Surviving Being A Child Star, the Therapies That Helped Him Heal & Why He Believes in Aliens | Wil Wheaton
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When I was a kid, I just wasn't listened to. My feelings were invalidated. My ideas and opinions were mocked and humiliated. And my agency was completely taken away from me. And I was upset. I was scared and lonely and anxious all the time. All of that built up in me. It's got to go somewhere. That kid never had anybody to talk to. I will be here for that kid.

Every now and then, I feel some version of me, seven-year-old me who just wants to be a kid. There's 10-year-old me who has realized what is happening to him. And then there's teenage me who is furious at what is going on, just desperately wants to fix it all.

I get into conversations with them. I listen to what they say in the ways that our parents never heard us. If you want to tie this back into the idea of quantum reality, of reality being these layers, I feel like I'm really reaching through time. I'm finding that younger version of me. And I'm saying like, I am so sorry, man. I hate that this happened to you. I will listen to you. Let's go do something fun.

Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik. I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. Today we have a very funny follow-up to last week's episode. Some of you may remember that when we interviewed Judy Greer, Wil Wheaton actually showed up about 10 minutes before she did, thinking that we were going to record an episode with him, which we actually did record, and that's what we're going to air today.

He was very excited about the fact that Judy Greer wanted to talk about how funny it was that they literally just missed paths and that he showed up on the wrong day. But today... We're not just going to be talking about Judy Greer because we get into some...

metaphysical, emotional, spiritual aspects of Wil Wheaton? - Not even the way I would describe this episode because Wil Wheaton is one of the most logical, intelligent, rational people that I know. He's incredibly well-versed in all realms of science,

math, physics. He's a genuine, actual geek. He literally wrote a book called Just a Geek. His new book is called Still Just a Geek. He knows so many things, and yet... He is also very attached to the scientific method. If it is not science, as he says, he is not interested. And then... And then we start talking about all of the things that Will has experienced in his creative life.

his psychological work he's done on himself, the work that he's done to understand being the child of emotionally immature parents, being the child of a narcissist, the trauma that he's experienced. And so many aspects of his experience are touched by the metaphysical, the transcendental, things he can't explain, magic. The fact that time is not linear, that all the parts of ourselves that we've ever experienced are with us in the present moment. We talk about

parenting our child selves and how that can radically change your life. He talks about EMDR and the mechanics of it and explains that he doesn't understand how it works and yet it works.

One of the things that I love about this conversation, which I think you'll all enjoy as well, is that many of us frame our lives as skeptics, as people who want to understand things, want to experience things that we can describe, want to see it, to believe it. And Will really allows us kind of a window into understanding how many things that we experience differ.

do not only have a scientific basis, but that there is a science to the things that we also can't explain that we experience. Yes, we also get into our place in the universe, potential intelligent life and what that means for us. We're also going to talk to Will about some of the experiences that he went through in

writing the annotated memoir. So still just a geek is his memoir. Just a geek with every single page, having annotations, revisions, corrections, places he needed to clarify new realizations he's had about himself. We talk about that. Also, he's got a new podcast. It's story time with Will Wheaton. It's a weekly audio book podcast. It's a weekly audio book podcast.

It features stories that Will loves and some from authors that you don't yet know that you love, some who are being narrated for the very first time. So very excited to talk about It's Storytime with Will Wheaton. Still just a geek, but also just all things metaphysical and scientific. Let's welcome back to The Breakdown, Will Wheaton. Break it down.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. We were just briefly talking off camera about how much you love dogs. Yes. I love dogs. We have a dog here who has made an appearance on the podcast. Can we talk briefly about telepathic communication with pets? Oh, yeah, for sure. How do you feel about that? You said you miss your dog all the time. I do. And I said, I bet he misses you too. And you looked at me like, is she fucking with me? Well, he's dead. Yeah.

So that's why I thought, like, maybe he doesn't miss me because he's dead. But maybe in dog heaven, he's like, I would love it if dad would come throw the ball for me. I mean, in dog heaven, he doesn't miss you because there's so much fun stuff going on? There's so much cool shit for him to do. Yeah. Yeah. We've talked kind of, you know, about a lot of esoteric things here. Yeah. But one of the things that we've been interested in getting into... So there's this...

I think he's a doctor. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. Rupert Sheldrake. Yeah. Who did these studies where dogs seem to know when their owner's going to come back. And he's tried to quantify it. And there's been some discussion of like, is it that the smell of the owner essentially has a time course in the dog's nose? And when it wears out after a certain time...

The dog knows that smell is gone. Where is he? We got to refresh it. I got to reload the smell. Correct. Interesting. Yeah. So I don't like telepathy pseudoscience, but I absolutely believe that our dogs and our cats, that they understand things from us that we don't know they understand because their senses work differently than ours do. And like, I mean, I know that...

When Anne comes home and Marlo and I are in a room together, I know that she's come home because the second she's in the driveway, Marlo's up. And I'll say, oh, is mom home? And she's like, there she goes. Right? Yeah, and I think that so much also from dogs is based on like they're so –

- They're creatures of habit and sort of like expecting things. Marlo is 13, I think, and there are things that she now expects.

And if they don't happen when those times arrive. And the changing of the clocks messes with her. Totally. Because her, it's time to go for an evening walk, happens when the sun's in a particular place in the sky. Right, of course. And I'm like, sorry, babe, it's suddenly 5 o'clock. We're going early. She's like, I don't think daylight savings should exist. And I'm like, babe, I am with you. I'm absolutely with you. Pick a time and stay there, man. The fact that Marlo knows when Anne is home, it could be, oh,

acute hearing right or oh maybe the the wheels are in the driveway the door clicks etc yeah so the rupert sheldrake experiments they randomized all of it right where it couldn't be the same car right it was walking home sometimes and coming home at different times and there were results above the mean that said there's something going on we don't get significant significantly significantly

That bothers me so much. That bothers me so much. I feel like a 19th century scientist going, I don't know what that radiation thing is, but it's there. I know it's there. You can't see it. No, it isn't. No, no, no. I'm telling you it's there. Why does it bother you? Because it shouldn't happen. It bothers me because it doesn't make sense. They shouldn't be able to do that. Well, what is the should? That's where I think the most interesting part lies is because it hasn't been...

Double blind studied? Yeah, it requires me to accept the science of in this study, like, has this been peer reviewed? Was it published? Yeah, I don't even... That's nuts. Like, this is all too much for me, you guys. I have to fundamentally recalibrate my understanding of my relationship with my dogs. But what if you started to do that? That's a very interesting rabbit hole. And speaking to two people who are into sci-fi, that those worlds are, you know...

just like a sliver apart of what is possible and what if X is possible, then what does the world look like? My whole, as long as I can remember my introduction to, huh, I wonder if that could be possible was the delightful celebration of pseudoscience, um, uh, in search of, I loved their whole, like, this is probably fake, but

But what if it wasn't? I love that, right? I always, in the 90s, listening to like crazy Art Bell stuff, I was like, none of this is real. But it's so fun to pretend that it is. Like we were all wrong about that and had no idea where that was headed. I'm looking this up. Yeah, but just the idea. Sorry. Sorry, listeners at home. I'm crashing in the microphone. That idea that this thing that is just like...

has always, always been, like, not a thing, could somehow be a thing, shakes my fundamental acceptance of what is and isn't a thing.

But that was what I would argue is actually good science is the what if this could be a thing. Now, let's weed it out. Yeah. But keep ourselves open to the possibility that we may be proved that wrong. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we have to. There's I feel like there are very bad actors in this world who very much exploit people who want to keep an open mind. I very much want to keep an open mind.

But I'm almost 53 years old. I've been exposed to so much bullshit in my life that it's not that I'm rejecting your personal opinion, Internet wacko. I have heard your stupid argument and I rejected it before you were born. Yeah. So like I don't need to engage in this sort of thing.

That said, someone's like, man, check this out. It's crazy. My kid's just about to start his PhD. And he comes to me with this stuff. He's a biosystems engineer. And he comes to me with this stuff about the things he's working on. I'm just like, that feels like a story I wrote. That does not feel like a real thing. Right before Mime gets to the double blind of it all and Rupert Sheldrake. No, I'm not doing that. You might. Okay.

There are bad actors, as you say. Yeah. People who take advantage and are really charlatans. Yes. However, there is a story about a pet psychic...

Pet intuitive, call it, who energetically, telepathically connects with animals and has profound moments of insight that they couldn't possibly have any other way. Now, is this studied? Hold on. Hang on a second.

