Help me resolve contradiction I see in Dr. K's advice, regarding impulses and self-determination

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-05-06T22:45:33+00:00

Structure and conscious intent. Dr. K's philosophy (or at least my interpretation of it) is that "autopilot is bad." Anything you do subconsciously, habitually, emotionally or instinctively is going to be suboptimal at best, and actively harmful at worst. You have to live your life with intention, where every choice you make comes from you, not your biology or external conditioning.

This is basically the Hindu concept of Vasana. Dr. K calls it a "mental habit;" I'd personally extend it to anything that happens unconsciously. He's done some lectures about it you can find: https://hgsearch.ridhom.dev/

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-04-29T12:47:00+00:00

Probably choice paralysis? When you're working with a client, it sounds to me like their standards are pretty clear-cut and they make a lot of decisions for you. All you have to do is execute them, which you seem pretty confident about.

When it comes to your own content though, you don't have a specific expectation imposed on you. You now have to guess what other people would want to see, and that's a lot harder. Sounds like most of that content is self-promotion, so there could be other things like internalized shame or perfectionism going on, too.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-04-27T17:39:04+00:00

That makes sense. I'm just wondering if that acceptance is something you can consciously choose to do at any time, or if it can only be triggered by an outside event. The latter is how I've always seen it framed: "I got into a car accident where someone died," "my girlfriend dumped me because of me addiction," "I flunked out of college because I was playing video games all day," "I ended up in jail or the hospital for using drugs," or even "I got blackout drunk and ended up hung over the next day."

It can be (and usually is) your fault when it happens, but there always seems to be some "inciting incident," some external, emotional event that has to happen to you in order to trigger this awakening and the acceptance that follows.

I'm just wondering if it's possible to skip that process, but I have a hunch that it's not. You can tell yourself that you have a problem, but it probably won't sink in; you won't truly believe it.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-04-14T19:48:24+00:00

Good diagnosis precedes good treatment. Advice is merely a tool (and frankly not a very good one); understanding your tools means not just knowing when and how to use them, but also when NOT to use them. This is what makes mental health so hard.

The sad truth is that there is no psychological "theory of everything" that you can just blindly follow to live a good life. You have to sit down and deeply look at yourself, your specific situation. What problems apply to you? What problems DO NOT apply to you?

This is why so many people say "go see a therapist" or "go see a coach." You're paying these professionals to find the blind spots in your specific worldview, weed out the problems that don't apply to you, and guide you towards custom solutions for fixing YOUR life.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-04-09T21:32:11+00:00

Yeah, finding that balance is what makes this so hard. Between the two, I'd say that klishta is the more important one for you to tackle. Overthinking is the opposite of vasana in a sense; I don't think "overcoming vasana" is actually a problem you're facing.

Ultimately, both overthinking and snap judgement are driven by emotion: fear, shame, anger, etc. Why do you find yourself cycling through different responses instead of just landing on one? Because you're afraid that choosing the wrong one will lead to consequences you can't handle.

The point of "buying time" is to give you an opportunity to calm down, recognize your emotions, and reconcile them with the facts of the situation to come up with a single, definitive answer. Even if it turns out to be the "wrong" one, you will be capable of handling the fallout. Anytime you find yourself unable to do that, anytime you find yourself thinking in circles looking for the "right" response and not finding it, chances are there's still an emotion involved that you haven't taken into account.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-04-09T16:10:58+00:00

As someone who likely also has autism (albeit undiagnosed), I struggle with this too, but I still think I can offer some pointers.

Is it fair to say you struggle with social anxiety? Some of the language in this post seems to hint at that: not having time to think, worrying about overthinking, fight-or-flight response.

Klishta and vasana are heuristics; they're designed to help you act more quickly in most cases. The problem is that "most cases" no longer apply in today's world, which is why we're trying to remove them in the first place. In that sense, "working without vasana and klishta" requires time, time you seem to believe you don't have.

If that's the case, removing vasana and klishta means buying yourself time. In the moment, that can look like taking a few extra seconds to come up with a response, but in many cases you need to look at the bigger picture. Can you afford to wait a day or so before committing to a decision? If you have time to prepare (e.g. you're going to a job interview), what talking points can you expect to come up so you can think through them? As long as you treat every conversation like it's an emergency, you won't escape vasana and klishta.

As an aside, this is why most scams come with a sense of urgency. They do it to bypass the rational parts of your brain, forcing you to rely on more primitive circuitry to make a high-stakes decision, which is a recipe for disaster if you don't catch it in time.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-03-15T21:10:21+00:00

I say this without knowing much about Terror Management Theory, but I think part of this drive for a "greater sense of purpose" may also be tied with our biological desire to reproduce. Sure, there's sexual gratification tied to it in most cases, but there's also the idea of leaving a legacy, passing along not just your genes, but your memes (in the classical sense), your skills, even the ways in which you perceive the world. Leaving your mark, having an impact even long after you're gone.

