Consept

I've been watching a few youtube videos and reading some articles about this and it hits the nail on the head for me. I actually shed a tear because its so sad what little me and little others that have this attachment style go through without even knowing whats going on. Just watching a video now the creator was talking about how you go through these cycles of on and off relationships, you never know if the persons right for you because you feel that you cant trust relationships although you really need them, mainly due to childhood neglect and not feeling safe as a child. All this time ive tried to deal with it by just having a mindset of 'i want to be free and independent', for a while I even thought guys in committed relationships were kinda losers because they were trapped. Its weird because i always wanted to be alone but not really a fuckboy and when i am alone for a while i really make an effort to get female company, then once they like me i become avoidant it just keeps going round and round. Anyway does anyone else relate and have any tips? It just feels like such an uphill struggle at the moment

The issue for fox is reputational damage, but no one really takes them seriously that doesn't watch them anyway and for those that do watch them they're not covering the story themselves so unless the viewers are consuming different news which I doubt, then I don't think they'd be affected.

Hey guys, I got asked by an OCD charity to tell my story about what i went through, so the transcript is below but if you want to see it on their page with pictures and stuff check the link - https://www.orchardocd.org/biyis-ocd-story/ In this week’s blog Biyi shares his OCD story: OCD is oftentimes seen as an interesting personality quirk, someone who just likes things organised or spends a bit longer cleaning up their kitchen. When I was a child I probably would’ve thought the same way, at least when my mind wasn’t dominated by intrusive thoughts that made me constantly question my very identity. Looking back now I know I had some form of OCD from probably around the age 5 or 6. My first memory of it was being in primary school, as it was a boys school we usually played quite rough taking the our inspiration from WWF. This day we played cops and robbers, as I aggressively threw my ‘robber’ into prison he hit his head on a rock and blood started to trickle down. He had to be taken out of school for the day so I faced 24 hours of not knowing what happened to my friend. In my mind I had killed him and a started playing out all the possible scenarios that could happen, ‘will I face the ironic fate of being the play cop that would now have to go prison’, ‘what about his family, what if he dies’. These thoughts were with me for the whole 24 hours, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I felt shame and guilt, ‘why did I have to be so rough?’, ‘Am I evil?’, I repeatedly asked myself these questions. My mum noticed my distress because the next day she came with me to the headmaster’s office to find out what happened to my friend. The headmaster told us there was nothing to worry about, he was fine, just had to wear a bandage for a couple days but he’ll be back at school today. ‘Phew’ I felt relief in that moment but this was only the start of a 30-year struggle with these thoughts. The themes changed over the years, when I was young it was more about the fear of getting in trouble as I got older it evolved into thoughts about myself image, I felt my chest was too big at one point which even led to me calling a plastic surgeon at the age of 14. Then they finally settled on this unshakable thought that I was gay, from the moment I woke up till I went to sleep this thought would always be in the back of my head. Even when it was quiet it felt like it was there, almost like a predator waiting for me to engage with it. What I now know kept it going, was the energy I gave it, I would constantly try and ‘get rid’ of the thought. I would ruminate constantly, try and outsmart it, use logic with myself, this resulted in battles every day of my life in my mind. These battles made my external life worse. One of my theories about OCD is that it can strike you when you don’t know how to deal with life, when you feel out of control. As a young boy growing up in South London without a good support system I felt completely out of control. OCD almost gives you something to focus on, but it’s like doing a deal with the devil. It causes so much pain with the promise of ‘if I can just work this thought out everything will be ok’, Its never OK, even if you do drop a specific thought another thought is following right after just like buses. The worst feeling is feeling alone and that no one will understand you. In my head I was gay, I was just fooling myself that I wasn’t. I would look at males and try and work out if I was attracted to them and then I would look at females and think ‘I’m not attracted enough to them’. It was constant, I would look online for answers, trawling through forums, asking whether you could just be gay all of a sudden. I wanted a solution, I just wanted to know either way, but no answer was ever satisfying. A couple times I considered just coming out, but that never made sense because I didn’t actually want to