhere without Daddy.

[00:49:10]He's coming to get me, right? I saw him get up and leave.

[00:49:14]He's running away, but I saw him. Oh, well, maybe maybe he is out there. I don't know.

[00:49:18]I don't really know anything, to be honest. But uh I want to keep this uh train rolling.

[00:49:24]A lot of good stuff happening so far. I am concerned about FEMA coming to take somebody, though. So, I don't know.

[00:49:32]I don't really know if there's a way to prevent that from happening, but well, I can't test anybody and I don't I don't think anyone's a visitor right now.

[00:49:42]Um let's let's check out the basement.

[00:49:47]I don't think there's anything down here yet.

[00:49:51]Okay, that was a nice like 10 second distraction from the dilemma.

[00:49:55]Um, yeah, well, I think I think we just see what happens at night time. So far this has been a great day.

[00:50:06]Okay.

[00:50:07]Yes, let's roll the dice.

[00:50:11]Oh, I need to I need to drink some beers.

[00:50:16]I need to make myself sleepy. Oh, we got an ear jacka.

[00:50:22]So, that's probably how we can test more people as well.

[00:50:26]Uh, we don't need that right now.

[00:50:29]Oh, that beer made me sleepy.

[00:50:33]Instant sleep.

[00:50:37]Okay.

[00:50:38]Let's see what happens.

[00:50:48]Please don't be female.

[00:50:52]Kitty, right near the door. So cute.

[00:50:55]Oh, it's the delivery guy. He's got my cat food.

[00:50:59]Hi, Forest delivery here.

[00:51:02]How did you become a delivery guy?

[00:51:05]Just passed the screenings. They checked all the signs, decided I'm human, and Oh, you mean how I ended up still working in the middle of an apocalypse?

[00:51:16]Well, what was I supposed to do? Sit at home and rot?

[00:51:19]At least out here I can distract myself and not think about this whole [ __ ] show.

[00:51:24]Besides, my family's far away.

[00:51:27]I'm not from around here. I only came to study at the local university.

[00:51:31]I'm on my own. It's too bad.

[00:51:33]Whatever.

[00:51:34]Being a delivery guy isn't that bad.

[00:51:36]Besides, what's the point of studying if no one's going to hire me anyway?

[00:51:42]That's real.

[00:51:43]All right, I've got an order here to deliver. Ready to take it? Yes. Give me.

[00:51:48]Yeah, got food.

[00:51:50]Have a good night. Thank you, sir.

[00:51:54]Looks like no one else is coming tonight, really?

[00:51:57]Oh, [ __ ] I just realized those buildings back there seem to be um ablaze.

[00:52:04]That's That's concerning.

[00:52:09]Panic to people rushed to nearby houses.

[00:52:12]They bang on doors desperate for shelter.

[00:52:15]But it seems no one is willing to let them in.

[00:52:21]Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that does seem to be the situation.

[00:52:29]The path along the field is littered with bodies of those who tried to run.

[00:52:35]From FEMA? Holy [ __ ] Just being even more brazen.

[00:52:41]Oh my god. Nearby stands the man responsible, a FEMA officer.

[00:52:46]He holds a rifle, smoke still drifting from the barrel.

[00:52:51]Moral wound, moral wound.

[00:52:54]Um not to be like dismissive either of, you know, I'm sure the people who work for FEMA like experience their own kind of moral wounding. We don't know how much information they actually have, right?

[00:53:08]They could be getting the same kind of disinformation that we have about um who is a human and who is not. Now, you are put on the front lines and um are someone who has to, you know, make those decisions. I think that they are responsible nonetheless. You know, as am I as a healthcare worker when I have to make decisions and decide to go through with things that I know are unethical. Which is is why sometimes I don't. Just don't [ __ ] do it even at the expense of um I don't know.

[00:53:44]People's finances who I don't give a [ __ ] about. Ultimately, I just ask, "Look, who benefits here?"

[00:53:50]>> [laughter] >> Okay? The client doesn't benefit, Brady doesn't benefit.

[00:53:55]The fan cats benefit.

[00:53:57]Well, they won't benefit if their funding sources become inaccessible.

[00:54:06]So, how can I make that benefit appeal?

[00:54:09]>> [laughter] >> You see a woman crying over her wounded husband. Is that the neighbor?

[00:54:16]You can't tell if he's alive or dead.

[00:54:18]Tear-streaked, she drags his heavy body away from the gunfire.