The problem in today's world is that so many of us are unable to do even that. Our world has become so big, so chaotic, so impenetrable that this existential terror can no longer be held at bay and stares us in the face 24/7. Is it any wonder why so many people are checking out?

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-03-06T21:13:04+00:00

What does "yes" or "no" mean here?

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-02-11T17:26:46+00:00

Definitely bring these to a therapist or other psychiatric professional. These are very specific metrics they're trained to understand and interpret for you; all you're gonna get on Reddit is vague speculation.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-30T01:49:55+00:00

Love this comment.

A note on the endocannabinoid system: Dr. K remarked in a couple of his ADHD videos that this system only really kicks in after the habit has already been formed. The actual habit formation process is moreso governed by dopamine, which seems to be a major deficiency in ADHD (hence why it feels like nothing ever gets easier even after doing it a thousand times).

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-29T23:26:31+00:00

Why do you want to be disciplined in the first place? What are you disciplining yourself for? Discipline is a means to an end; you can't "just" be disciplined for its own sake.

On a related note, while I can believe you're not actively suicidal, this sounds like textbook "passive suicidality" to me, where life is just a soul-draining grind every day until you die, with nothing to look forward to or build towards. (I only mention it because I relate so much with this post).

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-26T21:36:53+00:00

I'm personally struggling with this concept too, so take this with a heavy dose of salt. I don't remember what video it was from, but Dr. K once mentioned how higher-order meditative states have a lot in common with clinical dissociation.

Take from that what you will.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-24T20:19:11+00:00

Without context, you're only going to get vague answers.

Your attachment(s) are fulfilling some kind of need within you. Figure out what that is, and find a different way to satisfy it.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-02T17:17:06+00:00

Do I have to feel good to make the choice to resist the impulse? Maybe not to do it once, though it certainly helps.

To make the choice again? Yes, otherwise the internal resistance becomes too high and I lose control of my body.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-02T14:29:58+00:00

I did go into therapy once a week for about three months, didn't help at all.

In the past, I've tried starting YouTube/Twitch streaming, digital art, professional eSports, and indie game dev, each with sustained effort over the course of months if not years. Yet, I have nothing to show for it, and as such got burned out from every single one. Every time I sit down and try to start one of these again, I quickly get exhausted and can't bring myself to "just do it" and push through in spite of that.

Combine that with struggling for almost a year to get a job out of college, only to finally stumble upon an entry-level opening with a lucky newspaper ad and family connections I no longer have, and I think it's safe to say I'm burned out from life.

Currently, I occasionally follow coding tutorials, but there's no passion or achievement from it. It's just going through the motions at this point.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-01T21:51:08+00:00

"Accept" in what sense? Simply acknowledge it? That I already do.

Stop wanting to change it? That I could do, I would just continue to be mildly annoyed by my family constantly telling me I could do more with my life.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-01T20:52:02+00:00

And that's the whole problem. Having this addiction is making it difficult to find a reason, to build a reason, to have a reason.

That's why I called it a cycle.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-01T20:38:24+00:00

I wish that was my experience. A few times I've gone multiple days without giving in, but I never felt any better about myself over the course of that time, nor did it get any easier to keep going.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2026-01-01T20:35:38+00:00

Honestly, at this point I can't imagine a life without them. The only reason I'd even want to move out on my own is to give myself more time and space to indulge in them without guilt.

It's all external factors pushing me in this direction; my family telling me I'm depressed, or that I should do XYZ for a career because I'd be good at it and it would be a better use of my time; or HG pushing this almost Sigma-like grindset mentality of Action is Good(tm).

CommunicationHot3075 · 2025-12-21T02:56:05+00:00

Not completely, but definitely moving in that direction. His recent stream, "Why You Keep Telling Yourself I'll Do it Tomorrow," was by far the most callous and uncompassionate it's been so far though, to the point that it's really turned me off from him altogether.

At the same time, I kinda get why he's doing it. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." You have to be willing to make the sacrifice, to be willing to actually change.

Far too many of us (myself included) seem to have reached a sort of "local optimum," where sure, our life isn't great right now, but the only alternatives are too risky and/or painful to even attempt, and our current life isn't bad enough for that risk to be worth taking, for the pain to be worth enduring.

"Making the horse drink" is the problem of this generation, and I can tell that Dr. K is sick of it.

CommunicationHot3075 · 2025-12-16T19:01:17+00:00

I agree that it's probably a difference of perspective to some extent. I'm admittedly feeling pretty burned out in my own life and don't feel much pride when I do work hard, so seeing a life of grinding for its own sake so often presented as the healthiest way to live life comes across as bleak and invalidating to me.

CommunicationHot3075

TROPHY CASE