be with a man, I’d never fantasised about a man but that made it even more confusing as to why I thought I might be gay, this argument between me and the OCD thoughts would go on and on indefinitely never actually coming to a satisfying conclusion. One person I did confide in was my girlfriend at the time and although she didn’t understand it and it made no sense to her, she was very supportive and did try to understand which actually helped me a lot just to be able to get some of this stuff out of my head. Eventually, I worked out this must be OCD after looking online. I felt relief hearing others stories because it was exactly my experience. Just knowing didn’t stop the thoughts but it did give me an important perspective. I learnt that this was something that can be improved and worked on, and my choices were basically give up or do the work and try and get myself out of this, no one was coming to save me I said to myself. So, I signed up for CBT on the NHS. It took a little while, if I remember correctly about 6 months on the NHS waiting list but eventually I was offered 10 sessions with a local CBT therapist. She taught me how to deal with thoughts but even in these sessions I never actually talked about the theme, I still couldn’t do it, which shows the hold OCD had on me. It took until the very last session where I knew I hadn’t tackled my theme and I had to tell the therapist because it was no or never, so I took a deep breath and most likely mumbled that I thought I might have OCD and that the theme was worrying about being gay. I watched for her reaction, maybe she would say ‘of course you’re gay that makes sense’ or maybe she would try and hide her reaction because it was true. Her actual reaction was kind of no reaction, she just seemed to understand what I was saying and let me know that I could have further sessions if I needed. I took her up on this and had 6 more sessions that revolved around the theme. Straight I felt relief as I could actually be honest with how I felt, in a way I almost felt like someone who was actually in the closet and had this huge secret to hide because I felt that I couldn’t tell this to anyone. Probably being open about my thoughts helped more than the actual sessions but they were helpful nonetheless and set a good foundation for my recovery. Over the next few years I would oscillate between intense anxiety and relative calmness. I became a student of OCD and read books, watched YouTube videos and documentaries about it, I wanted to know everything, mostly because I felt that would be the way out for me. I tried to install good habits, like exercise, good diet, speaking to friends and family more. When I was 25 I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which is an auto-immune disease where your immune system attacks your colon as it sees it as a threat. This made life very difficult and gave me almost an excuse to not do anything, I could probably claim benefits and just avoid everything and everyone and have a good, justifiable, reason. My belief, although the doctors can’t confirm or deny, is that the illness was brought on by stress and most likely bad diet. With UC there would be times when it would flare up and be severe, some of the symptoms were not being able to digest food, bleeding when going to the toilet, extreme diarrhoea, fatigue, all in all you just feel terrible. There was an occasion where I lost about 20kg in two weeks, which was nearly a quarter of my body weight. Luckily, I got put on a medication a few years in that basically put me into remission, but having UC and OCD was really tough but I didn’t want either to beat me, especially not the OCD. This could be because I had already gone so far in the journey that I just needed to look at root causes and have someone else’s perspective on the whole thing. Through this therapy I realised that I had never vocalised a lot of how my childhood was or even how I was internally. I’d always had a shield around all of that, so to actually get all that out felt cathartic. I realised that the OCD had developed as almost a protector of my internal self or child self. As long as I was focused on the OCD I wasn’t focused on how bad and out of control I felt inside. I had not learnt how to accept and honour my feelings, everything was about how I needed to change. This was so key for me because ultimately you can’t cure OCD, the same way you can’t ‘cure’ your thoughts. What you can do is learn how to accept every thought and feeling that arises within you and this is the journey I took even though up until being confronted with it, I didn’t know I was on the journey. Now I do occasionally get thoughts but I know that they will just come and go I don’t hold any importance to them. When somethings not there you don’t tend to dwell on it, it’s kind of like if you have the flu it’s all you can focus on but once it’s gone you don’t really think about it. But I do like to think every so often about how grateful I am that I had this journey and how much improved I am than before. Also, I really want to help others who are going through a similar story and let them know how my journey was and that there light at the end of the tunnel. Because when you’re in that tunnel it can just feel like all there is, is darkness.

