Speak With Tyler Bryden
Speak With Tyler Bryden
How I Use Speak To Improve My Mental Health
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How I Use Speak To Improve My Mental Health

Early August Thoughts

This is is part of my live-learning series! I will be updating this post as I continue through my journey. I apologize for any grammatical errors or incoherent thoughts. This is a practice to help me share things that are valuable without falling apart from the pressure of perfection. 

In this video, I talk about how I use https://speakai.co/ to improve my mental health. Speak is more than a technology or product, it’s a methodology that has been tested, researched, and improved on over several years of recovering from a mental health breakdown. Thanks so much for all the love and support ❤😊

47 min read (9291 Words)

OK, I hope everything is going well. It’s Tyler Bryden. I am stream of consciousness doing this, but I’ve thought about it a lot, so I’m hoping that it actually works. An really the thing that I want to talk about today is.

How I’m using speak to improve my mental health and hopefully by going through this. It might illuminate options for anyone who watch this or listens to this or reads it. Probably going to me. Get myself some ideas.

Sort of exploring. This as I go with a couple core themes concepts and then just the previous work that I’ve done in the past. But continuing to. Chart into new territory, continuing to learn things every day and as you get deeper and deeper down. A rabbit hole. Just sort of see more and more and I thought this with marketing at the time when I started sort of my journey of trying to figure

out marketing. It was like I’m going to figure this all out in a year. And then you look at it and suck a little little puddle. But that puddle then turns into a Lake. That link then turns into a big ocean, and it gets deeper and deeper the more you go down. One thing, the more intricate it gets, the more you realized there’s so much to actually learn.

Guess a couple housekeeping items. I am running this on a laptop. It’s making a little bit of noise, so I apologize if this isn’t perfect audio quoting to continue to work and figure this out. And again this is a little bit of stream of consciousness. There are some, again some core concepts that I’m looking at, but there’s a lot of things new that I’m exploring here and then sharing and walking through for the first time while being recorded with the laptop that is somewhat.

Somebody’s interested also causing me problems. I hope I’ve got a decent decent setup here and again the question that I. I’m asking myself right now when I’m trying to work through. Is how do I use speech to improve my mental health? Anyone who knows me knows how. Much I really do care about this.

I first. Realized I was struggling with depression when I was in University. And. A lot of my friends were moving out, they were. You know living in the dorms in University and meeting all these friends and the only connected in in? In my case I had.

Been drafted to the OHLI had tried out they wanted me to play exhibitions but I just something didn’t feel right. I wanted to. I want to come home and it was during this time where my my parents were splitting up. My mom was living alone for the first time and.

I mean forever and. It was really difficult time to be so far away. Anne. I mean, I wasn’t going to hockey player, but I think there was some self sabotage that also came along with that and ended up with me living at home in a small city just outside London on and my. And as I watched, all this stuff happen. All my friends have so much fun and and I only went part time to University.

Didn’t get too involved, played hockey and continued to get sort of lost in that culture. I really started to feel the first underpinnings I guess have depression and remember walking up to my. Mum one day and just saying but like I’m sad it’s not just sad anymore. This is continuing. This is this is depression.

I feel depressed and. That was the first time I had ever. You know, turn that feeling into words understood. I had written lyrics for music and I’d love sad like sad hip hop that was powerful and impactful and or write my own lyrics. And a lot of my own lyrics were dark and. I guess I should have.

Seen all these things but I didn’t realize and I still didn’t even realize at that moment how. Sad, I actually was and you know from myself, there’s I think there’s lots of genetic things. Lots of lots of reasons why you can be sad for my big one. For myself was just my dad struggling with alcoholism and. Anyone who has had a father, parent someone close to them struggle with alcoholism.

It can really turn them into a completely different person. And unfortunately, for my situation that would be emotionally abusive, sometimes physically just. Anger coming out, temper and really an unstable. Childhood that led. That left me with a lot of traumatic experiences, a lot of things that process and then a lack of a father figure. That would have been, you know,

very crucial for I think anyone’s health. They actually need growing up. That on top of some concussions with hockey general. Pattern of partying growing up in a rural area, struggling with my own sexuality, and realizing that I had interest in other sex and the other sex at a young age and being too scared to talk about that to tell anyone because of. The fear of persecution, of stigma, of all these different things, and so you know.

All these things I didn’t realize were sort of. Coming together at the same time and not just the same time but just over the years to this chronic stress and anxiety and always monitoring the environment and making sure that you know that my dad was OK. And then you know the effects of that on my mom and my mom not becoming the person that she wanted to be or deserve to be and then having her own temper and anger and Insecurities. All the stuff sort of came together and for me at 21 I. Basically had a mental breakdown after my 21st birthday. My hockey career came to an end and again, anyone who’s knows me knows this,

knows the starter, watched it and watched it unfold. But we won this championship instead of feeling happiness. I just felt numb. I felt lost my purpose. I just didn’t know what to do and that started up trigger the series of just partying and getting out of control and not just alcohol and marijuana but.

Cocaine and and really just. Going down the path that I was. Not very happy to be going down, it will help me feeling very numb and I realize that at least part way through that summer is so I was about 2013 an. That’s also when I stumbled into everyone. Psychedelics that’s when I first had my first psilocybin experiences.