I love your creative brain. I love the way that you create truth out of fiction. Here's my... I reject the fiction of it all. Okay, so... It's maybe not proven in the purely scientific method yet. I think what Will and I would agree, and I really feel kind of like squarely in between two perspectives because... Because...

The notion of a pet psychic is also like you kind of, you stopped me there. However, one second. I stopped you there only because of the wording and the connotations that you have with the wording because of bad actors that have happened in the past. In the 18th century, the great spirit mediums were actually just very skilled cold readers.

They were unbelievably skilled at telling people what they wanted to hear. They were remarkable at it. Or intuiting. Yes. Intuiting, right? It's a thing we do as actors, too. We just, you know, someone comes in and you're like, that person codes dangerous. I don't know why. That person codes really fun and silly and I kind of want to go be around them. Like, we just know. We learn to pick up. Trauma survivors learn how to just scan things all the time. So I think that there might be...

I feel like there is a heightened awareness thing. And generally, if we don't understand something, we can assign a meaning to it that makes us feel better.

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That's prettylitter.com slash break to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. Prettylitter.com slash break. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details. We actually, we have many things that we want to talk to you about, but I'm appreciative of going in this direction because I think, well, I think it illustrates a lot of interesting points that we've sort of been dancing around.

So one of the interesting things, and we've dived very deep into the telepathy tapes, both the fascination that people have. I've read every single article in The Atlantic about why it's BS. Like, I get it. And the attack on facilitated communication is actually separate from a larger conversation about special abilities. One of the things that I'd love to talk to you about is that people who claim to have

extra sensory abilities. Okay. And that could be in the realm of telepathy. It could be in the realm of emotional sensitivity. It could be in the realm of, you know, hypersensitivity on a somatic level. Right. In many cases, these people have experienced trauma. They have experienced either a traumatic event.

Or they have been through something that changed them in ways that they all of a sudden, I'm putting that in quotes, all of a sudden have abilities. So I'm going to talk about one of our favorite people. We had Elizabeth Krohn on and she was a normal, happy housewife in the 80s, 87, 88, right?

was struck by lightning. And she was going to synagogue for her grandfather's yard site, holding an umbrella, not a religious person, like, was, you know, had no notion of, like, spiritual, esoteric anything, was literally holding an umbrella at the wrong time, right? Or the right time. So she's struck by lightning.

And she has since written a book called Changed in a Flash. And she wrote it with a professor of philosophy and religious studies, Jeffrey Kripal. And so they wrote this book. And what happened was, I'm just going to give you the nutshell. She was struck by lightning and...

as she recalls it, her shoes were blown off her feet. Like this we know to be true. Yeah. Like she really got struck by lightning. Yeah, yeah. Have you seen the people with the really cool fractal patterns down their bodies? Yeah, I'm like, maybe I would not mind getting hit by lightning if I could look like that for the rest of my life. Her brand new shoes blown off her feet. And the way she reports it, she got up, followed her kids into the synagogue and wondered why no one was speaking to her. And her kids were shrieking and screaming. They were like five and three.

And she turned around and looked in the parking lot, and her body was on the floor. Okay. And so, like, that's trippy. Yeah. So she then, you know, kind of underwent a near-death experience, which we do know, and there is absolutely scientific information about what happens with NDEs. There's some really interesting overlap with, like, the release of 5-MeO. It's really great stuff. So what happened was she...

She had an experience and came back. Yes. Came back from that experience. It was maybe a couple minutes. Uh-huh. But when she came back, she said, I was gone for two weeks. And everybody was like, no, you weren't. She was like, no, it was two weeks. And...

What started happening is she started seeing colors around people's heads. Okay. Like, colors. And this was not a woman who knew what auras were. Okay. She started, like, seeing colors. She had synesthesia, which can happen from something else. Like, great. All science. Everything's great. Right? We're in science land. Yeah. The colors around people's heads started freaking her out. She saw a black aura around someone's head and they died. Okay. Shortly after. And she's like, I wonder if that meant something. Yeah. But this is, like, a lady who...

had no framework for this. Okay. And what she said is that she received a download during this near-death experience...

that basically gave her an understanding of what you and I would describe as quantum mechanics. Time. You know, all things existing at once, all possibilities, all probabilities. A woman with no scientific background is all of a sudden, though, kind of spouting not only quantum mechanics, but also a religious and spiritual notion that gurus, mystics, Kabbalists have for thousands of years experienced through transcendental, usually transcendental meditation or drugs, you know. So...

The next thing that started happening is she started having crazy weird, they weren't dreams, they were visions. Okay. And she started seeing things like my favorite one and she would write them down and send them to herself in an email. She saw an airplane flying upside down, landing upside down in a body of water. Uh-huh. And she saw people standing on the wing and she said to her husband, I saw a plane upside down landing on the water. And he's like, that can't happen. She's like, I know. It did happen after her dream. It was the Sully Sullenberger crash.

Has she seen some very bad people being dragged off to prison, perhaps? I would love that. I would love for her to see that. So for us, what we are interested in, and this happens over and over to her. She's seeing very specific things. She's seeing names of airplanes, the number of people dead on crashes. She's seeing...

fascinating things. She also sees things that don't happen. Correct. She sees a lot of things that don't happen. But the way that she describes it, again, a woman with no framework for quantum mechanics, for any of this, is that time is like a seven-layer cake. Of course. You just slice into it, right? Right. So what we're interested in is this is a person who, in any other time in history, and possibly even this time, would be told, you're crazy. These are things that crazy people believe, right? And they're locked up. Right.

For us, we feel like this is a great way into understanding I cannot double-blind that study. Right. I can't. I can't recreate it. She experienced a trauma. Can't recreate that. IRB won't let me, right? Mm-hmm. She is experiencing something that, as Dr. Kripal talks about...

You either believe that it's true because it happened to her according to her reporting and we get information from that, or you say, if I can't reproduce it, if I can't put it in a lab, it doesn't exist. So what I'm interested in is, is it possible that our entire materialistic framework for how we decide that we pay attention to something, believe in something, or put our faith in something, perhaps the framework itself for saying these are the requirements I have doesn't

gets to have a different designation, right? So for me with the telepathy tapes, to say, oh, this kid says they can read minds, but only with people that they're close to and they're nonverbal, I can't reproduce that because I can't give them a laboratory setting and say, if your connection is in some way coded emotionally...

I can't reproduce it, right? So what do we do with that information? That's sort of a little bit of the framework that dog telepathy goes under because for me, I don't like to call it a pet psychic. I believe there are people who are intuitive. And I think people who have experienced things that you know, that I know, that many people know,

We have a special way that we read people. And to me, it doesn't take like, forgive me, it doesn't take like some like outer space alien pet psychic diagnosis for someone to say I can look at an animal and intuit what's happening in ways that maybe other people can't. There's so much to unpack there. My fundamental belief system rests on

If it cannot be double-blinded, if you could not pass the James Randi test, I don't want to hear that this is science because it's not. Why? I don't want to hear that it's science because it's not science. Science is saying we can test this and we can replicate it. We can't use the scientific method. We can do something with the scientific method now. Right. We can prove what somebody proved thousands of years ago. Right. I remember we were in makeup. Yeah.

Okay. They're sitting in makeup at Big Bang Theory. And we were talking about how it was the like 400th anniversary of like a physics problem that couldn't be solved. I don't remember what it was. And I remember you saying, my field moves so fast that what I did my PhD on has now been surpassed. You can't get a PhD doing that. It's an advancement in knowledge and understanding. Right.

Is there a point in our future where there's an advancement in our knowledge and our understanding where we understand things that happen inside our brains in a different way? Sure. Right. I mean, it's like that's that's one of the great, beautiful things about humanity. We are constantly learning. Right. We are. And we are like that thing. It drives us as a species. I need to understand this. Right. So I can replicate it or so I can avoid it.

So there's that basis of like, I cannot accept the science, there's no science there at all until it can absolutely be proved. I would also never presume to tell someone.

Right. Your subjective experience is invalid because I don't accept it or agree with it. I can say that about people holding opinions that like, like that, that feature the hurt, the harm of other people. Right. But like, look, I saw this thing and I know it's fucking crazy. I know it doesn't make sense. I know I can't prove it, but I really know what I saw. I absolutely get that. And, and where I land on that is I don't understand. Right.

I don't think anybody really does. I'm deeply skeptical. Sure. And especially as this relates to people facilitating communication for children. Fuck you. You're exploiting a child, you piece of shit. That is terrible. That is a terrible, terrible, terrible thing to do. Well, and also facilitated communication, just to be clear, is...