Although I think Leos teachings are very deep and very important as not many teachers delve into topics as much as him, Im always a little hesitant to suggest him to others because when I have people have just not resonated with him or flat out not liked him (of course they are only going off initial impressions and havent gone deeper). But i always wondered why this is. recently I watched the happiness video and Leo was talking about music he likes to listen to when going for drives, out of nowhere he said something like 'I have the best music, the best playlists, no one has playlists like these'. I laughed because its such a strange statement to make, it reminded me of a kid talking about some random thing that makes him great. For one, music is so subjective, what would even constitute you having the 'best' playlist? But i realised this is how he talks across the board so if hes talking about awakening, hes the most awakened, whatever it is hes the most fill in the blank. It doesnt really take into account other peoples experiences and also leaves the viewer with the wonder of 'why is he so awakened?'. This is fine if the audience can kind of tune that, for lack of a better word, arrogance out, which i do, it can also seem like someone to follow if youre a bit younger because of the certainty he talks with. But I think it can turn a lot of people off at face value because it just comes across as completely arrogant. Leo might say, 'well its true no ones awakening is as great as mine and im not going to sugar coat anything anymore', which is fine but then i dont really understand the goal of the teachings, like why does it even matter how awakened you are, its more about what you can do in service to others and if youre putting off a big chunk of the audience that this could potentially help, then what even is the point, apart from ego? Im not saying Leo should change, its his journey and hes built this platform up amazingly, but i think having some humility as a counter balance is very important and not humility for show but genuine 'maybe im not the most intelligent/awakened being in the history of man' type of humility.

This has been my experience, in that the more you try and 'cure' ie stop your thoughts the stronger they get so, when I switched to complete acceptance of them their power had less of a hold on me. Thanks for reading and your kind words as well x

Let's not get too stuck up on the music thing lol I was just using it as an example. Tbh the arrogance doesn't bother me I actually find it kinda funny, but as I said in the original post it's more a case of his core teachings and messages not being able to travel as far as they could without the arrogance. Its kinda like if he is arrogant and overstating about little things like a music playlist it's more than likely he would overstate with awakening. If I was in his position I at least would like to think I would want things like this pointed out to me.

I get where you're coming from, but then there's still his assumption that his reality is correct and everyone else's isn't. If there was some humility this wouldn't be the case. I agree that in the world now you are somewhat competing against other realities if you're producing this kind of content, but I think Leo's consciousness level should be above this 'competition' and I actually I believe it is and so it follows that this wouldn't be about competition, it just seems to be a personality thing or a teaching style. Of course this is speculation on top of your speculation lol

OK found it, it's at 1:46:00 To be fair it's not as bad as I first thought, he says about the playlist and I think what I reacted to was when he said 'nobody has these playlists'. Which I still think is quite a funny thing to say because you can still interpret as him saying hes special. We could also be charitable and take it as him saying because he's curated them himself noone else has them, which it could be but I do think in general he does say a lot of things in this arrogant way.

Need a timestamp lol but I remember it as 'no one has playlists like these' something like that

When I say risk I don't mean business risk of it not working, I mean the risk of going to prison or being killed.

@StarStruck Here is an interview with a pimp, notice the similarities in mentality between him and Tate -

@StarStruck One thing you can learn from studying Tate is how to manipulate people into doing what you want by giving them what they think they want. There's an autobiography by a pimp called Iceberg Slim, you'll probably recognise a lot of Tates strategies from there. This isn't a shot at Tate, he is genuinely great at manipulating others, he talked about it with pride, how he manipulated guys with cam girls.

If you actually just take what he says, it seems as though he has a lot of issues around his father ie getting validation, his father not being around, trying to impress/emulate his father. If you think about it he's almost a caricature of what a young boy would think is a masculine, tough, man, his view of masculinity may have been stunted. There also seems to be issues around his mum, there's not really a respect for the feminine, he just sees at as something to be manipulated in both men and women. He's also said that he wanted to be strong to protect himself and those that he cares about. Basically he's very flawed as is everyone, but he believes he can overcome these flaws with childish ideas of masculinity.

