What If Leveling Up In Games Explains Growing Up

I’m not going to pretend recording is easy right now. This is our first time back since my dad passed away, and that absence sits in the room with us. But we still show up and, somehow, the mix of honesty, jokes, and real insight turns into something I’m proud to put into the world.

From there we bounce into the very modern experience of Diablo 4: character creation that keeps shoving you toward the expansion, a stream that becomes three separate character starts, and the ridiculous satisfaction of ARPG loot. We unpack why those constant upgrades feel like dopamine fireworks and how progression systems are designed to rush you through the early game so the “real grind” can start. Then we pivot to Mass Effect and talk nostalgia, story, and why platform friction (offline licensing, controls, laggy aiming) can derail even a classic.

The deeper thread is mental health and personal growth through gaming. We talk about why some games feel like calm because you can pause, breathe, and return on your time, while others punish you for stepping away. We connect that to parenting, work stress, and the way our gaming tastes change as life changes. I also share what it was like to hit a million clicks on my site, speak on a mainstage at the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and keep pushing a message I care about: games aren’t inherently harmful, and play can be a healthy part of adult life.

If you like thoughtful conversations about gaming identity, stress, grief, addiction, and the psychology of progression, hit subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome Back And Missing A Friend

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I could be broken right now, Marcus, but we're doing a podcast. And when I edit this, it's going to be amazing because there have been so many little gems in this conversation. And that makes it worth it. That makes it so I'm proud of whatever is going on in backgroundprotocol.exe slash doc to be like, you're not stopping me from putting this into the world. Welcome to the Gaming Persona Podcast. This is the show that explores who we become when we play games. Whether you're saving kingdoms, leading epic raids, or just vibing in cozy indie worlds. Join me, Dr. Gameology, and my good friend Marcus as we search for all the ways gaming and personal growth collide. Grab your controllers and let's continue the journey.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Now it's like the it's like the band is back together, but we're missing our bass player.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Yeah, that's that's a really good point. So if we were Blink 182, we have Tom DeLong and Travis Barker, but we're missing Mark Hoppas. Sure. Wait, you're not a fan of Blink 182, Marcus?

SPEAKER_00 1:16

I like Blink 182. Even like my favorite band is Bad Religion. I don't even know who the members of the band are. They're just my favorite band.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

You are a true fan, Marcus.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, I don't care about who it's like it's like wrestlers, right? Like Roman Reigns, yeah. I know his name is Joe, but like he's Roman Reigns.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Well, you wouldn't be the first person to be a fan of some kind of religion, but not even know the people involved.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

I just like bad religion, the band. Alright, that's great. So what we're trying to say is we're missing Doritos, and it's kind of weird without him here.

Recording Through Grief

SPEAKER_02 2:07

You know what else is weird without somebody here, Marcus? What? This is the first podcast we're recording since my dad passed away. So we are recording without him here, too.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

I don't know how to get into that. That's like I like, yeah, no, like, you know, it's hard.

Twitch Return And Diablo 4 Confusion

SPEAKER_02 2:34

I have like three moments every day where I realize, like, oh, I'm never gonna be talking to him about that. So it's it's hard. But I've done a lot of cool things since the last recording, too, and I'm excited to share those. And I just think I want to give a major shout out to the people who hang out with me on Twitch. I did make my return after one month off, and I streamed Diablo 4 this morning.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Oh, the new one? And the new expansion.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Oh no, no, no. I've never played Diablo 4, so I started with the base game this morning. And actually, I created my character three times because I couldn't figure out how to access the base game, because the options in character creation are set up to push you directly into the new expansion. And I remember playing Diablo 4 for one hour a year ago on stream, and what I did when I created my character this morning was nothing like that. It like was so much more chaotic and advanced because it's the second or third expansion of the game. So then I deleted that character, created a new one, ended up in the expansion again, deleted that character, made a new one, looked it up on Reddit, and eventually ended up in the base game. So the whole stream was just me creating my character three times.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Sounds like a lot of people's first streams when they're playing they were playing Baldur's Gate.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yeah, possibly. You get in that first cutscene, you don't like the makeup that you picked, so you just delete the character and do it all over again. Because you don't realize that when you go to camp, you're gonna have a magic mirror where you can change your entire character anyway. Right. Yeah. But as far as I know, once you start the expansion, you can't go back to the base game in Diablo 4. So I feel happy about my choice. And I enjoyed the game a lot. I I think that there's cool little dopamine spikes you get every time you find a piece of gear that changes your look and increases your stats and increases your stats by like 1.7%. But it's just like, oh, I get to wear new boots, oh I get to wear a new pants, oh, I get a new helmet, oh, I get a new weapon, and then like, oh, I get another new pair of boots. Like it's just so rapid. There's no other game that I've ever played where you get new gear that actually makes you better every 12 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Well, so the way ARPGs work is the whole point of it is to grind through the main story and get through it as fast as you can, so then you can actually start the real grind of like getting in the harder difficulties, and the goal of those games is to get to the hardest difficulty and then you grind out the real gear.

