Dr. Anthony Bean
Appearances
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Oh, massively, massively. Absolutely. It works the same way with like board games and stuff. I run a Pokemon D&D group for my kids and their friends. And the amount of social capacity that they gain from that for being able to talk about how do they solve the problems that I put in front of them is undeniably powerful for them.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Because then they take those things and you can see them start to work with it and be like, well, when we talked about it and we worked together and we traded ideas in the game, it worked out really well. But when we also do this outside the game, when we're having a problem, we can also solve our own problems.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I'm 15 away from getting my entire Pokedex done. Just so we're on the same clear. I'm 15 away. Got it. And it's been a lot of fun. It's been very trying in some cases because every state does something a whole little bit different. And their rules and regulations... are very identical to other people in other states. However, they're
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And it's like you're taking the same concepts that you're learning in one and you're overlaying them in your other life. That's what gaming does with video games, board games, all of that stuff. That helps us really understand a little bit more about ourselves, but how the world functions. And they're great learning opportunities.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So this is an interesting thing, and I'll relate it to like our DSM is our Bible for diagnosing. Can you state what DSM stands for? Diagnostic Statistic Manual. Thank you. And so when we go and look at that, it says what we call prevalence rates, which is how often do these things actually come up.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So the highest prevalence rates are depression and anxiety, and they basically do an estimation, and I'm using air quotes here, estimation of how much the population actually has these diagnoses. And those things, every time they come out with a new one, range anywhere from 4% to 7% of the population for anxiety and depression.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Correct, broadly on that one. What I would probably say is I see a lot of people, and a lot of my people are geeks, nerds, stuff like that. They come to me because I understand their culture. I understand what they're wanting, and we can do all that stuff.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
When we look at that and what we call only focusing on one aspect of it, they're using it usually as a way of coping with the world, with something that's happening, with their own lifestyles. So is it prevalent? Yes. Is it only in that area? No, is what I would say. I would say it's also out other places, but other people use different coping mechanisms. Some people would work.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I know a guy who just builds things and then donates them to charity because he needs something to do with his hands when he gets anxious.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
interviewing and their, um, application process is wildly different. And some of them are wildly outdated, um, and in a lot of crazy ways. So I I'm, I'm licensed in a lot of different states. I see a lot of people I'm, uh, what you would call kind of a concierge psychologist.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So they go, people will go through whatever's most comfortable for them, whatever's helped them in the past, whatever's going to help them go for the future. And that's, is it gaming? Is it some of the other activity? It could be a lot of things. I play soccer myself, and I love the game. I coach soccer. I do a lot of other things outside of just nerd and gaming type stuff. But
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I think it's also dependent upon what the person wants to do, how they use the stuff in the past and what works. There's some people out there that are like, I don't really care for video gaming, but I love anime. And so they'll go watch anime instead.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And that helps kind of like re-regulate them or kind of help them process something because they can utilize the different tropes found within the context of the anime, the storyline and things like that to just understand what they're experiencing. So, I mean, for everyone, it's going to be a little bit different, in my opinion. Did you do any harm? No.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
You went to what's normal for you as a person. And I think the video game industry is only going to increase significantly. Every year, it just continues to massively increase.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Well, that's because movies have lost their ability to be unique. They're just rehashing everything. Gosh, ain't that the truth. It's terrible. But I think that with that, games are so immersive and they're so impactful in our world. There are new mythologies, what I like to say. If you as a person play this game, that mythology means something to you.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And that mythology is what we want to be talking about. Because whether you're conscious of it or unconscious of it, that's the piece that's grabbing you. And that piece is important. It's not something to just be like, oh, yeah, you're just playing video games. Yeah, you're not doing anything with your life. Oh, you're friends online. They don't really matter or anything like that.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Those are real relationships. Those are people that you have something with, a connection. Those things shouldn't be overlooked.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
