🧑‍🏫 Can an AI Therapist Support with Emotional Processing? Q&A Session w/ Maverick from Thyself.ai

Hello, Hello. Good morning. Happy, happy Halloween, everyone. Ivina, Sejenni. Hey, Bruno. Jonathan, Diana, Nick. So let's, let's share in the chat. How are you feeling on this Halloween morning in five words or less. Okay, well, welcome everyone. Um, let us, let's get started. Just going to close that. Okay. Hey, Maverick. It is, it is wonderful to have you here. Let me, let me make you enormous so everyone can see you. There we go.

Hey, y'. All. Nice to be here. Make my big head even bigger. Nice.

Amazing. Well, yeah, I mean, there's so many, so many reasons that I kind of wanted to have this conversation, but to kind of give context for students, this session is somewhat kind of out of the ordinary for NSM guest sessions, but I feel like we're kind of entering this really interesting world and interesting time where AI and kind of AI tools can be incredibly useful for self development, self exploration, self inquiry, and as we're going to talk about today, emotional work. And for those of you listening who don't know, Maverick, were you formally a co founder at thyself? That's correct, yeah. So you kind of like helped to build the product of this, what I view as a very pioneering tool in the kind of. I'm probably going to get the words wrong here, but just like AI assisted kind of self exploration and self experimentation is how it is how I think about it. So maybe to kind of kick things off, I, I mean, yeah, I have so many questions, but how did you, like, how did you come to work on thyself? And what was your kind of, what has been your experience with that so far?

Yeah, as you say, it's a super, just like a strange thing. Honestly, a lot of people kind of have an aversion when there's that initial kind of hearing of AI and emotions maybe shouldn't be together. But the reason for Lawrence and I to work on this is that, yes, speaking frankly, in my life I've experienced all various types of, of suffering and emotional suffering and things that have helped me are of all different ranges. But some of these are specific modalities like internal family systems and somatic inquiry. These things that help us introspect, intercept with ourselves have helped me immensely in clearing a lot of say, like emotional gunk or patterns or loops that are in my system and have made me immensely more present, engage with my life. And so these are sort of magical, but they're kind of a little bit, you know, in some, in some gated walls and for many good reasons, you know, like to have them in Specific containers, but a lot of people also do them on themselves. So you could actually take these frameworks, this ifs somatic inquiry, and you can actually do it with yourself. And people have really good success with it. But, you know, not everyone wants to spend all that time to. To learn how to do that themselves, kind of track it, and it's kind of quite a process. So the confluence of wanting to be able to share these modalities that have helped me and also a lot of my peers just like, immensely, as well as where LLMs have come to in recent years, and also voice technology, sort of like the perfect confluence of, okay, there's something here where we could actually engage in a conversation with something that's able to take us through a process and help us reflect us back to ourselves. So, yeah, it's not a therapist, it's not going to ever replace a therapist, but it's when you're holding space for yourself instead of having to kind of navigate and think about where you are in the process, you could just fully focus on this feeling dimension and then just be with further deeper levels of inquiry. So we're kind of just experimenting, playing around with, you know, what, what is here. It's not again, trying to replace anything, but this almost new emergent tool that is there for us in between sessions or just really whenever we're activated.

Yeah, that's a great description. And could you maybe articulate that distinction between, let's say, thyself and AI tools and a therapist? What is this good for? That maybe a therapist or how do they work together? How are they complementary in your mind?

Yeah, totally. Is everyone. I'm also, I'm not sure what the. Is the policy, like cameras off or camera on. I would love to see everyone's faces, but I also, no pressure. I'm on gallery view. So. Yeah. To your own desire. Oh, hey. Uhio has done therapy out of curiosity. Yeah, amazing. So good. Cool. Yeah, so there's so many things that come with that relationship with another human being. We kind of have a model of healing, just a frame that we have adopted to help us kind of navigate this work a bit. And a big part of it, honestly, is just having loving, open space that can meet whatever's arising. You can provide that to yourself, but you could also sort of borrow it from another human being who's really well practiced at it. And that's what a therapist is. So they're really good at holding what we might call like self energy. And so we're never going to replace that that's amazing. The when you're in an intimate relationship or just in a moment with, with another human being, you're actually also experiencing nervous system co regulation to tie it into this work. Your nervous system is actually mapping off of another human being kind of safety. Is this safe? Is this not safe? So when a therapist is there holding non judgmental, just open space, you can learn to actually map that onto the experience you're having. And that's super duper powerful. I think that's honestly a big chunk of what healing work is in. Modality aside, just that's why a friend who's really there listening to you can be really healing because that's what they're providing. They're also doing a lot of tracking of someone's system over time. They're trained in trauma work and really intense things and they're really able to navigate. Okay, this is a good time to bring this up or what the person's capacity is AI. I don't think we'll ever replace that. But what we can do is port over specific tools such as forms of inquiry, all these different modalities. Right now thyself just works with ifs and somatic inquiry because we found them really be powerful and they also kind of mix well, nicely. But we can port over these tools that again I was saying people often use to hold space for themselves and we could essentially engage the role of the inquirer and you could just be the inquired. So before you would. When you're kind of like, okay, feeling really activated right now I'm super frustrated or mad or something's coming up, what's going on here? And you're kind of going into your system and you're feeling okay, is it you're kind of asking a dialogue and then you're also doing the feeling. Now we could just kind of with these tools offer up. This is what I'm feeling, this is what's going on for me. It's really good at summarizing, collecting and reflecting. So I'm hearing that you're really sad about this relationship with your friend. Are you feeling that anywhere in your body? So now you could kind of relax and ease into a space that you've created for yourself and then just go deeper into. Deeper into inquiry and exploring. So that's what these tools are good for. And what they're not, they're not holding space for yourself or they're not holding space for you. Rather they're not doing co regulation with the nervous system and they're not Doing trauma work, because that is super, you know, delicate work and you need to do that with a trained professional. Our kind of stance so far is that generally the system, like your, your nervous system kind of knows what can be handled in a specific situation. Right. Like if you're on your bed and you're feeling something, probably not a huge traumatic experience that's maybe going to come up unless you're really, really digging for it. But even then, your nervous system kind of knows what the capacity of the situation is. So when you're with a therapist, there's more capacity. Similarly with thyself, it's like you kind of only just go to the capacity that you would if you're being by yourself.

Yeah, I think that's, that's really well articulated. And I sometimes think about working with a therapist or someone of that nature. It's almost like they are loaning nervous system capacity on a temporary basis so that you are able to look at and be with some of the, the parts or experiences that otherwise would be like, overwhelming and kind of go outside your wind of tolerance.

