Streamers aren’t your Therapists

Josué Cardona 0:07
Welcome to GTradio on the Geek Therapy network, here at Geek Therapy, we believe that the best way to understand each other and ourselves is through the media we care about. My name is Josué Cardona, and I’m joined by Lara Taylor.

Lara Taylor 0:20
I never know, and never know why you gotta throw me off hey everyone.

Josué Cardona 0:25
and Link Keller?

Link Keller 0:27
Hello,

Josué Cardona 0:29
hello. Alright, so today we’re talking about an article that was shared with us by Bryce, who reached out to Geek Therapy on Facebook, and asked what we thought about this. It’s an article that says streamers are not your therapists on ritual motion. And I think we’ve talked about this in the in the past, it’s definitely worth talking about. Often, every now and then I think it’s, it’s a, it’s important. So I kind of gave Bryce my my thoughts about it. I’m, I’m curious what what you think about this article? Basically, or I can review it real quick, which is basically that, you know, the Let me see the headline says that the streamers you’ve been watching starts to feel more like a personal friend, someone you could ask for advice or confide in. And basically the author is saying like, don’t, don’t do that. Just stop. Just don’t streamers are not your therapist. I have feelings about about the about the, the author’s opinion on it, I have I have my own. So what do you what do you think in reaction to it?

Link Keller 1:48
I think it does, it does suck to ask strangers to be your therapist is not not a cool thing to do. And

Josué Cardona 1:56
why? Why?

Link Keller 2:01
Because you don’t have the context for that kind of relationship.

Josué Cardona 2:09
mmhmm.

Link Keller 2:10
your relationship with your therapists. I mean, granted the past year with COVID, everything’s been a little bit different. But traditionally, you have a space that is dedicated and a time that is dedicated to having that interpersonal relationship with your therapist, as opposed to them being available anytime that they are online. Is is very different. Also, most streamers aren’t trained to be therapists, that it’s not fair to ask people to do things that they aren’t trained in.

Josué Cardona 2:45
Also, Lara’s off the clock.

Lara Taylor 2:48
I am off the clock. I don’t give out therapy for free. Damn, yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, not only link you said, strangers aren’t your therapists, friends, aren’t your therapists. It’s not okay to just dump that on friends, too. So even if you go to your friend’s stream and start asking advice. That’s not necessarily good, either.

Josué Cardona 3:16
That’s, yeah, that’s where that’s where, right around there is where I started having. It gets complicated for me. Because you may have a relationship or some sort of relationship parasocial relationship right with, with a personality on on Twitch or a streamer or, you know, any anyone else who you see online and

Lara Taylor 3:39
a tiktoker

Josué Cardona 3:40
a tiktoker I think that relationship can be meaningful. And if they are in a in a place where they are going live and want to engage with the audience, then then yknow, like maybe, maybe we’re kind of maybe we’re not friends, friends, but we’re kind of, we’re friendly, right? Like, there is a relationship there. So we can talk about stuff, maybe we can confide. And that’s where I, I, I don’t know that. It’s always someone. I don’t know if that people are looking for a therapist, or the things that you would go to a therapist for when you’re engaging in those relationships, because a lot of those things you might just be going to a friend for. Right, right. It’s like you, my friend, I’m gonna go. I have a therapist, and I also have friends and I talked to my therapist. My therapist relationship is one thing and my friends. My friend relationships are very different. And we wouldn’t necessarily talk about the same thing or I wouldn’t expect the same things. But that’s where there’s like, there may be a line there may be something in there that does get. There are relationships with therapists that aren’t healthy in their relationships with friends that aren’t necessarily healthy and there are lines that we tend to cross. in both areas, there are boundaries there that often get violated, I guess is is a is a is the only word I can think of like you cross these lines. And it might it might be just, it may not be dangerous, necessarily. But if you can’t tell the difference, right? If it’s like, oh, I don’t know, like, I feel like my therapist is my friend, just like, my friends are my friends. And but they give me better advice? Like, I don’t know, it’s like, once you’re looking for, like, looking for advice is also like, depends on what you’re asking me advice about? Because I might ask

Link Keller 5:39
i feel like most therapists, I would say that they they don’t like to give advice. as a concept.

Lara Taylor 5:47
I don’t I don’t give advice.

Josué Cardona 5:50
I hope that is true. universally. It is it is not. But, but that’s a good point. That’s a very good point. But you’re still going with a problem, right? So like coming to someone with a problem or even asking for an opinion or thoughts or anything or? Yeah, it’s it’s that’s kind of where I have issues with that. I don’t disagree. streamers are definitely not your therapists. But what you’re looking for in those relationships or any parasocial relationship? Is, is Yep, there’s, there’s two sides there that we’ll get into. But that’s kind of what I what I told Bryce, when he wrote to us on on Facebook, it’s kind of my, my take on it.

Link Keller 6:38
I mean, I think that there are certainly, like rare instances where where people are, you know, outside of online, they’re friends and one of them streams. And then one of them always shows up to support that stream or whatever, and maybe having more intimate conversations in that space than you would otherwise. But I feel like for a majority of people, they are watching the streams of people they don’t know, personally. And so the parasocial relationship is is a big, big, big part of it. So

Josué Cardona 7:19
yeah, yeah. That’s it. What How would you define? We’ve done this a million times. But how would you define a parasocial relationship?