[00:54:23]You're left with a single thought.

[00:54:25]Things will only get worse.

[00:54:30]Yeah.

[00:54:32]I guess I have been framing this whole situation as um you know, there's this version of reality where we make it through this and the protagonist sits down for therapy and sort of processes what happened. I'm not sure if that's on the table here.

[00:54:55]Well, well, I guess that's the evening then.

[00:55:03]We interrupt this program [music] with breaking news.

[00:55:06]Reports of civil unrest are coming in from a neighboring city.

[00:55:09]Due to unresolved circumstances, FEMA forces have sealed off the area.

[00:55:14]Please remain in your homes.

[00:55:16]Stay [snorts] where you are and wait for the instructions.

[00:55:19]And remember, support FEMA and join the fight against the visitors.

[00:55:23]That's the latest for now. Next up, it's Mads.

[00:55:27]Up next, a special report on the nature of visitors. I love the insinuation that advertising is still occurring in the [music] cataclysmic apocalypse. I mean, you got to slurp up every last cent, every last drop from these poor huddled masses in their homes before they die of loneliness or being eaten or disemboweled by visitors. I mean, where's all this money going to go once they're dead? Okay?

[00:55:58]We got to get them to buy buy buy stuff before they depart this world and all that money goes to their beneficiaries.

[00:56:08]We got to get it.

[00:56:12]What are the visitors? Ghosts?

[00:56:15]Creatures from deep underground?

[00:56:18]No. This is neither a sci-fi novel nor a cheap headline.

[00:56:22]This is our new reality.

[00:56:24]Rumors continue to swirl about the visitors' true origin.

[00:56:27]They aliens? The walking dead? A lab experiment gone wrong?

[00:56:33]Oh.

[00:56:34]Time is It's an interesting infographic.

[00:56:36]According to authorities, these are all just baseless theories.

[00:56:42]Authorities.

[00:56:44]Um When you point a gun at them, they pass along the virus to four other people. I don't know.

[00:56:54]Studies show that a visitor is a human who has come into contact with an undetermined biological agent.

[00:57:02]A virus?

[00:57:04]Methods of transmission remains unknown.

[00:57:07]And FEMA urges everyone to stay alert for the signs of visitors.

[00:57:12]If you believe you've been exposed or unsure whether you might be a visitor, call the FEMA hotline.

[00:57:19]That's the latest for now. Stay tuned for more after the break.

[00:57:24]Okay.

[00:57:26]That um didn't help at all.

[00:57:29]Even the hardest workers need a break.

[00:57:31]With Margaro cigarettes, you can take a deep breath.

[00:57:36]>> [laughter] >> Truly unwind.

[00:57:41]Margaro, cigarettes for real men.

[00:57:48]Is that right? Disclaimer, the company is not liable for any harm that may occur occur to lungs or lifespan.

[00:57:52]Consume at own risk.

[00:57:57]Now available through Horrest food delivery.

[00:58:00]Okay.

[00:58:02]Well, it's another day.

[00:58:05]And I want to see if the kitty is satisfied with the food that we got.

[00:58:14]This is the best episode so far. I just have to say it.

[00:58:18]It's full of great vibes.

[00:58:19]I'm really liking the options that are opening up to me in this game. I mean, first we could pet the cat, then we could pick up the cat, and now I can feed the cat some food.

[00:58:31]But first, I decided to pet the cat.

[00:58:34]Oh, and what a great decision it is.

[00:58:36]Probably the best decision we've made in this situation.

[00:58:40]The cat actually likes it. It's not as grumpy as you first thought. It's like it's starting to get used to you. Aw, come here little baby.

[00:58:57]>> [laughter] >> I love this game. This is a great game.

[00:59:01]Okay, let's give the cat some food.

[00:59:09]His little face is hard to read, but you're pretty sure he's happy.

[00:59:12]You have a strange feeling you can sleep peacefully tonight.

[00:59:16]What?

[00:59:19]Is this This is a mechanic. Is the cat keeping me safe? All of us safe?

[00:59:29]It feels like your furry friend has shared one of his lives with you.

[00:59:34]Say thanks.

[00:59:36]Who knows? Maybe death will pass your home by tonight.

[00:59:40]Oh my god.

[00:59:43]This is a genius mechanic. Ah, what a positive incentive to give us as a character as a hero.

[00:59:51]Feed the cat and you can literally save people's lives.

[00:59:54]Feed the cat. You don't have to blow anyone's head off.