So in parallel I was having these. You know, very. Potent gas partying experiences late into the night and. You know all the stuff that goes along with that and the health and staying up too late and everything you know and then then also these psychedelic experiences on the weekend. Working all the sudden just shifted my perspective. This paradigm that I had this way that I thought about the world and what I thought was real and what? What was possible and what? We talk about this about what we took as real,

what we thought was real. All these things started to get mixed up together until my 21st birthday. Had an amazing time out of a bunch of friends and eat some psilocybin mushrooms and walked through the city and really felt like maybe there was a new chapter opening in my life. But seven days after my. Birthday maybe seven days. My dad had a heart attack and he lives they did I died in the hospital for a minute and they brought him back to life

and so was really scary time and all the sudden. All these. Revelation sort of started to come up to me. Come up over, just like I haven’t dealt with any of this stuff. I don’t have a good relationship with my father. Could have lost him right there,

you know. What’s going on with his work? He’s worked in a factory for so long, and what could have driven him to like all these questions started to emerge and. And instead of having wrapping support around me, I isolated myself and I actually started to use psilocybin much more intensely. And you know, if anyone knows about. Using psychedelics, there’s a risk already and then add stress to that ad.

Trauma growing up. Large doses without. The right intention, the time between support. Guidance like. This this is really what’s what’s possible, and there’s often a lot of people who think that everything seems so stable in the world, and I think this year there was a lot of. With Covid, with everything that came, we start to realize just how unstable how dynamic this world actually is, and I just thought that you know, like like many people who are born into some privilege that.

You’re invincible that you’re not just walking unstable ground. And what I realize is that it’s much more like a you walking along a Cliff and just a couple steps to either side and you can fall off that Cliff really easily. And that led to. Series of public breakdowns and videos and always loved her videos and posting and so all of this just sort of happened with the eye of people on me enough to know that, you know, after this hockey championship and you know lots of big parties. But you know everyone in the city that I came through.

Sort of all connected and. And that was a really difficult time in my life and there was a lot of stuff that was made up internally that I still work through and deal with, but basically. As I went through those experiences. Thought about a shame. I felt a lot of stigma on there’s a big difference.

I like to say between. Solitude and then isolation solitude can be amazing, for you can learn about yourself. You can come happy with yourself. But isolation means that you’re you push people away, you get you. You ignored social connections for too long and. As much as I myself and I think people I can tell themselves,

we need people when we need people. We need, social connections, need family, need love. We need friends. Anne. So I.

Over several months, sort of got worse I guess. And I ended up in the hospital as an inpatient. After After a suicide attempt and multiple and many different, not just the attempts that mattered, it was that this ever is ongoing thought that was in my mind over and over and over. You don’t deserve to be here. Find a way to leave this earth.

Everything that you’ve worked for or for that 121 years like whatever. As it’s gone like, why try why try to heal? Why try to grow? Why try to? Why try to even repair the damage that you’ve done? You’ve lost everything. That’s the, you know, the loop that can take over your mind and. I was inpatient in the hospital. You know anyone who’s gone through that experience knows that we’re really just trying to bring you out of crisis and then get you to a place at safe.

At least here in Canada they do. As much as they possibly can, but there are shortcomings in the system that we have. And once you are out of that crisis situation, they sort of need you to leave the hospital. And so that’s what happened. I spent a week, I told the doctors I was OK.

I was not OK at every intention to find a way to kill myself after I left the hospital. And the first time I had, I guess, had enough. Power in my mind I told my Grandma I woke up one day I was staying at her place and God bless her and you know the people who do support you in difficult times and set up a gram of you. If you don’t take him to the hospital right now, I’m going to hurt myself. I don’t know what to do. What a horrible thing to have to tell your grandma,

your grandpa to print them through jokes that I aged her and I did. And it’s really. It’s actually quite sad. Second time I went to the hospital was after a much more serious attempt to take my own life. For awhile I thought I really wanted to kill myself.

And as I reflect back now and I think about it and sort of. Some of the. Cloud sort of I guess dissipate. I realized I wanted to live. There was a moment during the attempt at.

I realized that I needed to. Can do this basically. And I ended up back in the hospital. Months passed this time multiple months. And.

It was. This was a really eye opening experience the first time in the hospital was enough. ’cause you saw some really sad people in there and some people would actually hurt themselves and people have been traumatized by Warren. A second time, though, staying in for such a long time was.

Was quite. Impactful in my life and I guess in a positive way. In a negative way. I took two months and I grew through that time at least I reduced. Desire slowly you know that. Let’s start loop that we can get into this every single second.

Tyler, you don’t deserve to be here. Your worthless life is meaningless. No point for you continuing this now that went away instead of every second. It was once a minute and then. You know, once every 10 minutes and then once an hour and it slowly and slowly started to.

Two just. Give me some time, give me some relief. Give me some breaths and air to stop suffering. And so after a few months. I.

Left the hospital in this time. My sort of resolution to myself was. No, I definitely wasn’t healthy. I had a lot more work to do. I wanted out of there in one of the get the hell out of there.

I was. If you’re going to do it this time, Tyler know, take your life snow ******* around this time. Just do it. Don’t know there’s no cries for attention. There’s no you know like. I just I was either in or out at this point and when you think about it in this way,

it’s sort of hard to. It’s hard to commit to out, so once you’re out, you’re out. And what I realized is, if I even felt this way that there was a lot of work. That I had to do. Anne.