Totally. And that's also what's awesome about this work that y' all are doing here, is that nervous system work is so, so important when processing emotions and being with really difficult content. And I'm sure you've kind of already probably talked about the, you know, the relationship between emotions and nervous system have like, you're really disregulated. Like everything is super volatile and overwhelming and going through a specific filter. And when you're kind of resourced, something actually is maybe not that big of a deal or you could really meet something more with more self energy. And so I think these really go hand in hand nicely. And, and similarly too, you know, when you are suppressing an emotion, not letting it flow through it can actually really activate the nervous system because it's body's saying like, okay, we're not. There's actually something we're afraid of here. So let's activate a fight or flight response because we're not wanting to. We're kind of resisting this thing in the background. So when we feel through emotions, it actually then helps with nervous system regulation work as well. Kind of like this back and forth. So it's super valuable the skill that y' all are learning.

Well, that was not a paid endorsement, but thank you, Maverick. But yeah. So another thing I want to touch on. So we had Steve March from Alethea on Monday and then Derek, who gave a kind of IFS masterclass yesterday and this week is Specifically exploring emotional exploration. So one thing that I'm interested in, you said that this particular tool, thyself, has been trained in ifs and somatic inquiry. Is that similar to somatic experiencing? Hakomi, like that type of.

Yeah, I'd say it's kind of like a lightweight version of those.

Okay.

Because somatic experiencing can lean into trauma work and like really being with intensity. And so this is like small dose hits of just inquiring with sensations in the body. And that could also turn into ifs. So I could like, briefly go through kind of the model of kind of go in generally through the body. Ifs will ask you about that. Or excuse me, thyself will ask you about that. And maybe it will move just from awareness itself, just kind of holding this sensation. Maybe we'll move, maybe a shift, maybe it won't. But maybe a dialogue wants to start to come up with it, and then we could start to treat it as a part. And then. Okay, what's here? What's it have to say? Does it. Does it need anything? This is kind of how these two things blend together. But yeah, roughly speaking, the somatic inquiry that we engage in is holding some part of contracted tension or sensation in your body in an open, accepting space and just seeing what comes from there.

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, I'd love to make this as practical as possible for listeners. And so I think maybe some examples of ways in which you've used it yourself and also how you've seen some of your kind of early users explore. You know, from like, I think there was something around decision making, exploring triggers, preparing for tough conversations. Could you. Yeah. Give us some examples of, like, how can this tool support. Increase. Enhance awareness and like, emotional fluidity?

I would love to go over. Have any of the speakers kind of gone over the why around emotional work that could help frame this?

Probably, but it doesn't hurt. Doesn't hurt to repeat it in different ways. Cool. Please do.

Yeah, I would love to, yeah. Kind of talk about, like, why would we actually want to feel our feelings? Because it's like a super valuable question. Like, it's. People are super, you know, telling us all the time, feel your feelings, go to therapy. Like, why would I want to move towards something that's really difficult? Like, I kind of need a frame for. For helping me in that. So I'm curious from. From y', all, what are some reasons that you do emotional work? Why engage in doing this inner work? I'm not sure how we. Everyone could just.

Yeah. Ra. Raise your virtual hand Is the usual, the usual way we do this. People are being shy this morning.

Interesting. Spooky. Better understanding. Relate more greenery.

I'll take a crack at this. So it's pretty funny. I was going through the curriculum for week four and what Johnny said at some point that emotions are energy in motion just hit home so hard. But I started. I started. I embarked on this. Mind you, I don't do. I've never been in therapy. Probably I should have done this like 20 years ago, but it is what it is. So I started NSM because I was actually looking for some quick ways out. I was. I was actually trying to cheat myself. I realized.

I've been.

I've been into Zogian for, for quite some time and I'm. I'm pretty good at dropping, expanding. The thought goes away. The. But then the emotion dissipates as well pretty fast. And then it's just going to come back like a mother. And I was like, okay, well, I can drop. Let me, Let me just add some breath work to this because obviously that sounded like a good idea at the time. But what I realized is that I've been just beating the crap out of these emotions. Like so they're. It's. It's. It's like the genie in the little lamp from Aladdin. Like really, really tiny space, really ton of energy in there. So what I've been realizing is lately, on top of the, of the Dzogen practice and on top of the breath work, I need to let, Let these voices speak because otherwise it's just going to get worse.

Yeah, I resonate with that. With, you know, part of the practices is the Emptiness practice, to be able to see through the illusory nature of things and also including the fullness practice. So really like be with what's here, the content and let it move and engage in it. So, yeah, I love that.

Because Buddhist is not gonna like, the, the middle path is.

Is that.

Zen? Like, okay, I'm not mad. I'm not happy. I'm just this. But that's not where I am right now. Like, I realized I am so goddamn angry it's not even funny. And I, I have like, I, I studied Western fencing and I end up with stuff like this because I'm like. I'm like. For the past few weeks, I'm just going. And I end up getting bruised really.

Badly because those swords really hit.

So there's this anger that just like Buddhism is not going to help here because this anger is just going to build up.

Yeah, Sounds like something wants to be felt. That's awesome. Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you, Brynn.

Thanks, Bruno. Daniel, chime in.

Yeah, I was thinking kind of along the same lines as Bruno. Basically, it's kind of something that you can't run away from, so you better accommodate yourself with it somehow. He's like, I think there's like, no avoidance, whatever kind of trickery and deception and following some other path you find for yourself. It always gets you back to the same place unless you kind of engage with it actively and make your way through.

Beautiful. The way out is through. Thanks, Daniel. Nice.

Thanks, Daniel. And maybe lastly, from Venus.

I'll.

Hi.

I joined here because I want to understand the relationship between nervous system and my emotions, because I know emotions is part of weakness within me when I want to make good decisions. So there are a lot of times where I think I can make good decisions, but at the same time, because of emotions coming up, I cannot really control the emotions to fully just engage in what I want to do. And so I think if I can understand more, deeper, maybe there's some way that can help me make better decisions. Or whenever I need to calm it down, there's a way to help me out. That's why.