I actually would question how smart he is in terms of business, its similar to Trump, in that they often repeat over and over again how great they are at business. But if you look into it Tate has only ever made money from shady type businesses, its kinda like saying if youre playing monopoly and one guy keeps winning because hes stealing money from the bank, it doesnt mean hes great at monopoly hes just good at not getting caught cheating. If you dont care how you make your money and there are no rules for you then of course you would be ahead of people that are doing it legit. I happen to sell toys and other products on Amazon, all legit, pay taxes etc, my profit margins are anywhere from around 25% to 100%. Now if i wanted to take a risk and sell cocaine I could make 10x the profit margin, but I dont choose to, not just because of the effect on the world but also I'm not willing to take the risks that come with doing something like that, extra money is no where near worth it for me. For someone like Tate who is willing to take risks, you cant complain when that risk lands you in prison. Tate obviously fulfils a gap in men where they dont feel masculine enough, but what you dont realise is that he knows how to give people exactly what they want and extract money from them, this is what he has always done to make money, both on the camgirls side and on the customer side. This is his talent and if you are supporting him because of what he has given you ie you feel stronger, more motivated etc then he has done his job well. But on the flip what hes getting which is the only reason why he is doing it, is money, fame, status etc. This is something he has always craved which you can see from his reality tv show appearances. But the trick is that people think he actually cares about them, he doesnt, he cares about you as much as the cam girls, ie if youre giving him money and adulation he 'loves' you, if youre not youre an enemy.

I hear what youre saying but i also disagree a little, if you have a negative emotion I dont think 'stopping it' is growth, i think letting it be there and not even labelling it, almost like its just background noise. So not getting lost in it but also having complete acceptance of it if that makes sense

I agree with you it's a difficult situation, I only use the child analogy to illustrate the point to you, I probably wouldn't use it to change anyone's mind. I think it's near on impossible to change peoples mind on certain issues. The only thing I've seen that's effective is when something serious happens ie someone close to them dying or them getting really ill, even then it's not a guarantee that they'll change their mind. Essentially you are questioning someone's whole reality, at which point it's better just to accept them as they are, in this case the dad and not really entertain their talking points. I also think the government and social media companies really messed up by not communicating the message properly and then also by allowing wild conspiracies to proliferate especially in the early days.

Yeah now i dont really care they can say whatever they want even though i still dont think the numbers are in their favour, but my central point would still stand in that, they (anti vaxx people) think that there is a nefarious intent on behalf of the government. So that being said whatever is said by the government will be rejected, in fact I have a suspicion that if the government had taken an anti vaxx stance, conspiracy theorists wouldve been pro vaxx and got angry about the government keeping the cure from the people when many are dying. So the science is secondary or even irrelevant, primary is the perceived battle for 'freedom' against the government. Now being anti-government is not necessarily problematic in normal, but during a health crises it definitely can be and lives are on the line. That being said the government still has to communicate in a transparent and honest way and they have to consider those that are against them, in some ways they did fail with this. But either way if lives are on the line then of course they have to make decisions that could be restrictive to people, it is a very hard thing to balance. Also you have to appreciate the difficulty at talking with those that are primarily running on emotion. For example its hard to reason with a child that is wants to eat ice-cream for dinner, you can explain the science of how bad it is for him and how much better vegetables are but he is making the emotional decision that youre being unfair and any punishment or restriction will add even more injustice in the mind of the child. So you cant really win you have to just set boundaries and the child can either accept them or continually fight them but the boundary is the boundary. Any discussion is an attempt to manipulate into dropping that boundary, maybe he finds the one scientist that says ice-cream is healthy, maybe he pulls up a story about how someone ate too many vegetables and died, but either way he is not looking for the truth he is trying to manipulate you. He may even protest and have a tantrum, but all of this is just emotional and about getting what he wants. So its the same with anti-vaxx people im not sure what you could present them with that would get them to change their mind and so your only option is to keep the boundary but still have compassion for the fearful emotions.

I dont think it really matters tbh with the information they had it was way too much of a risk to suggest that people dont get vaxxed and just hope that it fades away, whereas the risk of actually taking the vax is so negligible its barely comparable. Even if lets say we find out the better option was to not vax and that it wouldnt make any difference in hindsight, why even take that risk, like if it has a chance to help why not do it? The only reason people really had was emotional in that there was a distrust of the medical establishment and the government but thats almost a separate issue to the actual facts.