So I guess this just paints a little background for you. If you are listening or watching this of my own experience with mental health, why I’m so passionate about this, why I’ve worked so **** ** his wife, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars. Very personal money of time donated to organizations. Calls conversation and like just I just care. So much about this, and I think you know a lot of people who go through difficult times.

What they don’t want to see. Other people go through is those difficult times unnecessarily, and I thought that there was a lot of things that I wish I had known. That if I had known, I probably could have avoided some of this pain, probably could have avoided some of this suffering and not just myself, but what caused other people. The isolation that I did the. Stressed that I caused my family members and my friends and the people who cared about me.

So. That’s sort of been my. Mission ever since an. I had to figure out how to build something sustainable for a while. At least make money and I was too scared to go to work and so some reason I thought that building my own.

Company would be a better idea and I you know I slowly took this path. I decided I wanted to go back to school after this whole ordeal. I needed to learn some more practical skill sets. I went to Fanshawe College in London ON. And then I learned how to build websites and actually my first year I had a couple people ask me to build websites and there was a program called the summer company program which would give you a $3000 grant to start a business and.

I had an opportunity to go do a job and it was a job I would just have to. Basically is Rogers and I would just have to go and talk and and sell stuff by standing outside of that. Just absolutely terrified me at. At this point I had gained a bunch of weight right now about 190 pounds is about 280 pounds at my peak and I had some serious work that I needed to do and I thought if I could start my own company this is maybe it was delusional. Maybe at the time that I could.

Have a little bit more control over my life and. Monitor alittle bit better than just. Figure out, give myself some time too. Figure out what I needed to do and then hopefully. Become.

Become able to capable of. You know, helping in a different way and. One of the realizations I had was it was really hard to for me at the time anyways. It’s all very hard to make an impact when I had. No money, I had no.

Respect. No one believed me. No one knew what I was capable of. No one. Knew that the experiences that I had gone through had made me more. You know, more strong, more resilient.

And I wrestled with a lot of insecurity and and and in pain during that time as well too. And So what I like. Started to. Want to figure out was just. What could I actually? Do to make myself feel better and.

During this time I had always written rap lyrics. I always wrote songs and music and notes and Journaled to myself, whether on paper or on audio notes or video recordings like I found watching myself on video recording a video. Saying how I feel, talking to things and then watching it back would give me this instantaneous feedback and then also. Yes.

Ability to. You know, analyze yourself immediately and that real time feedback this loop was very really powerful for me and I. Started to use different tools. I’m going to just record like right now. I’m using OBS for this. I think it will use like Oh BS.

Some of the stuff is still blurry. I would write text notes right right on like Journal papers and pads and I really have always loved you. Sort of set up here. I loved audio notes, recording audio and then just.

Talking and processing. The through the experiences that I actually had. And I just started to work on this idea of like self reflection and self analysis. And monitoring myself. And anytime I could try to capture high quality audio recordings or video recordings so I could then listen back or watch back. So I think that’s like 1. Key part of the technology that I’m trying to build,

but again, I’m not trying to just leave this as. The technology it’s more about a process in a methodology, so it’s like record them writing this down. Now you can hear the camera getting a little louder or the laptop getting a little louder. So record videos, record audio. Then capture notes basically so just to show you hopefully this works.

Yes yes yes. So I’m just writing basically what’s what I’m just sort of going through and like. There’s a couple of things this is actually this big system that are just sort of. I guess you know that are sticking out to me that I can actually show. On the screen here and then, I’ll also switch back, but. One of the things that has actually started to get a lot more research around it has basically been this idea of.

Expressive writing, therapeutic journaling. I would say I guess those are the two terms, but basically if you. Write about your trauma. You write about the experiences you’re having, the emotions that you feel. Then By actually taking the those emotions and articulating them to words has a very powerful therapeutic effect to it, and we’re starting to see you know there’s been now been several.

Several studies on here in awk see now pull up this screen. One of them. Being BI. Actual switch out for a sexy so I can pull this wonderful man up and make sure that I get the details right. So this is awesome guy here now.

Now I’ve got it. James Pennebaker so he wrote the book Secret Life pronounced, and he did a ton of research over the years of basically the power of expressive writing. Actually, you can. You can see here. So it was actually a specific protocol for this as well too. And basically you would get people to go through and for 15 to 20 minutes a day would actually write those emotional upheavals,

positive, negative and then that process of going through. Turning them to words became clear that there was a lot of value here and what one of his? Studies actually found was there wasn’t actually just a link between mental health, but there was also a link to physical health, and I’ve got a couple of links. I’m still doing a little bit more. Looking into this because you know, there’s always obviously skepticism that can be involved, but. They showed that. Yeah,

by working through your emotions that. There was mental health benefits and then there was physical and I believe it was blood pressure and and fat bought that body fat percentage and. I should have all this stuff repaired. I know I’m coming back to it, but the idea? Was and is is that turning? Turning the emotions you have into words is what’s really powerful. There’s a couple of things that I’d like to think about around.