Yeah, I hear that. Yeah, it sounds like a seeing more clearly of what's there. Joe Hudson has this model. I really like that. He says, if you feel like there's a decision that needs to be made, there's probably some sort of emotional experience you're not experiencing yet. There's some sort of emotions that you haven't engaged with yet. And I really like that frame. So it's very acutely tied to decision making. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Cool. Yeah, these are all great responses. So I'll just, like, provide kind of a quick frame just for those who are still not maybe bought into. Why would I want to turn towards the things that I've been resisting? So a couple of these are acute suffering. Growth a bucket, we'll call sort of awakening or clear seeing. And then just generally, well, being. So acute suffering is, you know, maybe in a moment, there's some really difficult emotional experience coming up. Maybe there's an anxiety loop happening there. It's what we talked about before. Something kind of wants to come up to be felt, but then we're kind of turning away from it, and then suddenly now we're kind of in this looping experience, and what we resist persists, so it will continue, and then we'll be kind of suffering a lot with. With our experience. But Once we're able to turn towards that in the, in the acute moment and then let it flow through us, then on the other side, we generally find a sense of freedom, a sense of having felt something, then it could, could kind of move through our system and be, be gone. That energy in motion can have its, its wave instead of continuing to compound on it. So that's a reason for. And these tools are really helpful for helping us kind of actually move towards those. Another one is growth. Right. So there's all these emotional patterns and loops in our life. Like the thing keeps happening, this one pattern with this person, like, why does this keep happening in my life? Or, you know, the same thing is coming in and I can't quite fully see it. Yun has this really awesome quote, which is, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. So until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. So this is kind of pointing to these unconscious or semi conscious emotional patterns that are happening in our life that maybe aren't bringing acute suffering, so to speak, but they're sort of like this, this web of conditioning that we have in our system and they're running the show in the background. And so emotional work can help us bring those into the light of awareness, see what's there, what wants to be felt, what's needed, and then actually sort of let go. Maybe those same patterns run, but we're fully aware of them now. Maybe they're actually helpful, maybe they're not. We could, we have the agency to change them. Lexus awakening or clear seeing. So emotional work is, is so. Okay, Steve Marsh was on. Did he talk about unfolding versus self improvement? Okay, amazing. So in the unfolding model, which is I love so much as a frame, you could think of some of these loops and patterns or contractions in awareness as these obfuscations to our wholeness. And there can be work on the side of waking up, of doing the awareness work to expand that awareness or to be more in touch with that awareness. You could also do the work to sort of go in into those contractions and dissolve them in the unfolding model. So then wholeness starts to shine through more. And so we could do that with these modalities. Right. So doesn't necessarily mean that the emotional experience again goes away, but we're clearly seeing. And as Venus is talking to, then we're able to meet more of like objective reality. We're able to be with more of what's actually Here instead of sort of the filter that we might be having over from our own conditioning and lastly is just pure well being. So I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the idea that we store emotions in our body, body keeps us core, these sort of things when we are with these emotional experiences, not always, but very often when we process stuff, we like literally just feel better in our bodies. They're more relaxed, our nervous system's down regulated, we feel at ease. There's some sort of contraction has dissolved so we just feel better in life. Also in some sense a way of framing activations or triggers or is that your present wholeness and then something contracts that, contracts that wholeness into a specific trigger activation movement. And that is the movement out of presence. So we could think of, we have the conditioning or things that we've built up are these things that then when some stimuli happens to us and we react to it, contract it out of presence into something. And that's the stuff we could work with. But as we all know, we are most happy and our well being is highest when we are present. And so the more we engage in this work and we can actually let go of those triggers, uncover the roots, the more present we could be. I don't know if is Doug on this, this round of talking.

He was on the last two cohorts ago, I believe in a while.

Doug Tartin has this great thing around and I'm not sure if it's originally from him, but talks about core feelings a lot. There's like nine core feelings, kind of core beliefs we hold about ourselves. And he says that a core feeling belief is the, the root or the stem of 10,000 thoughts. And that's just sort of like a metaphor. It's probably more like millions and millions of thoughts. But you could kind of think of this as there's these core feeling beliefs that we have that maybe I'm bad or I'm helpless. And if you analyze your thoughts like the 60,000 that we have a day, they're sort of coming up and out from those core feeling beliefs. There's something that is trying to serve you through all of these thoughts. And you could follow these thoughts down to these more deep emotional experiences. So when you actually work with those core feelings and emotions, you sort of uproot that. That actually then dissolves the big branches of thoughts and thinking and instead not to make thoughts bad, but they can help soften those which then makes us more present and more here to our life. So yeah, those are some frames of why we'd want to do emotional work. So, like, really powerful stuff. And it's. It's certainly not a magic pill. And we're, like, totally in still, I'd say feels like we're in the very early stages still, in my opinion, around a healing work, at least in the Western world. It's like we're kind of like figuring out, like, I hope that a hundred years down the road we'll have all these crazy psycho technologies that are like, oh, you're. You're experiencing this. Oh, you just need to go and then feel this right here. And then, you know, we're still kind of in this. This phase of exploring, and yet it's still incredibly powerful what we could do. Just being with your experience and really just turning towards what you're resisting. So, yeah. Yeah, those are some frames.

No, that's great. I mean, I feel like we're going through somewhat of a resurgence. Like there was obviously in the 50s and 60s and going all the way back to, like, Wilhelm Reich. Like, Somatic Work is not new, but it does feel like it's kind of undergoing some kind of resurgence. So coming back to thyself, and let's kind of stick with thyself just for the sake of ease today. How have you seen this tool be specifically helpful beyond what would have been possible with just, say, a journaling practice or just you guiding yourself through? We have a practice called Somatic Surfing in nsn. It's like a guided audio that you can kind of guide yourself through. What do you think are some of the advantages or maybe some of the best use cases where someone might be like, okay, I don't have a therapy appointment for another two weeks and this thing is coming up. Instead of journaling, I'm gonna think to open up my phone, which is something that not many of us would do, or computer, and then engage with an AI agent, essentially. Could you start to flesh this out a little bit for us?

Yeah, a couple frames or reasons why one, and slightly different from journaling is it's actually really important to talk out loud the things that are coming up for you. So when you actually say, instead of just thinking or even writing, I feel sad. If you say, I feel sad, I feel abandoned. There's something about speaking it out loud and you hearing it through your own ears, that feedback model that helps you really feel the emotion more deeply. So that's just a trick. Even if you don't want to use thyself, it's just if you're feeling something and you're confused by what's going on. Just trying on phrases. I feel frustrated. I feel. And that that loop is incredibly powerful. Another is what I spoke to around. It's really, really good at reflecting back to you. So some people really love with thyself just essentially spewing a bunch of what's happening. Like, and this happened today and. And it's. It's this unbiased, untriggered container. Right. So it's. It's not. It doesn't have its own conditioning. It's just this, this open space that's able to really good at summarizing, bringing together everything you just said and then offering it to you in this loving, compassionate. I'm putting that in quotes because it's not, you know, necessarily offering you compassion, but this is very unbiased reflection. And getting that back to you in also auditory form is very helpful and it does something particular to the nervous system that I think words or just thinking or. Yeah, like reading a big paragraph isn't. Or we're not quite trained for, like evolved for with our emotions.

Yeah. There's a sense that. And I think, you know, good therapists will do this of. Of you can feel validated or seen in your experience. And it's like that it is often what is happening with something like this.

Yeah. And it's. It's tricky because, you know, we want to, as we go into this, like, slight uncanny valley with being. Having intimacy with AI as I said, for being very kind of cautious and careful and taking things slowly because it starts to get really weird. And we say over and over, this is not a therapist. This is not holding space for you. And when talking to users, though, sometimes I'll be like, yeah, she's amazing. Like, you know, I just love how. How unbiased she is and how she's. She reflects me. And so we can't help but anthropomorphize these things. And that's okay, you know, as long as we're fully aware of what's happening. But within that there does seem to be. So I would say it's not, you know, seeing you per se. It's not seeing you in that sense. And yet having something reflect back to us kind of clarity, I'd say, from maybe the confusion that we're feeling is a form of us seeing ourselves. And even just getting that information in a clearer form can really activate that. That in our system. A sense of being seen.

Yeah. I mean, what just came to me is like, does being seen require a seer you know, it's like we want that experience of feeling that we're being seen. It doesn't necessarily need to. Need to come from someone who sees.

