“Negative emotions aren’t actually pain; they are your mind asking for help to solve a problem.”
In this episode, Nick speaks with Ryan Christensen, a hypnotist and author, about his journey through childhood struggles, mental health challenges, and the impact of autism on his life. Ryan shares his experiences with suicidal thoughts at a young age, his military service, and the eventual diagnosis of autism and bipolar disorder. The conversation delves into the complexities of trauma, emotional beliefs, and the importance of understanding the root causes of personal struggles rather than just addressing symptoms.
“Problems are easy to solve once you know what the problem is. The hard part is figuring out the problem.”
“The number one thing you can do is be curious. Ask questions, listen to yourself, and own all the crap you don’t like about yourself until you fix it.”
Ryan is an author and hypnotist with 23 years of experience in the military and intelligence / national security fields. His focus these days is on peak mental focus and performance.
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Click To View The Episode Transcript
Nick (00:01.789)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. Today on the show we have Ryan Christensen. Ryan, how you doing today?
Ryan Christensen (00:12.364)
Do it really well, man. Thanks for having me on. It’s an honor to be here.
Nick (00:15.388)
Absolutely, I’m glad that you’re on. I always enjoy shooting the shit with people before we start because I can tell basically where and how the episode’s gonna go. And for people to listen to this, there are times where I’m like, it’s gonna be a great episode and maybe it wasn’t for you but it was for us and maybe it was for you and it wasn’t for us, whatever. But for the most part, there’s a lot of shit that we’re gonna be able to get into and I’m excited for us to get started with things. So, wanna kick us off. Tell us what you do for a living and what’s one thing most people don’t know about you that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre.
Ryan Christensen (00:44.3)
Sure. So these days I’m a hypnotist and an author. I focus on doing very deep belief work, kind of refocusing those emotional belief sets. The one thing that most people don’t know about me is the first time I wanted to kill myself, I was nine years old.
Nick (00:55.376)
Jeez. Well, let’s fucking start there. So what happened at nine that you were like, that’s it, I’m done.
Ryan Christensen (01:02.444)
Well, it was very much a situation where I knew with absolute certainty that the world worked for everybody else and not for me. Everybody else is able to get what they need. Everybody else is able to navigate things. Everybody else understands stuff. Everybody else is able to play by the rules and not me. People tell me how to do things. I do the thing and it wouldn’t work. And I just could not for life to figure out. Nobody understood what the problem was with me. Nobody could help me. Like I grew up in Kansas in the 1970s and 80s. Turns out I have an IQ of around 140 to 145 and I’m autistic. But I didn’t figure that out until last year.
I didn’t figure it out that because I had a bipolar disorder episode, an acute manic episode and it just had a break. So it’s also a surprise. So it’s like, this thing is really wired, very, very different. But yeah, so by the time nine years old rolled around, I’m like, I’m done. I can’t get what I want. I just give me nothing but suffering for rest of my life. I’m out. So my mind had to kind of event a reason to keep me around. So I said, hey, you know, yes, you’re going to suffer the rest of your life. You can either end it or you can become Batman. Well, I’ll take option B.
Nick (02:00.283)
Fuck yeah
Ryan Christensen (02:02.218)
Right, so my life since then was like, you know, reading a lot of science fiction, military fiction, fantasy, stuff like that. So the idea of like heroic sacrifice was something that was a big part of my life back then. So, okay, fine. I’m gonna be in service of greater good, trying to save the world, be that knight in shining armor between the light and the darkness, And that’s kind of what started me down my path. I joined the Marine Corps when I was 21 years old, spent five years in the Marine, so I a Russian linguist. Spent another six years in the Air National Guard working.
intelligence for predators and U2s and F16s, F22s, and then spent 16 years in DC doing counterterrorism, counterproliferation. Yep. Unfortunately, yep.
Nick (02:36.378)
Hmm. Well, the thing is, like, where do you start with all of that? You know, I, for the most part, I wonder how many people as children, let’s say eighties, seventies, eighties, nineties, like pre technology, pre social media, especially wonder how many kids actually thought about that or experienced that sort of feeling. obviously the ones that are going through things that are like, can’t connect the dots or I can connect the dots too well. And it’s really hard.
Ryan Christensen (02:42.913)
Yeah.
Nick (03:06.073)
That can be a different thing, but I also wonder about the kids that nowadays have a fucking phone in their hand at five years old. they’re, I’m sure there are things that they can get onto and can’t get onto, but it’s probably difficult.
Ryan Christensen (03:12.214)
Yep.
Yeah, I actually had a there’s a young lady or their lady that knew me from back in back in grade school that actually hit me up last year because in fourth grade I was actually failing out of out of fourth grade because I was like done with life and then I just left and went to a public school because at least he could get me in the gifted program there. I was in private school at the time and she reached out to me. She said, hey, you know, I’m curious like what happened to you back then because my daughter’s having a lot of trouble in school. So she’s having those issues. She’s not really able to navigate things like what was going on. It’s like, well, you know, this is kind of what was happening for me.
And that was right before I got my autism diagnosis. So I reached out to her again earlier this year, say, by the way, figure out this is what’s going on. Turns out she has autism too.
Nick (03:58.616)
So let’s go down that path because I’ve had a few people on this show that have said that they found out they were autistic later in life. And I want to unpack that a bit because I wonder if that’s more of a thing. But before we get to that, one of the guests that I had on and probably I think it was relatively early in the show, like 30 or 40 episodes in something like that. The guide pointed out that he has a kid who has autism and then found out that he has autism.
And then it could actually look back and like see all the things that led up to that. But how do you start to look at that? Because I’m sure there are people that I know for myself and I’ll just speak for myself. There are times where I get frustrated with things and it feels a little more than just a normal frustration. I typically tie that to trauma. do trauma and process work and it heals some of that. And then there are times where I’m still frustrated and that trauma still on my cells and working through it, et cetera.
Ryan Christensen (04:29.034)
yeah.