Link Keller 7:26
A relationship with a fictional or semi real character? That is, by function one directional.

Josué Cardona 7:41
Yeah. We just got a comment from gian, which we, you know,

Lara Taylor 7:50
in true gian fashion, it’s like a little mini novel. side of my

Josué Cardona 7:57
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so I was gonna make a joke about that. Right. So we’ve been broadcasting on Twitch, right. And I don’t always announce that at the beginning of every episode. But pre podcast listeners, right, but we’re recording. We’re broadcasting live on Twitch. And, and I don’t know, I think there’s some amazing relationships that we’ve built through the Geek Therapy community through streaming through our discord through the Facebook group. And, I mean, I haven’t met in person, most people that I that I, that I appreciate so so much from the community. gian, we appreciate him so much that we can make fun of him. So we’re gonna do that. Now. He He is the reason why we started the forum because he needed longer space to write. So audio listeners, you’re gonna miss this, but I’m going to put gian’s comment on the screen. And let’s see how much it covers. I was going to take a look at the screen it covered up it covered your face. Yeah, yeah. Move up. Yep. Yep. Yep. No, this is great. I’m going to read the comment, right. Gian says I agree with elsewhere, therapy is not the only space where conversations about emotions and life circumstances should happen. And also gian right now is like, like, taking the lead on, on the discord. And that’s a that’s a it’s such a good community space. We could talk about it all the time. And a big part of that is thanks to to gian, like behind the scenes, right? Like he’s a moderator there. So there’s a lot of stuff that he helps with, and it’s so important. So he says it’s risky. It’s risky to trust a stranger for advice, because not everyone is a good advice giver, better trust a specialist for that. But if you admire someone and would love to know how they would feel about a specific circumstance, I think it’s healthy and good to want to have those conversations. And yeah, that’s what this is why it’s complicated. I think it depends on what you’re what you’re looking for, or what you’re talking about. Because maybe today The most important thing for me is is how do I do a particular thing in a game, right? Or maybe just like one thing, one thing I’ve even said recently is like, I, I sometimes hesitate to ask people how they’re doing, because I’m not equipped on that day to, to deal with it with an honest answer. If it’s,

Josué Cardona 10:19
if they give an honest answer.

Josué Cardona 10:21
Yeah, they’re not doing well, right. Like, most people, you know, most times I imagine most conversations are like, Hey, how are you doing? I’m good. How are you? I’m good. How are you? Do you go into a loop? By accident? But sometimes you’re like, I’m not okay. And I feel this way or that way. And, and that, that happens, right? So like asking someone, I don’t know, like, it’s all my fault as a streamer. If I asked you, like, Hey, how are you doing? And then I don’t know, like the conversation. It gets serious all of a sudden, right. And then it keeps going, it’s hard to manage that it’s hard to again, even within friendships, and again, you value, the person who is in your audience, you value the people that are in a way supporting you, but are just members of your of your community like that you can sometimes you feel this space that that person left behind when they’re not there, they don;’t come to your streamss, or they haven’t been on the discord in a while you’re like, oh, like, I wonder what’s up with this person? Right, those connections, they matter, those, those relationships are important, but definitely, definitely not your therapist. I know, a couple years back, we we had a we had a outreach coordinator was her official volunteer position. And it was Emily. And she was working with us. And she was very interested in these topics and streamers, and YouTubers who are who are addressing mental health issues. And so we sent out a survey and we have all that data. And we asked like, Are you having to address mental health issues specifically? And do you feel equipped to handle that? And if not, what could we? What could we do to help you with that? Right? And we’ve, we’ve built things for that. And we have like answers for that question. And, but ultimately, the most, the thing that we tried to do was simple things like, Oh, we need resources on our own twitch. So then when we’re there, so we can we can lead by example, there was a while when we had a policy that was like, you can never stream alone, you always have to have backup, because it’s it’s hard. We can’t, that was unsustainable to a point. But we have a you know, we have a bot running that shared different resources, we have resources on the page, things that’s like if people are there, and they’re engaged. There’s something there and we have, we should probably revisit them as a stream team. Again, I like to do that when we when we’re streaming more often, but like what, how do you how do you address this when it comes up? What do you tell someone who is who does want to come in and talk about mental health issues or or specifically just is looking for guidance advice, or I can think it’s hard to say that somebody is looking for treatment, you know, like, you may just want support? And like, do we not only is it is it wrong for a streamer to provide support, and empathy and understanding like and where does that line? I’m asking

Lara Taylor 13:29
more more. Right, but more of it like, That really sucks that that’s going on for you. Maybe you should talk to somebody about that.

Josué Cardona 13:39
It’s it’s honestly that simple. Right.