You know D is in all the studies they did. They did a lot of writing, so there’s a lot of power that comes with tangibly writing something and going through that exercise. So how attached? How connected is the therapeutic effect, both mentally and physically? From the actual writing part. The physical activity of doing that versus typing versus recording an audio note is a big difference between those. So that’s one thing that I’m sort of paying attention to, and I don’t want to go.

You know too deep into claims before I. You know, I guess make a wrong, you know. Say something that’s not wrong or not accurate, but there definitely does seem to be something really powerful here. And this is, I guess, bringing me back to the own technology and process and methodology.

Write stuff down. Just get it out of your head. That was one of the. Biggest sort of breakthroughs for me as I went through a really difficult time was when I kept everything in my head I felt. For lack of a better term, crazy I just.

I couldn’t handle it. There was too much going on in my mind. I know there’s a lot of people. Right now who have swirling quick moving minds that are firing at all times, and if you can’t get take that harness that and get it out of your head and you’re just going to swim and swim and swim, and so that’s one recommendation that. Now I’m making I’m not just selfishly trying to.

Claim that. Why I’m working on what I’m building is the only way to do this. I have a friend who’s going to really difficult time right now and she started recording videos and has already felt the therapeutic effect of that and she just did that with the camera on her phone. Can use Evernote. You can use, you know and write text notes you can.

Use your default. IOS app notes their systems to do this. What really, I think matters is. You have a thought or that’s inspiration, and it’s actually helpful outside of mental health, or if there’s a trauma or pain or something that you’re struggling with. How can you actually? Take that, put it into an environment. In my case I I love digital because it now a lot of a lot of things you can do with it in digital format.

And then start to come at it from a different perspective. Be able to revisit it. Re analyze. Can you make connections to other moments or things that you’re actually doing? That was one thing I always felt was sort of the lack with keeping it just on paper as it felt valuable at the time in therapeutic at the time. But as I wanted to go back for.

Review for analysis. It always was hard to hard to find. I had a lot of notebooks and scrolling through and there just was no scroll like flipping through the pages and so stuck in this world. That was sort of the challenge for me is how valuable it felt at the time. But then how that sort of fell apart after awhile? So you know, my recommendation is find something digital,

find something secure. Find something that you trust. You know, that’s something that I know. I think a lot about. First of all, for myself and then people are asking us when they’re looking at the application that we’re building is the safe. Is this private? Is it secure? Bring a lot of work into that.

First of all, money, time and energy research. But like. You don’t feel safe and secure sharing yourself. Into the system that you’re using, then you’re not going to get to full healing potential, and I think that’s something I’ve started to think a lot about as well too, is how does knowing you’re being recorded knowing that you. Are writing this into a system that you didn’t built? How is that actually affecting you? Experiencing the full therapeutic healing? Have you know that maybe? And I believe, for example, like Evernote leaked a lot of notes,

4.5 million people got details leaked. If you were writing personal journals and thoughts and their struggles with mental health and there like there is things to these things, to think about, and if you don’t have faith in the systems you’re using, then you’re not going to be able to guess fully, experience or share the way that you want, so that’s something that I’m thinking a lot about and just thinking about how we can encrypt not just in rest but or in transit, but in breast. And make sure that people know that we’re not trying to. I don’t know, I don’t.

I don’t want to. No. I don’t want to know. The intimate details of their life. I don’t. There’s no, I don’t I I just want to help and the system that we’re building is doing that.

It’s not me personally. Going in and looking through things, not that so you know, that’s not going to be the culture. That just doesn’t make any sense. What we want is a system and then a community that’s crowd source is how we can actually self monitor self, analyze for self improvement, for mental health or well being so it can be more productive so we can live to our fullest potential. That’s what we care about, so I know I haven’t necessarily built the trust out fully, but I can. I can swear, and I can tell you how much we actually do care about that, because I printing my own deepest, darkest, darkest personal thoughts, feelings,

emotions, everything into the system. And I want to keep that stuff safe as well too. So, just to reiterate, one of those things is. If you have thoughts, but it’s inspiration, or if you’re struggling. Document and try to get it if you can. I know that there is lots of stuff,

lots of power and writing. You know physically, but if you can capture it digitally, there’s so much power for analysis. One day I hope that I can actually write on a paper notepad and it will sync directly into speak. Let you know as soon as that comes. Anne.

So there’s a couple other things that I want to show how I’ve already been going on for 30 minutes. Thank thank you if you’re. If you’re still here, but one of the things that. I’m trying to figure out basically is how do we? So in in our tech right now and it will only continue to prove we’re doing, for example sentiment analysis to understand what moments were negative and positive and sentences throughout your transcripts from your audio and video, and then actual sentences within your text. We’re also doing named entity recognition, so we know what you meant. You know if you if you mention a person or location or brand or you know will add more objects so that you can actually self define things that you

think are valuable. You know now that you know now that you know, for example, that these things are being analyzed and then surfaced for you. All these items and you know you have a tool that can combine audio and video and text. Holistic Lee. How does that modify your experience with the technology and then how you can actually?

Therapeutically workthrough. Therapeutically worked through what what you’re trying to process and what we’re trying to go through. So now for example. I can say. When I go to this location, I feel happy. I feel sad when I talk to this person that makes me feel inspired.