Nick (04:51.224)
But I wonder how you can then separate from that and go, okay, well, there’s trauma, but there’s also autism. And I’m sure there are other layers and things of that sort, depending on the person, situation, context, et cetera. But how the fuck did you get to that point where you’re like, this is it?
Ryan Christensen (05:07.148)
Well, was a, again, it was kind of an interesting process. So I’ve got three sons, all three of them are diagnosed with autism, with Asperger’s and ADHD and stuff like that. And I always knew that at age that was kind of pretty obvious for me. But it’s actually two years ago, I was sitting down with my girlfriend watching Love on the Spectrum, which is Netflix show about autism dating, that kind of thing. And there’s a guy on there named Steve. Steve was 62 years old and wanting to have a girlfriend, never had a girlfriend in life, thought it’d be a wonderful thing. And Steve had been diagnosed with autism two years before the show started.
which means that for the first 60 years of Steve’s life, he did not know he was autistic. Right? I’m like, man, that would have been terrible. Like, my God, why would it be, would it have been like, crap, I do that, I do that. And that’s way too familiar. So it’s like, crap. So I went ahead and hopped on, like one of a couple of those online tests to see if you got Asperger’s. Like every single one that came up with high probability that you have Asperger’s, I’m like, okay, well that’s kind of, checks out. All right, fair enough. But I didn’t really think much about it because my life is going fine. I’m able to navigate okay. Like I’ve figured out my way to get through it. The following summer,
Ryan Christensen (06:04.259)
Last June, I find I had bipolar disorder. I was getting treated for ADHD. They put me on Adderall. And that’s a bad thing if you have bipolar because it can trigger a manic episode. So got into a manic episode. It went really far. a psychotic break, getting arrested, thrown in jail. know, having to deal with like three misdemeanors and a felony charge for a year trying to get out from underneath that. But because it was such a severe episode, I’m like, all right, that was a surprise. Let me make sure I don’t have anything else running in there. It’s like, let me make sure I have anything else. I’m just going to blow up my face.
Nick (06:29.614)
Sure. Yeah, clean it all out.
Ryan Christensen (06:33.26)
Yeah, so I went ahead and got a full battery, it’s like, it’s like dust and stuff like that. And I’m like, yep, the ADHD and the bipolar and yes, you do in fact have autism. Like, okay, cool. So was this me? And I realized that a couple of big pieces for me. It’s like, number one, it’s kind of like being socially colorblind. There’s like a lot of nuance and detail to human interaction and social interaction that I’m just, can’t see. It’s like, if you’re going to a white club and everybody’s there like a sommelier talking to the terroir and the tannins and whatever, it’s like, yep, this red wine in fact does taste like red wine. I just, can’t see it.
You just can’t see it, completely blind. So the way I ended up figuring out how to navigate life was, you know, I’ve got a pretty high IQ, so I just threw horsepower at it. And so just, okay, I’m just going to brute force reverse engineer human behavior, right? If there’s a pattern of behavior, then there’s a deliberate process that drives it, which means I can figure that out. Just got to look at enough inputs and outputs, right? So that’s essentially what I did to navigate the world from there for my entire life was just like, okay, I’m just going to reverse engineer what’s going on, right? Which worked, helped me a lot when I was in the intelligence world, because that’s a very transferable skill when I’m trying to figure out what’s happening over there, right?
But the other thing is there’s a lot of stuff. Part of why I went in that manic episode that far was because there’s this thing called autistic thought looping, where you like just latch onto something and just keep on cranking on it. Just can’t let go. So once I got in my sort of manic space, I started like, my God, let me, I’m really interested in this. And then I started going into this full on Ray man, beautiful mind, figure out the secrets of the universe kind of process, which is what drove me right off that cliff. So, you know, everything kind of made sense after I got that diagnosis. that’s why all this stuff was hard. this is why I missed all this stuff in my marriage. It’s like,
add the bipolar and it’s like, okay, no wonder I’m a mess. Everything was a flaming train wreck, right? But at the same time, it became my superpower in lot of ways because as I was trying to take care of myself and fix things like that whole like trying to save the world narrative sort of ran its course by the time 2019, 2020 came around. It’s like, okay, now I got to find another way to live. So got certified as a hip test beginning of 2020, started helping out people one-on-one. So now I’ve got that piece, but I still can’t get what I need in life. And if I can’t figure out how to get what I need in life,
This ain’t worth living. I’m done suffering. I’m out. So did everything. You know, the coaching and the therapy and this psychedelics and the energy healing and the reiki and the spiritual stuff and this hypnosis, like everything under the sun. And what I realized in the long way was none of it worked the way they set it up. Supposed to do the same, get the result and I don’t. Because since I’m autistic, I can’t lie to myself. I can’t pretend I can’t do the fake until you make it. My mind’s like, no, that ain’t true. Like crap. So I actually had to sit down and like reverse engineer what all those underlying assumptions are.
Ryan Christensen (09:01.696)
behind all these different models to figure out how they actually worked, what the limitations were, and figure out, say, okay, if this works this way, then I need to do this, this, and this to actually get to where I wanna go. And actually have to, it was crazy because like, okay, I know exactly what’s wrong, I know exactly how to fix it, I can’t fix it myself. They don’t have the right tools. So I have to figure out how to package the problem in such a way that they can use the tools that they have to get the work done that I needed, even though they didn’t know what was going on. So it was like.
Ryan Christensen (09:29.996)
crazy thing, but it’s because I’m autistic and have that ability to just like reverse engineer and just like keep on plugging away at stuff that allowed me to get to that point so I could see my ass.
Nick (09:40.099)
It’s interesting how we, we as people are survivors no matter what, like, even in those moments where you’re like, I’m done. I’ve been there. I’ve experienced that. I understand that for the most part, based on most of our energetics, it’s assigned to us of like, you’re off, there’s something off and not chemically or mentally even, or specifically, I should say, but that there’s something that’s
Ryan Christensen (09:48.043)
Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (09:53.259)
Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (10:01.761)
Yeah.