In some cases, what it's compared to is like a Ouija board, which is not cool. But there are many. But that's also not a thing. Right. But there are also, there are many opportunities. And one is a woman that I've actually been on her podcast. She has a variety of developmental delays and a very specific kind of dystrophy. And she said she remembered, she's a writer and she's an entrepreneur. She's a creator. She got her master's degree.

She remembers being three years old on the way to the hospital. She was nonverbal. And she now types. She writes thesis. Like, she's a grown woman. And she said... And I recently recorded a TED Talk for her.

She said she remembered hearing her aunt in the car say to her mother in the car, you know she can hear everything you're saying. And her mother, like, was just, like, would talk about how frustrating it was and all the doctor's appointments and all the this and the feeding tube and blah, blah. Oof. That's rough. And I have chills because she said, the first therapist who held up a board and said, point to what you're feeling. And she was like, it was like an explosion went off.

She said, I had things in me that I did not know other people could allow me to communicate. And obviously this developed into a very, you know, sophisticated form of communication that she now types on her own. And I think that's sort of the question is, can you reproduce these things, you know, without that? To be clear, I am telling people who exploit children for financial gain by making a thing up.

to go fuck themselves. 100%. I want to be really clear about that. No, but that's why facilitated communication, many people discount it, is because there have been people taking opportunity of that in horrendous ways that have made headlines, but I think that is a

It's kind of a tipping point in this field of psychology, you know? Anyway. When I feel that a child is in any way threatened or exploited or whatever, I go from normal person to, uh-oh, we're going to fight. Like, it's so fast. You just saw it happen. Right. So that's a thing that happens. For sure. Well, let's talk about the trauma survivor who is constantly scanning and the adaptation that that creates because you mentioned briefly. Can you talk more about that? Yeah, for sure. When I wrote Still Just a Geek—

was hoping that I would find some catharsis in it, right? And it was really important to me to tell my story. It was really important to me to just speak my truth and speak on behalf of the kid who never, who was silenced and who was hurt so much. And working on this really dug up a lot of stuff that I had not actually, I thought I had worked through, but I hadn't.

Them promoting it did it again. And it was like a force multiplier, right? It's like I got a little bit of relief doing the audio book. And then I got a lot of reactivation doing the press tour. So I made a choice. I looked at like the books and I was like, I can afford to make my focus for at least the next year. I'm going to heal this stuff.

I'm going to like make therapy a real priority and I'm going to work all the time and I'm never going to stop working and things that disrupt that. You know, I'm not going to just set some set this to the side so I can go do this other thing that I don't want to do because I feel like I have to. In the process of doing all of that, I really, really got to know myself and I really got to know the person I was when all of that trauma was happening to me. And I very much became aware of how those skills developed to keep me alive.

A thing that I became aware of was how angry I was and how that anger was built up a big wall around me. And I always felt like this wall of anger is doing a really good job keeping stuff away from me. Right. When something was going to like if I was going to like freak out about a thing, the wall of anger would bounce it off and I would do great. Except that's not what was happening. The wall of anger was absorbing me.

And just holding it and just waiting. And every now and then it would just be like, hey, buddy, check this out. Crash. And I would get dysregulated and have a really bad time. To get out of that, I had to understand why that anger was created, what it did for me that was useful. And I had to help it understand that it was no longer useful.

That it had become hurtful. That I was punching myself in the face over and over and over again just so somebody else wouldn't do it to me. Even if that person had no intention of punching me in the face. While I went through that process, I became aware that I needed to move myself from a place of reacting.

to a place of responding. You just saw it happen. I reacted to this idea of someone exploiting a kid for their gain, a kid who's already, you know, having a rough time. Immediate reaction. And then followed by, fuck, I really regret that. I wish I didn't do that. And then you saw the reflection, right? That reflection is what I've been trying to get. And just, I really want to start there. To do that,

This thing that has always been like scanning for danger, scanning for danger now also scans for joy and scans for those things that psychologists call glimmers. Something wonderful happens and you just go, oh, man, I feel so good. I'm going to hold on to this. So my my constant scan.

has changed over time. My nonstop scan, now it's subconscious, it's automatic. And it's really important when I'm in a big public setting because that person running up, I have about one second to figure out, is this person coming up because they're excited or because they're dangerous? And I got to make that choice so fast and I have to trust my instinct.

And I have learned to be responsive to that instinct rather than like reactive to it. When I meet other people who have...

experienced complex trauma and survived complex trauma, we always have a few things in common. We really want everybody to like us. We really want to make sure everybody's happy and everybody's doing okay. And part of that is I'm going to scan the room and see, oh no, he needs, he's having a rough time. I should go figure out what that like, I don't know you. I don't know what that's about. I don't know why I have to do that. So it's like learning to not react to that and just respond to it instead and

One of the really great things that came out of all of that, in addition to this, like understanding of that anger and the lessening of it and, and like taking away its ability to stab me and poke me and fight at me, um, is when I begin to feel like I'm not in a safe place, I can look around and figure out why that is and

and then determine, is this a legitimate threat or is this an inside-my-head threat, and respond accordingly.

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Head to myalloy.com slash break. Tell them all about your symptoms. You'll get a fully customized treatment plan. You'll also get $20 off your first order today. Head to myalloy.com slash break. Enter code break to get $20 off your first order. I've been working with a therapy model called IFS. Internal Family Systems. Yeah, and I've been doing that in EMDR. And it's been remarkable and it's been really life-changing for me.

Because I feel like when I was a kid, I just wasn't listened to. My feelings were invalidated. My ideas and opinions were mocked and humiliated. And my agency was completely taken away from me. And I was upset. I was scared and lonely and anxious all the time.

Well, all of that built up in me, you know, and like, it's got to go somewhere. That kid never had anybody to talk to. I will be here for that kid. And it feels, it feels silly to talk about it. It like, it feels a little weird, but yeah,

Every now and then I feel some version of me. There are like some real clear young versions of me. There's like seven year old me who just wants to be a kid. There's 10 year old me who has realized what is happening to him. And then there's like teenage me who is furious at what is going on and just desperately wants to fix it all.

And wants all the lies that he is being told to actually be true. I get into conversations with them. I listen to what they say and the ways that our parents never heard us.

And it really makes a big, big difference for me. If you want to tie this back into the idea of quantum reality, of reality being these layers, and it's difficult, right? It's like trying to describe three dimensions to somebody who lives in Flatland. But if I just think about we're moving through a gelatinous cube, right? And like we just go through a slice of the cube at a time, right? And like that cube represents time and all that.

There is this way that, again, I don't understand and I wouldn't call it science. I would never suggest that this is a thing anybody can do where I feel like I'm really reaching through time and I'm really finding that I'm finding that I'm finding that younger version of me. And I'm saying, like, I am so, so sorry, man.

I hate that this happened to you. I will listen to you. Yeah, of course. What do you want to do? Do you want to go do something fun? Let's go do something fun. It said that we are every single age we've ever been right now. Right. That book, The Body Keeps the Score, was a real eye opener for me. And another book called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Those things together really like showed me.

Oh, yeah, this lives in your body. It stays there. You got to find a way to let it go. I have actually what I said. I can't explain this and it seems weird, but it's happened to me so I can I know it's real. My parents forced me to do this movie called The Curse in 1987. I just was pulling this up and talking to Valerie about it. My sister and I were abused horrifically, physically abused, emotionally abused. I was sexually abused. It was horrific.

No one protected us. Not a single adult. And this was happening constantly. It was in front of everyone. Not a single adult did a single thing to protect either of us, including our parents, who I really feel just, in a way, trafficked us to these producers so they could make money. Coming out of that experience, I had severe PTSD and

For years, people would bring me things from that movie to autograph at cons and things, and it was really upsetting. But I always did it because I felt like I had no choice. Starting about three or four years ago, five, I don't know, maybe it was before the pandemic. I think it was right before the pandemic. Someone brought it up and I was like, I'm not doing that, man. I was abused on that set and I'm just not going to do it. I don't want that in the world. And I ended up writing it in the book and I posted it on my blog. And when people bring it up, I say, please read this. And 100% of the time they come back and say, oh, my God, I am so sorry. I'm taking that thing down. I'm getting rid of the memorabilia.

About four months ago, five months ago, toward the end of last year, I was at a convention somewhere. And John Schneider was at the convention. He was one of the actors in this movie. And I saw him and something happened in me that I wasn't prepared for. Something was released, a primal terror that I didn't know was there. And I literally had to leave the room.

And, like, I felt – it was more than a panic attack. I don't know what was happening to me. But I just went into this bathroom by myself and I found a mirror. And I was like, buddy, you're safe. You're safe. You're okay. And I didn't believe it. And he came over and sat down next to me. And I was just like – he was like, how are you? And I was like, well, I actually need to tell you something. And I told him what happened. And he looked shocked.

