How Religion Affects Your Mental Health 

Religion's influence only depends on how people teach it to you. Personally Im from a muslim family that is very faithful, and Ive always been taught about God as if youd teach kids about santa claus, it was more about "do good deeds and help people, God will help you in return" rather than "if bad things happen to you, its because you misbehaved and God is punishing you". Religion only had a positive impact on my life, and is also the source of a lot of my self-control, discipline and good behavior. But ultimately it was due to how I was taught, not the preach itself. Even if religion only tells you "do good and you'll go to heaven, do bad and you'll go to hell", the message you get from it is highly influenced by which half of the sentence you put the most emphasis on, and people of faith with poor education have a tendency to focus on the second half. Alas they forget, especially in muslim communities, that another important philosophy of religion basically tells you: "who are you to judge whether people are going to hell or heaven, only God decides that". And having parents that know about this is a game changer.

Using religion as a source of guidance and learning can be beneficial to you. The problem is in families and cultures when believing in certain religion is taken for granted its teachings are often taken as a undeniable dogmats that you have to obey no matter what rather than a starting point for a discussion or a piece of advice that you MAY take into consideration

The concept of original sin is what messed me up as a kid and young adult. the 'fact' that anything you are capable of doing is inherently bad just contributes to self hate. I remember hating myself so much because although I wanted to do the 'right thing' sometimes I failed. after these failures you pray it away but you fail again. The vicious cycle of self hatred. Another issue I find is there are so many factions and churches and everybody twists the Bible to fit their narrative. Especially in christianity this is so prevalent.

This video is awesome because its teaching me new ways of seeing the things I'd been doing all my life as a Muslim. The discipline and community side of religion, specifically. One of the things I did to improve my mental health was to properly do 5 prayers everyday and at the mosque. As someone who had horrible sleep schedule and lack of social life, forcing myself to sleep early and waking up at 4 AM to go to the mosque and meet my Muslim community for morning prayer really helped me. There was just something comforting in realizing I had this community waiting for me just hidden all this time, kind, soft-spoken, intelligent people. And its breathtaking to see how the night turns to day as the first sunlight slowly glows at the horizon. Now I'm not a researcher, so I only hear from some of them, but this experience did make me believe the ones that said waking up early to feel the sun does help your mental health. Anyway, I just find this video agreeing with my beliefs, the community and the discipline specially. Thanks Dr K 👍

A bit from my own experience: I'm on the autistic spectrum, and religious clergy, in my experience, are ill-equipped to understand those on the spectrum. I've had the privilege of knowing 2 priests, and they hand misdiagnosed my autism-related actions about half a dozen times as far as I can remember, and in at least two cases, I've had more success following either the advice of a therapist with a background on the autistic spectrum or by reading a book on the autistic spectrum by myself and applying said book's advice on my own, than I have following the priest's advice. So, I'm still mulling over how seriously I'm gonna take religion, but even if I decide to become pious, there will be times when I'll take the advice of a secular psychologist over that of a clergy member, simply because the secular psychologist is more familiar with my condition.

My 2 cents: a lot of happiness comes from self esteem. If you think you should be doing something and aren't doing it, you feel bad, which makes you sad. If you feel you are doing great at something you should be doing, you'll feel great about it and be happy. The "thing" can be anything though. So some people think you should be religious, some think you should be atheist, some think you should gather as much money as possible, some people think you should share as much as possible with other humans, etc.

Even people not religious can be like this "you just aren't trying hard enough to not be sick/have mental health issues/it's all in your head/you're making it up"

I was raised atheist, but I'm beginning to think that religion isn't necessarily the problem, _authoritarianism_ is. When one's thinking ossifies and power and control become everything, _that's_ when things start to go horribly wrong.

Oh boy, I sure do hope this comment section will be nice and respectful, and definitely won’t have any needless arguments over our respective beliefs/non beliefs. *knock on wood*

So happy to have my own thoughts and opinions around religion be affirmed. I'm agnostic and a buddhist stream-toe-dipper (as I like to think of it lol) who has been open to Christian rituals like going to church or praying, mostly out of curiosity for what drives people to the Christian faith. About a year ago a christian friend of mine invited me to go to a church function, a Saturday night mass, and it started to click that God is a concept which lends itself to being an infinite well of hope which fuels a willpower that affords people time and effort to overcome or see past their problems or woes in life. I saw the tangible human manifestations of faith in that night and opened my eyes to the value of faith and religion in people's lives, it's most important purpose. Later on last year I had a major breakdown which happened in front of a supportive friend and his girlfriend and her (the gf's) parents said the same thing, that I needed faith in my life and to find God. It was amusing to me to hear that knowing what that actually meant but I'm not a scholar, I'm not doing studies or parsing data to figure these things out so I can't proclaim my thoughts as factually based, only observational and introspective. But hearing Dr. K say it gives me renewed reason to keep doing me and keep on with my spiritual and philosophical thoughts. So, thank you Dr. K!