Nick (10:07.82)
just not aligned with what you’re doing at the moment. Like some people will go through jobs and they’re like, I fucking hate it here and blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, yeah, but that’s, that’s only painful enough if it’s just numbing or dull pain. But if you get to a point where you’re like, I just fucking can’t anymore, that’s a sign just like emotions where emotions are like, hey, just letting you know there’s something up here. You should do something with this or at least fucking look at me. But it’s interesting how we as humans will then be resourceful.
Ryan Christensen (10:10.849)
Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (10:14.144)
Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (10:23.69)
Yes.
Ryan Christensen (10:29.402)
Yep.
Nick (10:37.335)
Like you become very mechanical where you go great. Well, I can see that these pieces can work together and you’ve even figured out like, all right, you’re giving me these things and I’ll, see these things over here. Let me Trojan horse this and kind of put it in a nice little capsule and I’ll fucking give it to myself that way. But I want to take a bit of a step back because one, you kind of blew past a lot of shit where you’re like, I got arrested this thing happened, all that. I’m sure there are people that are listening like, what the fuck back 30, 30, 30, 30. Like, what did you say?
Ryan Christensen (11:02.282)
You’re like, what? Yes.
Nick (11:07.223)
well, I’m sure we could go down that path a bit, but I want to actually get to the thing that I think for most people, especially the people who listen to this show, go, look, I’m going through things. I’m successful or I’m working toward the things that I’m doing, but I’m fucking, I still feel agitated or I still feel not fully fulfilled or what is that? There’s a lot of times where I talk about trauma because I totally believe that most of the trauma, most of the experiences we have come from our childhood.
Ryan Christensen (11:26.464)
Yes.
Nick (11:35.539)
Even if somebody said something weird to you as a little kid like I don’t like your jeans or I don’t like your shorts or whatever that could have triggered you and set you on a path and what have you so no matter if it’s a little tea big tea or ginormous tea trauma is a factor to it, but that’s separate from a chemical thing and for you to be able to Understand how you operate and like you said give it basically like the horsepower of like well fuck it I’m just gonna go ham with this thing and push at it
I think a lot of people, even if they’re not autistic, will do that same thing too. For the most part, I think of that as kind of our subconscious winning strategy where our subconscious is like, all right, here’s how you go about this and here’s how you win in this. And then we go, well, great, just gonna fucking pour fuel on it and see how we roll from there. But how do you actually take what you do and how you go about things to be able to operate with what people have been telling you to go? I…
I don’t believe that I’m autistic, but I haven’t gone through all the testing and all of that. But for you to go, well, that doesn’t seem right to me. But what seems right and what actually works with me is this thing. So being able to take the diagnosis or you should go try this or try that, et cetera, and being able to work your own path while still ingesting the things that are coming to you, but filtering through them and not just taking what other people say. Like doctors will say, well, here, take this medication. And people go, OK.
I take medication and I’m good now. And then like two months later, they’re like, I fucking still hate everybody. And how do you work through that?
Ryan Christensen (13:02.518)
Sure. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, let me go ahead. There’s there’s a lot of pieces to unpack here. So let’s let’s start with childhood trauma first. Let’s talk about the chemical versus everything else and kind of like why we get stuck in these loops. OK, fundamentally, before you’re about five or six or seven years old, your rational mind, your reasoning really hasn’t come online yet. So you’re drawing all the conclusions about the world from a very emotional perspective. And it’s a very the problem with how we do everything, especially in the West, is a very left brain versus right brain issue.
Left brain, very detail oriented, very rational, very individual events, very specific stuff, right? Your emotional brain is at 30,000 foot view. It’s patterns over time. It’s sequences through events, it’s narratives, right? Trees and forest. Because we favor rationality, we make it such a high priority and such a major value in the West, we always wanna do what? The detail stuff. Why? Because that’s what we’re good at. That’s what we understand, right? So we’re always looking at the trees and nobody’s looking at the forest.
Your unconscious mind has its own set of beliefs or the emotional mind has its own set of beliefs, its own set of conclusions because it’s looking at it from the 30,000 view. It’s got a completely different set of conclusions as the ones down here, right? So your rational beliefs and your emotional beliefs often very, very different. And the other thing is you can’t get to the emotional beliefs from the rational ones. If you’re sitting around time square, can understand that thing every six inches, know, every inch of that time square and it’s gonna tell you absolutely nothing about what New York looks like from the air.
Ryan Christensen (14:27.284)
So the problem that we get stuck in is the only narrative, the only tools, the only stuff that’s out there is all left brain focused. Figure out this, figure out this piece, this piece, this piece. So the only thing that is available to us, the only stores that are out there are keep on hammering at that because that’s the only tool you have. And it’s not that the subconscious mind says this is the right way. It says this is the only thing you’ve got.
Ryan Christensen (14:49.484)
And the idea is that the narrow vows is, but just keep on hammering it long enough. It’ll go away. All you need is, this thing is fixed. OK, fix this. no, no, that’s not actually a problem. It’s this other little thing. we’re just going to fix this, right? But the problem is because you’re solving these individual things, you’re never touching that big thing. And this little stuff is really a manifestation or the individual application of this bigger thing. So if I feel like I’m not good enough, imposter syndrome, relationship issue, insecurity, blah, blah, blah, blah, so I fix this, still not good enough. Fix this, still not good enough.
Ryan Christensen (15:16.992)
fixes, it’s still not good enough. So just keeps on popping up in all these different ways. But our minds, when we’re in that place, we’re like, screw it, I’m done. Or we’ve ever been that way, we ever kind of felt that way, our mind has to keep us alive. Our survival mind is like, I will keep your breathing. I do not care if you’re happy. That’s not my fucking job. That is not my fucking job, right? So as long as there is hope, as long as the idea that a solution exists continues to exist for you, it will keep dragging you on. Right? Because it’s like,
Ryan Christensen (15:46.558)
solution exists, I just have to find it. That’s exactly why I stayed alive for as long as I did. It my mind was like, nope, there’s a way to fix this. I know there is. I keep going. There’s one time as part of my Mimic episode.