At this point, I go to different states and do a lot of psychological assessments, cuz I'm trained in neuropsychology, autism assessment. um, divergent testing, um, academic stuff and everything like that. All of those things, uh, are being pulled in lots of different States by experts because there's, there's not a lot of people who know how to do it really well.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
If I was in my office at home, you would see my Zelda sword.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I'm just trying to get my Halilian shield. That's one thing at conventions I'm always searching for, a metal one.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Oh, there they are.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, absolutely. So what you did right there is pretty much what we do in therapy is we go in and hone in on what those things are. So Captain America, like, I could do this all day type scenario. You can. You can do it all day. That's not something to shy away from. It's something that takes courage.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Captain America, throughout the movies, comics, and everything else that we've done, you can see such a wonderful trajectory where he never left his morals behind. in a sense.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And so that's one of the reasons I got licensed in all of those, uh, different States and find myself to be obviously very busy, but we, we also, uh, I would imagine. So we also love what we do at geek therapeutics and, uh, That's actually one of my major loves of what we do here, of incorporating geek culture into therapy. Geek Therapeutics is a heck of a company.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, and that's what we would focus in on and be like, all right, so morally, we can succumb, right, to what's happening right here, or we can use it as an opportunity to move forward. When we're faced with a crossroad in everything, it's like Robert Frost's Two Roads, Path Not Taken. We're very used to doing something that we're normally accustomed to.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And that's what leads to, say, that anxiety, that depression, that feeling of like, ah, something's up and I don't know what's going on. That's the road, the path that we've always taken. The question is, what does that other path look like? How do we go down this other path that doesn't resemble that? this familiarness that happens.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
What you did right there with the reframing is you chose to be like, yes, I can see these both paths. Yes, I know what this one looks like, but I want to try this one. I want to see what happens down in this area. Then you took it and you worked your way through it. You used it as Captain America as a model, as a guiding leader in that walking down that path. We're talking a metaphorical type
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
type scenarios like reading things like that he was he was your guide stone he was your your person in there to to even potentially go get your soul stone in a sense um for for that one love it love it speaking my language so what do you uh what do you say you know i find myself very fortunate to have been able to navigate that more or less of myself and i you know i've i've had lots and lots of
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
The simple question that we usually ask is, what do you do for fun? What is the thing that you use for? Some people would say a distraction. Some people would say escapism. To me, those are not necessarily just negative connotations. Those are ways that we have learned to cope. And coping skills are very helpful for any mental health problem that are out there.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
It becomes a problem when that's the only way that you choose to cope. Because we should have in our toolbox, our personal toolbox for anything that's happening, we should have multiple ways to work with a situation. If one doesn't work, we try to work on the next one. And if that doesn't work, we go to the next part in our toolbox that does work in that area.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So for people, it's what do you do for fun? How have you used that to understand yourself? How do you use that to better understand what your problem is? And then let's have that conversation around it. It's a lot of... metaphorical narrative thinking in a lot of ways of
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
How is this scenario, this object, this thing that we're talking about help you address those concerns that you've had in those past? And how can it help right now? Let's bring this to awareness. So we're not just going home and just playing mindless video games. It's like, no, do it in a mindful capacity to understand why this matters to you and how we can utilize that.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
With adolescents, it's a little bit harder to do that. Adults, it's easier.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