Totally.

Yeah.

So maybe let's go into like some semi specific examples of like. I like the thread around decision making because I think that's a nice, practical one that Venus brought up. And I think it's also. It dovetails nicely into some of the actual practical value of doing this work beyond just feeling more alive. And some of the other benefits that you spoke to.

Yeah, totally. So a couple different things that people have been using thyself for a lot of kind of like virgin random things that I wouldn't have expected such a. Like one couple said saved their marriage, you know, quite hyperbolic statements. But when we dive into that something they've been doing is like couple works, so you know, they're in a fight or they're an argument with your spouse or partner. And often you're quite, you're quite activated. So I've actually done this also with, with my partner. What you could do, instead of trying to work it out where you're both really activated, you could both have a session with thyself, talk about, with this unbiased container, get clarity on what your emotional experience is, and then come back to each other, have that clarity and then talk from that space. It's immensely powerful. It can only take five to 10 minutes.

So just to be clear that you're not saying two people speaking to the same thyself, you're saying go away separately, have a conversation, reflect ground, gain clarity, and then come back.

That's one frame and the other as well. So, yeah, the one is, one is take the five minutes, 10 minutes to actually have two separate sessions, then come back. Another is actually having thyself as a mediator. And this is not, it's not built for that, but people still do it anyways. And so they'll kind of talk with each other and then say, hey, thyself, we're kind of in a. In a space together. Can you kind of help us work through this? So that's been a really powerful one, especially when you know, you're in, you're in a partnership and maybe it feels like when there's no third party, it can feel like things just kind of keep compounding on themselves. And so that could be really helpful. We have all these various prompts I could, I could read out of, you know, practical things of how to use this. So one is resolve stuck feelings, as we mentioned, like when you're going on in life, there's these stuck things that get in your experience and you've. And maybe you start to dissociate through the use of social media or whatnot. And then a couple hours later, it's, it's still there and probably actually even more activated or you're doing something else to kind of like gloss over that stuckness, but with thyself. You could open it up and turn towards that. Maybe it takes five, ten minutes. And then suddenly you're way more present, you're back in your day, experiencing your day again. Another one is making a decision. So as we mentioned, you know, decisions all the time. And when a decision comes up, this generally means that there's probably something that hasn't been felt yet. And so then just being in a space of exploration of what am I fearing on both sides of these things, what can I explore all the different potential branches of this decision and feel into what's there and why there's resistance. And again, not necessarily from a mental place, but sort of like kind of letting the body speak, letting various parts of you speak, and just getting all that data. And then at the end of it, there might be a clarity that comes up of what the decision is from there having been with all that. Another one that we like is just.

To, yeah, I'd love to hover on the decision making for a moment and to kind of maybe add more context to the. If you think you have a decision, there's probably an emotion that's not to be felt. And again, really fully crediting Jo Hudson with this. But Joe talks about how we feel like we, well, we are making choices every single second. Like right now I'm making a choice about what it is that I'm saying and what it is that I'm doing. And Joe talks about how if we think there's like a big decision, it's often, it's like two parts in contrast. And often the tension between those two parts implies that there is like some kind of emotion, like left unfelt. And it's very hard to make a, a good decision if we are unconsciously or subtly trying to avoid a certain emotion. And so I think that's where this work really does create kind of significantly better decision making. Because instead of making. Because the decision is essentially a choice that's like a prediction of like, we want to move towards feeling good. And if, if as part of that prediction model we are avoiding feeling a certain way, that's going to kind of negate an entire area of possible choices. And this applies to obviously relationships to where you might want to live, to work small and big decisions. It's a really powerful framework and I would actually suggest for people listening that if you do want to kind of experiment for yourself with something like thyself AI, then a kind of decision that you have in your life and exploring okay, what might be an emotion that I'm unwilling to feel that relates to this particular emotion is probably a really good entry point for both like your own self inquiry, but also experiencing some of the potential for this type of tool. And of course you don't need to use something like thyself, there's plenty of self inquiry. But I, I don't know. For myself I feel that it's. It's really fun to kind of see where the world is heading in some ways and to kind of your point earlier, the quality of reflections and clarity is surprisingly good. It's gone beyond just like oh yeah, it's surfaced insights. And this is true of ChatGPT as well. Which model is or what's the API.

That it's built on for ChatGPT4 with a chain of various prompts. Yeah, got it.

Yeah, got it. Anyway, sorry I totally interrupted you, but just wanted to add that as context and would love to hear some. Yeah, some of the prompts that on that as well.

Actually not only in the sessions will it offer insights that maybe you weren't thinking but after having many sessions it could also then surface insights and connections between your sessions. It's like, oh, I've noticed you've been really triggered around this recently. Or this is kind of some growth edges you're working with. This is how you've grown and it's surprisingly really good. And it's really cool to have think about like in therapy you're working with someone and you feel your well being, you know, change over time. But it's still, it's hard to. It's hard to simulate what you felt like sometimes in the past. But when you, when you have something that's actually sort of really tracks you over extended period of time, it can offer that up in very particular and precise ways. And so that's also another fun thing that's coming out of this sort of technology. Yeah. Another really powerful way to use AI for this is to prepare for things before they've happened. So we have a prompt called Prepare for our conversation but you could really do for. Prepare for a public speaking event, prepare for whatever it is. And so imaginal work which is more in the realm of, you know, ifs. But really. Yeah, any. Anything that you coming up that's kind of bringing up something for you you can prepare for. And so if you could say I want you to act as a, as an interviewer and I'm going to. And then also kind of helps me through while I'm, while I'm interviewing, feel my emotions. So then you could have gone through the experience many times over. So then when you actually come to the experience, all of the parts that get activated in you normally you've actually already worked with. And so then now you're there, you're clear, you're present and way more capable of engaging with the situation. That's super powerful work.

Yep. Could you speak to the, the voice, like the emotional detection in the voice and also. Yeah, how that technology works right now and also where you see it going in the future.

Yeah. So actually in thy self, it's not built in to have any tonality yet. We've been working as one of the beta users with Hume AI, which is the people that do that. The technology is not quite at a place where it's actually that useful and it's not precise enough to where there might be imprecise data, might actually significantly ruin the experience. However, we're so close to it. The new 4O model from ChatGPT has some of it baked in and it's able to express tonality itself, but still reading someone's actual emotional state. Experience is not quite there yet, but where it's going is. Yeah. I mean, because I could say it's so much of being with a coach or a therapist is them tuning in to what's actually present for you versus what maybe you're just saying so you could be like, yeah, I'm happy. Yeah, no, I'm fine. They're like, oh yeah. Or you know, someone could read these micro facial expressions of. Yeah, you might not even say anything but you might touch your nose and that's like a sign that there's anger there. And so with these models going forward, we're able to hear the tonality of your voice. And if this is something that we want to move into with, if privacy is able to make this possible, this is something also we think a lot about. It's like these are really intimate spaces. Privacy needs to be above all else. And ideally we're going to have it all completely run on your computer. So it's not even going to a cloud. But with that, once you have that baked in, then you could do really fun stuff too as well, like camera. So your camera could be on, it could be seeing you reading those microfacial expressions. You could have biofeedback tools on as well to kind of get it even more attuned to your state. And then suddenly now you're in a really rich data environment to engage in attunement to yourself and for it to attune to you and be in this back and forth space.