Lara Taylor 13:44
yeah but it’s hard. I talk with clients about how some of the things that I suggest are, there’s simple, very simple things, but they’re not easy at all. Yeah,

Josué Cardona 13:56
yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the Yeah, the the finding help is hard. super hard. Oh, yeah, I’ve talked about that many times. But I mean, like as a streamer, just saying that isn’t? I would think it’s not too difficult. That’s what I was referring to in terms of difficulty. If if the person watching doesn’t stop there and continues, right, and then that’s where you know, some moderation in place is really important. And but I you know, we don’t talk about it as often. But what do you what do you do right, and how do I how do I handle that? What should I do next? If a person continues and there have been you know, their blog posts from from different streamers that I’ve seen and stories that the streamers have told about? Like, I didn’t, the person didn’t seem Well to me, so I but but I took them out of the chat and like, I told them, like, Hey, you know, maybe you should go talk to somebody or something. And they said something that was, yeah, they’re disturbing or like I can I couldn’t forget about and then they disappeared. And I didn’t know anything about them, like all these things are important conversations to have. And but they’re present in any type of live connection like this right? I think that the difference or what makes it harder is that there’s sometimes there isn’t a production team and a whole team of moderators, there’s so many people, even us right now, right? Like we, when we’re when we’re streaming, you know, what do we cap at? Like, ever is probably like, I don’t know, like, a dozen people, right? Sometimes 20 I think we’ve got that 30 people at a time, that’s still manageable, especially if everybody’s not writing all at the same time. I mean, there’s three of us right now. But imagine you’re playing a game or you’re doing something you’re trying to pay attention. They’re trying to pay attention to the chat. It’s a there’s that’s one piece of it. But the other is like there’s just like, there’s no other buffer, right? Like, it’s just you. And and the the chat, right, it’s just you in the comment section. And I mean, I don’t know if either of you have seen or played with this app clubhouse at all, and apps like this that are that are audio, right. It’s like, do like chat rooms, or just people just popping in. And then there’s a whole bunch of people. And for a couple of weeks, I was I was I was in there a lot. And just lurking like,

Lara Taylor 14:35
oh you’re in the know, cuz at this point, don’t you have to know somebody to be on there?

Josué Cardona 16:26
Yeah, yeah, yep. I got invited. I tried to invite Link, but it didn’t, it didn’t work. So but it’s it’s not even like the chat to the streamer feels very, very feels like there’s such a small or like a thin barrier between the two. It’s something like clubhouse where people can just speak is is is this situation can happen even more? Because like the person,

Lara Taylor 16:59
like invited up onto the stage to speak or whatever?

Josué Cardona 17:03
Yeah, I mean, you can do it that way. Yeah, yeah, there’s a way that that’s, that’s one way, but you can have a whole bunch of people there. And I’ve been in one where like, people are like, oh, like, you know, everybody take turns or whatever. And then somebody, you can invite somebody up, and then it’s like that mute button, like, do you mute them? Do you? Do you know, what do you do? And what if they’re in the middle of like pouring their heart out and like or asking for help? And if you’re not trained to do that, it’s even harder, right? Like I can, like, again, we have moderation tools to be able to deal with that. But there’s, yeah, I don’t know, the different versions and things like this. There’s, there’s just so much. It’s hard. It’s hard. It’s basically it’s hard.

Lara Taylor 17:45
I mean, this is the kind of thing, similar conversations have been going on, since like, AOL chat rooms, like that. I’m so fucking old. Yeah, it’s shut up Josué. You’re only a month younger than me.

Josué Cardona 18:02
But there’s, there’s something like there’s a it’s like, there’s a difference between us the social gathering piece, right? We’re like, we’re here. Or like, even when I’m one on one and, it’s a stranger. Versus like, on on AOL chat rooms. You weren’t. I was I was never there. So you tell me,

Lara Taylor 18:19
it was like social gathering, I would get I would hang out with my friends. That was where I started role playing. And we would do freeform role playing and like, create our character and just type things out. And sometimes people would, out of character talk about what was going on in their life. And I was like, 13, or 14, and just 13 or 14 playing with people who are probably in their 20s or 30s.

Josué Cardona 18:46
But like, we know, no, we don’t know. I don’t know. I

Lara Taylor 18:49
don’t know, how would you know, except for the few people that when I was older, met them in person, but I’m way back in the day to scary stuff. Don’t do it children. Um, but like, people will talk about what’s going on in their life and then just disappear, and then come back A while later, we’re like, what happened? And not really no, but like, Wonder during that that gap time? Like, I hope they’re okay. And there’s no way to contact them? Nothing. Yeah. Can’t even shoot anyone a message or anything. So

Josué Cardona 19:26
did you do you think I mean, I’m assuming that it feels more does like a greater degree of refill more responsible, and you might also be the recipient of more direct pouring, you know, of pouring their hearts out when you’re the host, right when you’re on Yeah. Like that’s, it’s a small difference, but you’re right, the very similar things are happening at the same time, because you just you just oh, we’re We’re playing a game or we’re together like we’re doing, you know, we’re doing an activity together, I think of you as a friend or somebody I can trust, or someone, you may be the best friend or closest thing to a friend to have in the world right now. And even even your best friend isn’t. There’s like a sense of responsibility that I think is unfair to put on people. Oh, yeah. But how do you support someone who doesn’t know that? They did, that’s not a good thing to or it’s not, it’s not gonna help, it’s not gonna be helpful to you. And it’s gonna make other people also feel, again, responsible, I want to say right, and to put them in a center where they feel like they might need to do something, it is hard to say tell someone like, nope, don’t notice that. That’s that’s boundaries. Yep. The boundaries are hanging up now.

Lara Taylor 20:49
Definitely, definitely. I don’t know.

Link Keller 20:52
I think that’s the answer, though, is getting collectively better at setting and maintaining boundaries?