Loot Dopamine And ARPG Progression

SPEAKER_02 5:29

I see. Okay. So the the gear that I'm getting just by leveling up through the low levels and doing story missions is not important, and that's why you're finding it. Correct. Yep. Yep. Okay. Well, I'm having a lot of fun with it. I created a female sorcerer. No way. Yeah, to the surprise of everyone on the stream.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Yeah. Wow. Wow. I'm I'm shocked right now.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

And you know what? On my plane to the conference for the American Society of Addiction Medicine, I decided to play Mass Effect 1, Marcus. How many hours? Oh, I just played the opening mission and made it to. I made it to the part where you get to the the spire and have your little vision of everyone dying, and then you wake up on the ship on the Normandy, and they like start talking about going and talking to the council because Saren assassinated your guy. Yeah. So it's like it's early stuff, but I'm really enjoying Ashley, you know, rescuing her. I'm really enjoying talking to everyone, getting that old school Sotor Kotor vibe that Bioware was so good at. Have you played it since? Actually, yes, you're you're gonna be like, does this count as playing it again? When I got home, I started it again on the PS5 because EA play is not a good experience when you do not have access to the internet on your plane on the Steam Deck. So you had to start a new character? Yeah, but I did the same thing over again, and also aiming is easier on the PS5. My Steam Deck was having a delay between my laser bolts going out and people getting hit by them. It's really weird. I can't explain it because I don't know the technical reason why this was happening. It's lag. Yeah, so but why would the Steam Deck be lagging?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Or it could be, I don't know, it might maybe this I don't know. Settings too high.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

It's a it's a PS4 level remaster of a like PS2 style game.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It can't it was an Xbox 360 game.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Are you sure Mass Effect One was not like Xbox One?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

I'm looking at it. It's I have it sitting Xbox 360.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

That Mass Effect One, two, and three are all Xbox 360 titles.

Mass Effect Reboot And Tech Friction

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Okay, got it. So I enjoyed it a lot. I I think when I played it two years ago or whatever, I created a male Commander Shepherd, which I think that we just need to establish on the podcast today. Everybody knows never, I should never play a male character if I have the option to play a female character.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Okay. But the real test, okay, and first off, I'm glad you liked it. I'm glad you're having you had fun with it. I'm glad you did the mission. Like, because this is this is the start of it, and if you can power through Mass Effect One, I would say it's like 30 hours. If you can power through Mass Effect One, two and three get so good. And yeah, but one is amazing, too. And with the HD upgrade, I mean it still doesn't look fantastic like great, great, but it does look a lot better than it did. And believe it or not, the gun mechanics are a thousand times better than it was back in the day. But going with that now, the real test for a game for me is always you play the game one time, maybe twice, and then it's the third, it's the magical third time coming back. I can give an example. So I've always wanted to play Dead Cells. Do you know what that is? No, it's a Metroidvania roguelike. When I was at PAX a long, long time ago, I bought, and I didn't even own a PlayStation 4, but they had a limited edition Dead Cells game in like the big box and special edition, and they had a show special, and it was 20 bucks. I was like, man, this game is gonna be awesome. I'm gonna buy the special edition, I'll get a PlayStation or I'll borrow NYX for a little while and I'll try it. Never opened it, never played it, but I've always wanted to play it, and they came out with a Castlevania DLC and and it was on Super Steam sale. I think I got the Castlevania DLC in Dead Cells for like$12. So I bought it and I played it for a couple hours, and then I played it again for about 10 minutes and I haven't gone back. Even though I want to, but I haven't. But then I've been playing Metaphor Ran Fantasio or whatever it is, and I finally seemed funny to me that you always screw the name of that game up. It's always it's almost on purpose, you know what I mean? Because it's what I do. I'm an idiot when it comes to stuff like that. But anyway, but my point to you is I finally got to a boss that I keep dying to, and it's interesting to me because I'm playing it on like I think I'm playing it on normal, and this shit's hard. And there's certain aspects of the game that are troubling to me, but since I got to this boss that's really hard that I've died like three times to, I haven't turned it back on yet. And it was and not that I don't like the game, but it's it's almost that same place I'm at in Elden Ring where I'm at a boss, and I know as soon as I turn it on, I have to get into a boss fight. So it brings me back to you and Mass Effect. It I'll say you like Mass Effect when you get back to it and play it two more times. Because if you put it an hour or two into it again, two more times, you'll get sucked in because you'll want to play it. But already you've started Diablo 4, which means Mass Effect is on the back burner, probably not going to turn it back on.