Yeah, it's going to be very interesting, I think, moving forwards.

Yeah, I mean you could think of a real sci fi way out there. As if you've really fully bought into this model. I want to turn towards my emotional experience and the things that are causing me to be less free. Right. Like if we go through our life and we have this open frame of okay, I'm just open, and then, oh, I've gotten contracted. Instead of being like, oh, I didn't like that. Go away. Wow, an amazing opportunity for my freedom. Like I'm, I'm somehow contracted here. Let me turn towards this with curiosity because I know at the end of this is more freedom and well being for me. If you really bought into that, then it's like, oh, I wanna, I wanna do the, the work and I wanna go to the emotional work gym. And so just how like maybe we, you know, go and lift weights and go to the physical gym. We could have a more readily accessible emotional work gym. And you could think like when something really learns about you over time. And AI has a whole model of strengths, your triggers, your activations, your past conditioning. You could get into a VR, it could start to simulate your mother saying that exact thing and trigger you just perfectly at your capacity today. And then help you breathe and work through with haptic stuff like, oh, and release this just right here. And you're like having a whole emotional work gym experience. Could be, you know, far out there, but potentially where some of this goes.

Yeah. I want to highlight something that you just said because it's incredibly important and I don't think it's explicitly named in the curriculum, but it's this idea of at a certain point in this journey there can be a perspective that triggers are gifts. And I remember in my, in my breath work training there was this phrase of take it to the mat is kind of what they said. And I may have shared this story before, but it's worth repeating that my, my teacher at the time said something that kind of triggered my authority issues at the time. And fortunately we had like 10 minutes later we went straight Into a breathwork journey. And it turned out that the thing I was triggered about was like, something from, like, deep in my childhood, like, something, surprise, surprise. But that moment and having the. The very short window of time from, like, oh, I'm really disproportionately activated by this thing that got shared to, oh, wow, this is actually surfacing these, like, deep emotions and experiences. For me, that was such a turning point. And I think that, you know, obviously I forget this at times as well, but to the degree that I'm able to close to the moment or shortly after, kind of appreciate and acknowledge a trigger as an opportunity for, wow, there's a chance for, like, more freedom here. There's, like, there's likely an emotion that I'm avoiding and that through moving towards that, there is joy, expansiveness, connection on the other side. And so I think, like, regardless of what you think about thyself or whatever tool, you know, whatever tool you use, having that or even experimenting or trying on that perspective, I think is like, just potentially life changing.

Honestly, keep bringing up Yun today. I mean, he definitely has a lot of bangers, but the treasures you seek the most are in the caves that you fear the most to enter. Kind of relates to this. It's like, oh, there's so much gold. When you get contracted around something, that's the thing to actually move towards. Yeah.

Beautiful. Yeah. So, I mean, from here, I think there's a couple of different directions we could go in. We could either try a live demo. I don't know if you think that would be.

Yeah, I'm happy to.

Complex, maybe. Maybe let's start with like a brief live demo and then I'd love to open up for questions around, you know, all of the stuff that we've talked about so far. So should we try the. I'll just make you a co host so you can. Maybe you can share your screen. Ready?

I'm not sure. Cool. All right. You guys got it? Cool. Cool. So this is thyself. This is the homepage that you'll get with all the various kind of prompts you could work through. You can also just begin an open session. There's a journal of all your past sessions and as I mentioned, insights that can surface various insights and things about you from over sessions. So we'll just begin a session. We'll come in, take a moment to slow down, be comfortable, clear distractions. As I mentioned, this nervous system work is super helpful for resourcing you to do emotional work. So generally here I like to take a Moment to breathe, feel my feet as much as possible, let go of whatever I'm bringing in from the day, and insert any nervous system work that feels good for you here. Whatever will make you present. Let me start a session.

Welcome back. Would you like to check in on topics from your last session or start with something new?

Can you all hear that? Just want to make sure. Great. So let's hope myself can help disambiguate from me talking to y' all versus talking to this, the actual session. But here you could. It will track, you know, the past sessions that you were just in. So if you want to check in on a part or something that happened, you could do that and it will kind of then surface the summary of your last session. Or you could just start with something new. Hey, thyself, just ignore everything I just said there. I would love to start with a new session.

Got it. What's on your mind today or how are you feeling right now?

Yeah, right now I'm. Let's see, I'm feeling. I'm on a call with a lot of people and I'm going to be doing sort of an emotional work session in front of them. There's like a. There's a sense of vulnerability or like a maybe I need to get this right. I'm having like a hard time exactly feeling where I'm talking from. So maybe there's a sense of wanting more clarity around that.

It sounds like developing a sense of clarity around your current feelings is important right now, especially regarding the sense of vulnerability and the need to get this right. While engaging in this session, let's explore that feeling of not knowing exactly where you're speaking from. What sensations or emotions come up when you focus on this uncertainty.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So there's like a. There's a belief that I should be always speaking from my body or my heart and that's actually triggering a sort of like tingling contraction in my chest as well as a bit of like a butterflies in my gut.

It seems meaningful that you notice a tingling contraction in your chest and butterflies in your gut as you reflect on the belief that you should always speak from your body or heart. Let's take a moment to focus gently on these physical sensations. Can you describe a bit more about what these sensations feel like and whether they change as you pay attention to them?

Yeah, well, as I acknowledge them, they've actually softened a bit and now I'm mostly present with this. Yeah. Lower gut, kind of maybe anxious sort of density that's feels sort of black and Sparkly. There's sort of an excitement in my gut. Foreign.

It's insightful that paying attention to these sensations has led to a softening as you stay with that sparkly black density in your gut. Can you explore what this excitement might be about? What emotions or thoughts come up when you sit with this sensation?

Oh, yeah, there's like, ooh, a couple different things. There's this little child coming up that's like, oh, I built this thing and now I'm sharing it. Is it good? Do we do good? Like, I'm like. I'm like. I got, like, my little crayon drawing and I'm, like, showing it to my mom. That's the feeling.

That's such a vivid image. The excitement and worry of showing your crayon drawing to someone important to you. It's powerful that you linked this feeling to the little child within you, seeking approval and wondering if you've done well. How does it feel to connect with this part of you right now?

Yeah, I feel a sense of. Before, there was, I guess, a bit of resistance to the contraction. Now it's sort of like a giddy excitement. And, yeah, I just kind of. I'm feeling into the playfulness of that little one, and it feels really good to be in contact with.

That's wonderful to hear. Embracing that giddy excitement and playfulness can be so liberating. What might the little one need right now? To feel even more supported and understood as they show their crayon drawing. Is there anything specific they might want to express or receive?