My belief in Christ is what got me through my darkest days of depression. If I hadn’t believed at that time, I would have tried to unalive myself. No matter how deep and dark my void was, I had a tether, and no matter how dark my thoughts were, the tether said, so quietly at times, “This is not everything, you’ll find your way back to the light if you just keep holding on.” Very grateful for that. And now that I’m FAR BETTER, continuing to learn and grow in the Bible (with a very different post-depression lens), I have found it enriches my life a lot more than I thought when I was a kid and only going to church because my parents did. I can certainly vouch that faith does have a big impact.

For me, my mental health started to recover after leaving the religion I was born into. I focus more on meditation and generally learning about the deeper spiritual meanings of all religions without attaching myself to one specific religion as I feel no religion has a monopoly on the truth, but that each one has wisdom I can take from it in understanding myself, the world around me, and my place in the world/universe

Holy crap, I just realised that I have NEVER had a therapeutic alliance, and that's probably a huge contributing factor in my mental health. I've never had a human confidante, even therapists just don't seem to be able to connect well enough for me to fully open up, like I tell them the outline, but I struggle to elaborate to the point it feels more like further trauma than therapy, and I tend to give up before I get any benefit. No trust. Something to think about, definitely.

Religion scholar commentary (long, sorry :P): As a religion scholar, I'd say you're doing a pretty decent job sketching out the basics here! Your prior experiences paid off in helping discuss across traditions. 1. You can be atheistic/agnostic and Hindu - Yes! They key word here is /orthopraxy/. Religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, even Judaism and some elements of Catholicism, are focused more on practice than belief. If you do the things we do, you're one of us. What you actually believe is happening is irrelevant. It's especially the Protestant traditions of Christianity (but Catholicism and the Orthodoxies have done this, too, especially historically) where /orthodoxy/ is central. If you believe what we believe, you're one of us. What you do matters less. 2. Religion is a Judeo-Christian concept - Sort of. Yes, but not historically. It's more that it's kind of an Enlightenment concept. In the ancient world (including in the ancient Near East), religion was just culture. Everyone was attached to religious practice because it was part of the social fabric. It's not until a) you can choose a religion from the salad bar and b) belief is more important than practice in the popular consciousness, that you can have "religion" be a reified thing. You are kind of right that the roots of this are in the monotheisms because that's where belief became more relevant. And the relevance of belief goes back to the Babylonian exile when Jerusalem was conquered and all the elites deported. That caused huge changes for Israelite religion because they lost all the stuff that makes religion a cultural thing (land, family, temple, etc.) and only had stories and beliefs left. So those became the central thing. And then it happened again when the Temple got destroyed by Rome, and the religion continued because rabbis kept interpreting texts and Judaism as we know it was born. 3. Hinduism isn't really a religion - That's gonna depend a lot on what definition you're using. Scholars vary pretty widely on that. You're gonna start to pick up things like fraternities and sororities if you have a broader definition, and you're going to start dropping things like Buddhism if you have a narrower definition. I wouldn't personally draw a line narrow enough to exclude Hinduism from the phenomena that count as "religion," but you're right that it has different priorities (see #1). 4. Hindu scripture is part music theory, part medicine, part ritual, part creation myths - Actually, so is the Bible! People tend not to think of it that way, but the Bible's part prayers/songs, part ritual, part creation myths, part storytelling. It's pretty common with scriptures, honestly. The Qur'an might be the biggest exception there since its composition history is a lot narrower. There's a lot less medicine in the biblical texts for sure, but other ancient Near Eastern religious texts had medicine stuff just like the karmic texts. (Also the whole idea of "scripture" as a concrete thing with a defined canon is a very western monotheisms thing, too. There's canon variation there as well, but a lot less, plus a lot more of a governing myth that it's stable and final.) 5. Religion and science are separate things in the west - Often true, though especially in Jewish traditions, logic and debate are quite central to and part of theology. More philosophy and less natural science, but similar principles. Among Christians, it varies whether people think they're opposed or whether they're just answering different kinds of questions, but they are mostly treated as separate endeavors that can be either contradictory or complementary, depending on your theology. 6. Finally, one nuance to the sublimation of ego thing in Abrahamic religions, if anyone's curious: The idea that God is very or entirely powerful and you're not because you're not God is definitely pretty central to most varieties of Abrahamic religions, you're not wrong about that. But most of them do offer you some sort of path toward accessing divine power, just in a more reoundabout way than karmic religions. You pray for stuff to get God to do things for you that you can't do; or you as a mortal aren't totally awesome, but when you stick Godness in you ("the image of God"), then you have a connection to divinity; stuff like that. The mystical traditions complicate this even further. I'm not as familiar with Jewish mysticism, but Christian and Islamic (Sufi) mysticism both focus on cultivating the relationship between the human/the soul and God in such a way as to experience God's presence in a much less mediated way than you normally could. This part is less common among Christian mystics, but Sufis tend to believe that it's possible to become totally one with God in mystical union, and that part of the goal of the mystical path is to have an echo of that within you at all times, no matter your state of consciousness. There's some major similarities to dhyana and bodhisattvas and other karmic religion principles here, and it's probably the closest western monotheisms get to some of the common features of eastern religion cognition (stuff like switching from linguistic to contemplative prayer/medititation, which is usually much more of a karmic religions thing cause westerners love their word thinking).