Story Games On Stream Versus Solo

SPEAKER_02 12:27

I disagree. Actually, what I have realized in my time off is that if I have a story game, I prefer to do my second playthrough of that game on stream because I don't stream as often as I have little moments here and there to play a game. The reason that I have never played the end of Resident Evil Requiem on stream is because I know if I want people to show up, there's a window where I've trained people to see that alert and show up and hang out with me. If I stream at a time that's way different than that window, I end up with a dead chat, and I end up feeling sad about how my stream is going, and then it bums me out the rest of the day. And I deal with so many different things in life. You know, I I know I might look super happy and accomplished on social media, but I really do deal with a lot of things, and I can't add extra bummed out because of Twitch. So I prefer to play story games on my own, and then once the desire for me to see that story is already earned on my couch, on my portal, in my bed, then I can create a playthrough for Twitch and just relax and enjoy it. And plus, I can analyze it because I kind of know what's coming. And the the real depth of my channel is the psychological analysis. Anyway, if I don't know what's coming, it is a little more pressure on me to come up with the stuff I enjoy giving to people. So Mass Effect is my me game right now. Diablo is gonna be two out of the three streams a week, and I am gonna go back to Final Fantasy XIV as well, and that's gonna be one or two days of stream every week, too, for now, because they announced the Evercold expansion for January, and I have so much story content from Dawn Trail in Final Fantasy XIV online that I haven't even played yet, and I'm so excited for Evercold because they're creating a new system where they're consolidating every class's abilities down to 16 abilities, everything fits on one set of buttons, and that is revolutionary, Marcus. But you can also toggle it to have the version of your bar that has 38 to 44 abilities, and you have to use R2 and L2 and the crossbar to do that. But I feel like for me, I know red mage with all the abilities, I know black mage with all the abilities, but other classes, I'd be so much better at the class if I could just switch to class, see the abilities, learn what they do. There's only 16 different buttons. I'm so excited to play the game that way. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, I get it. It's just I I but I feel like you still have to turn on the game. Like I understand what you're saying about your stream, but you still have to when you're home. I I'll be eager over the coming weeks to hear if you've played Mass Effect again.

Final Fantasy XIV Changes Worth Waiting For

One Million Clicks And Building A Platform

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Oh, I think that it's over a 90% chance that I'll be playing it, you know, either tomorrow or or Saturday. I have little windows right now where I can fit a game in. And I just want to say to you Like, can you fit through those little little windows? Maybe I could have fit better when I was 14. All right. I am the most physically fit right now as I've been since I was in my mid-20s. So maybe in case you needed a literal answer from your literal Dr. Gamology Marcus, I had my first piece of content that had a million clicks. That's amazing. Yep. I have a YouTube video about Ada Long from Resident Evil and a blog post on DrGamology.com that you know just gets that YouTube video out there and explains it in text form.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