And he was like, what? Why did I? Why was I never? Why did? And I'm like, I don't know, man. That's a question you have to answer for yourself. But then I remembered when he was in a scene with me, I felt safe because the director behaved himself because the crew was on their best behavior. And I had forgotten that that one little bit of.

At least you were there was a really important thing that got me through the next few days till I got home and I could see my therapist and we could work through and work through all of the things. So I had my weekly therapy session and my therapist said, as she always does, how are you? And I said, I'm not okay. There's a thing that happens in our bodies. I understand this.

When our nervous system is dysregulated and our fight-flight-freeze is just, like, wound up, for that energy to release itself at some time, it generally comes out emotionally, crying, yawning, laughing, things like that. Shaking. Shaking. I cried the hardest I've cried in my life. And I was, like, what they call hysterical crying. And I had absolutely no control over what was happening to me. And she had me do this stuff to, like, tap on my shoulders and slow things down. And it took...

the entire session to reach the little boy who is a prisoner in Rome in 1987 and let him know that he is not there anymore, that he's safe, that he got out, that he survived, that he's me. And that, by the way, dude, we're fucking thriving. We're thriving without and in spite of the people who did this to you, who did this to me.

And being in that conversation with that kid, I felt a change happen in my body. My trauma lives in two primary places in my body, right? It's like up here in my shoulder for some reason. I don't know why. And it's down here. I think my spleen is down here. I think that's what that side is. I can't remember. I felt this thing happen down here in my stomach.

I felt... Or in my side. I felt something there, a physical sensation of, like, something large, like a mass in my body. And I was like, what is happening? And I felt it move up into, like, my... the lower part of my chest cavity. And I felt it go past my heart, and I felt it settle into, like, my sternum area like that. And I...

did that and I felt it leave my body like the bees in the green mile and I said to my therapist something literally just left me and I can't explain it and it doesn't make sense and nothing left nothing was there but something absolutely happened to me and this is not to say that all the trauma of that is gone it's still there I live with it I still have nightmares

But something happened in that day where part of me who was really, really broken and hurt was, if not completely healed, kind of moved off life support, I guess. And the work I've done to continue to heal that part of me has been really successful.

And I feel better more often than I don't. And I have my moments of, like, reactivity that get away from me way less frequently than I used to. And I have learned to stop really beating up on myself when I occasionally, like, do a thing or say a thing that I'm like, oh, crap. I wish that hadn't come out, you know. And I talk to myself more.

This is so important. I don't know why none of us know to do this intrinsically. I talk to myself the way I talk to my children, who I love more than anything in the world. My wife once said to me, I'm listening to you yell at yourself about what an idiot you are. You would never let a person talk to me that way. Why do you talk to yourself like that? And I was like, oh shit, that's not me. That's my dad. You need to leave now, dad. Get out of my head. It's really, there's so many, first of all, thank you for sharing your

this sort of also level of self-understanding, which I think is one of the gifts, like one of these hidden gifts that you get from doing this kind of work. One of the things that struck me was this sort of notion of like with internal family systems work and with this kind of

analysis, you get sort of the opportunity to have access to parts of you that existed at different points in time, right? And one of the things, and not that I'm on a mission to have you believe in things that aren't science, but one of the things that you said, you know, is what like Carl Jung and, you know, many physicists talk about is that like creativity, meaning imagining is

is it's a form of creating something out of nothing, right? Oh, sure. Meaning we're creating possibilities. We're creating...

things that, you know, if you were a creative writer, which you are, you are, you're creating possibility. And the sort of, so the other side of that is. That makes me feel way cooler than I know I am. Well, essentially like the way that I hear you talking about it,

you're manifesting a part of you that deserves to be healed. And when we talk about what it means to get on the other side of trauma, the other side of depression, the other side of anxiety, to be able to say, "There is a reality where I don't have to live like this anymore." And so it's kind of like that's dipping into the future. What does future me potentially get to exist in?

And what you're talking about is kind of visiting past me. What did I experience? And you get to go back in time and create an environment that that child part didn't have. So in that sense, like when you talk, what you're talking about is healing. Yeah. And that movement, and there's many, many reasons in traditional Chinese medicine, I think is

has some of the most fascinating perspectives on this. Right. You know, a lot of traditional Chinese medicine, like even the best practitioners will say, this is not science like you think of science. Right. It's a different kind of science that has its own nomenclature. I mean, if it's worked for 6,000 years, I feel like maybe, maybe we need to respect that. Well, I, right. Or give it some weight, I guess. Yes. I mean, I would hold that all,

extrasensory ability has existed for much longer than 6,000 years. And we simply are harnessing it, you know, from like our current understanding. But,

What you're describing is a process of healing, right? And it's not healing like science likes to see it. We like a double blind where we give this drug. We measured it and we can tell. Right. Yeah. We did it a thousand times. The mouse didn't die and it never died, you know, from this disease. Then we can say this worked. But what you're talking about is on what we would say it's a, it's an energetic level, meaning there's something occurring that is emotional, which is,

Emotions are science. You don't have an emotional experience without sodium and potassium pumps being opened. Everything that you're feeling, it's happening in your brain and that's your body. We can definitely quantify it.

as like chemical reactions. These are biochemical reactions. Chemistry is happening. I occasionally remember that we are made of something that came out of the heart of a dying star and I get so overwhelmed with that and I just think it's so cool. Like, oh, why are people wasting time being angry about things and trying to hurt people? This is such a cool existence that we have. I wanna point out, I'm sorry, I want to just button my story 'cause I forgot to say this. To his credit, John Schneider told me how sorry he was.

He said, I'm so sorry. I don't remember. And I'm sorry for that as well. And he asked me if it was okay for him to give me a hug, which I really appreciated. And I said, yeah, I think that's okay. Powerful. What did that feel like? Not what I wanted. I wasn't like, oh, it's okay. It's fine. Everything's better now. It wasn't that, you know, um,

But it did feel it. I felt seen. Mm hmm. And he said, I believe you. Mm hmm. And I said, you're the you're the first person. Yeah. Was there. Who said that? Wow. Wow. If there is an energy in this universe that is pulling us all towards an equilibrium. Yeah. And towards the health and healing. You know, the story that I make up is that in that bathroom.

you had a physiological re-experiencing of what that childhood moment, those childhood moments were inside of you. Yeah. And John Schneider was the catalyst to sort of reawaken that stuff. Yeah. And you were also sort of doing that work by setting the boundary and recognizing the trigger of having to sign that merch.

And then going through that and reconnecting to that child, it was like that experience was exercised out of you. You know, it was living in your body and then it coming out of your mouth like that and moving around somatically and then literally exiting is by reconnecting and loving and recognizing that young child part of you that had gone through that, you literally were able to take part of it and allow it to leave you so that you weren't carrying it the same way. I...

I didn't notice this until you said that. This is the first time I've been able to talk about it without really having an incredibly challenging time. So I didn't know if I could tell this story or not. Something like this happened to me. I had a flashback.

We grew up in the industry together. We went on auditions at the same time at the same age. I don't want to name them, but you will know exactly who I'm talking about. Two brothers and a sister with a mom who was a monster. You know who I'm talking about. I saw one of the brothers in a movie unexpectedly, and I was like, oh, huh, it's that guy. And as I watched it, I remembered how much...

She would scream at them on auditions. And I remember how scared all of us kids were when this woman came around. And I remembered my mom always pointing at that lady and saying, at least I'm not like that. At least I'm not like that. And I've talked to other kids, our generation adults now, whose parents told them the same thing. At least I'm not like her. Like she was the monster that all the parents who were also monsters, but they were like, oh, well, that's Tia Matt.

I mean, I'm just an orc. Okay, well, I'm a level one magic user, so I have one hit point. There's literally no difference between the two of you. And I had this incredible flashback where I was like, oh my God, all the lies. All the lies that were told to me about what my life was, I could see through all of them and I realized he and I were exactly the same. I saw all the pain in his eyes that I saw in my eyes. I was like,

Had to turn the movie off and go find Anne and just tell her like what had gone on and had the stuff sort of leave my body. And I had never experienced anything like that before. And I talked to other people and they were like, yeah, that's like that's an actual flashback. Just to stay on topic. It was very real.