[00:59:57]Feed the cat and you don't have to endure any moral wounding. Do I need any more evidence, folks, of the healing power of cats for trauma?

[01:00:06]I mean, this is basically a qualitative study happening right before our very eyes.

[01:00:12]Oh my god, I love it so much. I love this little thing. I love everything about it.

[01:00:18]Okay. Well, um let's talk to our friend on the phone and see I wonder if we're are going to be able to speak to the same person, actually.

[01:00:28]Kind of hope so.

[01:00:33]What?

[01:00:35]Did I Now I'm always unsure if I just typed it in wrong.

[01:00:46]Okay.

[01:01:10]Okay. Well, let's talk to our residents [laughter] then.

[01:01:14]What's up, dude?

[01:01:16]So, what did you do for work? Work?

[01:01:19]>> [snorts] >> Only [laughter] suckers work, dude.

[01:01:23]I was out there living.

[01:01:25]You get me?

[01:01:27]I saw this movie once. The main guy?

[01:01:29]Straight up me.

[01:01:30]Tell me, do factory dudes look happy?

[01:01:33]Hell no.

[01:01:34]I threw parties, man.

[01:01:36]Met rad new homies. That's real living.

[01:01:39]Like, I guess I was a warehouse manager once, delivery joint.

[01:01:43]Folks set me up, you know.

[01:01:45]>> [laughter] >> So, yeah, it's interesting. We don't really get a choice in some sense. Our protagonist doesn't like this guy. He didn't like Among Us guy, either.

[01:01:57]But, we are pretty warm towards uh the other three in the house right now, Inner Jeca man, the theater guy, and um the young lady.

[01:02:10]We're naturally curious about them, but our comments towards these guys they're quite judgmental.

[01:02:17]And I wonder why. I mean, we definitely have our bias towards like what's a negative personality trait.

[01:02:23]I try to look a little more humanistically and say like, okay, you know, there's elements of adaptability in everyone, and uh we really don't know enough to make serious judgments about whether someone like this doesn't work because of a lack of interest or a lack of capacity.

[01:02:44]Uh but, I think we consider him a slacker.

[01:02:48]You're a slacker, then.

[01:02:50]Oh, that's quite mean. Hey, yo, chill. If you're jealous, then just say so, my dude.

[01:02:57]I get it. Not everyone starts life on easy mode.

[01:03:00]It's just the way it is.

[01:03:02]Dude, I totally just remembered I still got one special Tootsie Roll left. Oh, man, this is going to be tubular.

[01:03:14]My bad, dude.

[01:03:16]Totally forgot to puff and pass.

[01:03:18]Peace and love, man. Take a regular roll-up.

[01:03:21]I'm just going to like chillax for a bit. Yeah.

[01:03:25]Um okay.

[01:03:27]You know, it's fair if we find their personality a little grating. Might not be to our particular tastes, but um well, we haven't blown his head off yet.

[01:03:36]So, uh that's a positive.

[01:03:40]Okay, let's talk to our theater friend.

[01:03:43]What's the story with the collectors?

[01:03:46]I lived with my mom and nana. My pops left. He was an actor, too.

[01:03:51]Cheater.

[01:03:52]Drunk.

[01:03:53]Classic theater, right?

[01:03:55]Mom worked in the costume department.

[01:03:57]She tried to protect me all my life.

[01:03:59]When I grew up, I found out we've been drowning in problems all along.

[01:04:05]Mhm.

[01:04:07]So, it's probably something we can relate a lot to, the father connection.

[01:04:12]Mom couldn't always land a job.

[01:04:14]Big theaters? Forget it.

[01:04:16]Impossible.

[01:04:17]Small ones?

[01:04:18]Barely any money or no work at all.

[01:04:21]So, she got a loan.

[01:04:22]Not from anyone she knew.

[01:04:24]Some random company.

[01:04:25]Just so we'd have something to eat.

[01:04:28]Of course, she couldn't pay it back.

[01:04:30]Then the collectors started coming. I remember we had this strict rule.

[01:04:34]Don't answer the door if you weren't expecting anyone. And if you got to the house and there were some guys hanging around, you went for a walk for a couple more hours.

[01:04:43]It's [ __ ] up.

[01:04:45]With everything else going on, people got savage.

[01:04:49]Collectors even more so.

[01:04:51]One time I came back home, door wide open.

[01:04:54]Everything wrecked.

[01:04:56]Mom and Nana.