Makes me feel excited. When I eat a lot of sugar, I feel depressed when? When it’s really rainy for a bunch of days in a row. It makes me sad, so by connecting an object and the way that you’re feeling, this connection is actually made and that becomes a very powerful thing because you can start to input. Things in the system that are so correlating to how you’re feeling to your mood and then you can then re examine and re expose and resurface those down the line. So I just wanted to make that maybe a little bit more tangible. I’ll just show you this is actually,

I’ve now exported audio and videos from the time I started. So like June, June 6, 2019 until until now, September 10th. And this is every time you can see what I’ve done here is actually typed in the word that times every time. As I’ve said, sad basically. And now I can see spikes in it. And I can then start to see OK, so why and I know exactly what happened here?

November 21st, 2019. My my partner at the time and I ended our relationship and it was really sad and I made a note and I said no we’re no longer together and I’m sad it’s going to be sad for awhile then so was self documenting and self reporting and. At the time, we weren’t even that advanced, but I knew that there was things coming down the pipeline that would then expose this in the future. And so by self documenting self reference referencing saying why I’m now able to get this spike, which is a moment of interest to me and something I can go surface. And now I can go back to this audio note.

It can re listen to it. I can find the actual sentences can find out what made me feel so sad. So that’s like one of the things that I’m I’m trying to think of, and then I just. Another part was sort of same. Same idea, but surfaced through a different way was I was actually looking at sentence is right so September 7th all way back to December 8 2019 and I typed

in the word breakthrough. So now I know. I can go use anywhere again, feel or feeling is really powerful. ’cause then if I typed in transcript text here feel or feeling then it will surface every in every sentence that I say that and then I can start to analyze. I can start to learn about what’s making me feel certain ways and call it instantly. In this case, I was looking through the word breakthrough and then I now able to see you know May 5th, 10:00 PM new apartment. Note that’s a breakthrough,

right? I said, well, I don’t know what it was talking about here. I could now reference that note. And I can go navigate through it. And you know, even with, as with new notes where it’s actually starting to grab some metadata for myself, I can see that it was in Toronto and that it was a little bit cloudy and just going to take forever to chug through this, I think. But just to show you.

Another example. If I self reference and I say happy, then I’m going to be able to see that same spike here. This takes too long. This is not in the actual speech system yet. This is actually a raw export and then I’m using a Google data studio to expose the info, but we’re now surfacing we’re adding tags and then transcript text which will actually be sentiment analysis sentiment. Text so that you will be able to search through audio,

video and text and for example what I’ve done here. Is every time I’ve said happy? Hopefully I’m not exposing anything that’s too upsetting for you, but you can see literally every instance that I said. I’m happy. I’m very happy that I used to use the app for this. Just sitting here talking about it makes me really happy. First call so this is your head and I have phone call and we tested this together and then you know all the mentions of happy so I can now

start to see that Spike and I can see the same thing here wins all the Times that I mentioned that I was happy. And so this is the part that I I find at least. To be like quite a breakthrough. In terms of what’s possible with technology to self. Monitor self document to analyze, to understand, to help yourself grow. And more than that, there is,

you know, ways to tag things and trying to see if I can do this in a way that’s again not. Too risky in terms of data. Still, it’s always expect, which is me preparing for a live stream and then I you know what’s happening here is I now sort of in surfacing insights, things that I didn’t necessarily know. Were there, you know, like I get this now, I get an email back when I upload this audio I recorded for five very 8 minutes sort of went stream of consciousness and talked and talked and talked. And then I get this data back of like what was actually talking about. Who did I mention? What brands, what locations you can start to see, the actual connection there? I can start to see sentiment as well too,

so I can see. OK. Where were the positive moments? Where were the negative moments? Yeah, so like. Let’s see, hopefully it stays on the screen sometimes get long. Yeah. Childhood trauma and sexual abuse.

So you can start to see and quickly analyze and understand. So this has been another big part is to just like stream of consciousness talk. And then automatically surface things that I wasn’t. Maybe even aware of, or paying attention to at the time. And we won’t just have no negative positive neutral be able to at least take a shot at telling you what emotions we think that are being described.

And then I can even sort through. I can see what are the top 10 most negative. I know more than that about top 10, so if there’s 100 sentences in this, what were the most negative moments? And then were the most positive so that part? Already has been. Immensely informative for me to identify things that. Again, are positive or negative very quickly,

not. You know, it would be hard for me to go. Do every single piece of audio listen to it back? But by transcribing it by then extracting these insights and surfacing in these different forms, all the sudden, you can really quickly get these insights and then same thing with the actual transcript. You know everything is searchable. What I’ve been doing. And if anyone is using the system or wants to use a system or just once too.

Start self monitoring or analyzing more. In general. One of the things that I would really recommend is to find those. Words that matter to you, the phrases that matter to you. Mouse should come here at some point.

Here we are. So this has become a sort of ongoing search for myself. What words are meaningful to me? And I, you know, I’ve given this example before about absolutist terms is when you no longer see in a state of temporary world that your pain is only temporary, but everything becomes permanent. The world is cold. I’m a loser forever. My complete idiot and it will always be that way. Those are the science that you’re actually moving into state of permanence instead of temporary,

and that you might be getting caught in the thought loop. And so if I use those words, I can now. Start to see how many times am using those words. Where do they actually seem to surface as it in conversations at webnotes myself? One that emerged from the other day. Someone actually told me is they look for could or should when they use those words.