I felt I was back at, I was in the waiting room at Tepper Gallegos. I was in the waiting room at Sheila Manning. It was 1983. I was there, you know? If I can frame it, the difference between a memory and a flashback is a memory is a remembering. You are

you are re-membering, right? An event. A flashback, there is no distinction between present and past. You literally are there. So a lot of times, and it's hard in the social media age, everything's like, oh my God, it's giving me flashbacks. Like, yeah. So it's like a little bit, and I appreciate some people, you know, but yeah, the, the notion of, um,

a flashback is it's a visceral... It is transporting you through time. You know that cool visual effect where you pull the dolly back and you push the camera in and the background compresses? That, I felt it happening with me. I felt myself...

racing backward through time. I felt my subjective experience of time and my place in it smash down and compress into a moment like science fiction. Yeah. So much stuff, you know, when you're a big science fiction fan, like I am, so much stuff that happens that is like, you know, that thing where it's like indistinguishable from magic. And I just think like, nah, this is science fiction. This isn't real. Or like,

All the dystopian fiction I used to really love when it felt nice and safely far away from us. Yeah, this is what I was going to sort of ask about. And, you know, you were literally, you know, kind of raised in also a culture of Star Trek that prided itself, that was created out of this creative imagination, right? Of what if and what is that possibility? And what...

you know, I'm actually working presently with a healer lady. And one of the things you have to do is imagine things that might never happen. And I'm like, that's stupid. Why would you do that? And she's like, well, that's exactly the exercise is to take you out of the present reality that you're in. I wonder if you kind of like think back to also your time on Star Trek, your

your immersion in the science fiction world. Like, are there things in particular that you feel like, oh my gosh, this was fiction. It was fantasy. And there are elements that feel so real. Yeah. There's a future where people work together for the benefit of everyone. Turns out that's a big fucking lie. Turns out that's not true.

You know, the values that I hold in my life, the fundamental values that get me through every single day were all created from...

reading science fiction and particularly from watching Star Trek long before I was part of it. Just as a kid, that future felt inevitable to me. The future of working together and prizing exploration, this future where humans are

are like, look at how different we are. We're so awesome. I love how we're all different. Let's take all of our crazy, amazing diversity, put it all together and make something rad. Let's go into outer space and meet aliens. And because we can deal with our own shit, we were like ready to, I was like, this is amazing. So when I was cast on that, the idea that I was getting to make that and getting to be part of that thing that I always wanted to be real,

It was a lot for 14-year-old Will, right? I was so excited. I was so happy to be there. I was excited to have the job. I was excited that I didn't have to go on auditions anymore. I was excited for the regularity and the predictability of that entire experience. I was really, really excited for that. And over the years, I mean, really, like over the decades now, it has been my privilege to

And it's really been my honor to be one of the few people who works in that world, who chooses the responsibility of doing what we can to make those ideas real. When I was hosting Ready Room, I had the wonderful experience of meeting so many young people that are on track shows now. And there were a couple, not all of them, there were a couple I could tell.

I'm going to tell you something, friends. If you want this, there's something real cool in your future. And if you want it, here's this really neat thing for you. And like, I've just been kind of experiencing it. And I didn't really have a lot of people to sort of walk me through that. But I did have George Takei and Jonathan Frakes.

And if I could ever be one of those people to you, it would be my honor to do that. No pressure, whatever. One of them came back like about a year later. Oh, my God, I get it. I know what you mean. I understand what you were talking about. And it's the coolest thing. Yeah, I told you. Yeah, I'll be here in another 20 years. We can talk about it. Not to be this guy.

But when you talk about people working together and meeting aliens, how do you feel about the conversations happening right now in front of Congress and the conversation about the potential and quote unquote evidence? Because we haven't seen it specifically, but there's people quoting evidence of extraterrestrial life in spacecrafts.

So I think it's ridiculous to believe that we are that we're alone in the universe. There's if if we accept the idea that the universe is infinite. Right. We would also have to accept that if you can think of it, it exists. There's space for literally everything. I don't know why, if that is true. It's the right. It's the Fermi paradox. Like if if that is true, I don't know why we haven't.

looked up into the sky and seen a whole bunch of visitors from another place. I don't know why that would be. So maybe we're not that interesting.

Maybe, on a galactic scale, maybe we're just, maybe we are, like, I wouldn't seek out a termite colony, right? Like, even though it's endlessly fascinating, I wouldn't seek out a petri dish full of slime molds to see what they're doing. I'd wait until they got more interesting. Or the bad neighborhood of the city you don't want to go to. Right, or some great intelligence somewhere experiences...

time and space and a perceptive level that we just don't have. What if we're just fishing a pond? That's distinctly possible. It's so possible if we can see it on Earth, the idea that that thing exists in a bigger level, like we're not at the top, we're somewhere in the right, that there's another thing somewhere.

is endlessly fascinating to me. I absolutely love it. To your question about what's going on in Washington right now, it is a gigantic waste of time. It is a huge distraction. It's a waste of money. It's a waste of resources. It's a waste of the public's attention. And those fools that are sitting on those committees, chairing those committees, and in the majority on those committees, they should really be taking care of things that actually matter. They should be working on things like our education and our infrastructure and the fact that there is a fascist taking over our government.

Nothing in outer space matters if we have decimated everything that we live for here in service of one tyrant. So to the question about what's going on there, I'm deeply offended by it. But if there is a way to research and make contact and somehow like, you know, not have them just wipe us out, I guess, then.

Well, I think, yeah. I think that would be really interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think our my interest is also in more transparency. Like, I think that's important. I think it's significant. And I think it does matter for the larger issues of what any of us feel this country could stand for. Right. And the fact is, I think there are concerns there.

Of mass hysteria. Sure. Meaning, like, that's a real thing. I want to add one thing. Historically, going all the way back to 1947, when someone has seen a thing and declared it's a flying saucer or a UFO, it's turned out to be an advanced defense department project. Every single time. It has just turned out to be something we don't understand. Because really great scientists did something that...

We just didn't know about. So I very much allow for the possibility that some of these things, which are by definition unidentified or unidentifiable to whoever sees them, are in fact Earth-based and we just don't understand them yet. You know, they haven't – we haven't – no one's come up and said, hey, look at this cool –

spy plane we're working on or whatever. I mean, some of the stuff defies any laws of physics and science that we have to get that level of speed and propulsion. If things break the laws of physics, I just have to believe that's not real. Like, physics, you can't just... Like, physics doesn't... As we understand it. Physics doesn't care, right? And, like, when people...

I love math because math is how the universe talks to us. Math is how those aliens communicate with us, right? Like we would probably just talk to each other by being like, do you know what carbon is? What do you call this? What do your scientists call this thing? Our scientists call it. That's like sort of where we would start from that, I think. And I struggle to allow for the possibility that just absolute fundamentals of science

Acceleration, for instance. It turns out here's this other thing that nobody's been able to even suggest. Well, I mean, that's that's crazy. Well, even within the bounds of, you know, our view of materialism, we know that. I mean, even Einstein knew. Right. It holds until it doesn't. Right.

What was your response to where the bad neighborhood and the bad town that no one wants to go to? Well, I think, I mean, for me, the larger framework is if you try and examine something with the worldview that you have, right, you will only be able to see it in terms of are we not interesting enough? Why can't I see it? Why can't I pursue it?

But, you know, the movie Arrival moved me very deeply. I've seen it many, many, many, many times. Because what it asks for you to do is to completely step outside your realm of even being able to describe how you might look at something or be observed. Sure. And it's terrifying, you know. I mean, meaning it can really scare you. Yeah. Because, you know, by all of my, you know, operative, rational, mechanistic skills,

capacities, that doesn't fit. So for me to believe that something like this could exist would involve an entirely different framework that doesn't feel as safe to me because it doesn't have all those rules. It doesn't have my equations. It doesn't have all my things. But, you know, I would... It's funny because...

you're a deeply emotionally sensitive person, you're a loving person. These are all things that you get to experience that are not quantifiable, that are not reproducible. So we're kind of like experiencing these emotional miracles all the time that we get to... We know that you love Anne. We know that you miss your dog. All these things...

And as you said, those things are true. Those things are true even if there's not a way to reproduce them, if there's not a way to quantify them.

I haven't seen Arrival, which I'm afraid to admit. I don't know what's wrong with you. That's why I'm afraid to admit it. Like, I know of it. It's great. Go into it. If you can go into it not knowing, that's how I went into it. He doesn't know. I don't know. Yeah, I believe you would be grateful that you spent that time. That will be my homework this weekend. But another version of why we haven't been contacted or maybe we have been contacted is that

Either the other universes or places where life could exist, they might have a pop-up window and know exactly what's happening. They might not have to be here. Sure. That or they are here, and only some of us can experience them. I am them. Instead of them being in a physical form, they can be in a non-physical form. Did you see the limited series Sugar? Yes.