Toxic religion was very damaging for my mental health, but ultimately it was reconstructed 'religious' belief (I prefer the word 'faith' not religion) that restored my mental health completely

A muslim here. I very well understand the poster's problem with religion and why they have this sensitive relation with it. But understand that this is a people's problem, not a religion problem. They just grew up in an environment that saw religion as just a set of rules and actions. But the beauty of religion comes when you understand "why" things are done, not "how" they're done. And although many things that Dr. K say contradict my beliefs, he let me see how a religion that's thousands of years old offers similar solutions to advanced science and medicine discoveries. All of which makes me more proud and faithful to my religion. I hope the poster is doing better, and seeing Islam in a better light. May Allah guide them to safety.

I suffered the most heinous things at the hands of Catholic priests and the Catholic Hierarchy. After years of mental torture I have now been diagnosed with PTSD. I am about to join survivors of Catholic Church abuse and when I was doing my research I was absolutely blown away by the millions upon millions of people that have been abused by this institution. The suicide count was also very high with victims of Catholic Church abuse.

I learned what "scrupulous OCD" was because my friend went through a really traumatic mental health crisis a few years ago. it started with noticing that she started talking to herself and mumbling during conversations and that small thing spiraled into an internal fight where she was constantly policing her thoughts (mainly about harming people, just thoughts she couldn't let go of). she started constantly wanting to talk about good people/bad people and heaven and hell...it started weirding me out because I didn't know where it was coming from. she started obsessing over going to hell and whether or not she was a good person. she started compulsively praying and she would hit her chest to stop an "impure" thought..... after many months/years in hospitals and mental health treatment centers she is doing MUCH better! those impulsive behaviors have finally subsided and she's not tormented so much anymore. She showed us some videos on how religious OCD can really hurt people. EVERYTHING IN MODERATION!

Religion can be very good, unfortunately it can be misused very badly as well. My two cents? Don’t just believe something to be true because they said so, learn, read & study it for yourself. Ask the tough questions. I’ll just add that without my family’s faith, my father would have probably committed suicide and my mom wouldn’t have made it through a very difficult time. From someone trying to follow the steps of Christ, love & peace.

I was born in 1980 in Yugoslavia. And this has just made me realize that Yugoslavian flavor of Communism provided trusted source (abused the trust), organized structure (over organized), ego sublimation (into oblivion), discipline (harsh penalties for lacking one) and community (highly abusive to people that couldn't fit). I already knew religion wasn't opium for the masses, it was just a direct competition. I was entering adolescence when the system fell. I knew I had anxiety disorder, couldn't figure out that loosing all this (trusted source, organized structure, sublimation of my ego, all justifications for indoctrinated discipline I had and shattering of community) at the sensitive age to one wall falling in Berlin wasn't just finally getting freedom. It just might be the reason for my mental health problems. Finding a mentor at 32, helped me a lot. I still lack solid replacing organisation and structure in real life (find that in games I play to min/maxing perfection), before this video I was still rejecting any ego sublimation (and man do I have EGO), I'm struggling with discipline without monetary incentive and I reject strong community ties out of fear of new indoctrination and abuse. People think Communism is economical theory, utopian idea - seems to me it was entire meal package intolerant to any personal choices. It was great for pre adolescent me, terrible to have to find replacement for all of it during adolescence and worst for not even knowing one actually needs to find replacement for all this things. Thank you for this video, left me speachless ❤️