The reason is because we have a whole education component to it where we'll teach people how to use geek culture in therapy, how to use it in your life to better understand yourself. That's one arm of our stuff. We have a research arm. where we actually do research, evidence-based research, utilizing geek culture in therapeutic contexts. We've gotten quite a few studies published off of that.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So actually, with all the school shootings and stuff along those lines, if you go and look at them, these are all public knowledge, so anyone can go in and research them. If you go and look at what was going on with them, what video games they played, because it's all in the reports, it's actually not shooters or anything like that, that are negative or aggressive gaming.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
most of them are kind of like escapism. Dance Dance Revolution is usually a popular one in a weird, weird way. Other ones that are not considered to be aggressive, but more like E for Everyone, E10+, things along those lines, those are the games that are being played more. Those are the games that have been locked in
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Not eSports, but like some of the more like quick play engaging stuff is that so I wouldn't say that it is leading into it because all these people also have had a long history of mental health. Sure. Issues. That's that's what I would probably say it into what I where I was going with it was that the games are not the ones that should be blamed, even though.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Once a headline's ran, it's really hard to pull that headline back. And that's really what gets people to read news is like, what's the headline today? What's happening in our world right now? That's what's going to get people to read the news articles. Addictions everywhere. Addiction is such a ubiquitous use of a word. I've never heard it being used more than in the last five years.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I feel like I'm so addicted to these tacos. Oh, I'm so addicted to this water.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
They're delicious. They're delicious.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Yeah. But it's the whole concept behind the idea of addiction is I think in our research, in our world, our psychology world, there's more and more people that are leading towards a what we call a behavioral addiction rather than identifying one specific thing. And the reason that we're going into that concept of a behavioral addiction because it widens the parameters a little bit more.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And it incorporates a lot more. So it doesn't have to be just video games, dance, or slot machines or something like that. It can be running highs, it could be going for working out in some ways. When we talk about the behavioral addiction, it's just sometimes things just get kind of switched around a little bit.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Then we have a publishing arm where we do all of our evidence-based reading and kind of fun readings, like our psychology series of different things. So we've got like D&D, Zelda, Pokemon, all the different types of psychology books that we do that are based upon a lot of educational components, but are like... I would call them easy readers. Sure. Just because they're fun. They're fun to do.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
In order to be like, yes, I'm not necessarily doing this type of behavioral mechanism, but now I'm doing this one, which has very similar aspects to what I've experienced in the past for what got me into the problem, let's say, with video games. Now I do it and I'm running myself, but I'm running myself ragged. In a way, I'm overworking. I'm either running and I'm not having good nutrition.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I'm not giving my body time to get back together, rehydrate itself, let the muscle tears take care of themselves in some capacity. Those are what we start to see some difficulties with going in and why we start pushing towards a behavioral addiction.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
That's kind of more or less what I was saying. It doesn't have to be just gaming in a sense. It can be a lot of other things that can have negative impacts.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
You can absolutely overwork out in lots of ways. be massively negative to, uh, to your health. I mean, isn't it like the, um, world's, uh, universe, the universe man or stuff like that. There's so many stories of them. They push their bodies to such extremes that when they don't do it anymore, their bodies break down.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So one of the easiest and most simplest things that you can do is track your time. Track your time and what you did. I played video games for two hours today. I cooked a dinner for 30 minutes. It's about putting yourself into that tracking stuff of like, where did all my time go today? I feel like I lost my entire day. What was I doing?
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And so what that does is it helps track what is actually happening during the day but also then starts to allow you to start categorizing certain components for it. It's hard in the beginning because you're going to think, oh, this is stupid. Why am I doing this? I don't want to get this out and do that. I would just tell you, jot on your phone. Go into your notes. Just jot.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Be like, played video games for two hours. Cooked for 30 minutes. Ate dinner with friends and family two hours. Something like that. It just helps bring awareness to it because that's really what we work most heavily with. Adolescents, adults, families is where do we have to do to bring that awareness to it?