Lara Taylor 20:59
Yeah,

Link Keller 21:01
I mean, you talked about earlier on our own twitch page, we have our roles set up for what people, you know, the behaviors that are expected in our community spaces, and access to resources that are, you know, beyond the scale of what we are willing to provide in that space. And I think that that’s a really clear way to put out boundaries. Now, of course, it requires the other people to respect that. But the better that we all get at practicing actually saying them, and then it gets easier to maintain them.

Josué Cardona 21:39
I think as a matter of practice, you’ve got to this is this is why we created one of the courses on Geek Therapy, you too, you know, for streamers, and content creators to to address things like this, because you’re not going to have a lot of practice. I mean, you know, I’m, I’m happy to jump on someone’s stream and or do a mock stream, try to practice different things to say, but like to have a script to have, you know, different and then have your mods. Ready. But like, but you don’t. This is this is not exactly this, this is very different. But recently, Jessica was streaming on Twitch, and someone came on and asked a psychology question. It was, was it something about Carl Rogers? I think it was.

Lara Taylor 22:27
Rogers question or Yeah,

Josué Cardona 22:29
yeah, we we we have not equipped, Jessica and Jessica with that information. And even even I wouldn’t have been able to maybe, I mean, I know.

Link Keller 22:43
We’re less you’re specifically like a Carl Rogers.

Josué Cardona 22:47
Yeah.

Link Keller 22:48
Academic who was also like contextually thinking about Carl Rogers, because it was out of nowhere. It wasn’t like a there was a lead in in of like, Hey, can I ask you a question about, you know, a psychology idea. It was just straight up, like, what do you think about this specific name from this specific person is like, let me Google it. And I’ll tell you, you expect me to know that while I’m like fighting zombies, that’s not cool.

Lara Taylor 23:13
Even a rogerian therapist might not have an answer to that particular question. I think I don’t remember the exact question. But I remember being like, I, I’m pretty client centered, and I don’t, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Josué Cardona 23:27
I would like to think that we are. I go, I’ve got Okay, there we go. So I would like to think that we are a place where you would come for, to ask something like that, right? It’s like, oh, like these are these are geeky mental health people. They, you know, are psychology people, they might be able to answer that question. But again, there’s no guarantee. This isn’t again, this isn’t a serious thing. I think I think it was I but I still felt bad for for Jessica, because she was put in a situation where she, she didn’t know the answer. She didn’t know what to do. And actually, that’s probably not true. I think she just just found that like, I don’t know what that is, you probably want to ask one of the other people on the team. And, yeah, that that’s good, right? That’s a version of version your no

Lara Taylor 24:13
of a no, your boundary?

Josué Cardona 24:14
No, go talk to a therapist. Right? Go talk to somebody. And even, I don’t even want to jump to the therapist thing, which is, again, one of the one of the things that one of the opinions I have about that article, it’s, it’s like, there are other supportive places and people like like gian said, and so you can I usually say, when you’re the therapist, you don’t tell people to go talk to their therapist, right? Like for some things you’re like, I don’t know, like, do you have a support network? I want to make sure that you’re taking care of between sessions, like what do you have, and that’s really important to have, and I and, you know, kind of being very honest, like, I’m, I hope I can teach you something. I hope I bring you some entertainment. I hope that this is you know, a good experience. For you, but I can’t provide you that type of support. So I suggest, and then I think that the Twitch, which is what we ultimately decided to share, as our primary resource, twitch has a pretty good resource list. And I think, I think it’s good. I think it’s, it’s, it’s worth checking out. And I think that if the idea is if we get in the habit of using it and showing, and hopefully, other streamers would do the same thing, and other channels can refer to that too. And twitch will take it seriously, and support it and keep in, keep updating it and make sure that it’s always up and then it’s available and remind people and you can kind of create a culture of of that. And, and that’s practice, rather, but it’s not even, I can’t even imagine the people who have 1000s and 1000s of viewers at the same time. Ultimately, I mean, I don’t know that you can. Sometimes the chat is moving so fast, it’s probably hard to, to if you ask a question like that, you’re probably gonna feel ignored or like someone’s not paying attention. But if someone sees it, you know, like, I don’t, I don’t know, I’m sure. And I know some streamers have moderators who have who have an idea of what to do, or they have some kind of protocol or, you know, you have like two separate rooms and things that you can use. Yeah.

Lara Taylor 26:21
Well, it’s good that we have those like the the bots and things like that, because we cannot give Jessica three years of grad school in like, a short amount of time. It’s just not gonna happen.

Josué Cardona 26:37
Yeah,

Link Keller 26:37
you will. No amount of schooling will ever prepare you for a random question on twitch

Lara Taylor 26:42
Oh, yeah,

Link Keller 26:42
I’m sorry. There’s no, there’s no winning.

Lara Taylor 26:45
And that’s another that’s another thing that I was thinking about. I’ve seen a lot of talk on Tiktok right now about like, being able to ask someone if they have the ability to answer a question. Just like, hey, do you mind if I asked this psychology question or like,

Link Keller 27:03
yeah

Lara Taylor 27:04
What are your thoughts? Do you have expertise in this? Can I ask you a question about it? Like? Yeah,

Link Keller 27:11
it’s like, it’s being mindful of people’s boundaries and offering them space to say, Actually, I have a boundary there that I would like you to not cross and nobody’s feelings gets hurt.