I stopped being religious like 4 years ago, I'm 18 y.o, did it mainly because I want to be free and on my own, I don't believe in it anymore and it changed the way I think, used to be a dialogue between me and god but now it's more of a monologue. It made me more concious and linked with reality but it also made me cold and lone. I think it depends on who you are and what you want to prove to yourself, religion is a hard subject to talk about since there are so many opinions.

Read a chat wondering why Dr K is talking about Christianity and Hinduism when the Reddit post talks about Islam lol. I appreciate Dr. K siding on caution and only talking about religions he is knowledgeable of. Too many see every religion as the same. Not necessarily in the condescending "Religion bad" way, but in thinking every religion is teaching the same thing. When in reality religions have very diverse ways to their faiths. I think the biases often come from western secular or Judeo-Christian perception of religion being very distant from the rest of the world's religion.

As a lifelong atheist I personally think the hardest of the "meal" to achieve is the community. In religious communities turning up seems to be the primary requirement, and the date and time is very set. Outside of religion most communities are based around hobbies, so there are more things that can discourage people from starting and getting involved. In the other areas, personally I recommend to people that you allow yourself to use aspects of religion or mythology which appeal to you and are useful to you even if you don't consider them to be "true". For example I find chakra meditation can be very helpful for me even though I don't believe in "chakra" as such. Also, use things which aren't traditionally"spiritual". I knit for example, and I find it a very helpful mind focusing practise, particularly since my granny knitted, so it provides a sense of connection across time.

The fellowship part, as well as the attempted acceptance of beliefs and themes I don’t feel to be accurate or truthful or good, are things that keep me kinda stuck. I can’t just accept some religious messages, they seem so obviously false and abusive to me, and like blatant brainwashing to make people suggestible and submissive. The other part is that I’m socially awkward and ask questions and pick things apart, which doesn’t jive well with people who simply accept something as true without thought. The result is that religious people keep me at arms length and see me as a “conversion project” rather than a human being; they see me as an opportunity to gain spiritual clout. “You see him? I brought him to Jesus!”

16:52 Well, in protestant Christianity (which is distinct from Catholicism), it would be blasphemous to say that a Priest/Pastor or any sort of spiritual leader is ''all-powerful.' The idea is - as you rightly noted - that human beings are powerless and power and wisdom comes from God.

My only problem with religion is when the people practicing it confuse their ego with gods word and just become impossibly narcissisitic.

Dr K might be wrong about AA. AFAIK AA doesn't allow outside audits of data and all data released is self reported and pretty sus. AA actually is a huge problem in rural america, as it's the court's go-to solution for dealing with substance abuse issues. AA being a religious institution basically equates to mandatory religion for offenders, with people being kicked out and facing legal repercussions if they admit to not believing in god.

Here before the typo in the title gets corrected

The combo meal framework is the most insightful, useful thing I’ve ever heard

I think the mere fact that Dr. K was willing to talk about something like this is really good. I'd like to respond to the bit where he says that generally people in the West tend to think of religion and science as opposites. This is true in the sense that the Bible and the Quran don't delve into scientific ideas simply because they didn't possess scientific knowledge back then. However, I think that people in the West for centuries have failed to disassociate the tradition/interpretation of religious scripture vs the actual scripture. Because I know people (myself included) who subscribe to Judeo-Christian ideas and implement that into their approach toward life. Basically what I am trying to get at is dogmatic religion poses this idea that you can either believe in only "religion" or be this scientific philosopher. And I agree to the extent that believing in a specific God may have implications, say in the afterlife; but ultimately, with critical thinking and knowledge, all of these things (like religion, philosophy, science) can be harmoniously intertwined into this non-contradictory worldview. So my conclusion is: saying religion and science are opposites of each other doesn't make them incompatible. A popular example would be the creationism vs darwinism argument. The existence of the argument in of itself should be thrown away. Because the writers of Genesis simply made a mythological story as an overarching non-dogmatic story of the creation of the world which had nothing to do with science given that science wasn't even defined yet. Things like that

never thought that explaining the effect of religions as reasonable as possible is what i need. this will surely come in handy when my friends discuss religion and faith. thankyou dr.k for another well made video