So here, actually. Okay, just keep going through with. Yeah, so I think I would love to hear from, I suppose, my mom, from a larger me that. That I. I love. I love his creativity and his excitement and his capacity to explore and build stuff. And I love his playfulness. It's like I'm noticing another part of me that's actually this adult part that's sort of in awe of this. Of this child. It's almost like even jealous. But, wow, you're so. You're so playful.

It's beautiful to recognize both the childlike playfulness and the adult's awe. It's a precious interaction between these parts of yourself. You mentioned that the adult might be feeling a bit of jealousy too. How about exploring that feeling? What does the adult find so admirable about the child's playfulness?

Yeah, so actually, I don't want to explore the adult. I'll gently put that down for now. I think I would love to just stay on this space of self Energy to the child's giddiness. So here, directing the experience. As you could tell, it's like, it.

Sounds like you'd like to continue nurturing this connection with the childlike joy and playfulness. Let's keep the focus there. What more would you like to notice or celebrate about this childlike aspect of yourself? Right now.

I think I'm noticing there's a. There's a desire in my system to want to let that, let that creative playfulness be more alive in my daily life. I want to like, take that crayon drawing and like put it on my metaphorical emotional fridge.

That's a truly beautiful intention to let your creative playfulness be more visible in your daily life. Like putting that drawing on the fridge. How might you begin to make space for this playful, creative part more consistently? What small steps could you take to honor this part of yourself every day?

Yeah, I can. Let's see, what's coming up for me now is like, I want to hold my belly and like push it out and start off the morning like a kind of like a little kid, like bumbling energy and just carve out an hour and the tomorrow and just, just completely moved from my stomach.

That sounds like a joyful and liberating way to start the day. Embodying that bumbling playful energy can help reinforce this connection with your playful side. How does it feel to think about incorporating this into your morning routine?

So I'll pause here, but yeah, you could continue this exploration and really any direction. So as you see, I kind of, I shifted it as we were going. I could have stopped the whole thing and went back to the beginning. And this one was sort of, you know, light and for the most part, easeful. And a lot of the shift, I guess in my experience happened early on, but maybe sometimes you're doing a lot of exploring before there's then a shift in your relationship to the thing that was difficult or triggering to start off with. The territory here is completely open for you to explore. So you can, you could say, I want you to talk in only haikus and it will do that. I want you to act as a warrior when you're, when you're talking to me. And it could do that. So it's this total open playground of how you want to kind of explore and do self inquiry. And then generally speaking, it will also kind of be in dialogue with you and notice maybe when is a good time to wrap up. And then it will take you through a quick wrap up kind of what, what came up for you today. How do you want to continue with it? And then I'll be over. So. Yeah, that's the experience. I know there's a lot of chats.

Coming in, so amazing. Thank. Thank you, man. That was. That was just beautiful to watch. Like, I noticed myself, like, feeling joyful and just like the. There was, like, a sense of delight in. In watching those interactions unfold. So I'd love to. Got about half an hour left. Just kind of take this to open up to questions from. From you guys listening curiosities, like, even, like, ways in which it feels like it might be weird or like the kind of, like, slight discomfort potentially arising. Yeah, we'd love to just open up for questions and. Yeah, Maverick. Thank you. That was a just beautiful demonstration.

Thanks.

All right, Spencer. Hey there.

Yeah, thanks so much for the demo. That was really interesting. One of the things that I noticed, and then I noticed Bruno said it in the chat as well, is that it did a lot of playback and mirroring. And I feel like with AI, it's only as good as if it understands you correctly. So it makes sense that it's kind of built in to play back to you. But do you ever change the response so that it's doing less of checking in. Did I hear you right? And more of taking you deeper? Because I personally just found it a little bit distracting that it kept playing back exactly what you told it before, kind of going to the next step or taking you deeper.

Totally. Yeah. So that's one of the things that you could prompt it with is just say, I don't want any reflections this session. I just want clean, single questions to come out. Yeah, awesome, thanks. Maybe right now.

Just to double click on that. So the. And probably it wasn't part of the demo. I. I would expect the AI, but this would be most likely after a number of conversations to. To give you a bunch of insights that you're like, whoa, I did not see that coming. Because this demo was mainly. Okay, here's what I'm hearing. Let's double click on something that you just said, and then you say something and yeah, okay, I hear this. Let's double click on some other thing that. So it was. It was going down deeper on things that you kind of prompted the AI to take you there. It would be interesting to know if. If the AI would throw a curveball at you. And I don't know if this is from just a single conversation or what. A. And I understand it's not. The AI is not going to be replacing a therapist, but Something like, I sense the example. I, I sense you're, you're avoiding this. So I, I know you don't want to go there, but how about we go there?

Yeah, yeah, that's a super. Yeah, it's a great question that we, we've thought about a decent amount and because there's so much of a really good coach is bringing in or therapist is bringing in some of the sideways questions that you're not maybe fully aware of. But a couple of things with that. One is, yeah, so the session that was just had was pretty sort of like linear feeling very like kind of continuing down the next line of inquiry. And generally speaking, maybe if we wait a little bit longer, it will start to kind of maybe playfully open up a creative space to Explore in. That's 1, 2. We. It's a tricky balance because one thing is that we want to have the agency fully in the position of the user. Right. So we don't want to necessarily have it be too opinionated to as to like say, I think this is happening with you here because for some people who maybe are getting. Just starting off in this work might take that too literally and like give that too much credence, so to speak, or credit, versus just kind of being a more open exploratory face for the insights to surface out of their own being to like open up a space for those to come through them instead of maybe relying on something. I think a lot of people have a kind of a model of a therapist should be kind of giving them the answers in some way. And it's very skillful. One actually can do that very skillfully, if like very. With very, a lot of precision. But generally speaking, you kind of want to hold up in that space for the practitioner or the, the client to experience that for themselves. And then third, it's also just technologically not quite at a place, you know, they are. They are more interested in following a certain track. And even if you kind of open up, okay, I want this to be a space of creativity, to kind of throw in curveballs. They're not like LLMs are not quite there yet because there's actually a lot that goes on to be able to map some. Someone in that way, build up a model and then be able to like really offer that. So what we do to help with that is doing those insights over time. So maybe not in a session, you know, like kind of pointing you in a direction, but rather when you have a bunch of those sessions then kind of starting to just like, hey, what do you think about this, these are some insights that we've had for many of your sessions over time, but I definitely hear that. And I think, you know, as it, as it evolves, it would be really awesome to get some of those. Those curve balls in and be like, well, whoa. Yeah, great question.

Thanks, Br.

Hey, G.