Lara Taylor 27:24
exactly.

Josué Cardona 27:25
This feels like a reunion. Um, Brandon is in the is in the chat.

Link Keller 27:29
hi brandon! Do you like my fit?

Josué Cardona 27:33
Brandon, have you? I’m curious if if you ever dealt with someone coming onto our stream, and it’s seeming like they were looking for therapy, right. I mean, I mean, you know, we have therapy in the name of our channel. It’s the name of our organization. We talk a lot about therapy, and we talk about how to do it. And we have many people in our community who do provide therapy, but you wouldn’t come to our twitch stream or any twitch stream to do that. And I don’t remember actually having this conversation with Brandon. Brandon is also like a trained mental health professional. But he’s also a bad, bad ass like FTL, and things like that. And that’s really what people came for. They didn’t come for

Lara Taylor 28:22
they didn’t come fore his mental health skills. Yeah,

Josué Cardona 28:25
yeah. Yeah. They don’t care about that. So yeah, if you I’m curious, Brandon, and if there was anything like that, it would be it’ll be interesting to to know. Yeah. Brandon says, I never had that experience, though. I did not stream for too long. you streamed for a while, man. Mostly made alan wake. It’s true. It was it was the comedy people came for the comedy. I think it might be only delve into that zone, maybe one or two times, but I am overly cautious about getting any into anything therapeutic. Yeah. Which is, which is that’s, that’s the difference, right? Like, if you’re a therapist, trying to do therapy on Twitch. That’s probably another conversation with other other set of opinions. Right that I will share that I’ll share gladly add another episode

Link Keller 29:14
straight to jail. Yeah, it’s so much content, the context, right. It’s like the medium is the message Twitch is not a platform built for that kind of relationship building. It is possible to do that. But that is not what it is built for. That is not what its systems are built around encouraging or supporting. that is not the right space for it.

Lara Taylor 29:39
Josué Are you going to argue that it’s a place to have community and build community?

Josué Cardona 29:43
No, no, I think I think that what we’re doing things like clubhouse and even twitch I mean, how different is it from calling an am radio station you know The Daily Show of a psychologist who’s like answering questions about mental health and support like the public. phone was built to do exactly that kind of thing. And Twitch, I know twitch has had identity issues.

Link Keller 30:06
I don’t think you should call the radio for therapeutic help, either.

Josué Cardona 30:11
Right? but

Lara Taylor 30:12
theres a difference between Calling love line and talking to Dr. Drew back in the day.

Josué Cardona 30:17
That’s the thing, right? I don’t think radio was built for that either. But no, but that it exists still today. Right? And it was it’s something where some people would like they can’t wait to call doctor or whatever.

Lara Taylor 30:28
There was an entire TV show about it called Frasier.

Josué Cardona 30:33
Which is coming back by the way. Yeah, Brandon, Brandon, with with the reference. Yeah. Just coming back, which is? Yeah. Which is? Yeah, I mean, wow. Wow. We can revisit this topic again. when Fraiser comes back. Yeah. And so that exists. So I, I understand that. And it’s not just the calling in to a therapist, or a psychologist or a medical doctor for the kind of advice. This happens with just regular posts and DJs. Right, like you call in and you’re like, Ah, what do you think? And so they’ll ask, and there’s also moments like, like, like, right now, right? We’ve had two shootings recently. We’re talking about Asian American and Pacific Islander violence, you know, again, against that community. So lots of I mean, that’s on the news, people are talking about it in many different contexts. And just like, you might be in the car, listening to the radio, it comes up. Anybody want to talk? Right? People will call in and say things. But they’re still like, depends on the radio station, there’s, there might be more something in the background, right? There might be someone who is a screening calls, like I remember, like, you know, you sometimes you call them their screening calls, like maybe, maybe they have like, oh, like, maybe you should call them maybe they have protocols for that. streaming, it’s if it’s just you, there’s no, there’s no filter for that. But also like those conversations that are gonna happen, they’re happening, right? Like, if we’re streaming, and somebody is like, oh, there was in the shooting right now, do you? Do you say, Hey, we were not going to talk about that here? Or do you do kind of just go into it, and then hope it doesn’t get into something further where people are seeking more? more support? I it’s it’s complicated. It’s, it’s, it’s really hard. I don’t know. Again, what is asking for therapy? What does that actually mean? You know, like, what does it mean to be a therapist? It depends on the therapist. And, and, yeah, I mean, building being supportive and, or even just listening. Like, whatever. Just listening is that? I mean, you can’t really listen on on Twitch. Yeah, yeah.

Lara Taylor 32:58
Well, I mean, and

Link Keller 32:59
that’s sorta what I’m talking about.

Lara Taylor 33:02
Gian brings up a good point, he’s getting in on the conversation, we should just have him on the podcast.

Link Keller 33:08
can we?!

Josué Cardona 33:09
I mean, technically, we could just have people call in. We’re, believe it or not, we’re moving towards that. We’ve always there’s a there’s a secret room in the discord for gt radio, which I’ve always it’s been there for, I think, two years. And the idea is that we get if we were to bring somebody in, we could just bring them in that way. Technically, we could bring somebody in right now

Lara Taylor 33:34
but and then I don’t could be then we could do the same kind of thing that Frasier crane did…let’s not do that.