It’s sort of A. Why that, is it a distortion as a cognitive distortion? You know what? What are those things that are valuable to you and for myself? Now that I’ve gone through a journey of mental health and really serious breakdown, I wish I had had a tool like this because I could. So trace back. I can now trace back and see the signs, but I didn’t see them at the time and now a system like this. About times when I record especially audio notes, It’s one of more pushed into.

A time of stress and so. By doing that. Then surface is these things and almost these early warnings, so trying to think of it, you know there’s a very high level of that of no. I’m, you know, I’m feeling depressed. You know, I feel. You know,

I don’t want to be here anymore. Things like that. Those those are very obvious signs, but are there more subtle signs for yourself? As well too. So those are the things that I I recommend. Is your building a process of journaling and writing? Start to look for phrases or keywords that actually indicate to you that maybe you’re positive trending in a positive direction or you know sadly, in a negative direction, and then you can use that as an early warning signal as a detection sign and then. Correct from their course, correct?

Is a. Another thing. That I guess you know, I would like to add there is like what we need to think about her then what are the factors that are actually impacting our mood and. You know there is. I wish I had the article pulled up right now, but you know, there’s a lot of articles and sort of say like 99 factor. Some of those are social. You know your relationships with other people, so how can you self document that to technology? Some of it’s genetic maybe a little bit more harder control,

but none. There’s things like your foot in your diet, your exercise. You know here to me, one of the big ones is yourself. Talk with yourself. It’s great when you can be happy with other people.

We’re undistracted by a funny television show or whatever it is you’re watching. But how do you feel when you’re just by yourself when you’re alone when you’re silent? What is that conversation that you’re having with yourself? The Communication that you’re having with yourself? And really, that’s what I’m trying to capture. Sometimes it’s not. Me. I must remove myself and record.

I pull back and then I expose. That underlying. Stream of consciousness that can be positive or negative. Trying to capture that. And then go and reflect on that after review.

What was just said and sort of removing myself from that picture. So. If you can do that, and that’s why this expressive writing therapeutic generally say like, don’t stop writing this write and write and write and write until you’re done. You’re 15 minutes or 20 minutes. And then go back and look at what just came out when you tap into that stream of consciousness.

Your. You know you’re feeling something about yourself about the way that you feel. Your perspective on the world. They have a tool and have systems that go in. Re examine that is deeply, deeply powerful.

So one of the things that. It’s not quite polished and fleshed out. The way that I would like it to be, but is the documentation of. I think two major ones are exercise and then your diet. So a lot of us are using desperate apps connected.

No, I use fitness pal and that monitoring and. Regulating what I was eating and then understanding my exercise was huge for me to lose the weight from 280 down to what I am now. And so how can I do that with my? Their system that we’re building is also something I’m trying to figure out and then trying to make that as Seamless as possible, because the part that always sucks with my fitness power. Any of those tools is manually documenting them, and then you lose. Desire to do it sometimes and again it always seems to be. Sometimes it’s easier to do it when it’s good, but then a lot of people,

I think, find that it’s easy to do these things when you’re really. Sad or we will need to? You’re forced to. Then once you sort of get out of that crisis moment that then those habits go away, you stop the tracking and I know that happens with me all the time and So what? I’m trying to figure out way to do is reduce the friction. Of things, and so I would like to be able to just record with my voice audio note. Text not yeah, but I I want to hands free and selfish is how could I document when I’m eating and then have that ported in for analysis as well too? Or at least at the very least for recall.

So that’s something that I’m trying to think. See if I can actually do. Hope I actually have an example of this, never actually typed this one in before. But for example, like what I am typing in sugar? By the way, yes. There we go Oh, so cool, see I have not done this before sugar.

Yeah, and. Love you sugar inside and not sure what I was saying there. Shower. I thought the effects of sugar right? So now this easy search method surfaces things. I don’t know if they have more. Sure, talk about food.

A self documenting my food yet intake of unhealthy food and drinking lots of cake and food this weekend and that’s never healthy. Yeah, see I hadn’t actually surfaced this before. Yeah. Very, very fascinating. So I’m taking food. And then here’s another one that definitely,

you know, is important. So I’ve got food. I want exercise. I did, you know I should just be able to say, you know, I did three sets of 25 reps of 25 reps dumbbells. Girls, you know that that was horrible. Hi, I just butchered that opening but you know, that’s that’s the idea that actually want to get into.

And then you know the other one that I sort of just mentioned. So for me, I fancy man, so I use the word Psilocybin. But I am looking at, you know any secondary or micro dosing or macro dosing like you can see now 0.9 Psilocybin 0.9.

So I did 0.9 maybe 1.5 throughout the day Guelph. It’s actually Toronto at 9:00 PM to clouds 1.5 on September 12. Yeah, quite a bit, I agree. Goes back all the way back 2019.

There we go. Why news in shell sentence? So like now I’d be able to with just a simple word written or spoken, I’m able to then pull up. Instances of drug use. It can speak prescription medicine. It can be non prescription medicine, but the power to be able to document that and then pull it up at any moment to then chart it out overtime.