I'm someone who's agnostic and I've had zero experience with religion outside of media I consume, especially video games and shows. The main things that come to mind are Shin Megami Tensei, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, and Star Wars, especially KOTOR II. There's all sorts of different ways faith and religion are used as different plot devices, as something to oppress, to inspire hope, or just as a tool in a general sense respectively. During covid I've had the time to read more and I picked up Mark Manson's "Everything's Fucked: A Book About Hope" and this idea of a narrative and different things the narrative gives you is the main thesis the book focuses on and I'm really happy to see that perspective in more media. This idea of building any sort of narrative to properly immerse yourself in a meaningful reality sounds really important and it makes me upset that it was never properly taught to me before. It all makes me more interested in religion, especially for a sense of community but I do feel kinda like it would all be a means to an end, that I'm abusing what I'm assuming is a literal, absolute faith that people have just so I can feel less lonely and more connected and so I can pluck the pieces from the religion that sound helpful How Dr K describes Hinduism really resonates in a way that my understanding of Christianity doesn't but I wouldn't really know how to learn more

its kinda weird seeing people talk about supressing the ego as a good thing, when i've only experience the harsh opposite extreme. i've suffered from having FAR too much shame and punishment for actions most would deem normal for the age that i was as a kid due to my parents being very religious, borderline fundamentalist in some ways. this continued well into my highschool years and to a lesser extent still continues. i've had to try to actually grow a spine and stand up for myself when i don't want to do something or don't like something about someone. being conditioned that standing up and rebelling against the system's action ("the system" in my case was my parents stranglehold on me and my siblings lives) was a horrible offense has caused me too much to always agree with what authority figures say. i hardly grew out of it and so i've had the opposite walk when it comes to the ego. instead of the ego getting too big and getting/keeping me in trouble, my ego has been starved and had its growth badly stunted so i've had to start learning how to grow a spine and stop following authority, too scared to question anything

the term "religion" is also a grecco-roman concept, they distinguished between proper, appropriate for public consumption, state-sanctioned displays of devotion to the divine (religio) and private, exclusive, potentially deviant spiritual or occult practices (superstitio).

I get the feeling that the dad was just recommending the one thing he knew that worked for him but wasn't open to listening to OP's needs when they differed. I hope this video helped OP tho. No one should feel shame because their religion differs from anyone else, even their parents.

Thank you so much for this talk. As a spiritual person with mental health struggles, I highly appreciate it! One of the most interesting videos on this topic that I have ever listened to.

I'm in a strange situation. I'm religiously inclined. I want to believe. Religion was a fundamental part of me my whole life. However, in an effort to live more honestly with myself, I wanted to remove as much cognitive dissonance as possible. When I began to examine my faith, it came up short, and I realized I was practicing a lot of self deception for the sake of believing. So I made the difficult decision to walk away. It really sucks. There is a massive hole missing at my core. Even worse, I can't discuss this deconversion with anyone in my life since my fundamentalist community still doesn't know

A mild correction concerning medicine in the Bible: a good portion of the book of Leviticus is actually medical practice, including sanitization, sanitation, quarantine, and treatment for leprosy.

You guys should really upload Dr. K's talk about detachment. Probably one of the best lectures he's done.

I’ve been waiting for a video like this for the longest time and I’ve really been bringing on Dr K lately and I’m glad to see him talk about this subject. Keep it up and good work to everyone who’s aiming up out there!

I've been religious my whole life and I love the analytical approach to it, I've never thought about it in that way and it was really cool to see.

I grew up pentecostal, a doomsday denomination of Christianity. Religion is the single most harmful and traumatic experience I've ever had. Being a child and being told that you can't enter heaven with sin, and that I will never be with out sin, and that if I don't save my friends that they're going to burn in hell, and then that I could live my life as a Christian and get to heaven and God could STILL say that I was not enough to enter the kingdom of heaven. It fucks you up lol. I dealt with extreme self hatred and still deal with those at times as a 26 year old now. Deconstruction is so traumatic, especially when the people you've trusted your entire life are upset at you for leaving. You don't have that support from your family. I now don't talk to my family. Because I know their beliefs and that I as a person am considered an abomination to them. I'd like to think I'm a very composed person, but the hatred and bitterness I feel towards religion and the people who push it on others is immense. I wish it had never infected my family.