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Because when we're aware of it, we can then take an observational approach to the concept and then start making different decisions.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
A bunch of essays and things like that. And then we have the therapy side where we do the psychological assessment and therapy practices across all these different states. And we have a physical location, two physical locations in Texas, one in Colorado and one in Virginia. Wow.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
When you start seeing grades drop, start seeing social aspects outside of it, sports drop, other things that are outside of the gaming start to be like put on a secondary importance. That's your sign. That's your sign that something's going on. If grades are dropping, why are grades dropping? Oh, my child decided to start playing four hours of video games before he was playing one to two hours.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Let's take a look at this. Let's bring this back down to one to two hours and let's put a little bit more time into the educational component. Maybe there's an undiagnosed learning disability. Maybe there's something going on, harassment at school. Maybe there's something else going on. But it's also engaging your kids in a lot of different ways to really help out with it.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
But it's being aware and mindful of what they're doing.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
playing with your kids um let's say if you're if you're worried about what games they're playing play with them have them be the teacher have them teach you how to play that game because and you can act whether you know how to like i play all the systems so i know how to work everything really well um but most parents who come in here like gaming is a whole new thing for them my parents they don't know how to do anything um in gaming or anything like that i when i when i go home for like um
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Holidays, I'm literally spending about an entire day just being their IT person and resetting everything because they've done something to their settings and they have to wait a little bit to get there to just reset the whole thing for them. But they don't understand what it is. Me with my kids, it's going to be a completely different upbringing for them because I know what gaming is.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I know it's very prevalent. I know how to work with it. Um, and we can work together and they want to play with me. So all the, all everything is right there perfectly for it. But parents are the biggest number thing that I've always seen is, you know, what games your kids are playing. And most of them are like, yeah, something online. Do you know, even know what system you have?
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Are you one of the parents that calls a Sony PlayStation and a Nintendo?
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
um like how much knowledge do we have to like there's nothing there's nothing wrong with that like i i grew up in southern california and all soda is coke all video games are nintendo so i yeah that's that's what my my mom did too so it's it's something that now i have all the systems um and everything that my kids play on them and we we do we do things we play together and if they're
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
They don't play in there unless I'm in there because they want to hang out and they want to do stuff with us right now. And they're at the age. And of course, I'm going to do that because I want to be there with my kids in a lot of ways. But it's also about being in that that awareness of. I'll go in and play with them. I will absolutely do those things. And they're like, you're really good.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I'm like, I just have a lot more experience than you guys. I know I've been working on these controls since I was your age. It's not when you get to my age, you'll be perfectly fine and able to do it soon.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
My days are never boring. I can tell you that.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So our kids don't don't get that. They only get an iPad. If we're going on a trip, like on a plane, or a road trip, that's three hours plus. That's our rule. Other than that, they have to bring toys, other types of tools, books, stuff like that. And even when they do get that... That iPad, because we're traveling or driving for that time, they have to switch it back and forth.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
We only have one iPad and two kids. And so they have 25 minutes on it, and then it's 25 minutes for the next person and vice versa. So they have to keep on switching tasks on what they're doing. So it's not just a continuous reinforcement of one thing over another.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Um, when we see this in, in, uh, supermarkets, restaurants, all that type of thing, what parents are doing, they're just, um, reinforcing something that they're gonna have a lot harder time with it later on. Um, our kids, I've, I've been down in, uh, I don't know if people are gonna know what sprouts is. Um, but sprouts, you, you from California, you're gonna know what sprouts is. Um, and, um,
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I've had my son like have a hard time because we didn't get the graham crackers that he wanted one time. And he just sat down on the ground and started tantruming. And I'm like, this is fine. We're allowed to tantrum. We're allowed to have this experience and this feeling of not getting what you want. But I'm going to get down there with you.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And I went and sat on the floor with him and he didn't want anything to do with me. for the longest time, and by longest time, to me, it felt like eternity.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Like, I'm just sitting here, I'm holding the tension for a tantruming four-year-old in the middle of sprouts, and then what eventually happens is the kid notices that you're down there with them and you're not shaming, you're not doing anything bad, you're not doing anything that should be... be able to be seen as reinforcing not just the behavior, but also giving in.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
You're having what we call authoritative boundary, and they come into your lap, and they start to regulate themselves. And that's what we do. And we're like, look, we can get this next time, or we can try to do this a little bit later. But we have enough right here. Why don't we try to do this aspect first, and then we'll come back to this next time we're here.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
