Viewers in the comments on my live stream keep trying to diagnose me as bipolar, telling me I need to get on medication and that I'm unstable. I know people who are on medication, and if I were to go get on some medication, it certainly would flatten me out. But I wouldn't be able to do YouTube anymore. I wouldn't be able to be creative. The people I know who are on medication for things like that are pretty consistent, but they're also pretty flat. In order to do YouTube, I need to have big emotions. I need to be able to handle highs and I need my lows. I need my full range of emotions to do YouTube. If I were to try to take the edge off with medication, my videos would just be utterly boring and useless. What makes them work is my wide range of emotions.
Who decided the normal range is supposed to be small?
Labeling things as bipolar, to me, is suggesting that the normal range of human emotions is supposed to be very small. I would actually say that my emotional range is healthy and normal. But we live in a society that has trained you so that anyone who shows emotions, you diagnose as bipolar, and anyone who shows you that they're sad or down, you diagnose with depression. To me, this is part of a system where people are supposed to be muzzled, where people are not supposed to show feelings. If this world doesn't trigger some extreme emotions out of you, I would say you're not really feeling. And in order for me to create on YouTube and be a creative person, I need my feelings.
I could go to some doctor and get some medication to level me out, and then I'd probably just go get some job too. I could probably make six figures doing online marketing as chief marketing officer at some company somewhere, creating content. But I would be boring like that. I would be boring and predictable. And what kind of value would I add to the world? I think my range of emotions is extremely healthy, and it's also difficult to handle. I'm so down today. Everything feels pointless. I just got back from VidSummit, I'm doing a live stream, and I know everybody in the chat thinks they're a doctor and is out here diagnosing me based on me showing you the reality.
Almost nobody shows you their life the way I do
I met up with a bunch of other YouTubers, and almost nobody who creates content shows you their life the way I do. They hide the down, manic parts of themselves from you as much as possible. They try to only show you their upside. And that is what leaves all of you thinking that life's supposed to be happy and great all the time, and that there's something wrong with you if it's not. If you don't look around this world and find all kinds of reasons to be depressed, your eyes aren't open. Reality is utterly horrible in so many ways. At the same time, there are things that are beautiful about it.
A viewer said the system wants us isolated with no time to connect with family and friends. Exactly. Right now I'm down, and part of that is because I have had less time than usual to connect with family and friends while I've been on a trip. I've had less time with my kids, the least amount of time I've had with my kids all year, in the last week. I went to one AA meeting in Dallas and I met a bunch of new people at VidSummit. At the same time, I have nobody I'm dating, and I'm struggling to connect with people in other places because it feels like everybody is just like a bot these days. I'm having a hard time getting a heartfelt connection with someone where it feels like there's a human being in there. And at the same time, I'll probably be really up tomorrow.
Handling a wide range of moods is a strength
I think it's a sign of strength that you can handle a wide range of moods, but the whole system is constantly conditioning you: any time you feel anything, go do something about that. If you feel great, celebrate, and knock yourself back down with something. If you feel terrible, go ask somebody and get this pill and we'll fix that for you. I'm very intelligent, and some of my family members are also very intelligent, and they've struggled. They've been officially diagnosed with things like manic bipolar, and taking medications in some cases made things worse for them. They would take the medications and things would be fine, but then they'd stop taking the medications, and then things really got crazy. I think it's important for me to learn to handle the full range of human emotions, the very good and the very, very down.
One thing that would help a lot of us is to stop going around diagnosing other people. At the same time, I'm constantly judging people myself, at least internally. But the prevalence of psychological language across our entire culture is not helping anything, because that psychological language was there to diagnose the most extreme cases. And now it's, "Oh, Jerry's a little sad today. He must be manic bipolar." I'm having normal human emotions. Being down is a normal human emotion. Being sad and crying are normal human emotions. You can see that when you look at a child. If you look at kids, they have a healthy range of emotions. But many of us as adults have been programmed and told to stop having emotions: stop feeling sad, stop feeling down, stop feeling too happy, stop laughing and having fun. And then you wonder why people have all these weird things going on.
Feeling my emotions keeps my body healthy
To me, having emotions helps my body stay healthy. Now, I'm not a doctor. That's just my experience: the more I can express my emotions, the more I have a body that's very healthy, a body that feels good physically. The worst my body used to feel was when I had the most trouble expressing my emotions. My addictions were very rough when I struggled to express my emotions, and a big part of getting sober has been continuing to learn how to handle the full range of emotions. I think it's very important that we define our own reality. My reality is that having emotions is healthy. I question how great a life you can have if you're not honestly experiencing your feelings. I doubt I can reach my full power personally and do the most amazing things I'm capable of without feeling my feelings fully.
I choose to say I have no interest in going to any person who is going to diagnose me and tell me things are wrong with me. To me, that would be me getting tricked into thinking there's something wrong with me when there's not. When my kids cry and my kids feel sad, I see that as a healthy, normal human experience. I also get very happy and very filled with joy, and that's powerful. So I refuse to let anyone diagnose me or tell me their reality is primary and mine is secondary. I am extremely happy. I am extremely healthy for having emotions. I'm proud that I have emotions, and I'm not going to do anything to try to stop myself from having feelings, because that would be insane.
When everybody around you is insane, insane becomes normal
We live in a society where insanity has been normalized, and all these platforms increasingly normalize what, in a healthy human society, would be insane behavior: trying to numb and crush your emotions. That's not healthy. That to me is unhealthy. That to me is insane. But when everybody around you is insane, what is insane can become normal. Think about the past. Think about some of the craziest points in history, when some of the most horrible human behavior was normalized. There was a time when, for example, slavery was normalized, and that was what was right according to the law. It looks crazy today, but back then it didn't. I would say that in an optimistic, bright future, we would look at humans who have crushed themselves emotionally the same way, as crazy, insane behavior that nobody would want to do. If you want more days like this one, the ups and the downs, you'll find them in my Daily Vlogs playlist.