[01:04:59]Their fingers, legs broken.

[01:05:03][ __ ] it was a nightmare.

[01:05:06]These two huge guys showed up.

[01:05:08]I ran.

[01:05:10]Just ran.

[01:05:12]Scared.

[01:05:14][ __ ] I hate myself for it.

[01:05:16]For not protecting them.

[01:05:19]Running like a coward.

[01:05:21]For never going back.

[01:05:23]Just too scared.

[01:05:25]Selfishly scared.

[01:05:27]Yeah.

[01:05:29]The other guy is also giving us the exact scenario I was talking about.

[01:05:33]That's actually becoming a recurring theme.

[01:05:36]As it is with, like I said, most of the traumatic narratives that people are left with when they are post-adaptation.

[01:05:45]Along with post-traumatic stress, we also have post-traumatic clarity.

[01:05:51]Which infuses those moments of distress with the realizations that we only came to because we chose some path of survival, right?

[01:06:03]Running away.

[01:06:05]Saving himself.

[01:06:07]It's not a moment where we have access to the full range of morals and you know, can even make any kind of rational decisions. Those things come online after we have made a choice to survive.

[01:06:24]And then the rationale kicks in, and that clarity walks backward into the moment and says, "Why didn't you do this then?" But you didn't.

[01:06:33]You didn't have it then. The clarity you have is evidence of your survival, and so much shame and guilt gets built into the reflection on that experience. Like that's Yeah, what we're seeing a lot of here.

[01:06:47]The goal is not to get this person to a point where they suddenly can justify the decision. That's never the goal. It's not to it's not to placate and say, "Oh, but you shouldn't feel bad because you didn't know better."

[01:07:07]That is not what we're after.

[01:07:10]Like I said, we have to acknowledge the cost on the person's morals and on the real decisions that they made before we attach any of those identity-strengthening qualities like you did you did this to preserve yourself. It can't just be a replacement. It can't be, "Well, you should forgive yourself because what you did was based on survival." It that's going to feel very dismissive. That's where a lot of therapists get this wrong. They'll they'll try to immediately jump to, "But here's how you were resilient."

[01:07:42]It feels disrespectful to not acknowledge the cost on the human and to just wave away the guilt. Like that's not going to work. It's there.

[01:07:52]It's foundational to our perspective now. That stuff is there. It's a part of the narrative. What we're trying to do is reattach the rest, not to replace it.

[01:08:01]Really, there's two layers of conflict that would be worth working on here, which are the actions and identity.

[01:08:10]When you make a play for trying to validate someone and saying, "Oh, but you did this to survive and that's okay."

[01:08:16]And we haven't separated out those two elements, what we get is it feels dismissive.

[01:08:23]What you're trying to say is that the actions you took are worth validating. Like based on your own fear response, your own physiological fight or flight, the actions that you took, they do make sense. Like they are the normative response to acute stress.

[01:08:43]The rationale to leave the situation and protect yourself is not something to feel guilty about. The action that you took is worth forgiving.

[01:08:53]However, the identity parts, the people who this impacted, my mom and my Nana, the relationship I have with them, my inability to protect them, my inability to return.

[01:09:09]Right?

[01:09:10]You have to recognize that those are distinct things. If I try to get the person to self-forgive all of it all at once, it it doesn't land. It's going to feel dismissive and um it's more likely to actually strengthen the fusing of those things.

[01:09:29]Because they're inherently stuck together.

[01:09:31]Right now it feels like the actions that I took to run away are a part of the identity decisions. I ran away because I didn't care enough.

[01:09:41]But they're distinct. That's why you go with what was the moment of adaptability and you sort of follow the procedure of what was the first action that you took when you noticed that fear in yourself?

[01:09:52]Well, I left the room. I ran as fast as I could.

[01:09:57]Okay, we're separating out the actions.

[01:10:00]We're not attaching emotion to them.

[01:10:02]We're not saying and how did it feel to run away? Because that's identity stuff.

[01:10:06]I was afraid of what was happening to my Nana. That's all in this other space.

[01:10:09]Like I just want to focus purely on action first.

[01:10:12]Because we're trying to recognize that those are normative responses to acute stress.

[01:10:18]You noticed that there was this massive overwhelm of fear.

[01:10:22]Um you could feel it in your body. You you decided to run.

[01:10:27]You could feel the tension in yourself.