Josué Cardona 33:42
We could, i built it. I bet. I mean, you just you just tell me when you want to do it lara, when you’re ready. We’ll do it. We’ll start by

Lara Taylor 33:50
No, no, you’re gonna start paying me I got an hourly rate.

Josué Cardona 33:55
that’s fine. Gian’s Good point. What is Gian’s?

Lara Taylor 33:59
Gian’s good point is he said, um, you know, things just moved in the chat. I’ve witnessed a lot of moments where people only asked for psychiatric help, because they asked a YouTuber or streamer about what they think going to a psych can be useful. A professional can be scary, but hearing about a peers experience can make it more comfortable. I wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t gotten that feedback? Would they be too scared to look for help? And I think that’s a great point. Because I know, I know clients who have come to therapy because they’ve heard about it on a podcast and heard the experiences that people have had on the podcast or on tik tok or on Twitch or YouTube. So

Josué Cardona 34:40
I told you I like I didn’t realize I had Lyme disease until I heard it on a podcast. I’m sure.

Lara Taylor 34:48
yeah you told me that

Josué Cardona 34:48
Yeah, yeah. And and yeah, this is why for TAGGS right the the therapeutic and applied geek and gaming summit, which is happening in about three weeks. One of the The theme of the show of the event of the conference is community. Everybody has a seat at the table. And like I’ve written a little bit about this, and we’ve talked about it on the livestreams we do for taggs. It’s the idea that we all do play a role. So that’s why one of our keynote speakers is Mama foxfire, who is a streamer on Twitch, she is a mental health advocate. And she talks about mental health every week. And she brings on us right, like, she invited me to be on the show. I’ve been on the show jack Birkenstock from the Bodhana group has been on the show. O’Connor has been on the show, right? She she invites, she always talks, you know, she always started saying I’m not a professional. So that’s why we’re bringing professional Yeah, here’s our profession. Right. ask them the question. This is all I can do. And she talks about how she can say things that maybe you can’t lara right? Because like, you know, like, you. There’s there’s a code of ethics, you have a licensed chair there all these things, right. Also, they’re no

Lara Taylor 35:55
I would have to put a little disclaimer that Yeah, not medical advice or therapeutic advice, blah, blah, blah. I see that all over Tik Tok.

Josué Cardona 36:03
Yeah. And if we can work together to do that, right. Like, if we, thanks to mama foxfire, we can, maybe more people have gone to therapy, right? And maybe they take that extra step. There’s also there’s also the does a broader, a bigger topic, which is like you can be a psychologist and not be a clinical psychologist. So it can be like, Oh, I just want to understand human behavior or this aspect of like, why do I do this? Like, Oh, that sounds like that. That’s not a diagnosis. That’s like, I don’t know, like, I’m a researcher. And you know, maybe this and again, the responsible thing to do is usually to go and say, Oh, go seek help. Right. After I heard that Lyme disease episode, on on a podcast, I went through a specialist, and then got tested to make sure that was it. I didn’t just walk away thinking. I’ve got Lyme. I knew it. Cool. Yeah, yeah.

Lara Taylor 37:02
Yeah. And I’m on I’m on Tik Tok more than I’m on Twitch. But I see a lot of people, a lot of people, um, but seeing spaces where, like gian was saying, like, they’re seeing your peers talk about an experience and being able to get those lived experiences from people, oh, I never realized that might be a thing. And I really appreciate the ones who encourage you to go seek help if you think it’s a problem, that they are not a professional. And even if they are a professional, they say, go get some professional advice. I can’t diagnose you on Tik tok, or I can’t diagnose you on Twitch or whatever it is. And so I think those lived experiences are important because you can learn a lot from that and feel a sense of closeness and community in those spaces too.

Josué Cardona 37:56
Many years ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD and Lately, I’ve been going like on another one of those rabbit holes of like, what do I like? Is it ADHD? Is it something else? And there was such a big difference between the here is an explanation of what it is of people reading from the DSM literally right, trying to explain what is the, the the lived experience versions are where you can connect and be like, Oh, that’s what it really looks like, well, that’s how it feels. And so again, we need all those components. We can’t we can’t just do it, we cannot. I think we do expect for people to go straight from I don’t feel good to going to see a therapist, there’s so many steps in between. And I think that streamers can play a huge an important role in there. But if every everybody’s got to kind of recognize where they can, what role they play, even therapists, right, like I think I think there’s a I have like having conversations with therapists about like, Oh, no, like I try to, I always try to work with a medical doctor like I like I suggest that you know that because we want to rule certain things out first, it’s like okay, now you have like a complete picture and you understand that you do not have all the answers and that you are not the only piece of this puzzle that can possibly help a person and and yeah, so I’m I streamers can play a huge an important role. And so can bots which it’s happened because there’s people chatting and it’s been pretty active. And so moobot came up and shared switches mental health support and information page.

Link Keller 39:42
Thank you moobot.

Josué Cardona 39:45
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, media matters, right. This is important too. This is not just not just streaming again on Tik Tok. I, there’s a social worker that I follow on Tik Tok that I I really, really appreciate a lot, the way that again, it’s one minute, I got one minute to tell you something. And sometimes it’s enough to then. Okay, I’m gonna go research as I’m gonna go learn more about this. I’m gonna Oh, I didn’t think about it this way. It’s Yeah, it’s um lots of different roles to play and and on Tik Tok it. There’s a comment section too, but a lot of people go live on Tik Tok and on Instagram, and all of these platforms have live versions of things.