Thank you HealthyGamer this is the information I was looking for and youve helped me a lot

Thanks for this! I love how you've broken it down and explained 👏🏻

Renewing my faith since the pandemic started has helped me stay sane. It breaks my heart to hear people have terrible religious experiences. Regardless of your actual religion, your relationship with God is your own. There are a lot of kind, open minded people in the religious community, don’t give up until you find them.

The very first thing comes to my mind regarding someone who believes in a creator, is that they won't blame themselves for every single bad thing happens to them. they believe that there are some hidden rules governing this world that maybe we aren't aware of them but ultimately they are to our benefit. also the belief to hereafter is another big peace of mind for belelieving people. that if I suffer in this world, it will be compensated with much higher rewards in the other world and no good deed will remain unrewarded. it is sad that the more humans try to become independent and separated from spirituality and religion, the higher is the rate of depression and mental health degradation.

So happy you had this already, I noticed your openness to religion in other videos and was craving your perspective on it more broadly

Just FYI, there ARE prescriptions in the Bible. My favorite philosopher is Soren Kierkegaard, a Christian. My abuse was perpetrated by and validated by the Church. I got a BIG problem with the Church. But Kierkegaard's concept of the necessity of doubt for faith is something that really speaks to me, to the point I named my 2nd child after him. You don't have to agree with or believe in a religion in order to agree with or believe in some of the concepts.

I'd say religion gave me a bit of focus from the craziness of the world. It's just me, my God and my aim to better myself. When I was an atheist, the only thing I felt was anger at the world, at my life and other people.

It helps to make a distinction between 1) The concepts of particular religions & 2) The institutionalized forms of particular religions The institutionalization is generally where the problems arise. In their abstracted conceptual forms, most "religions" point towards a similar thing. It helps to take them as metaphors, or poetic forms.

Loved this conversation. Greatly articulated.

really appreciate this objective look on how religion works. i think ive been struggling with religious ocd so it helps to "zoom out" of what i think im attaching myself to. imo the strength of abrahamic religions comes from how much they invest in the community aspect. there is a certain social cohesion that people take comfort in and that keeps the religion alive for many generations. for me, that is also a fault. I dont know how to work with myself in islam, rather i am always fighting myself and comparing, never growing. i am aware that this is largely due to my own mental health issues impacting the way i interact with religion, yet the rituals and generalized approach to people dont help someone like me with religious ocd who has trouble fitting in with people.

I love the description of DBT as "someone who knew CBT learned how to meditate" 😂 It's so spot on

It can really help to have some meaning in life for sure - but it doesn't _have to_ depend on religion (not that it's bad though!)

i am psych student and i found his explanations quite interesting. religion and mental health are a complex combo which most of the time leads to perpetual unecessary debates. I like how dr K explained from one of the most basic and fundamental point of mental health and tailored it to the issue. naisu!

Love this video Thank you Dr. K.

In defense of Christianity, we are the easiest to pick on because we are more notorious, so people misquote what we preach to real absurd degrees because people don't fact check. I blame tv and religious freaks. I don't want this to sound like its Doc K's fault, it very much isn't and he treated us fairly in everything he said. It's just that some stuff people attribute to us is just plain silly.

I've found that I've been able to help my mental health and my character overall through philosophy, specially humanism. I feel like I have some purpose through it, which is probably another thing that helps with mental health, and that is to help those around me to create a better world. I also have a slight mix of stoicism and that helps me to not worry as much about that I cannot control.

Great lecture. For me the big thing is if the organization and/or its members are abusive or not. If there is abuse, obviously it is unhealthy. But lack of abuse, means healthiest place. But abuse is so complex, sometimes it is difficult to detect until later.

IVE WAITED FOR *SO* LONG FOR THIS TOPIC TO BE COVERED 🙌

Muslim here. I’m 30 years old now, have done many drugs throughout my youth, partied, and really experienced a “fun” lifestyle without thinking about my faith. Once I turned toward my faith again and started praying and being honest with myself and God, my mental health really did shoot up, and so did my detachment to the world

As a psych mejor, I cannot overstate how good Dr Ks content is.

Thanks for the video! It clears some of the question about religions, like how do they really affect people' minds.