[01:10:29]You felt some small amount of relief when you knew that you were out of danger. And we want to make sure that that is captured as a distinct part of the traumatic experience. Recognize that we can feel okay and self-forgiving about just the procedural elements of what we did before we walk into the other side of this.

[01:10:52]Which is the more relational, more intrapsychic aspect of I feel guilty because of the people this affected my mom, my nonna, these ones who cared for me and I was never able to care for them. That is like a whole different project. If you don't teach someone neutrality towards their actions, especially during a trauma where our actions prioritize survival and follow very normative, very predictive responses to distress that we shouldn't feel in no way shameful about. And I'm talking about running.

[01:11:28]I'm talking about dissociating when some sort of trauma's happening. So, like, you know, shutting off our awareness to things.

[01:11:35]People come away from that all the time and feel guilt about it. Oh, I can't believe I don't remember, you know, this awful thing that happened. It feels so disrespectful to myself and whoever, but that is not something you owe guilt to. It makes about as much sense as feeling guilty for being hungry.

[01:11:54]Like, it is a predictable biological response to circumstances of environment and emotion.

[01:12:02]We can work on forgiving that.

[01:12:05]Then we can work on the identity stuff, okay? The moral wounds that come from making choices that don't align with your actual beliefs. And we may never get full forgiveness in that space, but like I said, that's not the goal. The common mistake for therapists is to not separate those things out. Go for You have to learn to forgive yourself.

[01:12:29]You have to accept it.

[01:12:31]You can't change the past. You should feel okay with what you did cuz it was normal, but it's all too enmeshed that we're going to respond to the identity stuff first, and we're going to say, "I'll never forgive myself. There's no amount of things that you could say to make me feel okay with what I did." Well, because what you did is still a tied to who you decided to be, but there wasn't a decision to abandon your family members. There was a decision to respond effectively and normatively to your physiology, and later clarify that those actions had a moral and emotional impact on people that you care about. That clarity came post trauma, post stress, as a result of those things.

[01:13:16]And we infuse them, and they are not to just be waved away in favor of like very superficial complementing of someone's strength and resilience. Like that's that's not going to help really in this situation.

[01:13:32]That's just [ __ ] up beyond words.

[01:13:34]Yeah.

[01:13:35]I wish I could start this process with this young man. He deserves it. He deserves to um process in this way that is going to help at least balance out the perspective with what he'd be willing to forgive versus not forgive.

[01:13:52]Not a healing game, though.

[01:13:54]Not going to get that opportunity here.

[01:13:57]I I want my mommy. Yeah.

[01:14:02]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, look this is this is our foible as the protagonist, but it makes sense, right? Like this is the obvious instincts, you know, without that training. You need to accept what happened.

[01:14:14]What do you mean? Watch how poorly this goes, though.

[01:14:16]I saw a TV in your room. Can I watch cartoons? Also, um maybe you can invite my friend over, please.

[01:14:23]I think [music] this is her phone number. Oh, [ __ ] I don't know. When the grown-ups invite her, they they let her come, but if it's me, they just tell me off.

[01:14:38]Okay. Uh let's let's try to land this a little bit more softly. Your dad might not be coming for you. I don't know what happened to him. It's honest. Are you saying he's not coming?

[01:14:50]Why would you say that?

[01:14:53]Why hasn't he come? No, that's Don't say that. Don't say that.

[01:14:58]Don't lead her to use rationale to discover that her father is dead. That's going to create all the problems I'm talking about.

[01:15:08]What did he look like last time you saw him? Also not a great option, but it's the better of the two.

[01:15:15]He was good.

[01:15:17]They hit him, so he I don't remember.

[01:15:21]Well, and again, moment of adaptability, she dissociated.

[01:15:28]Predictable, normative, biological response, not worth feeling shameful about. Later in life, she is going to feel terrible about the fact that she can't remember her father's last moments, and she will be uncharitable to herself.

[01:15:46]That for some reason she should have remembered this, and why can't I recall it? Because maybe I was selfish in caring about myself. Like you can see how easy it is to start adding on the identity stuff in post-traumatic clarity.

[01:16:03]Um not to your own benefit. Oh, this is awful. Sure, yeah, I bet your dad's on his way now.

[01:16:09]This is a very nice thing to say despite it being quite quite quite depressing.

[01:16:17]I'm sorry about your dad. He was a good man.

[01:16:20]Too kind for this world.

[01:16:23]The girl seems to stare through you.

[01:16:25]You're afraid to move, so you just wait for something to happen. Yeah, she's she's shutting down.