Lara Taylor 40:32
Definitely.

Josué Cardona 40:35
also I don’t think that people again, I think that I tend to talk too much. I don’t, I don’t necessarily, I’m not necessarily looking for an answer sometimes. Right? or advice. Sometimes it’s just since I’m just thinking out loud. And but there’s no way for the streamer to know that but just you know, thinking about all of those different things is part of that. I said puzzle before? I don’t know, I don’t know what how to, what’s this thing that I’m trying to build? that we’re all a part of. But I think I think a lot of us have roles to play. Yeah. Any thoughts on this from from from the chat or either of you?

Lara Taylor 41:20
I think my other thought is just because you see it on the internet, whether it’s YouTube, Twitch, Tik, Tok, Facebook, Twitter, whatever, don’t necessarily believe that is gospel. That is not, check people’s credentials, and do research on your own as well.

Josué Cardona 41:43
I used to tell my students all the time, and just in general, I think I still, I mean, I know I do it. I don’t know how often I do it. I hope I still do it as often as I think I do. I tell people like Don’t, don’t just don’t, don’t believe me. Just take what I’m saying. I think I’m right. I think I’m wrong. I may not have remembered it correctly. But I think this is what I read or, you know, go look it up, go get more information about this. I used to tell my students, just because I’m an adult doesn’t mean that I’m that you know that I’m right. Double check.

Lara Taylor 42:12
I tell that to my clients

Josué Cardona 42:13
All the time. Yeah, that’s a great lesson. Just because your parents said it just because I said it don’t doesn’t mean that it’s true. We make tons of mistakes, double check

Lara Taylor 42:23
just because I went to grad school, and I know stuff doesn’t mean I remember everything I learned in grad school over five years ago. So do you do your research?

Josué Cardona 42:33
human memory is garbage. In general, things change. Oh, I read I read something the other day that said, I didn’t read it. I saw it on on a on a YouTube video. So please double check. I think I’m right there. When I was saying this, it was a doctor talking about a like a meta study that was done looking at how long it takes information. That is like new information that is discovered in a field to actually be used in clinical practice. And the study stated, it takes an average of 17 years

Link Keller 43:07
Holy shit.

Josué Cardona 43:09
Which is like

Link Keller 43:10
i was gonna guess like six and be like It’s so high. Wow. Six, Jesus

Josué Cardona 43:15
17, which is which is so frustrating, right? So because especially in medicine, you hear this all the time, it is disgusting, right? You hear? Oh, like I was doing? Like, just think of diets, for example, right? It’s like, oh, we’re doing this. And then it’s like, oh, no, we have research that shows that that’s not true. But it’ll take about 17 years for people to begin for it to be not to begin, right. But for it to be Oh, like it’s more common, like, Oh, yeah, we people. It’s an in being a part of different changes. Right. Like how, remember? I don’t know. Yeah, I think we’re because of when we came into the mental health field, it was like we were there for the transition between the DSM4-R to DSM5, right? That was such a weird period of time, where all of a sudden, Asperger’s disappeared, like, that’s not a thing anymore, and this code and like all these things, and we’re like, is that like 17 years before? Like, in the case of the DSM? It’s, it’s I think that’s probably accurate in some cases, right? Which really, yeah, by the time the DSM five is there, there’s a committee that’s debating what to put into DSM 6, they’re not going to agree either. And so, which is again, so frustrating, you can have all this information. And maybe you can’t even bill insurance because insurance only reflects what’s in the DSM 5 and if the DSM five is an updated, right with information that could be you know, generally accepted. It doesn’t it doesn’t matter. I know that DSM four got updated at some point whether like DSM four, tr and I keep discovering like, how many I expected that it was just like grammar corrections and maybe typos but it wasn’t like there were there were some you know, like significant changes from before to the to the TR and If I told you the story, I don’t know if I’m sure I’ve told you, I don’t know if I’ve said it on the show before. But I saw I was seeing a therapist around. I was in grad school for mental health. So I was and I was seeing my own therapist. And she had the DSM for not a tr, in her office. And I, I pointed it out, and I said, Oh, that’s interesting. I’ve never seen the four I’ve only seen the TR because that’s the one that I have the gray one. And I think, I think the four is to remember what color I don’t remember, I never saw like my numbers or something like that. And she and she’s like, Oh, really? There’s an update? I don’t I have no idea. And, and I, I stopped seeing her. But it’s that type of thing. where like, has your does your doctor go to conferences? Does your doctor read research? Does your doctor believe in science? I don’t know. Oh, that’s frustrating. Yeah.

Lara Taylor 45:58
Yeah. We came into the mental health field around the time my psychopathology class in grad school was on the 4 tr, and then the DSM five came up the next year.