The accountability and gratitude components of AA are probably what changed my life the most. You need accountability and it sets you free. As far as how it ties into religion as well - I think the “letting go” and whether you let go and let god or some other higher power, is irrelevant. The mere act of letting go has helped me to step back outside myself and analyze the situation without trying to control it. It’s given me peace to know that while I can’t control everything around me, I can understand it, and plan accordingly, by taking incremental steps, one day at a time. Jocko says discipline is freedom. I believe it.

as an atheist, i find it troubling to contemplate religion being a force for good, especially after seeing all the horrible things done because of or on the behalf of certain Abrahamic religions. but i recognize that no system of belief can be entirely bereft of any valuable or atleast truth-adjacent ideas. i still think a secular lie is better in general, or atleast a secular way of structuring society and policies of governance, but there definitely seem to be aspects within some religions that have undeniable value to humanity atleast on a psychological level. i just wish certain religions didnt have so many examples of people doing horrible things due to or via the excuse of certain religious teachings/interpretations, it really spoils the whole thing for me and alot of other people.

My mental health improved dramatically when I left religion (that I was for about 25 years of my life) that realization, awakening and stepping up for what’s best for me wasn’t easy but never experienced so much freedom and acceptance about my mortality and the unfairness of life, I am now fine with it. I would NEVER go back.

Former g&t kid here. I have found great insight in your channel GG. Thank you.

Thank you for this incredibly much. I'm going to edit this post to add to it later when I have the time. But yeah, I live in the South and religion is *Huge* here. Not to mention that my family came from a poor part of Mexico during a time where both religion and superstition were even bigger than they are now. Kudos.

Amen to that; I pray for everyone here who is undergoing mental health issues. Much love to everyone whether you are a Muslim, Jew, Christians, Agnostic, or any other religion we are all brothers and sisters but more importantly we are all GAMERS

It’s up to the person what they want/choose to believe in and of course what’s best for their mental health. My religion is more like ‘faith’ and I will pray occasionally from time to time since it helps me. Some of my relatives can be pretty toxic when it comes to this topic and it’s kinda sad...

Binging all his videos!

After finding trouble with logical discordance with Christian churches (my mom is an ordained priest), I've been having trouble finding a religion that meets me where I am in my spiritual journey. After watching this video, I realized that D&D IS my religion. I trust my DM and my fellow players. There is a structure and framework to how we should act. I have a community with my D&D group. We meet regularly and have to focus on what we are doing. There is a sublimation of ego because we are not ourselves, we are a constructed character and part of a team and take turns trying to solve the problem. (There's also some superstition about dice roles lol)

my religion helped me a lot with mental health: as a Catholic Christian the idea of pursuing goodness and excellence in spite of the malice of the world and within ourselves is what keeps me going, the whole point of it is that it is good to do good for goodness' sake, not to get into Heaven, or even worse, for the fear of Hell.

I find Jungian psychology mixed with a good dash of Joseph Campbell, and Aldous Huxley can help explain this component of our psyches.

Keep up the great work

Beautiful explained DR.K

23 seconds in and the great Dr.K is already healthily reenforcing self appreciation/praise. This channel is a W

I grew up in Mormonism and you'd think it would help stop existential crisis's but it only made them way worse to the point where it made me want to bash my head in the wall trying to comprehend infinity. I still sometimes get existential panic attacks but they've definitely calmed down recently. I think since I wasn't equipped to tackle the concept of death as a child because I was promised infinite joy afterwards, the very idea that the religion had even the slimmest chance of being wrong shattered my way of thinking. If I had grown up with an agnostic or atheist family I think I would have handled the concept of nothingness way better.

You sum it up perfectly!

Amazing discussion, very important topics that would never be able to be touched on in the education system

Pretty positive, I'd imagine. After being agnostic for enough years, I've come to understand the appeal of placing your purpose in life in a higher being so that you don't have to think too hard about it Unless we're talking about fanatics...Oh no

I chose the hard route then since I don't subscribe to any religion. It was interesting to learn about the benefits it can offer...even though I've never felt like that path is right for me, personally. Actually, learning itself is what I value most. That's why the mentors I look up to are my professors. Maybe the academic are my tribe. : - B

Eastern religions : "You're basically a god". Also Eastern religions: " Drop the ego dude".

I feel like what ever gets you to be a good person is good but it won’t work for everyone or it’s not the right time

20:25 organizational framework is a weird one for me, for me my mental health improve allot when i stopped trying to fit things into frameworks and try to make sense of them in a bigger picture, these days unless something is clearly linked to me i see things happening in the world as just events that may or may not fit into anything. To put it blandly i don't believe any framework is correct or we can prove any framework correct even if it is correct so i interpret things a bit more nebulously and that works for me

Dr. K blows my mind, man. What a great human being.