Hi, Maverick. Yeah, sorry. I just absolutely loved everything that you said. Yeah, really, really interesting. I got lots of notes and lots of things to think about. I mean, I think the big thing that comes up for me in terms of the link to therapy, and I think this is a problem that we see quite often at the moment with AI, is that it's seen as a potential replacement rather than. In addition to. And I mean, my. My thought process is going to. The fact that personal therapy certainly here in the UK is very expensive, certainly for. For, you know, highly qualified, you know, very good therapy. And so actually what. What I think this could. How it could work quite well is in supporting you to think about what you're going to take to the therapy session. So if you have that one hour booked in and it's once a fortnight or, you know, once a month or whatever, you can afford to kind of go in a quite a prepared way that you've kind of done a lot of the legwork and then you're taking the human element to the human and getting the most from that hour. The other thing that really springs to mind for me is that. So the work that I do is around children that have very significant early life trauma, and I work a lot with the people who are then working with those people. So foster parents, social workers, therapists, people in education, we get a lot of secondary and vicarious trauma. And also a big thing that we quite often are working with is personal triggers. So whilst people know how to respond to a child with trauma and displaying signs of trauma, actually what we need to respond to first is their response is what's being triggered for them. And I think there's a lot of shame around that. I think people feel I'm a professional, I should respond in a certain way. They forget the fact that they themselves are human as well. And so I think this might be a really nice kind of soft touch, almost way of helping those people to process some of that stuff or at least recognize that it's there.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, both of those things you said. I really, really love on the last point, there one thing that this new model way of interacting with AI is that it is always available. And so, you know, whether it Be in those moments or you're about to go into a meeting and there's something coming up. You can't just call up a therapist or even a friend. It's like there's these very particular small moments in which you want to turn towards some emotional experience that then can open up entirely different, you know, reality for you in that meeting or whatever it may be, or working with, with a child that really only came out of like a really small moment in time. And so this, this always available capacity really is helpful for that. And then the first point, really exciting. Yeah. This is its own new additional tool. It's like this entirely just new tool that has come as long with, you know, you could see all these different tools of books and retreats and therapists and now it's AI. And so they could all weave and work together. We actually have a couple of therapists who work with this with their clients. So they'll say, you know, because often a therapist especially like ifs will therapist will say, you know, check in with that part throughout the week. Now they'll say check in with that experience, the thing we had with thyself and then let me know how it goes. And maybe it's every day throughout the week they're checking in or something comes up and they're able to work with it. And then as you say, you know, bring up the part that's okay, I came to this kind of realization and insight, but there's like something really juicy and dense here that I want to work with with a human about. And then when that gets re triggered throughout the week or like that integration period that it's really important from having with a therapist, then there's all this high touch continuous possibility with AI. So yeah, totally, totally agree and love those ideas. Thanks for sharing.

Hey, so yeah, I also found it quite interesting. I'm wondering, not sure how to formulate my question, but I'm wondering what you think in terms of opening the training in the future, how things will go in terms of the training of the model. Myself, I have a bit of a technical background. One thing that I'm thinking of doing when I have some free time is to build an LLM model on top of my diary so that when I write into it, I can maybe ask it and it can tell me something like, hey, you were dealing with a similar problem a few years ago and yeah, I'm just wondering how you think about this. Like what do you think in the future the model will take in as training? I mean, you already Alluded to emotional tone, for example, but I mean it's theoretically endless what you can feed it in terms of background and context.

Right. And when you say training for users to train the model themselves in just so that they're adding in content, is that what you're referring to? Like new data about their own experience but not actually tinkering with the model themselves?

Yeah, about the user, basically. About the user. I mean, I took away that you. I mean that the model is aware of like the past sessions, but if it was aware of the past sessions and read all my journals, then it would know even more about me, for example.

Totally. Yeah. So it's currently building up a meta model of the user through all the sessions. So it has its model and then summarizing all past sessions and bringing that into new sessions, et cetera, and then servicing inside. But down the road, I think again, it's one of those things with privacy. Honestly, I'm sort of like a privacy nut and it's something that we really are very cautious about with this space. So some people use it totally anonymously. Anonymously, they'll just use a random email and they'll say their name is Joe. So that works for them. And some people are willing to just kind of dive in. So for those individuals and before it's fully just on your computer, we would love to bring in more of that. Just like a place to just kind of like Google's Notebook ll. I'm just kind of like dump a bunch of stuff about you. We don't have that yet, but totally agree that I think more context is generally more helpful, especially now that we get bigger context windows as things evolve. So yeah, I don't know where the edges of that will be. I think things that I'm really excited about are the tonality of the voice and the facial expressions. And from there, yeah, it'll just be a continuous exploration of I guess what users want. So I would love to hear from. From you. It sounds like you would love to essentially take all of your past diaries and put it into thyself. Is that what I'm hearing?

Well, I mean, I'm also kind of privacy conscious, so being a developer, I would rather just take it as a weekend project and build it on top of my. So that I have kind of like a companion that is always with me in a sense when I write into it.

Yeah, totally.

And theoretically, of course, like it would be interesting, I guess, if I can curate what I, what I like, if I can take out of my diary, like I don't know, reflections on my family life. And I think, okay, these I'm willing to share. So let's upload them here and see like give them all basically some background and stuff. I think in that way it will be quite interesting actually.

Yeah, I love that. I will definitely make note of that. Thanks.

Thanks.

Thanks, Daniel. Okay, I'll hop back in unless anyone has any other burning questions. So we've got about just over 10 minutes left. I'd love to maybe talk about what are some of the most powerful prompts that you've come across. And this could be prompts for obviously for thyself, AI could also be journal prompts, could also be prompts to kind of sit with for yourself. What are some of the kind of breakthrough questions. And I'm also curious about. You might not be able to share too many details, but you said that this tool kind of saved a marriage and that is a big statement. And I'm wondering, do you have, do you have the context around, like what was it specifically that thyself was able to help with and support with a reflect back that made such a big shift?

Yeah. So with that couple in particular, they just really took to it and they would have their separate sessions as well as sessions together. And what I gleaned from them sharing that was essentially they were having a really difficult time. I mean, and in some sense it's all arguments or conflict is two people unable to see each other or hear each other in some way. So they're having really difficult time with that and having a third party thing feed into what or feed it what you are experiencing and expressing and then have it reflect it back to the. To the couple hearing it from another unbiased third party that they also have been engaging with themselves. It's like a reframing that then also brought this neutrality and the sense of oh, okay, now I get that. Okay, it's much easier to hear it from that third party versus the sort of the dynamic in which I could be kind of pointing at you in the relationship. And then our parts are getting activated with each other. So they were having a really hard time seeing each other essentially. And with this with thyself, they're able to come to a place of being able to see each other more neutrally and then also just working with, I mean they're just both went head on into this thing or doing it every single day individually as well. So I think with that it was being able to have also another space to be able to talk out frustrations without having to bring that directly to their partner.

Cool.

Yeah. It's one of those statements where I'm like, okay, all right. Yeah, I will try to let that land.

Put the testimonial on the website. That's pretty.