[01:16:32]After some time, she starts wailing again.

[01:16:35]It doesn't look like there's anything you can do for her.

[01:16:39]It'd be worse to let her believe a lie.

[01:16:42]She has to learn to accept reality as soon as possible.

[01:16:46]Uh there's things in between those two uh options, but uh we're not going to get them here.

[01:16:54]We're not going to get them here, folks.

[01:16:56]Oh, look at that. It's Township Day.

[01:16:59]While the city burns.

[01:17:01]Well, that's it. Run out of steam.

[01:17:04]All set?

[01:17:05]Huh?

[01:17:06]Oh. Oh, yeah. I'm going to leave tonight.

[01:17:09]So See you.

[01:17:11]Godspeed. Hope you manage to outrun the psychos.

[01:17:16]I I like the idea of encouraging him.

[01:17:18]Not the language I'd use, but That's not sarcasm, right?

[01:17:22]Thanks, anyway. Got some decent rest here. I've got at least few days running in me.

[01:17:27]Energetica works wonders, you know. And if that was supposed to be witty, doing something, anything, is better than waiting for your brain to boil.

[01:17:35]Got [snorts] nothing to lose anyway.

[01:17:37]Left it all behind. So, why not look for something more?

[01:17:40]Better than throwing in the towel and waiting for the curtain to fall.

[01:17:44]I don't want that.

[01:17:46]They won't let you back in, you know.

[01:17:48]Well, good luck.

[01:17:50]I do actually wish the Energetica man well.

[01:17:55]I think he's um he's a good bloke.

[01:17:57]This one.

[01:17:59]I'm glad that we were able to do something positive for him, you know, just give him a place to rest. You know, I only I only pointed the shotgun at him once. You know, just once. Okay?

[01:18:10]He was able to forgive me for it, at least.

[01:18:13]Thanks. You, too.

[01:18:15]Maybe we'll meet again.

[01:18:17]I might even have a story or two from my troubles.

[01:18:20]And maybe I feel like telling them.

[01:18:21]Cuz I sure as hell don't now.

[01:18:23]Not with your miserable face.

[01:18:26]Damn.

[01:18:28]Uh okay. Well, one last person to chat with.

[01:18:35]Did you need something?

[01:18:37]Thinking about fairy tales again? Yes. I remembered another tale today about the frozen city.

[01:18:43]A place of tall walls and icy towers.

[01:18:46]They lived never trusting one another for centuries.

[01:18:50]They felt like that's how it would always be.

[01:18:52]But then a traveling glass blower came along and little by little things began to change.

[01:18:58]He lined the streets with his lanterns and he never missed a chance to say good morning to a neighbor.

[01:19:03]At first they laughed at him. But then little by little the ice in their hearts began to melt.

[01:19:10]It's nearly impossible to change everything overnight. The real change has to start within yourself.

[01:19:16]Light your own lantern even when the world around you is dark.

[01:19:20]Mother, God rest her soul always joked the moral was simple.

[01:19:24]If you wait for change you'll die waiting.

[01:19:27]In the end it's us who keeps this world alive.

[01:19:30]If we don't try we're already lost.

[01:19:35]>> [music] >> Yeah, I like I like where this guy's head's at.

[01:19:39]I try to hold on to kindness to humanity even when it hurts hoping against hope it will show others the way.

[01:19:49]Wow.

[01:19:51]That was I was waiting for the gut punch but I like that at the center of his philosophy is well, a more realistic version of hopefulness that you're not going to find overnight success with it.

[01:20:06]It's going to be small changes over time.

[01:20:08]And that that implies internal work as well.

[01:20:13]I sure hope I don't have to shoot him and blow him into little bits.

[01:20:20]>> [laughter] >> But anything can happen once we run out of cat food.

[01:20:25][ __ ] anything could happen. For his sake and my own for For sake of not causing any more moral wounds, I hope I don't have to blow his happy little head off.

[01:20:38]So, with that said, folks, I'm just going to end things here before things get dire and bad again.

[01:20:47]Let's just have a nice rounded episode where only good things happened.

[01:20:53]Because as the protagonist said, things only seem to be getting worse.

[01:21:00]So, thank you for watching, as always.

[01:21:04]Be good to yourselves.

[01:21:06]Please.

[01:21:08]For me.

[01:21:09]Or for the cat.

[01:21:10]And until next time, see you again soon.

[01:21:13]Bye.