And because of the boom of Resident Evil Requiem coming out and hitting so big, I had a million people visit my website looking at that that article.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Yep, it just it just got into Google and people started clicking, reading, clicking, reading. Just I had my website meeting yesterday, and we're talking about how to get all my content like linked in together so that I can be the a better version of Dr. Gameology in terms of consistency. So we'll see. I might be making a promise I can't keep right now, but I'm hoping it happens because I would love to make more YouTube videos. I'd love to have games that are these are my stream games, but then I'd like to have analysis of games that don't necessarily end up on Twitch, but they do end up on my YouTube and they do end up on my website, they do end up as parts of our topics for the gaming persona. And I think a lot of people became more interested in our show because I was able to plug it at the conference for the American Society of Addiction Medicine. And oh, by the way, we have to add, just like main event J. Uso from WWE, we gotta add a new moniker to the Dr. Gamology name. Would you like to know what that is, Marcus? Yeah. Mainstage, Dr. Kaufman. Love that so much. Yep. So I showed up at this conference in San Diego. I was looking for my room for my first presentation. I had two presentations and guests on their official podcast. And this is for the whole Society of Addiction Medicine for the United States. So literally, since I treat addictions and I build programs for gambling and video game addictions to help people with their mental health journey, there's really no bigger conference that I could speak at than this one. And I'm looking for the name of the room and the ballroom with thousands of people in it. Right. Is right there and it has the name that's on my little personal schedule. I'm like, no. So I keep walking down the hallway finding the small rooms, like they have to have like offshoot rooms that are like part of a cluster. And then the keynote address ends, they swap the titles on the display boards next to the door, and my panel is on it, and we're talking about AI technology in healthcare settings. And it's like, oh my gosh. So I started taking selfies with the stage and just going up there looking for my co-presenters. And you know, one of the cool things about all the things I do on Twitch and the podcast is I really do think I have a sense of humor that works on the internet that makes me sound different when I describe things than a typical mental health professional at a serious mental health conference. I think people hear what I'm saying and it's good information, but they experience it like I'm sharing humor. So they laugh a lot. And I am addicted to making rooms with thousands of people laugh, Marcus.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Well, you're you're really good at talking to people in a different way than I'm good at talking to people.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Yeah, you're gonna get them to sign up for stuff, participate in stuff, follow through on stuff, maybe even buy stuff.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

And laugh, but it we're just it's just we're connected in different ways.

Mainstage Talk On AI In Healthcare

Games As Growth Across A Lifetime

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Yeah, yeah. I think there is a different style of how you would get people to laugh versus the strategy of how I would do it. Right. I just I'm blown away. Everyone at this conference received me so well. I had so many amazing conversations after each presentation of people that just were like, You said this, what does that mean here? How do I use this? And just I feel like there's so many possibilities, not just for me going to more events, because that will keep happening, because every year for about five or six years straight, I've ended up at more events or bigger events. But I think that there's gonna be people watching. This content and books I'm in, and maybe even checking out YouTube videos when I eventually get around to making more of those. And I'm just so excited to see what happens with that because my goal is to get the message out that video games are not these scary, awful things that ruin people's lives. And they help us learn about ourselves and where we're at in our journey, and to really appreciate who we are becoming as people, the way that we design our avatar, but then we get the gear, we level up, we gain new abilities. And as people, we do that too. It's just it may not be a lightning strike coming out of my fingertips, but I can download a new app, use it for a piece of content, I can create more intuitive spreadsheets and charts to send to my boss at work. I can explain things to journals and help people know a new science y fact about how video games work. And those are things I wasn't doing 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 12, 6, 3, 1 years ago. Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Yeah. You come a long way.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Yeah. I mean, if you think too, because you have some different job stuff too, you have some different life situation stuff. You know, in addition, like our kids obviously are older, we're older. The the things that happen when you and I talk, Marcus, are so similar to when we first met and we just wanted to defeat Dread Palace, but they're also so impressively amazingly different.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Sure. Yeah, we we just have different goals, and our growth chart is on the trajectory up, but it's definitely in a different path than it was seven years ago. Or ten years ago now.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Do you think, in a way, it's because we have these gaming experiences and we kind of looked at progression and gamified life?