That's what starts getting your kids closer to you. That's what engages them in a much more calming way, but also teaches them that rules, boundaries are important and that self-regulation comes second in those instances. But as they got older, that four to five minutes of tantruming has come down to about 20 seconds of like, I'm done with this. What's going on? Let's take a couple minutes.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Let's have a seat. No, I'm going to go sit on the stairs. That's cool. I'll be right here on the couch. You let me know when you're ready to have a chat and we'll work through this together. And just sit there like this, like this. And then 20 seconds later, be like, you know, I'm feeling really angry. That's great.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Let's talk about what's making you angry. It's not why, it's what. Because it is an external source that is creating that type of feeling within us. And if we can recognize that... This external source is something that I don't like. I can then talk about it because it's not me. It's not me as a person. That's the bad thing. It's this external source that I just need to process.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
How do I handle this? How do I problem solve? How do I go forward with this? That's what we're doing with our kids.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
in general that parents should be more cautious about how they apply these electronics as a distraction for their kids like i i would i would say yes i think it's important because um kind of the rule of thumb is for every think of it's like uh there's things called extinction bursts which means the tantrums that you originally gave the uh the ipad to for uh behavior management
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
If you've been doing that for two weeks, it takes about four weeks to get rid of that behavior. And there's going to be extinction bursts all throughout it, which it gets worse than where it originally started.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
The more you do that, the longer you do it, the harder and longer it takes to get rid of that type of coping mechanism that isn't necessarily a positive one or helping them kind of moving themselves forward.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
You brought up actually a really, really good point because a lot of people don't realize that they can take all the different principles that you learn through gaming and And I know we'll get into all this fun stuff through this fun podcast and everything.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
There's not a lot of positive aspects to any of that. Toxic is as toxic does. It's kind of like what we kind of say in the area is that if someone's being toxic, You're welcome to cut them out of your gameplay. It's happened multiple times. You work in a guild, someone's toxic, being a D-I-C-K, cut them out. Within the virtual space, it's not great. It's not great for your mental health.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
It's not great to be harassed, always put down, put into those categories of feeling like you don't matter. There's nothing great about it. It's prevalent. Is it getting better? I think it's getting more covertly. While it was getting more covert, now I think it's more overt, mainly because of our current administration of the country. Things are no longer covert or overt.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
But when you take the principles that you learn within the game and you apply them to different avenues of your life, it completely changes everything. Not just what you do, but also all the benefits that come with it. So like Starcraft's another huge one. I literally played that game until my desk would not work anymore. Yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, but even that is a chicken and the egg thing, like what caused what. People become emboldened. When the external sources are all kind of doing it, people become more emboldened. That's why toxic is as toxic does. If one person is toxic to one person over here, then that person is going to be toxic back. Then these other people will be like, oh, you're being DICKs? I'm going to be one too.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And then everyone just becomes this whole toxic community. And you're just like, why would you do this? And that's our big problem.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
You have to recognize when it's happening. And you can stand up. You can be a voice of reason against it and be like, no, I don't like that. A lot of people when I've worked with adolescents and stuff like that, they want to stand up for their peers. They don't like bullying. They don't like those types of harassments.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
But they're also fearful that if they stand up, that they're going to be the next target. And one of the biggest things that we always teach them is like, it takes one and then other people are going to come forward too. But it's also very important of how do you address it? What is the language being talked about? If it's very derogatory, get someone else involved.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
If it's just like someone's bullying, pushing, and you're standing up for someone, stand up. Be like, hey, this isn't okay. Usually it just takes one person, one to two people max, to stop an incident from happening. It just takes two people.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So the, it's usually multi-session, but we, we go over.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
in a lot of ways of identifying what what are your geek principles what are the things that you like to do when we start off with like do you like anime dnd larping video games we go into like what's your favorite one of each one we we kind of build like a profile in that aspect and then once we have that profile built we start talking about those specific more nuanced interests like for me it would be zelda um in a sense because that that's my that's my love um
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And when we do that, we then bring the game in, the anime, the short clips or something. Like anime is one of the easiest things to work with because you can find clips almost anywhere online of what you're specifically talking about. And on top of that, you can have a very, anime episodes are usually about 20, 25 minutes long.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And that's when you're taught as a psychologist, you're not taught how to run a business. They teach you how to work with clients and do all sorts of stuff, but they don't teach you any business type of stuff. And so what would you think that a nerdy gamer, a psychologist is going to fall back on? Their games. Absolutely. What does StarCraft do? It teaches you multiple resource nodes.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And so if there's a specific minute and a half that you specifically want to have a conversation about, you guys can watch that right there together. And then you can talk about why is this impactful? What, what is going on in here? Is it the, is it the, the actual, um, narrative ontology that's happening in there? Is it the relationship between these characters?