Ryan Christensen (16:00.48)
got to a point where I realized that I no longer had free will. Right? You’re in this manic episode. I feel fricking phenomenal. My unconscious mind is going to do whatever the heck it wants and I can’t tell it no. I can’t stop it because when you’re doing the right thing, you feel good. Right? So the fact that I felt phenomenal about everything means I was doing the right thing, no matter how crazy it was. Like, crap. This is really bad because I’m a former Marine.
I have multiple firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, body armor, and I’m not happy about the way things are being done. That has bad idea written all over it. All over it. So I’m like, crap, I’m in a situation where like this could go really, really bad. So I actually texted a friend of mine, I’m like, hey, this is what’s going on. I need you to let me know if I’m dangerous or not. I set my phone down, I just sat on the couch and cried. Because if she had said that I was dangerous, that meant there was no solution. I was not gonna allow something that dangerous to fricking live.
would not allow that. know exactly, I worked counter-terrorism for too many years. I was in Marine, like know way too intimately that is not, I can’t let that go. She said, no, you’re not dangerous. You’re going through some stuff. Here’s some stuff. There’s like, okay, cool. A solution exists. Don’t know what it is, but it exists. All right, so that’s why I told my mind, was like, okay, look, you screwed up. You took my free will away. I can’t stop you. Fair enough. You find a way to engineer free will so that you can never manipulate it me again. I’m gonna put a bullet through your head. Cause I knew a solution existed. How to find it.
Ryan Christensen (17:25.696)
Fine, you screwed up, you fix it. Right? And it got to work, but that’s what ended up causing that psychotic break. So then of course, the next three days, I just went completely insane.
Nick (17:36.532)
Something I’ve been bringing up a lot over the past, I don’t know, five, 10, 15 episodes even, is how sometimes we can just skip past time where we can go, this thing happened, and then five years later, this thing happened. It’s like, what the fuck happened in those five years? So even then that, the next three days, like, my God, what did that time look like? And that’s part of the reason why I get to that is part of the purpose of the show is to be able to talk about
Ryan Christensen (17:50.582)
Yep. Yes.
Ryan Christensen (17:56.246)
Yeah.
Nick (18:02.074)
overall mental wellness, but the things that you’ve done to be able to work through things on your own, because there are people that listen to this that are probably like, fuck, man, I’ve been through that shit too. I’m in there right now. I’m on day two. You know what I mean? Like how do they get through that? What do they do? So without walking us through every single bit of that, being able to kind of look back, hindsight being 2020, what were some of the key things that you looked at? And I want you to get macro with it because you’re really
Ryan Christensen (18:11.766)
Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (18:16.043)
Right.
Nick (18:30.302)
passing through a lot of this shit where you’re having these conversations with your subconscious, being real rational and logical with it like looky motherfucker, I see what you’re doing. And sometimes that can be really difficult for people to be so self aware and so locked into it that once you do that, you go well, I do these things and then I’m already here and I’m doing these other things. Sometimes there are people especially listen to this episode or the show rather, that are still trying to figure out how do I mechanically put those things together so that I don’t have to
Ryan Christensen (18:32.673)
Yep.
Ryan Christensen (18:38.646)
Yeah. Yep.
Nick (19:00.358)
really think about it, it just becomes locked in with what I do. And then I’m actually able to get to that next level. Not like we’re trying to get better or be less worse, but like how do they then maneuver that to get out of that shit to maneuver better from there.
Ryan Christensen (19:14.804)
Okay, big question. The next three days from me after that point, I don’t really remember the vast majority of it. I really don’t, like I have no idea. I know that I drove back up from Austin to Kansas, visited my folks. I know that the trip back took an extra six hours and I have no idea why. No idea. I ended up getting arrested, walking around the parking garage in my old apartment building naked on a Sunday afternoon, like two o’clock in the afternoon. No idea. Just like, okay, great, this is what happens, right? Spent two and a half days in jail.
Yeah, it wasn’t until the morning after I got thrown in jail that I actually realized that I wouldn’t happen. That I’d like actually lost my mind. Like I didn’t I didn’t understand that until the next day. But as far as like trying to figure out how to get yourself out of all these issues and stuff like that. The work that I do is really focused on understanding where those macro beliefs came from. Like we have these we have these emotional conclusions we’ve drawn about ourselves and who we are, and it’s not individual events. The individual events don’t matter. They really don’t. It’s the stories that we tell about what happened.
And again, the emotional mind is looking at that 30,000 foot view, so it doesn’t care about the individual trees. It’s looking at that pattern over time. Right? And that’s one of the things that really hit me about the whole trauma narrative is if you’re looking at everything from the terms of trauma, then every individual wound is something else you have to deal with. Every other negative emotion, another wound you got to deal with. So you got to spend all your time trying to fix your past. And while you’re doing that, more more traumas pile up. So it never fricking ends. Never fricking ends. Not the way you think, like you can’t go through life that way. You’re never going to get to finish life.
And for me, like again, had to find that finish line. I had to figure out a way to get across it. So one of the things I realized was that emotions aren’t actually pain. Negative emotions aren’t actually pain. Everybody thinks that they are. It’s the easiest conclusion to draw, but they’re actually not. just, your mind is just asking you for help to solve a problem, right? But when you consider emotions pain, especially when you’ve been through a lot of having negative emotion when you’re young, now you’re amygdala. That survival part of your brain kicks off because what happens when somebody is in too much pain? They die.
Nick (21:07.954)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (21:12.46)
So now what does have to do? It has to manage your emotional state as if it’s a threat to your physical survival. Right? That’s why everybody’s always looking at them in the problem, because what happens? Your hand hurts, you’re supposed to look at your hand to fix it. That’s where the problem is. Feel these emotions inside. Problem’s gotta be in here, gotta be in here. No, it’s not how it is. Problem’s always out there, just how you navigate life. So if you wanna sit back and try and figure out how to do all this stuff, if you’re trying to solve, again, if trying to solve these individual problems, you’re doing left brain, rational stuff, playing whack-a-mole, you’re be doing that forever. Chopping down a bunch of trees to try and get rid of the forest, that ain’t gonna work.