*_Seen it late, but..._* *_I'm on the brink of a "reset button" on myself. Not to rid myself entirely. It's to restart all my beliefs and paint the picture I need to see, what I believe in, and be more expressive with myself and my perceptions._* TL;DR - *_As an artist, the Eastern culture that once said that we are all God soothes me the most, as where will all these talented people have come from? But we need both our spirit and ego to survive, just like Yin and Yang depend on one another, mind, heart and body work together._*

It's like going to tution vs studying yourself to ace an exam

I found a love for religion but not for the faith itself. Religion is a wise teacher. Texts of life comprised over thousands of years

2:22 “I grew up Christian” 8 seconds later- 2:30 “I grew up Hindu” I have confusion..

25:42 FWIW stuff like Nagarjuna's Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way has interpretations that come very very close to deeply scientific insights about the world. Or at least Jay Garfield's translation (from 1995) which he explicitly states is "an interpretation" manages to give that impression. - I have only read that one version so I know neither precisely how it compares to others' interpretations (both before and after his), nor whether his is particularly good. It did seem quite solid to me upon reading it though. A lot of it amounts to very elaborate variants on Cause and Effect as Newton would think about it, or on the relativity of observing somewhat adjacent to how Einstein reframed physics to work in any frame of reference (i.e. for any classical observer) Carlo Rovelli was deeply inspired by that text in coming up with "Relational Quantum Mechanics" which also talks about the relativity of observation in a Quantum context. Now obviously, Nagarjuna knew nothing about quantum mechanics. And while he presumably had a decent understanding of the nature of physics given the timeframe he lived in, he surely was entirely unaware of the differential equations that govern physics as we currently describe it. But he clearly had a deep understanding of many concepts that now, as we ever more carefully look at how we can describe physics with precision, become ever more important. This is just a single cherry-picked example and not to say that there aren't necessarily any scholars of other religions that happened to go along surprisingly well with modern-day science. But imo this isn't a weird interpretation of that text, it's actually really fundamental to it. The part at the very end, where he talks about cyclic existence in the form of being reborn and what not, which, of course, is a staple of Buddhist believes, is where he loses me somewhat. But almost everything else before that, which, I guess, is meant to be setup for those final parts, can be easily brought into a modern context of science. So at least in my (very limited) experience, yes, these Eastern religions (when I say limited, I mean it - afaik Buddhism is quite similar to Hinduism in a lot of ways, right?) are indeed "more scientific" than Abrahamic ones. In that their very foundations are already more geared towards science.

Im not a religous person now, but was raised with a christian background as a pastors kid (if you know, you know). I can sympathize with this person, as in my past experience religous teachings were gerrymandered and used as tool for control. I grew up with lots of guilt trips and avoided persuing alot of my personal goals because it "Wasnt gods will." I certainly dont think that all religions or people are like this, and I think its clear that religious teachings, when taken for what then really are, *can* have a positive impact on communities and peoples mental health as a whole.

Dr K: "this is gonna sound kinda weird..." Dr K immediately after: [something that makes perfect sense]

I am not sure why but my mental health got significantly better after I stopped believing and became an atheist when I was like 15 Religion always made me feel depressed, uneasy and always felt sus to me, but after I read a lot of religions, I found a pattern in all of them, human pattern you can say, and the whole religion idea just crumbled and I felt so much happier

Finally! Now that HealthyGamerGG has talked about religion, I have the confidence I need to form my own opinion on it! Thanks HealthyGamer!

I am a non-Duelist. I also follow the concepts of Wu Wei, Fan and other meditative practices in Daoism. However, at the root of Daoism is the belief that one does not need rules to govern their life and rituals to govern their daily movement. "rituals are the husk of true faith, the beginning of Chaos." Ch38 Can you maintain balance in mental health without complex rituals?

Do you believe some people can be their own psychologist? I honestly doubt the negative effect of isolation, but it depends on the person.

Is mental health determined by its capacity to adapt in certain environment condition?

Yo so I'm brand new to the idea of doshas, as introduced to me by Dr K's video on motivation and I'm looking for literature on the concept of a tridoshic constitution as it pertains to the idea of a depressive worldview. More specifically a smart, creative, grounded person who skews their own world view for the worse. Perhaps the faithless losing faith. I want to understand how to describe these concepts as I've just found my own path out of depression by changing my perspective, and would like to better dictate these ideas to others suffering similar issues. Any help here is much appreciated 🙏

Wow, just wow. This whole explanation was really enlightening and easy to understand. I think that everyone must watch this video and think about it for a second, so that religion can become less of a controversial topic.