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Is it that they overcame their, uh, their differences and they worked together? There's a lot of different things that can kind of go into and that, that helps out with, um, understanding who we are and why this spoke to us because we watch things. Let's, um, Man, Guardians of the Galaxy 2. It's a hard one, the ending of it, right? He may have been your father, but he wasn't your daddy.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Like, if you have a relationship with your kids or your dad and stuff like that, man, that quote, that hits you so freaking hard. And the reason it hits you is because it means something very, very important. That relationship you have with your son, with your dad, is one that no one else has. It is the one that is so important and based with you that it can bring you to tears.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And that speaks to the importance of it. That experience that a lot of us as fathers had, other kids are having with their fathers, or you have them in, in different video game based type scenarios. When we, it's the last of us, just a spoiler alert.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Oh my gosh. Sunday guys. The next one comes out.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
If you play the games, you're going to know.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Well, if you need to cut that out, you need to cut that out. But on that note right there, People who didn't play the game, the games themselves, they lost someone that they had a huge attachment to. And they don't understand why they're feeling this type of attachment loss. And that is very important to have a conversation around.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And that's why we then would bring it into like a therapeutic realm of like, what did this person mean to you? Like, what was his actions? Let's go over his entire, entire experience of, of him. He was a father. He lost his daughter. He went into this other journey. He sacrificed the world for Ellie, um, in, in a different way. And now it's into the fan. I like that.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And you're like, what is happening? And then the, the event occurs. That's important to, to process.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
We practice what we preach. That's the biggest thing. There's tons of people that are out there that will do certain things, and they'll say, oh, this works, but they don't practice it. They don't do the actual work in there, or if they're not licensed to, and they're doing things that they probably shouldn't be doing, causing more harm than helping. We are very firm.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
We would not suggest doing something like this unless, one, you're trained on how to do it, and two, you know what you're doing in appropriate manners. But three, we do it every day.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Um, it would depend on kind of like, and obviously as a clinician, I can't, uh, diagnose or anything like that. But one of the biggest things that we always say is how long is he playing it? Can he work to get that thing? Is there a behavioral mechanism that if I do all my chores, I get all my homework done. I get to play for these things. Is there a token economy that's going in?
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Those things, a lot of people, um, parents that have, um, neuro neurodivergent children. When they hear token economy, they think ABA therapy and they think ABA is really crappy. ABA has a purpose. That's it. That's the biggest thing I could tell you. I'm not an ABA therapist, but the principles that are behind it.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Every day.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
can be gravitated and utilized and extrapolated outside of just what ABA therapy is. So token economy, that's just, we live by a token economy. I work every day so I can get paid. Welcome to a token economy. I go to the grocery store. I hand you money. You give me groceries. Token economy. We live in that that type of world.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And so if you can use those principles in a realistic setting for your child, such as a you have 15 minutes, and then we're going to do this timers and everything like that, and find a stopping place. Some video games, I think it's one of my biggest pet peeves growing up was like video games, they didn't have a stopping point when we were younger. in some places.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So we had to get to the end of the level to write down this silly code so we can start back where we used to be at a save point. But what happens now is there are save points, there are places where you have an opportunity to stop. And if we can get our kids to recognize that, oh, here's my opportunity to stop, let's put the game down, even if they need an extra three to five minutes,
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
That's okay to give them those extra three to five minutes. You don't have to be such an authoritarian person like, no, 15 minutes is done, done, like that. Be like, find a stopping place. I'm going to give you a couple extra minutes, get it done. If they push the boundary, pull the boundary back.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
yeah so this is a uh if this was a scientist um asking this one i would say this is a bait question um in a in a way um and for everyone's going to play a different game a different genre that's going to have the better effect for for them i love space games to give you an idea i love space games fantasy games but you put me in a in a shooter like call of duty i could care less like that doesn't that's not going to do anything for me um
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
People are going to gravitate towards specifically what game, what genres that make them feel good, and it's going to help them out in those instances. So it's hard to say what one's going to be the better one, what's not going to be one. It's about recognition. It's about co-regulation. It's about cooperative play.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Those things actually help us because we feel like we're making some of that thing. The chemical you're asking is dopamine, but don't get drawn into the dopamine principle because it's not... really well researched and it's not really well based right now. I'll give you an example, um, of this type of stuff.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Uh, um, dopamine when you play video games is released at like 150 to 200% of what normally is, is in there. You eat cheese pizza. It's 300%. You do Coke. It's 5,000. So let me ask you how, how intensely is, is our video games really working within our dopamine regulation system? Are they there? Sure. Cheese pizza better? Absolutely. I'll be reinforced by cheese pizza every day.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I'm okay with it. I prefer it not, but I can eat it. I love pineapples, so...