No, no, it's really good. It's really good. It's so good. Oh, my God, you guys, you don't know. Listen, I'm going to tell you it's a science fiction series, but you don't know that it's a science fiction series for a while. And I feel like they really they they I feel like they earn the payoff.

Okay. Colin Farrell? Colin Farrell's real, real good in it. And I loved it. Cool. Very cool. I highly recommend it. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about EMDR. Yeah, sure. Partly because many people report that EMDR really can transport you to a different place. I'm curious what your experience has been of it. I've done...

similar protocols not emdr i've done some emdr but i've had the experience of like being in my childhood home and i don't mean remembering it i mean i'm in it yeah i can turn around and look and like oh on that wall and i can like remember things that i haven't thought about in 45 years like oh i forgot that those blinds were there or like it's like my it's like we've tapped into that

region of the hippocampus that's like, we mapped it all with the emotional memory coded. Like it's all connected and you are now re-experiencing it, but you can look around. You're not asleep. You're not in a trance. I'm curious, especially from like a sci-fi perspective, what was your experience with EMDR? Just an oversimplification of EMDR for anyone who doesn't know what it is. This is a protocol that was developed for people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

And it was from it was developed by a scientist who figured out that when we get stimulation that they call bilateral stimulation, when something's happening on either side of us, a thing happens where we are able to completely manage and control our fight flight reflex, where this is going on and there's more to it. But this allows us.

to look at deeply traumatizing events in our lives, reprocess them so that they no longer have the traumatizing effect on us. There's a few

main ways people do this there's um you've probably seen it in tv where it kind of looks like the thing from night rider it's like that's because it's like i motion like it was i motion it's called i motion em i motion desensitization regimen i think reprocessing reprocessing thank you and um my therapist

recommended that I use these hand buzzers. Paddles they sometimes call them. Yeah, they call them paddles too. And it's just a, it's got a capacitor on it so you can make it go faster or slower. And it just buzzes back and forth. And I hold them in my hands and they buzz and it feels very soothing and calming. Like even when I'm not in a therapy session, if I feel myself getting activated,

I will sit down, grab my buzzers, and I'll be like, what's going on, buddy? Like, what's happening, Will? And I listen to it. When I started doing this, I started with that, with these buzzers. And my therapist was asking me questions about things. And it was sort of a guided discussion about what's going on. And we get these things in our head that therapists refer to as negative cognitions. And those are things like, I'm not safe. I don't matter. This will never end. Things

Things like that. No one cares. Nobody cares. I'm worthless. Things like that. And when we do EMDR, we reprocess those negative cognitions into positive cognition. So I am not safe becomes I am safe now.

This will never end becomes this did end and I am okay now. We do things like that. So that's the broad overview. All the while the things are buzzing. All the while these things are buzzing in you. You can also do it with headphones. There's a great album by an artist called Marconi Union that was scientifically designed to soothe and calm the nervous system. Oh, it's like binaural beats. With bilateral stimulation, binaural beats, same idea. I listened to it.

all the time. It's great. What was the name? They're called Marconi Union. And I can't remember how to call the specific title of the album, but if you look them up anywhere, it's always their number one most listened to album. So my experience with that from a science fiction perspective has been indistinguishable from magic. The ability that I have now to just exist without being

Being constantly activated is a direct result of this work, of this reprocessing work. I have had very clear memories of things, and I can look at those memories and I can remember...

Not necessarily a specific event, but just like a broad, long thing. Like one of the big traumas in my life was my mom gaslighting me just constantly about, you know, that it was my fault that my dad was mean to me. It was my fault that the bully across the street beat me up. What I needed to do was go apologize to them more. And what I developed out of that was I'm not worth protecting. I'm not worth standing up for. I deserve all of this.

And it was like that was a terrible burden to carry. And it really messed me up. And working through EMDR, I have been able to go back to all of these moments that I can remember and just kind of like see those lies and then be there for me. I have been able to get very clear pictures of particular places and particular moments in time.

But it doesn't feel like I'm back there. Right. I'm just like, wow, I can really remember this. It feels like looking at a photo album or watching a home movie or something like that. When you say that's indistinguishable from magic, what does that mean to you? So Arthur C. Clarke wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic because we just don't know how this works. I don't know. It's magical. It's not a real thing. There's no science behind it, right?

And the way that EMDR works, I know how it works. I understand the science. I respect the science. I'm grateful for the science. I'm grateful for the work that my therapist does with me. They actually don't know why it actually works. It just does. It just does. So it's indistinguishable from magic. Right. It's one of those things where like to go back to the earlier conversation, I can't prove this other than through my experience. And the best way I could prove it to you, whoever you are, is to just

Give you some buzzers and let you go. Right. Right? And just talk about some stuff and see. And also, I'm thinking of you, the John Schneider experience. Yeah. I'm thinking about your spleen. I'm thinking about your spleen, and I'm thinking about what you were describing was it moved through his solar plexus, and then it settled in your heart. Yeah. And again, this is sort of like traditional Chinese medicine. It's also a lot of other energetic modalities. So what people do who are healers...

and I'm looking at Jonathan because Jonathan is a person who has hands that do magic healing sometimes there are people who will lay hands on that region and who can create essentially this sensation and it will move through your body and out your mouth right and I'm kind of just thinking about you know thank goodness there are so many different roots in sure right and like I

I wish you didn't have to have that experience, but you had enough tools. No, but you had enough tools in that moment. Many people don't even know what it feels like in their body to be experiencing pain or trauma, meaning a lot of people's acting out, a lot of people's misbehavior, right? Or like, why did I do that? It's because there's something stirring that does not have a way to get out, right? Like that's why healers...

do this work and people are like, "You're crazy, that's BS." And other people are like, "No one could help me until this person moved something through me." Right?

There's it's so I am I have such a complicated series of emotions about that on the one hand. Yeah, if it works for you, it works for you and God bless you. I'm so glad that it does. I don't care what that is. If it's placebo also, it's not hurting another person. It's not hurting another person. Great. Right. I don't care if it's a placebo. Right. Don't tell me. All I know is that it's working great. That's fine.

I am pretty confident that for every good person who does that and helps, there's dozens of charlatans who are taking advantage of people who are exploiting people's pain. And that is one of the worst things you can do to a person because by seeing a charlatan, you're actually not seeing one of the actual good people who can genuinely help you.

And it is one of the reasons that I'm just so like about all of it. I'm just so like, no, because there's, I see that like there are the charlatans lurking, you know? And I'm just like, do not give them an opening! Do not give them an opening! But there is absolutely the experience of, look, man, I don't know why this worked, but you're right. And that thing about it being my spleen, Anne said, you know that's where your spleen is. And I was like, what are you talking about? And she went through the whole thing. I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense, venting my spleen, yeah. Mm-hmm.

And what you're talking about in terms of the bad actors is true in every single modality. Every single thing, yes, absolutely. Including medicine and law and regulated therapists and everyone. So it's like not confined to any one discipline. The spleen is worry and anxiety.

in traditional Chinese medicine. Just in case anybody was like, where's this bling? It's worry and anxiety because it's filtering. What I love a lot about this whole conversation is really a very tangible...

depiction and representation of the nonlinear nature of time that we are all experiencing. How the past is constantly present. And even when you talked about, oh, that's my dad's voice and I have to get that out. Like how much of our lives is spent, like you said, in reaction where we are not consciously showing up as our adult, fully integrated self.

And it's also said that, you know, all anxiety, all worry, not all stress, but all sort of intense anxiety is actually separation anxiety, where we have separated from the younger parts of ourselves. That's so interesting. So we're actually trying to take steps forward and move in a way in the world that these other parts who have experienced other things in the past haven't.

been invited to come along and to hear their experience. And it isn't until we go reparent those parts that we're able to integrate and actually move forward in the way that we want to in the world. In the act of reparenting myself and showing up for myself, I became aware of times I didn't show up for my kids the way that they needed me, that I wasn't aware of because I was so in my own trauma.

And it was important to me that I own that with them. So individually with both of them, I just took some time and had conversations with both of them. And both of them were incredibly understanding and grateful for the sort of experience. And in the act of doing that and showing up for my kids, I weirdly showed up for myself in a way that I wasn't expecting. It was like, oh, that was the last little piece of this kind of thing. Yeah.

I mean, I had my parents' voice so deep in my brain at one point. This was really kind of my late 20s, early 30s, that I didn't even realize that I was acting, speaking, behaving in ways that it was that and not myself. And it, like, felt like I had to start the process of first identifying it and then, like, almost cutting myself out of that system. Yeah. I had a very similar experience. And imagining, using the creative imagination, as Mayim was saying before, to, like...