SPEAKER_00 24:09

I definitely see progression in my own life. Well, you know, so marriage and going from young, little, little, little baby kids like diaper kids to seven and ten-year-old kids. It is harder in some ways, but easier in others. And the mountain that you have to climb when you have a baby baby and like diaper baby, that's a whole nother level of progression that you have to get through because there's no reasoning with a kid, you know what I mean? A diaper kid. Then you have, you know, my marit the marital stress from it. Then you have work stress, like you're literally going to work, coming home, and taking care of that baby. You know what I mean? And then you progress, and then you're you're coming home from work and you're hanging with the kids, but like tonight, I was playing catch. My daughter's playing softball. My rhino's playing baseball, and we were playing catch all night. Like we came in for the kids to take showers, and that was my night. So it's a different type of tired, you know what I mean? And I think grinding in a video game, I don't want to say it's taught you that, but it I feel like playing video games is the calm I need. And maybe that's why I started playing JRPGs. Because even though I'm in a turn-based fight, if I something pops up and I'm in a fight and the boss hits me, I have an unlimited time until I have to move. I can shut off my Steam Deck screen and be able to go do that thing. Where in Elden Ring, there's no pause button. Or in an MMO raid, there's no pause button. You're in it and there's no stopping. If you stop, you die. And if you just grind it for three hours to get to where you are, and then you die and you didn't have a safe spot, now what do you do? So, yes, I feel so that was a long-winded yes. I feel like I feel like video games teach you what progression is in its own way. Because every video game has progression. You know, if you look at the the Call of Duty players are gonna get really mad at me when I say this, is simple-minded, not simple-minded. It's like it call of duty's progression tree, is you level up, you unlock perks, you unlock guns and skins, and then you hit max level, and then you start over and it unlocks new things, right? There's no real you're not upgrading armor and gear, you're just upgrading your guns, and I don't think they do more damage than they did before you got them all pretty up. You know what I mean? You might have a better scope, but that progression to me is a lot easier to follow than like an MMO's progression where you're doing nightmare or savage rating in a in a in your grinding out gear, and you need so many tokens to be able to buy a piece of gear, and then you have to go find this vendor. That's a lot to deal with.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's a complex video game.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Right, exactly. So, you know, I think levels of life are dictating what progression I can do in video games.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Interesting. So, Marcus, did you know that I wrote a book?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

You know, I was not gonna bring it up tonight because Doritos wasn't here, and then if he once he listened to the show, he would come on next week and be like, You guys didn't mention that Doc wrote a book.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Well, you so beautifully describe Eric Erickson's stages of psychosocial development.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Can you say psychosocial ten times fast?

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Psychosocial, psychosocial, psychosocial, psychosocial, psychosocial, psychosocial, psychosocial, psychosocial.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Wow, good job. I would have messed that up.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

The real question is can I say biopsychosocial ten times fast? Anyway, all kidding aside, there is a chart in the gamer's journey that explains these stages of human development, but side by side with the stages of gamer development. And it equates, if you look at the chart, it's on page 167. Yeah, it's a juxtaposition between life and gaming. And as you grow up, the little stick figures go from baby to kid to teen to graduating, getting married, to having kids, to getting old and walking with a cane, to a tombstone and dying. It's the full lifespan. And I put on the gaming side a joystick, an NES controller, a Super Nintendo controller, a GameCube controller, a Wii controller, and a PS3 era controller. So you're you're seeing the passage of time. And my the reason I wanted to depict them side by side is because my argument is that it is possible in a healthy life for the things you do and the people you're around and your role that you serve for them to change. And it's also completely okay for the games you play, your time commitment, the kinds of goals you have in those games to also transform with you as you grow through life. And I think the thing in that chapter I'm arguing against is this idea that video games are immature and adults should not play them, and trying to normalize the idea that we all need our coping skills, our escapes, and our relaxation moments. And life, especially when you start looking at one job, like how do I fit another job into this? It's so fast, and the stress level is so high. I literally can feel in my veins the moment every night where the adrenaline can stop and I relax, and everything feels from muscles to blood flow like we can slow down now. I don't think it's healthy. I feel it every single night, Marcus. Right. And I don't play video games every single night. What I'm saying is, if video games were a thing, or anything for that matter, that can relax that and make the endorphins so that they don't have to be so wound up for me to get through my day, that would make me more healthy. Right? And yeah. The idea of why people play video games is often not taken into account by the people who are just negative about the fact that they do play video games. So, you know, you talked about playing with your kids outside, you talked about being very actively involved with them, and you know, that's beautiful, and you talked about video games as a thing that is for you at the end just a little thing to help you wind down, and it's like a mindfulness space, too, because you're talking about a game that you can play at whatever speed you feel like you need to is more appealing than a game that puts you in a high stress environment and punishes you for yawning.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

I'm just trying to think yeah, I'm trying to think of how I was just thinking, I was thinking about it because we've never talked about that particular chart. I've not made any content about that page outside of the page itself. So people who've read the book know where I went with that, but people who see me on on Instagram or Twitch, you know, this is the first time you set me up so perfectly to talk about how play is important for positive growth, especially in childhood, but it doesn't have to end there. And the less seriously we take ourselves, the easier it is to feel a successful mental health journey. And I'm saying that completely aware that I'm the expert and people should listen to me, but I don't follow my own advice. So take that for whatever it's worth, everyone who's listening.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

There it is, words from Doc.