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Oh, it's got to be Zelda. Any Zelda is the only game that I will literally stay out night and get the limited editions for. I will pay money for limited editions of any Zelda game that's out there. I've played all the randomizers. I've played every game that's ever come out to a point where I... We basically, when a game's coming out, I take a week off.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
My favorite is pepperoni mushroom. I don't know what about it, but if it's just good, man, it's just so good together.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So this is going to be based upon the community that you're a part of. The reason is because if you're not a licensed clinician, you don't have the training in order to do stuff. That's not to say that you can't do things with them, but you don't want to become the crutch that someone goes to.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Yeah, that could also... occur. And so for for this, it's really about sometimes it's just being present with the individual. And when you can recognize that, like, oh, this person needs additional help. Hey, have you thought about going to a therapist? No, no, I don't want to do that. I think it'd be a good idea for you to go to to a therapist.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Community is key for anything. Don't do your best to not like isolate yourself. Find a community. Go in and be a part of it, whether it's online, whether it's a social group on the outside. It doesn't have to be therapy because things can be therapeutic. Playing games are therapeutic. Being in a community, going and playing that Topgolf, therapeutic. Playing soccer, therapeutic.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
and out to eat with your friends, therapeutic. Those things are very, very important, I think, for people to realize it just takes one step in that direction and it makes a world of a difference.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Those are kind of middle of the ground. It depends on which self-help book.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Generally, I think they will bring up a community, a community, but communal aspects you feel connected to them. But I think in some ways that they're a little overrated. Okay. Crying. Underrated.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Underrated.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Underrated.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Oh, man. I beat Elden Ring so many times. It was so good.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I went bleed the first time and that was the worst decision I could have done. That was the hardest beat I had to do in that game.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I think it's overrated.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And that's all I'm doing for like 12 hours a day. It's like I'm just playing this game, going forward, exploring and beating the crap out of it.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So one of my favorite quotes is you either die the hero or you live long enough to watch yourself become the villain.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I think it's going to depend on what you need in the moment. Honestly, I think it's an underrated thing that the video game systems and companies that we have, they haven't incorporated like, you're playing as the villain and yes, you're going to die. You're going to not be able to beat this game because that hero is going to come back stronger and better each time.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
But I think it's going to be a very interesting game to play as the villain and without the knowledge that there's no way you're going to win this at the end of it.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Shrinked does an okay job with it. Such an entertaining show. But I'm going to let you know those therapist rooms, those are not real. No therapy room is that large. That is crazy. All right? That therapist room in California, because I used to live in California as well, that therapist room would cost $8,000 a month for that. There's no way. No way in history that those things are real.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I like the movies for you.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So they can just go straight to geektherapeutics.com and they will see all of our education, our therapists and everything like that. We do telehealth. We do in person. So we are readily available. We do psych testing as well. If you're like, I want to be with someone who's going to understand me as I do psych testing, we're the right place to kind of come in and do that.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Ooh, so I like them both. Breath of the Wild was unique, and I think that's where the gameplay kind of came into play very, very importantly. But I really liked Tears of the Kingdom because of the different striations of levels that you had to play within. And the mechanics in it were very similar to Breath of the Wild. I feel like they added in some additional things.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