So if I say. Cancel, Simon. I can now see spikes in that and connect to see if there’s anything else. Well, so here is the instances that I actually mentioned in any other things I thought was fascinating. To now I’m skipping, but was sentiment, overtime so sentiment of overall note sentiment, so I can start to see positivity and negativity. Overtime, where that actually was,

and that’s all the way from June. So by documenting on an ongoing basis, printing into this system and then combine with the analysis that we actually built in all the sudden, I’m sort of. Yeah, just surfacing these things I didn’t even know. I’m so honestly grateful for it because I put a lot of time investment into documenting these things.

Not one not mentioned. Building the system and to now see it giving me insights and not only insights with breakthroughs. I’m I’m truly humbled. I’m grateful, and it seems like we’re on a path. Path to help people and ask again why I’m here and what time. What I’m doing? I have A rule.

OK. It’s not a girl, it’s I think they live by about $0.11 currency. Hello hello and the idea is that. My stick of incense isn’t a great measurement of time, and so I can now. Know that my instance is almost done,

so that means that maybe my time with this video is almost done. Trying to think if there’s anything else ’cause I know I got through some good stuff, but I also feel like I didn’t do a lot of things I want to talk about, but I think this will not only be this will be just part one. I will do much more. Now 50 minutes Tyler. So the question re ask yourself that would be a good thing. How do I use speech to improve my mental health?

Talk about the documenting. Just getting things out of your head. Recording and capturing. Talked about like a self referential part. So just like knowing. Knowing the named entity recognition. Recognition, the sentiment analysis, knowing that that’s there, then you can use that to your advantage when you’re actually recording notes, then you can surface insights that you’re looking for and then by,

for example, attaching. I feel I see when I go to this location. I feel happy. That It then allows you to build that connection between sentiment and an entity. One of the things I guess is I’m looking at the way that this is helping me right now, but I’m always anticipating what’s coming in the future as well too. And. There’s some really exciting things, and one of them is like we keep calling it deep search,

but it’s basically. You know we want people. I’m looking for, you know, very I love the data stuff. I love it like I’m looking for instances of sad. But what people are not, you know you don’t want to manually type. Sad ’cause what about when you use the word depressed or?

Devastated like there, we need to not just individually use words. We need to start to categorize and group them together to focus more on the emotional weight or what you’re actually trying to surface for. The other part that I’m really exploring right now, and I think it’s deeply, deeply fascinating, is. And getting to what looked down what people are actually looking for so you know, I mentioned my friend who was struggling. A little bit, she said she wasn’t just. Data driven stuff is great, but what she wants to know is why am I sad today?

Not something I really want to figure out. That’s what plagues me. Sometimes they just wake up. I’m just not happy and I want to figure out why. What is it? Is it the sugar intake? That there has been multiple days of.

Bad weather. They spent too much time with someone that makes me feel a little sad and negative. That I’m just too stressed out. That I re triggered some trauma. Where I’m not trusting someone, I’m not loving someone the way I am. These are things that are really.

I’m trying to spend a lot of time on because if you can. Get early warning signs signals. Can correct you again. Just wake up and you feel miserable and horrible work.

You feel great. You know you want to know why. How can you replicate that over and over and over again? And then can you predict so if I know, for example, that when there’s five days of cold, sad rain? That I get 40% more depressed, depressed in my notes. If I could look into the weather forecast and then say Hey Tyler, you got some really tough days coming up here in terms of whether I just wanted to mentally prepare so. No, these are the contextual information. Other points that we’re really trying to figure out and then just again not displaying just data but actually displaying insights and just to make this point. You know this is a little too busy, right? These are all the sort of the topics that I’ve mentioned, and if I go into,

you know, I guess I should turn this off for a second. But you know, turn, you know if I start to go, this is already. So this is only 10 days. Let me switch here for a second. See if I can get this go back.

Even even last sale last. Couple days. And then these are sort of the insights that I’m actually setting. Apologize to the right corner so psilocybin damage just talking bout brain damage. This part really cool. By the way, I want to know I was talking bout brain damage that can actually go click and go to that specific moment so still blows my mind blows my mind that you can actually do this but I can use this to surface sort of my own analysis and like wow,

I’ve talked about this. I didn’t even realize I was talking about this and how many times like I said feel 42 times in the last. Six days. Now I can start to sort of get some ideas to sort of navigate through or things that I maybe need to address, but it’s still busy. It’s a lot of analysis and what I’m trying to figure out what we’re trying to figure out is how can we actually break this down to sentences like how can we turn this too? Again, not just analytics, but insights and then actually breakthroughs. How can I get, you know, you know how you have maybe feeling right now and then predictions, and then you know da sentence, sentence, sentence. We know you know this week you’re 25%

more positive than last week. And then this idea for the search bar up here is why am I feeling unhappy today? Why am I feeling so good today and we can’t just give the answers but we can give suggestions we can give things that we might think and say you have a person named you know, James you don’t like I said, I don’t like James when I’m talk to James, it makes me really unhappy and then a couple weeks later, you start to feel really sad. You said I don’t know why I feel sad today and so you ask. And it says, why have you been talking to James? And anyway, I realize you were in your holy **** Yes, that’s why did I mention that I didn’t even realize? Or maybe that we’re wrong and no, it wasn’t talking to James Scott wasn’t the solution, but then maybe ruled. You’ve ruled something out. So those are, you know,