Recently just watched most of the happiness video and there are a lot of things I can relate to Leo on. We're both around the same age and both INTPs, theres a lot of differences of course but in terms of the question its mainly relevant that we both like time to ourselves and having a freedom of routine. So im trying to figure out what would be better for me, being single or in a relationship. I notice Leo, you sometimes mention you have a girlfriend or that you date, so how does this align with your need for solitude? Personally Ive always found the idea of traditional relationships scary in that another persons needs are somewhat your responsibility and that you dont have that same flexibility of just doing whatever you want, even if thats just being by yourself for a few days without feeling guilty that you havent been in touch with your partner. On the flip, I do enjoy having someone there that cares about me and someone that you can share things with. Ive kind of always had relationships but tended to keep them at a little bit of a distance in terms of not wanting to live with them and wanting to have my own life outside of them. I dont really want to do the player type thing, Ive dabbled in it before and it is fun but its just not that meaningful and I feel that all the effort that gets put into it is not really worth a bang here and there. I've also grown and developed where i think i could be myself more in relationships, this is something i struggled with a bit previously where id sometimes feel like Id lose myself and just try and keep the other person happy. I always somewhat put the relationship not working on the partner because they were difficult but looking at it now they were doing their bes with someone who had one foot in, one foot out, wanted a relationship but then also wanted to be by themselves. So i came to the conclusion its really on me, the partner could of course be more or less compatible but generally its my issue either way. Anyway any advice would be greatly appreciated and obviously not just Leo can answer, anyone that can relate or give advice.

tbh i dont know of anyone with long term effects from the vaccine, potentially i could be biased and maybe dont remember them or maybe people dont share because of the stigma, but short term as in for a week or so after taking the vaccine I can remember quite a lot of people got sick, headaches etc but since that first week nothing else. In terms of long covid quite a few speaking with a friend who coaches youth football (soccer), he said he had it and also many of the teenagers he coached were affected by it, aside from that a lot more than ive heard have had problems with the vaccine. Also I was in hospital for something unrelated during the pandemic and speaking to the nurses a lot of them got covid and had long term effects the specific nurse I talked to knew around 10 or so colleagues and patients personally that had died, he himself got covid and was seriously ill for over a month. So thinking about from my personal experience its not even comparable.

Personally ive seen a lot more people with problems from long covid than problems with taking the vaccine

Im a regular gym goer but ive strained my neck meaning gym at the moment isnt as useful for me as i can only really do cardio. So ive been walking a lot more in nature, which is great and i enjoy it but ultimately without the gym equipment i wont really be able to build any muscle. So to answer your question it depends on what you want to do and what your aims are for exercise, if youre looking to just do cardio and get fit you dont really need a gym, whereas if youre looking to build muscle and do resistance training then you will absolutely need a gym. So no the gym will not be seen as a fad unless they find something better that can do what the gym does for you.

I agree with you on this and I would even go further. If you are in suffering I think pretty much everything you do is in some way an effort to alleviate this suffering, including something like trying to become enlightened or understand consciousness. You may convince yourself that you just want truth but it's no different than someone who is pain that wants to get rich, the only difference is the belief of what is needed to escape the pain. Most people seeking enlightenment or meta physical understanding, I believe, would drop the search if they were genuinely content and had worked out all their trauma. Which is why I think for you to even embark on the journey your first step should be working out the trauma, I can't get my head around people that say you shouldn't worry about this step or try and skip it.

Yeah fair, I havent delved into the suicide statistics but I guess what would be relevant is whether men are killing themselves at a greater rate that women now or has it always been the same ratio? It's currently 75% of suicides are male. The other issue in terms of girls doing better than boys would be more pronounced now because girls are encouraged to do well at school and in academia where they wouldn't have been before. In fact there are a lot of programs to get women into different fields that they may not have considered before. Of course none of this is bad per se but it does mean more competition for boys that older generations wouldn't have had, meaning that it's harder than it would've been before, which is great in terms of getting the best people but it will leave some men purposeless. Having said that, masculinity crisis is probably exaggerated and overblown, I'm just pointing out that there are some things that have changed in society which will make some men feel a bit lost if they dont adapt.

I wouldnt say its totally fake, it is true that boys are falling behind girls in school and of course there are higher suicide rates of men than women, men are more likely to be homeless, addicts etc. So there are definitely issues, I think most of them are due to society changing and men not wanting or not knowing how to change with it. It is difficult because there are so many factors conflicting, evolution, genetics, societal norms etc, before it was laid out pretty black and white whats expected of a man and a woman but now we're questioning if a 'man' is even a thing, what we have is freedom but we are all experiencing the anxiety of that freedom.