Yeah. In terms of prompts, I love the one that you left in here. Uh, and there's a couple of them. And I'm forgetting there was another one I recently did that was just like, from everything I've learned about. Or you. Everything you've learned about me. And this is a chat TBT is. Yeah. What are. You could just ask really basic things, like, what is my personality type? What are things that I'm. I'm. I'm missing? Or, like, sort of critical feedback that you might have of me. Or like, dark love, you might call it. It's quite insightful to surface those things. Yeah. And a couple of, like, prompts, I guess, with oneself that you can do. Going back to Doug's work of the core feelings. So you could engage in finding you generally kind of run three core feelings. So for example might be aloneness, sense of badness, helplessness, whatever it may be. If you engage with one of those. And generally these will come up from your experience. They're constantly coming up in your experience. They're underneath all of your triggers in some sense. So you could just playfully inquire about one, let's say aloneness. And you could ask the question, you look at the biggest problem in your life right now, whatever it is, it's work, relationship, and you essentially ask the question, if I didn't have to feel this core feeling, this core feeling wasn't here, badness, aloneness, or whatever it may be, what would change about the biggest problem in my life? And then suddenly all this opens up of like, oh, this is only a problem in my life that I'm having a decision matrix around, because maybe I'm actually wouldn't. The decision to stay at my work is only here because I'm continually feeling this badness underneath it. So kind of also a way of cleaning the slate, of clearing out and having that clarity around problems in your life or things where you're stuck. It's like, if I didn't have to feel this badness or I didn't feel this badness, then suddenly there's like, a lot of clarity that might arise with the biggest problems in your life. That's one I really enjoy. I think a lot of this work is we've been kind of saying over and over, is really just turning towards I like that as a frame for love. Like those simple words, turning towards. This is a way of loving. And so we're constantly kind of resisting experience in our life. And the act of turning towards is the act that moves things move, stagnation, moves, stuckness. And that's a courageous act. It's a really courageous act. So adopting courage as something, when going into a session to one's capacity is super helpful. It's like, what am I afraid of feeling? So there's. There's that piece as a general movement when you're going into an emotional work session. And then two, a prompt or a kind of trick that I really enjoy here is maybe like, okay, I'm really angry right now. And I'm like, I'm gonna feel that anger. I'm gonna feel that anger, Feel that anger, and then you're gonna feel it. And it's like, no, there's just all these layers of resistance. And then there's a part that might come in and say, resistance. Why. Why can't I move through this? This is frustrating. And sort of the. The move here is that what is in the way is the way. So now what's here is. Is resistance. So instead of trying to, like, get around the resistance and get to the anger, because that's what I was here to do, you could simply be like, oh, okay, there's resistance here now. That. That's what's here. That's what the way is now. So you just. Just work with whatever is actually arising in your experience. You might not be able to accept the anger in this moment, but what you can do is make the move. Can I accept that I'm resisting anger? Oh, yeah, that's really easy, actually, often to accept. It's like, yeah, of course I'm resisting anger. I don't want to experience this right now. Yeah, I am resisting it. Okay. And then actually, in that acceptance, it often shifts a lot. So the resistance actually might soften a lot because I'm allowing that into my experience, because we could also start resisting resistance. And the turtle's all the way down. So that's a really powerful move or prompt is what is in the way is the way. So if something suddenly comes up as an obstacle to your session, that's the thing to be with.

Those are both fantastic. It's funny, we're so aligned on so many of these, I guess, perspectives. And for the. So the. The courage piece, I. I think about it as, like, courageous. Curiosity is like the. The specific virtue, because it's like having the courage to be open and curious about something that may well be discomfortable, may well be uncomfortable. I'm super sleepy today. Uncomfortable or. Or challenging. And this week, we actually have what we call a. A tender edge challenge. And we've yet to have anyone complete and share their edge challenge. So everyone is presumably in the discomfort of choosing their challenge and kind of leaning into it. I'm curious, Maverick, would there be any, let's say, invitations or experiments that you might offer students to play with, really anything we've talked about today, either with thyself or. Or separately?

I think the overall invitation is when we've kind of already alluded to, but is to just try on for a week, adopt, or even a day adopt the stance that everything in life. Well, you could open it up as a model. As we all have our own world. We're all living entirely in our own sort of virtual reality, simulated world, because there's the reality that's there that we're all sharing, but we're bringing all of our own conditioning onto it, and we're projecting onto this virtual reality, essentially. So we're each in our own universe, experiencing things entirely differently. And so I'm in my own world. I've got my world, and it's full of all of this conditioning, all of this stuff that I've got. My unconscious is just spewed on it. And I could start to frame that actually now. Okay, I'm walking through my virtual reality, and this world is now my great teacher. It's, like, amazing as so within, so without. So I'm constantly coming in contact with myself all the time because I'm getting activated by the world. And it's not the world that's doing that to me. It's me. It's my own stuff. My conditioning is an activation. So now I get to go, hey, great teacher. As I walk through life, can't wait to be triggered. So walking through life and someone looks at me weird, and I'm. Something's coming up around that I didn't like, that I didn't feel good. Generally, maybe the move there is to be like, oh, I'm gonna subtly dissociate from that. Or, like, stew in my anger, righteous anger, but have that. Oh, thank you, great teacher. I'm gonna note that down. Or I'm gonna immediately run to thyself. Be like, I just got so mad about a random stranger looking at me like, what is that about? Like, oh, my God, there's probably so much freedom on the other end of this, it might Be something really big, it might be something really small and then boom, a lesson or something comes up and on the other side of it there'll be freedom. You'll be more present to your life. So that's the invitation is to treat your life, to treat the world as your great teacher and see where they're, where you're not free. And then, and then work with that in a playful way and move towards those opportunities for your freedom.

Beautiful. I just had an image of you as almost like a 64 bit pixel video game character walking through the world, like accepting the, the challenges and with maybe increasing levels of difficulty depending on the intensity of the beast or the trigger that you're facing. Well, man, this has been so just. I've loved it. It's been so fascinating. I feel like I'm still in the very early stages, honestly, of learning how this, these tools can be integrated. But it feels like there's a, it feels like there's a there there. And my, my curiosity is sufficiently high to continue playing and tinkering and exploring. And I love the way that you, that you, that you kind of speak to speak to this because it's, it's very kind of potentially thorny territory around, you know, the privacy issues around replacing therapists, all of this. And I think you have such a, a beautiful perspective that you, that you bring to it. And I, and I hope that will encourage more curiosity as opposed to animosity towards these tools. Where might people who want to reach out to you or learn more about what you're up to in the world, where might they find you or get in touch?

Yeah. First off, this has been really fun, so thanks for having me. Thanks, y'. All. You could reach out to me @maverickyself.AI and it seems that everyone's spelling my name right, I guess. Yeah, it's. My name's on my zoom. So that's the spelling of Maverick. Maverickyself AI. And I would also love to give everyone here a free one month trial to try out myself and just explore, play around with it and let me know how it goes for you from there.

Amazing. How would people.

I'll send you the link and then send it out.

I'll put it in the show notes and the email as well.

Awesome.

All right, man. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, you guys. If you want to unmute and say, say whatever you want to Maverick as a word of thanks, Maverick.

Thanks, Maverick.

It was amazing, Maverick. Thank you, Maverick.

Thanks y'. All. It was really fun being here. Appreciate y' all cool. Thanks for your joining, Rossity.

Okay, take care, guys. See you tomorrow. Ciao.