Ryan Christensen (21:42.38)
Got to go higher level. Because if you fix this, if you fix the context that everything is being interpreted in, you don’t have to do a lot of this stuff. Now that you use it a lot of times, like, OK, you got a big box in your head, label on the side that says, I’m not good enough. A million different things in it. Standard process, take some stuff out, put it in a different box. Right? A million things in there. That’s going to take forever. More stuff getting added in every day. That’s going never end. But there’s a label on the side. Let me take off, I’m not good enough. Let me slap up, I am good enough.
Ryan Christensen (22:10.846)
Everything in the box now means I’m good enough. Don’t have to deal with it.
Nick (22:15.728)
I really appreciate that you look at getting to the root cause of it. That’s a, it’s kind of like a duh moment in a sense where I think once people get to that and they realize that like, yeah, I’m just fighting against these symptoms or these smaller things. And for the most part, the world we live in kind of just pushes things for symptoms. mean,
Ryan Christensen (22:23.03)
Yes.
Ryan Christensen (22:28.31)
Right.
Ryan Christensen (22:35.05)
Yes.
Nick (22:41.332)
I was having a conversation with somebody the other day about the amount of commercials that are out there that are medications about other medications about other medications. And it’s like, I don’t know the actual numbers, but I feel like it’s got to be between 60 to 80 % of these commercials are all medications. And there these happy people that are like, inside effects may include mass genocide and suicide and like, they fucking kidding me? Like, what they’re like, yeah, exactly. But if you take this other drug and you stack it, ask your doctor for these other things to keep them health.
Ryan Christensen (22:55.841)
Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (23:04.008)
But only on Tuesdays is fine, only on Tuesdays, yeah.
Nick (23:10.974)
care system keep going. It’s like nonsense. going through those symptoms, yes, I’m right there with you. I like the idea whack-a-mole because you’re like, motherfucker, come on. But if you change the story, and that’s one of the things that I look at with trauma and even just deep subconscious processing work is getting in where is the core of it. I was having a conversation recently with somebody who started to go through subconscious processing for the first time. And she was like, what am I?
Ryan Christensen (23:20.78)
Exactly, it never fucking ends.
Ryan Christensen (23:25.505)
Yes.
Ryan Christensen (23:32.032)
Yes.
Nick (23:38.149)
What should I expect? I was like, well, first off a few hours, like you’re going to be there for a bit. So use the bathroom, get some water and just like cancel things for the afternoon. But you’ll go into it expecting like, this is the thing I want to work on. You’ll come out of it. Typically going, this is the other thing that I actually worked on because it’s gotten so far back that yeah, right. I’m right there with you with the box. Like if you change that label and that’s real simple, you know, obviously it’s just going to change that piece of tape.
Ryan Christensen (23:42.38)
You
Ryan Christensen (23:46.07)
Right. Yep.
Nick (24:07.396)
There’s work to be done. Yeah, exactly. But in essence, I mean, that’s what we’re talking about of just like re-changing, changing that, reshaping it, telling ourselves a different story and understanding where that stuff comes from. But if we can get all the way back to the core of it, then we’re working on the actual problem. It’s almost in the physical realm. It’s like if you’re bleeding and you’re just gorging blood out of your arms. Yes, you want to put something on that. But why are you fucking bleeding? What’s happening?
Ryan Christensen (24:08.204)
A little bit more complicated, but yes. Well.
Ryan Christensen (24:24.694)
Yes.
Ryan Christensen (24:36.182)
Right, yeah.
Nick (24:36.44)
and where is it coming from and how do you stop that. So, go for it.
Ryan Christensen (24:39.894)
Let me throw, yeah, let me throw a couple things in here because.
People say, what’s the root cause? Right, I’ve got this problem, so let me follow this problem down to the root cause. Even when we talking about subconscious processing, stuff like that, you’re still taking a single symptom, single thing, down to a single cause. So like, I’m procrastinating, where did that come from? The way I look at it is very, different. It’s like, okay, you’re procrastinating, hold yourself back, all this kind of stuff, great. That’s this idea of like, I’m not allowing myself to succeed and live a good life. That’s just all these different tools, all these different mechanisms to accomplish one goal, hold you back.
Great, let’s figure out why you’re holding yourself back, period. Not all these individual things, no, no, no. Not in this way, not that way, no, no. You’re holding yourself back, why? That’s the only thing we have to figure out, right? Because when you do that, you’re now looking at the emotional symptom. Following the emotional symptom back to its root cause. Rather than the individual event, it’s gonna lead you to an individual event. Okay, so if you follow that high level pattern back to its cause, you’re actually looking at it from the 30,000 foot view to begin with.
Nick (25:22.736)
Yeah, just in general.
Ryan Christensen (25:43.296)
which means two things. Number one, you don’t have to deal with a lot of that individual stuff. A lot of stuff is going to go away. Number two, it doesn’t actually take very long. It doesn’t take hours and hours and hours. I can fix pretty much everything.
Where I try and get my people to is a place where their core beliefs are there’s nothing wrong with me and there never was. There’s nothing to heal and there never was. Trauma goes away. Never happened. It’s not what that is. Good enough as I am to deserve whatever I choose. Don’t have to prove it to anybody, not even myself. There’s only four things you gotta fix to get there.
That’s it. There’s only four things. Got to fix this idea that emotions are pain. Disarm that little trigger in the back of your head. Make sure that you can actually engage with the negative emotions. Fix this idea that you’re the problem, because that ain’t it. Figure out how to give yourself value, which isn’t even possible until you fix it. But first, too, because if you’re knee to heel stuff, that means you’re broken. Not valuable. You need to fix stuff. You’re broken. You’re not valuable. Got to improve stuff. You’re not valuable. So you got to fix these two first. Then you can become valuable, at which point the question is, how valuable are you? But you got to do it in a way that you don’t have to measure.