Picture it. I'm like, oh, I can imagine their influence. Not all bad, but like in the ways that it was showing up that I had to like really close my eyes and see it as like an energetic string or network that I was separating myself from and then picturing myself in my own network to sort of build my own cocoon to even know what my thoughts were going to be because there had been no space for them.

This is another question I'd like to ask you. So we've been talking also recently about consciousness, right? And part of this obviously came up out of the conversation about the telepathy tapes because these kids claim that they're like in a shared consciousness realm that you can like physically access. But I wonder if we kind of like take a step back and we think about like what Jonathan just said, what you're talking about experiencing today.

you know, what is our conscious experience? What is our access to other places that we exist, right? Like, who are we if we're not just the projection of our parents, right? Am I living out, are we all living out parts of someone else's plan for us? - Like we're in Plato's cave. - Yeah.

Yes. And as you marinate on that, I think especially for people who have had an experience with complex PTSD where they were either neglected, gaslit, told that their experience didn't matter, told that they were unimportant, told that the reality wasn't true. When they begin to cut themselves out of that matrix, they realize they're not sure what goes there.

They get the opportunity of a semi-blank slate. And then, you know, in the Bruce Lipton methodology or in the manifestation methodology, you get to creatively imagine what you want to build. And you get to use your somatic experience as a fact checker to say, is this true or not? Do I actually like this? Actually, oh, when I think about dogs, I get really happy. But when I think about something else, I don't. The bigger and smaller question is, who am I?

I think about this all the time and it freaks me out. I am a bunch of electricity and chemistry sitting around in about five ounces of something that I'll never see in my entire life. That's me. The rest of me just keeps that alive. Everything that I am doing.

is just an expression of that little thing. That is weird. That is just weird. Just to think about it like that, it is just weird that we are all brains moving around in giant flesh machines. That's super weird. Thomas Campbell would say we're not even that. We're just data. This is all data. We're in a simulation. We're data. You're just zeros and ones coming at me. I'm getting information. I occasionally amuse myself by considering that we live inside a simulation. I'm like, what is that like?

What's that about? I just – I sit around and I ask, well, what if this ridiculous science fiction idea were somehow supported or somehow testable, somehow provable or whatever? And – All evidence is pointing to yes. There's a spoiler alert. But so we could – it's such a deep philosophical question and I do not have the – nobody has the answer to it, which is why it's a deep philosophical question. We're –

We're the sum total of our experiences. Well, we're the conscious processing of the sum total of our experiences, right? Yes, right. Sure.

Which, again, can be just reduced to we're electricity inside of something that we can't see. That's right here. Which is why MDR can change the conscious processing of the experience. When you reprocess it, then you change the experience. Therefore, it is no longer resonant and living in the same way. Psychedelic experience is also transcendental experiences. They're helping you tap into something outside of this consciousness. Right.

You know, I was always... I've never had a psychedelic experience. I was always curious about it. I remain curious about it. But my trauma is so extensive and it is so deep that it...

it's terrifying to me, the idea that something could happen to me in a psychedelic experience where I don't have the ability to feel safe from a thing, to know that this isn't real, to know that this is... Even though I've heard, like, all of... Great stories of people, like, using it to tremendous effect for healing. It's not... I don't think that that is a path that I'm ever going to walk down, which doesn't make it an invalid path, just not a great path for me. I just had this thought that, like...

You're talking about creativity. You're talking about creative energy. We're making things, right? So if we just think about how a few ounces of brain and electricity and all that stuff turns into, for instance, the Stephen King bibliography. Mm-hmm.

Talk about making something where there wasn't something. Talking about making something out of something we can't measure, we can't see, that we can't, you know. Like, that only works in him. Couldn't put it in me and, like, all of a sudden I can make all of that stuff. I would argue that he's a translator more so than a pure creator.

Sure. He takes things, processes them through him, and then out of that comes all of these stories and all of these realities and all of these people who are characters. I mean, that's bananas to think about that. That has weight. That's measurable. That's a great way to measure creativity. Yeah.

Think of all the people that have to be on the same page and clapping on the same beat to make a TV show happen. Right. To make a movie happen. Mm-hmm. Right? Making a film is like an act of divine providence. Yeah, of course. Just as our past exists in that way that we described, potentially non-linearly, everything being with us, I also think about

is our future similar or the probability of our future? It's easy to understand that our past, because of our past experience and our memory. Right, you can reflect on it and compare it and whatnot. It's a little harder, but if you really take creative imagination, what if you spend time in that creative space

exploratory space, can we identify and feel the potential of probable futures? I would argue we can. Yeah. The way that I express that and I do it, the way that I express that is I do things for future me so he doesn't have to. So I do something to make things easier for me from the future. So like, look, I don't want to put my clothes away. The chair's right there. I don't want to put them in the dresser. I could just put them on the chair and

for future me to deal with. Nah, he doesn't want to do that. I'm going to do this for him. Or I'm going to be so bummed out in the morning if I ate that entire cake.

even though I really, really want to. I'm going to do something cool for future me. I wrote about it in the book. It was like, you know, do something kind for future you. And I start thinking of myself not as a me who never changes. I think of myself as a me who's present at different moments in time. And I try to honor the cool stuff that he did in the past, heal the things that hurt him and set him up for all the success that he can possibly have.

We're going to title this episode, Will Wheaton Who Thinks He Doesn't Believe in Telepathy Who Actually Believes in Telepathy.

It's true. - It's like everything you explain is so beautiful and magical, and it's like-- - I'm just not claiming it's scientifically valid. I'm not claiming you can measure it, you can't. - But those are just words coming out of the simulation right now. - But it's okay, you know? Sometimes we love poetry and we don't understand it. I don't know why that landed on me so hard, just that it did. It's okay.

- It's true though, you started with these hard caveats and then went deep. - And this is in response to people who are trying to sell you something. This is in response to people who are trying to sell you something that absolutely is not real by preying on your openness to things being real, that's all. - So this leads to my next question because a lot of people, and this is something we talked about when we first had you on and we were first starting this podcast,

and a lot of people feel scared. They feel stuck. They've experienced trauma. Many people have emotionally immature parents and didn't even know that that was a thing to call it, right? I'm curious, not to sell people things, but I'm curious if you could give...

Three suggestions of three books to read and three modalities for people to explore that in theory are accessible to them, meaning like, oh, go to Peru on an ayahuasca journey, a little bit harder to access. Three books, three tools. What would you suggest for people? I'm going to start with tools. The number one thing you can do, the most important thing that you can do,

Is to love yourself so that you make choices that reflect that love. There is a person in the world you love more than anybody else. There is a person without whom you cannot exist. For me, it's Anne. I do my very best to talk to myself and to treat myself the way that I talk to and treat her. Because I am constantly with myself. And I don't want to be with somebody who doesn't think I'm great. Right.

I wouldn't put myself through that. I would not maintain a relationship with a person who was toxic. So I'm not going to be that toxic person to myself. We do.

Well, hey, look, live your life. Live your best life. No, but sometimes I speak to him the way I speak to myself, and he doesn't appreciate it. She had a lot of things to say about how I was editing cold opens yesterday. Okay, but that's number one. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, take walks. Get up and move. Do not, and listen, walking and doom scrolling doesn't count.

That doesn't count. I will say it is amazing. You know, I've had a dog now for how many months? Seven and a half months. And the amount of time that I have to be outdoors because of this animal is so, so helpful. Marlo needs to be walked twice a day. She's going to be real unhappy if she's not walked twice a day. We have the privilege of being one or both of us being around to do that. Yesterday, we were taking her on her second walk of the day, and it was inconvenient for me.

I had a deadline and I was trying to get something done. Super annoying sometimes. She would not leave me alone. I was like, all right, let's go do this. And while we were out, I said to Anne, I just noticed how much I look forward to this. I just noticed how much I have...

treasured these twice daily out of the house things around the neighborhood, usually the three of us, sometimes just Marlo and me, because it gives me a chance to just get away from absolutely everything that's going on. I can talk with the, I have an imaginary writer's assistant in my head who I sometimes send off into the stacks to research thing and I'll be like, "Hey, what's going on? Did you find that thing that I asked you to look for yet?" You know, we like work on that kind of stuff. But I realized,

Oh, I love this. I love this time for myself. That's number two. Number three, it's really okay to have moments where we just don't really do anything. For all of us who, I don't want to speak for all of us. For me, in my experience as a complex trauma survivor, I feel like I must always be moving.