a couple of things. The actual train thinking about is not just obviously now now is. Just the thing the future is coming and we’re always working towards it, and we’ve got some awesome things happening for us right now. They’re going to allow us to continue exploring this and growing. But those are the things we’re trying to figure out, and just, you know, as a note, this came to me and I’ve gone on longer, of course. But just like I know, we built a system to import like bulk import Evernote notes. So now if you’ve been recording Evernote notes over the last,

so I’ve been doing it for 17,000 notes over like. Almost a decade. And. What data could I get from that? What insights going to get myself that I was journaling and writing and recording in that all the time? Not recording audio, but you know, they don’t have very good audio and video. It’s part of the reason why I built a system, but like I was recording notes and there’s valuable insights there, not just what I wrote, how I wrote it when I wrote it,

where I wrote it. And you could even go back in time to start to service these things and connect dots. Sometimes I ask myself if all this is helping me. But I. Undoubtedly actually feel like it has, even if it’s just convincing myself. I’m trying to make more.

Quantitative. Get a better quantitative understanding of myself that’s been really helpful and it’s been a fun journey. At the very least. I think. That I can continue to do this and what I’m trying to do is not just surface things that I think are valuable, but things that are clinically validated. You know what? It’s tough here as I haven’t been tracking my mood in an objective way throughout this entire period, so I took, for example,

pH Q9 questionnaires, then correlated with everything else. I’d start to be able to make a lot more connections between what I was writing and then the actual objective measure of my mental health. So I’m starting to think a lot more about that. How can I objectively measure so then I have something to compare this data to? Do I think that answer? For all this is technology. Not really, not all the time.

In fact, I think many of us feel that we need to get more connected with nature with ourselves with our family with their friends with their loved ones. And I look at what we’re building as something that can help augment that and be part of it, but not something. That is everything because. As much as I love what I’m building, the system that we’re building spent a lot of time, and it’s very helpful for me. There’s more to life than just looking at the data. It’s getting these insights and integrating them to your life and then going to live a better life,

learning a little bit more. Self reporting and documenting again. And then going back out and living again. That’s what I’m thinking about a lot right now too. It’s been hard too.

Admit to myself and others that. A lot of this is for my own mental health to build this and do this. And that there is a worth. It’s worth focusing on mental health.

Know people. Keep telling me how. What’s the business case for this? What’s the level on how you’re going to fund this? On course those things are important, but. You can. Change people’s lives, give them tools they need to help themselves grow in self heal and. They’re going to be better during the better.

Personally professionally is going to make compounding impact effects on their entire life. I’ve said this before, but like this note, worth idea. When you document your notes and you self document like this, it compounds overtime just like an investment. And I’m really trying to make this connection between mental health and then. What’s? Let’s I guess the business case of this and it sucks to have to do this, and I don’t want to really like.

As want to see people have the tools they need to avoid the suffering. To see, get those early warning signs to get those signals. Your health is everything. If you’re not healthy, you can do. You can do.

Can’t do the other things. And so I’ll keep fighting this case. I’m going to keep pushing this, showing how crucial moral mental health is trying to help people quantify it to get a therapeutic release to build more empathetic technology that actually seems to care about nothing. Care about you like I want this technology care about me and already some of the insights given me means a lot. I couldn’t do this just by myself and that’s what makes me so excited.

I. I’m not building this out of some mega. I’m saying this, but try not to build this out of ego. As want to find people who care about this too, who see? Possibilities here and want to contribute and want to help. Want to grow? Want to personally themselves and want to help other people grow? They want to stop other people from suffering that we can build again.

Not just technology but content and resources and guides and methodology is how to improve to feel better to self monitor to become more self aware to become more productive. These things that really make us happy. How can we stay in the flow state? How can we get and stay in the flow state? Something else I’m trying to just deeply dive into and see if there’s ways. To do that with technology. How had again that does not.

It’s not everything not perfectly. Here it is. I’m not capable building all of this this you need. Don’t you know if you’re struggling, you need to talk to people need talk therapy. You need to reach out to your friends and the people that love you.

You need to eat healthy. You need to exercise, right. You need to do all these other things. Is there any other thing that you want to talk about daughter? How do you use? Speak to yourself. Monitor and improve your mental health.

For me, I think there’s just. It’s a confidence that I have that it can do this. In this retrieve it any sites, any second and that I know I like what I would have. I was a user to have faith in. Company that cares is continuing, trying to push to expose new insights to yourself.

So that was what makes me happy. I’m confident in the direction we’re going that we have purpose and meaning. I got through a lot. I’m pretty happy with that. I hope this was enlightening and enjoyable.

There are some connections may be made. And I’ll be back to talk about this more. If you have any ideas, any thoughts you want to just chat, connect about this stuff. How can we use technology for God to improve ourselves to prove our understanding of ourselves, others, our own awareness, our own mental health or well being? Please feel encouraged to connect. And thank you to everyone who supported me along this journey.

It really, truly does mean a lot. I love you very much and just thank you for spending this time with me here today. I think those. Lot more amazing stuff that come can come from helpful us and I hope for you. I just wish you all the best on your journey.

Thank you. 

 

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