Josué Cardona 46:10
Yep. Yep. I remember making a stink about that. in grad school. I was like, are we are we? Are we gonna, I’m not gonna look at the like, the the, like, the beta version was out for review already. So we could have been studying that. But I was like, now, it was a weird, it was a weird time. It was a weird time. And in practice, right, I started using the ICD 10. Because there was like, even some insurance company was like, oh, like, we don’t know, like, we might, and there was a lot of discussion on we’re not gonna I’m not gonna use the DSM anymore. All the DSM haters came out in full. And yeah, yeah. But like, like, we know these things, because we worked in the field. Most streamers do not. So there was no, there’s no, don’t ask other streamers about DSM stuff, ask us a little bit. We can do

Lara Taylor 47:08
only a little bit

Josué Cardona 47:09
only a little bit.

Lara Taylor 47:11
Give you definitions, no diagnosis,

Link Keller 47:13
if you’re just if you’re just looking for definitions, just google it just just Google shows you have fingers. And Google is really good at misspellings nowadays.

Josué Cardona 47:26
I don’t I almost don’t want to jump on this. But that’s, that’s another part of the problem.

Link Keller 47:34
everything’s a part of the problem

Josué Cardona 47:36
Everything is a part of the problem.

Link Keller 47:37
We’ve got systemic issues.

Josué Cardona 47:42
I know we do we do? Well, I’m not even sure if we’re on topic anymore. So any closing thoughts on the streamers are, are not your therapists article,

Link Keller 47:52
respect people’s boundaries, give them space to express those boundaries If you are unsure.

Josué Cardona 47:59
No. And it’s self awareness. If you need help, in figuring out what you can and cannot handle, I just seek help for that. But if you’re if you’re not trained in that, if you are even if you feel like you can be supportive, like you can lend an ear again, even if it’s just a friend. Are you prepared like even even therapists burnout, right? So like these are it’s like a such an, it can be hard, it can be really hard. And in that moment, when you when someone is suffering and you want to be helpful, we can, from that perspective, from the from the helper side, also not respect boundaries, and then make it worse, by can diving into something that you may not know about, or even putting yourself in the position where you you give the person information that they can then or might act on, which is again, something that is probably not what you signed up for when you decided to, to stream First of all, but in that moment when you want it to be helpful and and a good listener and supportive. It’s hard. It’s hard to be supportive period. It’s really really hard. And, and,

Lara Taylor 49:22
and if you take that, go take that Geek Therapy u course,

Josué Cardona 49:26
for sign up for it. Yeah, yeah, there’s again, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that we talked about here that I think is is helpful. This is why I think there’s things like the that the emotional support group or emotional support channel right on the discord, right? It’s like, it’s like, hey, like, there’s a lot of people here we want to we’re here to support each other, but we’re not giving therapy we’re not. We’re not giving advice. The idea is, hey, you’re not alone. there’s a there’s a lot of us and that’s it. Sometimes that’s that, that’s an It’s good, that’s good to have. But that’s not you need other pieces too.

Lara Taylor 50:05
And the point is, you can go there to listen, if you are ready to be able to listen.

Josué Cardona 50:13
Yeah. And at least in in our space, right, like, we’ll be telling you left and right, go see a therapist or Go, go, go talk to somebody, right? The Geek Therapy, discord is in a place where you’re going to, if we, you know, I mean, probably on our Facebook is probably where would happen before the moderators got to it. But if, you know, if a therapist started trying to, you know, provide therapy on in the Facebook comments, we would shut that down immediately

Lara Taylor 50:39
right away.

Josué Cardona 50:41
Very, very quickly. Thank you so much to our mods. Facebook, true,

Link Keller 50:46
thank you to all mods everywhere.

Josué Cardona 50:49
All mods everywhere, each and every one of you. All right. So I think that’s it. Any closing thoughts? Link?

Link Keller 50:59
I already said my closing thoughts.

Josué Cardona 51:01
All right. closing thoughts lara?

Link Keller 51:02
no thoughts.

Lara Taylor 51:03
I already gave my thoughts

Link Keller 51:04
thoughts gone.

Josué Cardona 51:05
Good, good. Good. Just want to make sure everybody’s good. I mentioned taggs before taggs is in a couple weeks. I think all of us will be presenting so well. A lot of cool people and friends from over the years. I’ve roped Ali Mattu Patrick O’Connor, Kuniak, I got Janina Scarlet in there, and game to grow is gonna be there. Lots of AOC did not return my message. But there’s still time, we will still see it. We’ll see. Yeah, and for more on that you can go to taggsummit.org. That’s ta GG su mm it.org. For more Geek Therapy, visit Geek therapy.org. In the shownotes you will see links to our community spaces, including our discord and our Facebook group. And that’s it for today. Thank you so much for listening. remember to geek out and do good, and we’ll be back next week.

Link Keller 52:09
mBye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

• Twitch Streaming
• AOL chat rooms
• Fraiser
• Radio call-in shows

Conversation Topics:

* Carl Rogers
* Boundaries
* DSM
* Feeling alone
* Mental Health Services
* Other: Streaming

Relatable Experience:

* Clarity/Understanding
* Depression
* Making Others Worry
* Guilt
* Trauma
* Other: help-seeking

Check out the GT Network: network.geektherapy.com

GT Forum: forum.geektherapy.org

GT Discord: geektherapy.com/discord

GT Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/geektherapy

Find us at www.GeekTherapy.org | @GeekTherapy | Lara: @GeekTherapist | Link: @CHICKENDINOSAUR | Josué: @JosueACardona

Ask us anything through the Question Queue and we’ll answer on the show: geektherapy.org/qq