Because if you have to measure it, it still cannot be enough. Yeah, right, right, But if there’s only four things, it shouldn’t take very long. Typically, it’s only like three 90-minute sessions. Because again, we’re dealing with stuff at the 30,000-foot BU level. Fuck this. This stuff takes care of itself because you’re creating a new context for all this stuff to be done. Right? Because your emotional mind happens faster than your rational mind. So your emotional mind is set in the context in which all this is understood. So if we fix this,
Nick (26:48.73)
Yeah, you’re back to it. Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (27:17.356)
change the context of all this stuff as in, you ain’t got to do 90 % of the crap down here that you think you do.
Nick (27:23.272)
you bring up context, context is super important. The idea of Yeah, and it also, I think it really ties into there are tons of interpretations because we are meaning making machines where we go all this, this should look this way, or I was told that this is the way or fuck even I believe, and I think I’m intelligent that you should do it this way. And it’s interesting how I think energetics ties into it as well as the way that we’re brought up or the environment.
Ryan Christensen (27:25.674)
Yes, yes, it’s everything.
Ryan Christensen (27:35.114)
Yep. Yes.
Ryan Christensen (27:41.29)
Yep. Yes.
Nick (27:52.142)
all those different things. And sometimes I’ve seen people just brute force their way through things because they can control and they can do those things and they just see, well, I see emotions coming at me. I push them off and I just keep driving and they’re just as tired and beaten down as the people that are super emotional. Yeah, it totally is, but it’s such a…
Ryan Christensen (28:09.324)
God, that’s so dumb. Yeah, so dumb, yeah.
Nick (28:14.614)
we’re going at it in different ways but not always getting to the root cause. Even some of those people that then say, all right, well, I’m going to fucking brute force my way directly to the root cause.
Ryan Christensen (28:23.114)
Well, those people can’t because the whole, I’m just gonna brute force my way there, it’s like, I’m gonna ignore all this crap. So it’s like, these are all these useful signals trying to show me where the problem is, I’m gonna completely ignore that and go where I wanna go instead. I want this to be the problem, so I’m gonna fix this. As opposed to listening, it’s like, hey, if your mind is trying, if you’re afraid, your mind’s saying, hey, this thing out there is a problem, you need to get away from it. I’m gonna ignore that, just gonna go there, and mind’s well, that’s freaking stupid. Your mind’s trying to help you figure out what the hell the problem is.
Nick (28:29.498)
Yeah, you’re just blinders on.
Ryan Christensen (28:52.116)
So freaking listen to it, right? Especially if it’s stuff you don’t want to hear. Cause if stuff you want to hear, it means you’re freaking wrong about something. It means whatever story you’re telling yourself about who you are or why is fucking wrong in some way, shape or form. It’s either incorrect and incomplete or whatever the hell it is, but whatever it’s there, you are wrong. Period. So you got to listen because you’re trying say, Hey motherfucker, look here, this is truth. This is truth. Even if you don’t want it to be truth, allow it to be true long enough to figure out why it is so that you can fucking fix it.
Nick (29:20.08)
I want you to go a little deeper with that because I want people to understand me from what from what I understand and correct me if I’m even wrong, but you’re not saying like just listen to what it says take it for what it is and then do something with it. It’s to be alert with it almost like watching like getting to a traffic light. The red means stop. We all know that you can still keep fucking driving if you want totally and I see people do it at times. So some guy yesterday I was like
Ryan Christensen (29:39.564)
Sure. Yes. Yes.
Ryan Christensen (29:46.24)
Yes, and if you get T-Bone, that’s on you. Yeah. Right?
Nick (29:47.972)
What are you doing? It gets purple at this point. The fuck? But we can still make those decisions to do it. The people that are the brute forcers that are controlling or what have you, and I’m real black and white in this moment right now, but those people that are real brute force and they push those things away, they feel in control of it and they go, well, I can get to this point and do it. The others that are super hyper emotional, all these things come up and they’re like, well, there’s relevance and there’s…
Ryan Christensen (29:56.364)
Absolutely.
Ryan Christensen (30:09.889)
Yes.
Nick (30:16.258)
probably some truth to this and I want to hear all of you out and I want to experience all of that but then being able to be anchored in yourself enough to say I could do either of those I think that then ties back to what you’re talking about of we’re not broken
Ryan Christensen (30:31.69)
Yeah, so people who have control issues have this idea of like, if I just have control over everything, then I can determine the outcome. Right. Control is always about safety. Safety is always about fear. Always. So anybody who’s got control issues is massively fucking afraid of something. And because they can’t acknowledge those negative emotions, they don’t even know what the fuck it is. They can’t tell. They can’t even go there, can’t even look at it. They can’t even acknowledge that fear in the first place because it’s too difficult. Right.
So when you have these people that are so aversive to feeling negative emotions, because the thing is people like that, more than happy to be happy and joyous and prideful and all that stuff. Good emotions, great. Going to do all this all day. Negative emotions, can’t fucking touch them at all. Too painful. There was shit that was too much that they could handle. They’ve been running from the past their entire freaking lives. And they’re just, they’re stuck in a really, really terrible situation. I call it the treadmill a lot of times. It’s like, okay, you got this intolerable situation when you’re young, found a way out and now you’re chasing that thing.
Right? Got a carrot on a sticker chasing. If you ever stop, get the stick. So they got the whole pleasure and pain double whammy, which means their knives get very, very fucking narrow because this is the only damn thing they’re allowed to do. It’s the only thing that’s fucking safe for them to do. Right. The people who are hyper emotional are these people who have like. They don’t have any agency. They don’t think they can do anything. They’re just stuck. All they can do is just be bombarded with this stuff.
Ryan Christensen (31:59.584)
And because they don’t know what to do with it, they feel like they can do anything with it. They’re stuck like dealing with this crap all the time and just a victim. They don’t have any agency. They don’t have any power. The way through it, in my opinion, and sort of the thing that’s worked the best for me is after I’ve done all this work, I’m in a very interesting place where I want it all.