You can also get my parenting book on there of utilizing all the geek culture in your parenting things.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Checkpoints and autosaves. Love it. Love it. Great title. It can't go wrong with that one. That was just good.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
We'll be at PAX East, New York City Comic Con, PAX West, and PAX Unplugged this year.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And you really can't be bombing the living crap out of someone while flying.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I spent so much time underneath, and we call it the darkness, and literally just finding everything and lighting it all up and then literally just lasering and just flying around being like, oh, you killed me, you stupid little frog. I'm going to get you this time.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
I'm doing pretty good, pretty good. Excited to be here.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
So this is a very wide-reaching question. We'll go through it like little piece by piece here. And in one of our stuff that we're seeing in gaming is it has a lot of pro-social and positive effects upon the individual playing. are only heightened when the parents play with them.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And so what we're seeing in the research is like, yes, these games are really good if used as a tool for helping depression, anxiety, cognitive development. My son learned how to read off a Pokemon.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
He's devouring manga right now. Like, I can't buy them fast enough for him. He's going through, like, an entire manga a day. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do with you, kiddo. Yeah.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
But the research around it is very positive around what it can do to help problem solve, logical task manipulation, keeping someone on staff with your – by staff, I mean like your own mind, staff compartmentalizing different difficulties that you would have. Emotional regulation is a really big one right now, and we have a lot of what we would call mixed research. For me, I would say that –
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
describe what emotional what was the word you use emotional emotional regulation emotional regulation thank you yeah yeah so emotional regulation is whether you can kind of calm yourself down when you get overexcited anxious depressed angry something along those is like how can you satisfy what your body is needing right now with being able to bring yourself down to a more calm less emotional state as our emotions go higher our logical sense goes down and vice versa so when we have someone who's dysregulated
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
in this capacity from an emotional standpoint, whether it's like brother, sister, didn't do well in school, didn't do well in a game or something like that. Our goal is to be like, great, let's talk about it. Let's build that regulation around it and let's get you re-regulated and less emotional. It's logical so we can actually talk about it and then process it in a lot of very powerful ways.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Absolutely. So I am a licensed psychologist. I'm actually licensed in about 35 different states. Like a true license, not like a... There's something in our field called PsychPact. I'm not part of that. I actually have like the actual real license across about 35 different states.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
And so when we're seeing things for kids in emotional regulation, what we're seeing is there's a time for kiddos, kiddos, adolescents, where too much gaming can have what we call like a, an overdraft effect on them where they have a hard time re-acclimating back to their normal functionality. However, for every kid, it's different. That's the whole thing.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
My daughter, I'll give you examples with my two kids. My daughter can play Mario Kart for like two, three hours, half the time of her life, and she's like, yeah, I'm good, I'm done. Not a problem. My son, when he does it for about an hour and 15, when he does it for a little bit more of an hour and 15, we start to have that hangover dysregulation effect happen.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
That's when I work with them and be like, let's process what you did in the game. Let's talk about it. Let's get these things handled. What do you think you're going to do when you can play the game again? When's our next time that we can think forward that we're going to get a chance to do that again?
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Those are regulations that we have to do for our own personal emotions, but also for the people around us. It works a lot better when you play the game with your kids. uh, my son loves Kirby, all, uh, friends, all stars, friends and allies, whatever it is right now.
Video Gamers Podcast
Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast
Um, it's one of the Kirby games that's out and he enjoys playing by himself, but he enjoys it much more and is much easier to, to help, uh, regulate any sort of like, say, if I play with him, do you mind if I ask how old your, uh, son and daughter are? Yeah. So my daughter's five and my son is eight, eight.