Self Talk, Therapy Goals, And Depression

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Yep. Well, when my elevator pitch for the podcast right now is there have been three generations of the show. Or four, depending on how we see Doritos' role in what we're doing, Marcus. But there's the Doc and Jenny era, then there's the trio with Gene, and then there's me and you for a little bit, and then we got Doritos. And I kind of see the you and me and Doritos era, it's the same thing to me. I is it the ruthless aggression era? Ooh. Sure, yeah. That I'll go with that. Ruthless aggression. Yeah, that's fine. I I just my my pitch of what it is is it's it's three people that became friends through video games talking about whatever's on our mind with video games, and then I try to take my shot near the end to create an academic conversation. And I think that that resonates with people. I I think that is honestly the best way to describe what we do every week.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

I'm just here to be the idiot.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

And I'm successful every week. You you are. I you know, as a mental health counselor, I do have an issue every time. Like I twitch every time, not not the streaming website. I I involuntarily convulse in my brain when I hear you call yourself a name like that. I don't like it. I wish you were kinder to yourself, Marcus.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

I am.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

I am kinder to myself, but like is a nice way to call you an idiot. A bonehead? That's still name-calling.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

So I'm actually gonna call you out a little bit on this. So you say that me calling myself an idiot is hard, but I remember back a few episodes there was a situation, and I don't know what it was, and some guy was terrible at his life, and he agreed to do the dishes one day a week, and you called him out saying that he only does like that's that's all you can do, and you know, we all do so more, so much more, but it's I forget, like, I don't know how it just brings that back to me that like I'm me calling myself an idiot, but this guy could be really like I don't know, down in the dumps or something, and you know, his he can't do anything, and him doing the dishes once a week is is ridiculous as that sounds to me.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Laziness is a defining person and name, it's destroyed describing an interpersonal quality. All right. All right, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think my point there is for a lot of people, the bar is so low, and you could blame maybe they are experiencing major depressive disorder, or maybe there is a focus and attention issue, like something related to ADHD. I'm not the person's counselor, actually, in that scenario, I'm the supervisor of the person's counselor, and I was encouraging my supervisee to try and get a more advanced treatment plan goal because that is so behaviorally obvious. It's kind of a shame that that's the most advanced goal you can get out of your counselor when you're going to therapy. Because I was I was encouraging her to elevate her strategy with the client and not just you know, I had a couple ones years ago where they were just talking about doing something that was not emotion or psychology or relationship related as their goal. And I just listened to it and I said, Okay, so you want to agree that this is what he's gonna do and this is what you're gonna do. I would just like to say, I can't believe that you have to have a counseling session in order to come up with that goal. That is just something that could happen in conversation in your living room.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

But if the guy but if the guy is severely depressed, I mean you don't know. I I can't I can't speculate on that. I think I could I This is so cool. Okay, I wanted to.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Wait, hold on one second.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

Yeah, but okay, I'm with you on it. But what I'm saying is, is I think he's a lazy turd completely. Okay. But what I'm saying is, is because of what I do every day, but I understand that some people may be so depressed they can't get out of bed.

Dad’s Standards And Closing Reflection

SPEAKER_02 38:19

The solution to depression is not actually to do things when you're feeling not depressed, it's to learn how to enter into an active mode, even when you're feeling like you could be depressed today. That active mode will carry you past that feeling and you will feel better. The problem is the motivation isn't there to make that happen. I think that my argument was just the bar is very low for a lot of people in a lot of different situations, and sometimes I don't know what to say about that because I do the things I'm supposed to do, even when I am the most broken version of myself that you could possibly imagine. Right. People don't know, they just don't. I could be broken right now, Marcus, but we're doing a podcast, and when I edit this, it's gonna be amazing because there have been so many little gems in this conversation, and that makes it worth it. That makes it so I am proud of whatever is going on in backgroundprotocol.exe slash doc to be like, you're not stopping me from putting this into the world. Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

I get it.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Yeah. A lot of people don't see it that way. You know, let's bring it full circle though. I think it's because the way my dad raised me. The way my dad raised me, I think there was no excuse that would justify falling short like that. And whether he meant to instill that lesson on me, or I just didn't want to face him knowing that I could have done better, that's what I became. I think it has a lot to do with what happened to us in previous points in life where we either fell short or felt that we were at risk of falling short. And whatever happened to me in those moments was something I never wanted to live through again. And so there is no excuse for I feel too bad to do the dishes. I feel such a lack of motivation that I will not take that can of soda and put it in the trash. And so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Mourn them, do not miss them, do not, as death is a transition, not a permanent end. Continue the journey.