Heights of ecstasy, depths of hell, give it all to me. For a couple different reasons. Number one, if I’m only allowed to feel good, then this entire portion of the human experience that I’m not allowed to do.
Ryan Christensen (32:29.068)
All this shit’s cut off, right? Number two, if I’m ever allowed to hear the negative signals, my mind now has to keep me in a place where it’s only safe to do this. So there’s a lot of shit that I don’t get to do. Right? Number three, when emotions are no longer pain, every negative emotion is simply a question your mind is asking. It’s like, hey, we’re facing this kind of problem, help me solve it. Which means that feeling bad is a good thing because it means I’m fucking doing it right.
Ryan Christensen (32:52.896)
Right? If I’m never afraid, I’m never up against something that I can’t just automatically conquer. It means I’m not challenging myself. If I never feel shame, that means I’ve always hit the standard, cleared the bar. The bar’s probably too fucking low. Right? If I’m never feeling guilty, nobody’s got a problem that I can solve. It means I’m pretty fucking useless. If I never feel sad, I never fucking lost anything valuable. If I never regret anything, never had an opportunity to give something valuable that I really needed. It means I made me too fucking small. If I’m feeling bad, I’m fucking doing it right.
Ryan Christensen (33:22.796)
as long as I allow myself to feel that, as long as I allow myself to leverage those as actual tools to help me navigate life. And the beautiful thing is this, problems are easy to solve once you know the problem is. The hard part is trying to figure out what the fuck the problem is. So if my emotions help me figure this thing out fucking faster, listen, listen.
listen. I really love when I get to not only have conversations with people on the podcast, even mentoring or coaching people or just having conversations with people about life because I can’t not have conversations about these things. The people that are closest to the void, the people that are closest to the depths, if not deep in it, are the ones that are the most open.
Ryan Christensen (33:55.201)
Yeah.
Nick (34:07.255)
to doing this work and the people that are just skating through life or so it seems, or they’re doing the things and they’re not getting to either of those emotions. It can be a roller coaster at times, but it can also be, it doesn’t have to be a crazy wild ride the entire time. As long as we go, well, this is what happens. This is how I am. So I think there’s components to it where it’s understanding ourselves, our energetics, how we relate to things, what we do, even
Ryan Christensen (34:09.313)
Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (34:14.378)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (34:37.421)
chemically and things of that sort and then understanding what these pieces are and that within that is some semblance of control whether you’re the really controlling type or the type that feels and experiences all the depths of emotions.
Ryan Christensen (34:51.948)
Think about it, think about it less in terms of control and more in terms of agency. The ability to act, right? Because again, like control is a really, really tricky thing. Cause the only thing you really have control over is your own choices and decisions. And not really even that, right? Cause if you were operating from a place of like fear or pain or need to prove yourself, you don’t really have free will because your mind has to keep you away from stuff, has to trap you in this place, has to keep you safe, has to keep you away from stuff, right? And since your unconscious mind controls the reality you perceive and the amount of options you’re allowed to choose from.
Nick (34:55.37)
Yeah, totally. I get that.
Ryan Christensen (35:20.522)
You don’t really have free will at that point. So much stuff is off limits for you. Right. But once you’re in this position, it’s like, OK, now I’m dealing with stuff. Now I’ve got tools. Now I’m actually engaging with it. Your mind has been trying to help you this whole time anyways. So, of course, it’s going to help you figure this stuff out. But the reason why people were so in depths of hell are so willing to engage with it is because we don’t have any fucking choice. We do not have it. It’s like we don’t have any fucking choice. Like it’s either figure this shit out or you’re fucking dead. Period. Right.
Nick (35:41.837)
You’re there. Everything’s dark. You gotta do something.
Ryan Christensen (35:50.066)
If life is going OK, you can lie to yourself. You can pretend. It’s good enough. It’s fine. but just like if you’re one of successful people that are just dead inside, it’s like, everybody’s telling me everything’s awesome. I’m getting all this positive reinforcement. I’m just going to pretend to do that. Even though I feel dead inside, it’s easy to lie to yourself. Fortunately for me, I’m autistic. I don’t get the fucking chance. I can’t lie to myself. It’s one of the most frustrating things. I can’t fucking lie to myself. A whole fake it till you make it. Cannot do it. So I couldn’t lie to myself about this thing. You know, things that.
We’re working because it fucking wasn’t. the problem is solved. No, it fucking ain’t like, no, it’s not. So I didn’t have the opportunity to coast. I didn’t have the opportunity to pretend I didn’t have the opportunity to say, OK, things are just fine. It’s like, no, they’re fucking not. I’m still in hell. Still got to drag myself out. Right. There’s a beauty in that in that you’re actually living real life. You’re actually living truth at that point. Sucks. Fucking sucks. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s actually truth.
Ryan Christensen (36:45.694)
actually truth and actually puts you in such a much more powerful position than everybody’s living in life.
Nick (36:50.442)
I think that’s a huge observation too. So people that are listening to this that are going through really, really, really tough times or have gone through a situation like a life changing situation, the death or divorce or whatever that looks like, we can then feel the emotions or we can become a controller or whatever, whatever you’re going to do. But being able to actually understand that this is life, I’m sure there are certain people that will listen to this and be like, fuck you too.
Ryan Christensen (37:15.434)
Yeah.
Nick (37:17.758)
Like I’m in it right now and this sucks and blah, blah. Like, look, we get it. We’ve both been suicidal. We both have had all these experiences where it’s like, take me out of here. I don’t know about you, but I’ve taken that off the table. That is not a thing because I understand like what we’re talking about, that this is where life is. And if we’re here and we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it. Some days I fucking don’t want to because it’s tough. It’s like a workout.
Ryan Christensen (37:18.668)
You
Nick (37:43.998)
You know, you hire a trainer and you go, all right, I want you to kick my ass. And then halfway through the ass kicking, you’re like, can you stop? It’s like, fuck you, you paid me to do this. We’re here to do this thing. You’re gonna hurt in a beautiful way and being able to work through that stuff. So, man, I appreciate you getting in everything you’ve gotten into, all the depths of everything you’ve gone through and for you to still be here. That is a beautiful thing. But for the people that are going through all of this right now and they’re on their path towards self mastery and working on this stuff, what’s your advice for those people?