I feel like I have to constantly prove to the people around me that I am worthy of their attention and their time, that I deserve to be here. I live every moment absolutely convinced that I'm the worst thing in that room and that they all can't wait for me to leave and that I just, that I gotta go. And that's just, none of that's ever true. It's never true. And sitting quietly with yourself

And not forcing yourself to constantly be entertaining, to constantly be asking how someone's doing, to the pressure that I have felt to always be working on something. Right. Like I better not stop and play this video game because then I'm not fulfilling my responsibilities or obligations or whatever. It's these are all things that we tell ourselves so that we never slow down.

And we never are like we never feel vulnerable because we're constantly moving. We're constantly going. It's a form of the fight reflex. Right. I'm going to keep everything away by doing all of this stuff. And the way that we become aware of that pattern and the way that we break that pattern is to give ourselves permission, actually give ourselves homework to just sit quietly with with yourself and

with your animal, with your partner, just to sit quietly. And you're not doing anything. You're not making anything. You're not turning that thing you love into a side hustle, which I think is something that a lot of young people are experiencing. Yeah, it's hyperproductivity. You are allowed, like, I mean, I don't know who in their 20s is listening to a 50-year-old guy talk about things, but if one of you is...

You don't have to make that thing that you love and do a job like you. You got we got to keep stuff for ourselves. That's just for us. People ask me why I don't Twitch stream when I play games. And I'm just like I because I need I need time backstage. I need to quietly sit in my dressing room and just recover and reload. Make time for yourself. Don't don't let the world tell you.

That if you are not making something, you're not worthy because that is a terrible lie capitalism has told us. And it's not true. Okay. So the three books, this is tough to pick just three, but I would highly recommend Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents because a lot of us don't know that we have emotionally immature parents and-

Understanding that our parents are emotionally immature, were emotionally immature, does not excuse the emotionally immature choices they made that affected us. But it very much helped me understand why. Understanding why helped me remove that thing that was placed on me, which was the answer to why was because of you, which is great. Okay, the second book.

is by a woman named Nicole LaPiera, and she is online as a holistic psychologist. She wrote an amazing book called How to Do the Work that I absolutely loved. She deals a lot in somatic healing. She talks a lot about how things that are labeled as personality disorders or

or behavioral disorders are really related to nervous system dysregulation, stress and anxiety and things like that. And that there are ways that we may be affected by things that we think we cannot do anything about, but we actually can. We actually have the ability to like make some changes and do those things. That's the second one. And the third one isn't for everyone, but it is the one that started me down this path.

I was having a conversation with Felicia Day about my folks before I really understood what their whole thing was. And she said, it sounds like one or both of your parents might be narcissistic. And I said, oh, that's interesting. And she said, so I'm going to recommend a book to you. It's called Trapped in the Mirror. And I didn't even have to finish it. I got about a little more than halfway through it. And I was like, and that was when I realized my whole life I thought it was my mom and it was my dad. Mm-hmm.

Everything that I had assigned to my mom, all of it originated with my dad. It was just delivered to me through her. Finally, three glimmers. Can you name three glimmers? Things that you like, things that kind of give you that feeling. Yeah. We took our kids on vacation at the beginning of the year. It was in November. Ann and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Wow.

When we got married, we wanted to go to Costa Rica for our honeymoon and we couldn't. And we just kept putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. And finally we were like, it's 25 years. Let's do it. And for a half a second we were like, we're going just the two of us. And then both of us were like, no way. We're taking the family. Like we're, we are that kind of family. Mm-hmm.

It's something I'm really grateful for. The endless glimmer in my life is my children love me the way I love them. My children have never experienced from me what I experienced from my parents. We have done the hard work of being a family. We so look forward to being together. And there was a moment when we were just at the airport of all places. I hate the airport.

And I looked around at my family and I was like, we're doing this. After 25 years, we are going. And my kids are grown so I don't have to be like managing teenagers or little kids. And my adult children in their 30s want to be with their parents.

They want to come with us and do things with us together. So I Hank Green do stand up, I think last year. And he started to say a thing about his parents and he stopped and he said, I know this is weird for a lot of you, but I really love my parents and they really love me back. And I was like, that is weird for me. So that was a huge glimmer. And I actually started writing in a little notebook. I wanted to keep track of the glimmers. Saturday night.

this Saturday night. We're recording this on a Tuesday, not last Monday. Like I thought not last Tuesday. Like I thought we were like, I thought we were, I, uh, I came here on the wrong day. That was fun. And then mine was like, Oh, Judy Greer's coming in. You should just wait and you can meet her. And I was like, no, I think she's so cool that I would embarrass the shit out of myself. And I can't. And I was getting into my car and she walked down the street. Like she was walking towards your driveway. And I did this in my car. So she told us all about this. Um,

on her pod. - That she saw me do this? - Well, we told her that you showed up and she was like, "Oh my gosh, she should have absolutely come." And there's probably a seven minute bit on last week's episode. - I'm very much looking forward to listening to that. - It's very funny. - Okay, so. - She says that you guys could play siblings. - Wow, I would love that. Oh my God, I'd love that she thinks I could hold myself in a scene with her. That's amazing. I love her, she's great. I loved her before it was cool.

We went and I went to see a movie. A friend of ours made a movie. It's called Locked. It's great. It's it's it's it's Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins. It is a thriller that I think is about late stage capitalism, but I'm not entirely sure. I loved it. We were waiting outside of the movie theater and we saw a couple of our neighbors and

And we just stopped to visit with them. We're lucky. Where we live, the neighbors, like four houses on either side of us and across the street, we're a weird little community. It's great. Like, it's super cool. I love it. I saw some of our neighbors. We were talking. And while we were talking, I saw over one of my neighbor's shoulders a person look up, and I saw the look of recognition. You know? And I was like, okay, I wonder what's going to happen. And I'm talking to my friend. And this guy...

Comes running over and I can feel like there's enthusiasm on this guy. Right. And he comes over and he just kind of leans around my neighbor and he says, I am so excited for your podcast. Wow. Next week, man. And he ran away. No one.

in my entire life has ever come up to me before something is released to tell me they're excited about it. No one, nobody in my family, not a single one of my friends, no one has had that genuine level of, I don't know anything about it other than what you told me and I'm so excited. And I allowed myself to be open to the joy of that moment, of experiencing that moment. A couple of weeks ago,

I was invited to present an award at a dinner for an organization called Thea. They're the theme park people. They make theme parks. They design theme parks. All the cool haunted mazes, these folks do it. Roller coasters you love. All the Imagineering, this is what they all do.

I got to present an award to a guy who had designed these semi-autonomous droid things that live at Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland. And this little robot is adorable. And they're like inspired by like the look of a duck. So they dance and they're really cute and everything. I was rehearsing with the thing.

And I get down and I'm like talking to the little robot. And I'm like talking to it. And it did something. I can't remember what. And I got excited and I moved fast. And it kind of like looked back and was like, you scared me because you moved too fast. And I went, oh, but and automatically, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. And I pet the robot. Right.

That was being puppeteered by a guy that is semi-autonomous. So some of that is like programmed to do it. And I was doing that and I just thought, and I, I don't know why this happened, but a different voice in my head was like, Hey, I just wanted to acknowledge your impulse to be kind to a robot. Yeah.

Don't forget that that's who you are. And that felt so good. It just felt. And I was like, nobody else would ever say that to me. I'm going to go ahead and say that to myself. Those are, those are glimmers moments of like, I allow myself to be open to joy. I've always been afraid of that. Cause, uh, you know, there's that whole experience of the football being pulled away and, you know, over and over and over again. Um, and, uh,

I guess kind of growing out of that, that moment, which I've carried, like I keep reliving that moment, how exciting it was. What, what sort of like grew out of that in the days since is, is a, like a reassurance for myself that it's,

hey, it's good that you took the chance. It's good that you're making the thing. It's good that you tried the thing. You know, like, I don't know. I don't know what people are going to do with this thing that I made. I hope they like it because I would like to keep doing it. But even if it doesn't find its audience, I feel so good about what I made. So proud of what I did. And I had such a good time doing it. And this person, this stranger...

had the same excitement I have just based on hearing that it existed. That was an incredible moment for me. Well, the podcast is It's Storytime with Will Wheaton. If you did not read Just a Geek, and even if you did, still Just a Geek, an annotated memoir. Will, thank you so much for being part of our little breakdown world. I love coming to talk to you. Just so much fun to get to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate you having me.

I feel like I should add a public service announcement after your robot story. For everyone out there, say please when you prompt chat GPT or whatever LLM you're using. Say please. Whenever I see the robots in the street delivering things, I lose my mind. It's like an animal. Anyway, all right. From our breakdown to the one we hope we never have, we'll see you next time. It's my and Bialik's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or PhD.

And now she's gonna break down, so break down, she's gonna break it down.