Ryan Christensen (37:51.767)
Nope. Right. Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (38:06.604)
Thank you.
Ryan Christensen (38:14.966)
The number one thing you can do is be curious. way I see it, there’s really only three things you need to do in life in order to get everything you want. Number one, you have to be authentic self to the maximum extent possible, which means you can’t lie to yourself about who you are. If you’re in the shit right now, that’s actually a lot easier. It’s a lot easier to be honest about what you are and where you’re at, right? Number two, you gotta listen to yourself. You gotta listen. All these different parts of your mind are trying to help you get where you wanna be. All these different parts of yourself are trying to give you signals. Listen, if something feels off, it’s because there’s something fucking off.
Nick (38:30.376)
Yeah. Hell yeah.
Ryan Christensen (38:45.26)
Take the step back and do number three, get curious. Get curious. All you gotta do is keep asking questions. That’s all you gotta do. What does this mean? What am I missing? Where are you trying to show me? Right? Even if it’s wrong, it’s gonna get you closer to where you’re supposed to be. It’s gonna start to like, you need go down this rap hole. I need to start looking about this. Right? Be yourself to the max of set you can. Don’t lie to yourself. Own all the crap you don’t like about yourself because it’s true on some level until you fix it. Listen to yourself.
all this little subtle signals wherever they may come from and get curious. That’s all you gotta do. If you do that, you will get yourself out eventually. Won’t say it’s easy. Won’t say it won’t be rough. But there is a solution. You can find a way. You just have to keep being curious.
Nick (39:32.698)
And I think to add to that too, that can probably piss some people off. And I’m sure we’ve both been there where part of this is fun. You know, you’re here and you’re working through this and it’s a game, you know, we get to play this game, but it’s easier to say in this context right now on this call. I know there are times where I’ve even said that to myself while going through things and myself is like, you know, fuck you self. I’m working through this shit right now. And it’s like, you shut your fucking mouth, but.
Ryan Christensen (39:40.928)
Yep.
Ryan Christensen (39:57.452)
Yep. Yep.
Nick (40:01.386)
At the same time, we get to be able to work through these things and explore through it. All the rest of the stuff are variables. They’re just ways to play this game. So what a cool thing, you know, in that sort of sense where sometimes life is just really crazy and stupid and there are times where I’ll even look up and be like, why the fuck are we all here? Like, why don’t you just end this thing?
Ryan Christensen (40:13.494)
Exactly.
Ryan Christensen (40:21.579)
Mm-hmm.
But here’s the beautiful thing about all that. When you start looking at life as every single thing is out there to teach me something, every single event is out there to teach me something. Like, did I go through hell? Yes. Did I fucking have to drag myself out of hell for 48 goddamn years? Yes. Did I have a gun in my hand more than once? Yes. Did I fucking lose mine? Yes. And every single one of those things taught me something about how things work, about how mine works to fix myself and help me fix other people.
You can get anything you want in life as long you’re willing to pay the price. The more valuable, the higher the price. I paid a pretty fucking high price to get really fucking valuable. Every single thing is there to teach you something. Just take the fucking lessons.
Nick (41:08.507)
Yeah, I mean, we so many people play video games, no matter what age at this point, and we can all play those video games, but then we forget at times that we are kind of an RPG. Like, we’re moving through this and sometimes you get half, you get half or all the way through, I think back to like the Legend of Zelda at times, links going all the way through and he goes, fuck, I forgot this goddamn key and you got to go all the way back and find the key and go.
Ryan Christensen (41:12.321)
Yeah.
Ryan Christensen (41:19.584)
Yeah, basically are.
Ryan Christensen (41:26.586)
my God. Yeah.
Nick (41:32.586)
That’s a basic thing. But in that sense, like we sometimes do that. And I’d said to myself and even my ex wife and friends and business partners and stuff for I don’t want to go backward because I had a fear that backward meant such a bad thing where there’s not actually a backward. There’s a you learn from these things and you continue just move along. So you’re still more things to learn. Even going back to a Legend of Zelda and like going back there are other things you get as you go back through that level to get that key and keep moving along.
Ryan Christensen (41:47.008)
No.
Nick (42:02.15)
I think that’s a playful kind of tongue-in-cheek way to put it because for most of us we’re used to something like that, but then we get to be able to move through life in that sort of way. So, man, I appreciate you being on today. Before I let you go, yeah, of course, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?
Ryan Christensen (42:15.542)
Thank you so much for having me.
Ryan Christensen (42:20.842)
Yeah, so my website is www.ryanthehypnotist.com. Offer 45 minutes consultations are free. We’ll sit down, dig into what’s going on in your life. I’ll tell you what’s actually happening, where it came from, why things have not been working. I also have a book on Amazon called Winner Piece, W-I-N-N-E-R Piece, How to End Inner Conflict and Make Success Inevitable. It’s actually my entire process, start to finish, all the theory, all the modality, to extent that you can get the benefit of working with me one-on-one in that format. I try to give you as much as I can.
Nick (42:47.626)
Beautiful. love that. And you’re not trying to just like, hide the secret sauce with it. Because a lot of this will take either work with you or work with some practitioner to be able to work through this stuff. I want to touch on that real quick. We’re not here to just do life alone. We are here to work with other people. And I deeply believe that part of purpose in life for all of us is community based, and us being able to work with other people. So I appreciate you doing that putting that stuff in there and also understanding that you’re going to work with the people that you work with.
Ryan Christensen (43:01.868)
Sure. No.
Nick (43:17.832)
and those are going to be the right people to work with. Man, it’s been awesome having you on today. Again, thank you so much for your time.
Ryan Christensen (43:25.14)
Outstanding. Thank you so much for having me on. was a great time.
https://youtu.be/vK4PO708vFE
