#145. Dr. Teimojin Tan: ‘Alone’ Season 9 Finalist Explains Why Mental Health Is Health?

Just putting anyone butt naked in the middle of the wilderness and saying, survive, and imagine the amount of self efficacy you feel after that being like, okay, I had a piece of rock, and I was able to survive for, like, God knows how many days just with that. Now you build up to that for sure. But to say that, hey, I can do that.

Benoit, I want to ask you about the show. What do you think? If you were to recall what was the most memorable or least expected reality break moments during your appearance on Alone, season nine? I think a break from reality for me was realizing that I didn't have a pager, I didn't have any responsibilities, and every single social construct that you can fathom, all the personas were meaningless. It allowed me to live and to express who I thought my true self should be or who I wanted that person to be.

And that was around, like, day 30 or so, where I was eating, hunting, and had a pretty comfortable shelter, and I was just living out there and concentrating on those basic needs allowed me to really reflect on who I wanted to be and who I am. So sounds like it was deeply reflective moments, even though you were expecting certain level of challenges that I'm sure you've seen the show before. Yes, absolutely.

You're only there by yourself, and you have to vocalize every little thought for TV. So it was almost like a forced therapy session for me, free of charge. And on the other end, with a possibility upset of $500,000.

Absolutely. How are the cameras being charged in such harsh conditions, especially in season nine, is one of the harshest conditions yet with possible polar bears, which is the most vicious predators in the world. And when it's negative 40 degrees out with snow, when you're literally barely surviving, mentally, physiologically, emotionally, how do you also take care of the cameras and batteries so I can't go into the details, but you have enough equipment to film all that you need to, which is 24 hours a day, every single day.

And if it breaks, then you get a new one. All right. I'm sure there is NDA disclosed, so let's make sure none of us get into trouble.

Let's go back to the reality break moments, where awareness without action becomes a burden. So I'm curious to see if you actually did something with that data sets or reflections that you did take away from the reality break moments we talked about. Absolutely.

So I would say some of the key things that I took from the experience is, number one, my family relationship, specifically with my mom and my Godmother and so forth, needed to be deeper and they needed to be more frequent. So I actively reach out and I'm more involved in those relationships. And number two, my relationship with myself.

To skip all the BS, to not do things because people want me to do things, but to really truly design my life, my business and everything around me, around what truly brings me joy and having that selfishness and that tenacity to just stick to my guns with that. And I think that's something that was present before, but not to this veracity. It's almost like aside from the free therapy, it's a forced confrontation with maybe some of the truth or things or dissonance you've known about yourself that maybe you've been maybe unknowingly or subconsciously avoiding.

Would that be accurate? I would say that's pretty accurate. I mean, when you're out there, you are living with the basic of the basic and you end up being quite happy with whatever little you get. And to see how unhappy I may have been in the past or in the present with the complexity of surplus is certainly eye widening.

And I feel that if you really focus on the one or two things that truly make you happy, even if it may be silly to another person, if you really lock down and do that, then you end up being happier. Even though you're not making more money as a doctor or making more money as a therapist, but you're truly doing what resonates with your identity and your purpose and your mission. And I think that's something that I stumbled upon through this experience.

So being forced to be deal with less was actually more in terms of increased gratitude. Because on the surface that sounds like oxymoron, right? I mean, one of the things that I realized, and this comes through my work with nonprofits and going to developing countries is some of the happiest people that I've met are not the ones with a whole lot so like the maasai or farmers or anyone in between. If they are happy doing what they're doing and they appreciate and have tremendous gratitude for every little bit of anything that they have, they tend to be more happy than someone who may have a car and a house and a wage and all that.

So alone was my version of that. In a very counterintuitive way, it's actually harder for us to grasp and reach for gratitude. Whereas for your experience it sounds like the gratitude which is a key ingredient for happiness.

Through Harvard, a medical school's longest longitudinal research on happiness, you and your other contenders were actually able to obtain that in the most unlikely places where you will feel grateful with nothing. So you have this challenge and at the end of it is a big prize. And throughout of it, throughout this whole experience, there is a lot of mini challenges.

Whether that's not getting the food that you thought you were going to get, whether that's a different terrain, all these things that set you back. And if you are not kind to yourself, number one, if you don't think in a positive light or change that perspective, you won't do well. And number three, if you don't ground yourself in something that will push you through all that suffering, because it is suffering when you're out there, no matter who you are, whether you got a moose, whether you got a bear, to some extent, there is an element of suffering there.

So unless you exhibit some kind of direct control over how you're coping and perceiving the situation, you're not going to win that half million dollars. So I was actively doing a bunch of different things coping mechanisms, gratitude practices, meditation, all these things in hopes that it would keep my mental game super strong. And what was surprising is it kept my energy levels a lot higher than what it would have been just on calories, aside from your mother, which will go deep into it in a bit, so we'll table that.

But aside from your strong why of being on the show to pay off your mom's debt, her health conditions, that aside, can you recall some of the most effective and powerful anchors that were able to ground you until Day 63? I would say my mom was my first anchor for Day 40. I specifically remember that day because it was the first day that it was warm enough to take a shower. So that was the first day I took a shower, was day 40.

And I remember sitting on the beach, bathing in the sun, and knowing that, hey, I have food, I have shelter, I have all that I want right now, but what's going to get me to Day 80 and beyond? And I was trying to figure out what that reason was and what would make that experience worth it for me. And up until that point, it was a completely selfish experience. I wanted to prove myself.

I wanted to be in that niche where I'm surviving, doing my military training, exhibiting my medical knowledge, and that was not enough for me to push further. So just having the possibility of being able to change my mom's life and hopefully some other people like my mom, that was more than enough. That was worth me suffering for.

That was worth me risking things for. And that was my biggest anchor from that point onwards. Now, my second biggest trouble was the pain that comes with cravings.

So at the very beginning, you get starvation pain, your stomach shrinks, it feels horrible, you go through ketosis, but after that, you start craving things, and that's something you can't touch. It's not a stomach cramp, it's not nothing. It just feels like a void that you can't touch.

And it would be so haunting that it would keep me up most of the nights. And for me to anchor in something that was powerful enough to overcome that, I used a combination of visualization meditation, and I was visualizing what my family would look like, how it would feel like, what our basement was like, what it would smell like, what I would be doing with my kids, all the little things. And it was like a little movie in my head.

And that's what gave me the most peace out there when it was at that final point of desperation. So similar to my introduction for you, Timonjin, where I talked about the difference between being alone and feeling lonely. Because aloneness and loneliness are not the same to many people's, I guess surprise, because if you really not just semantically, but they do feel differently.

And I sense that ethos from what you just said, where you were alone. But on day 40s, which I do remember, you were, I think, the most vibrant you've been on the show. And I do remember the weather being warm, and I do remember you citing that I'm going to do this for my mom.

So I do remember you seeing down the show, even though I watched it on Netflix a year after it was released on History Channel. But would that be accurate? Was that the moment you really leaned into the difference where, yes, I am alone, but I'm not lonely? The feeling of loneliness for me, I can really contrast it with two big experiences. One, me being homeless during medical school where I was still going in for my rotations.

I was surrounded by other people. But I would say that situation in my headspace at that time after a bad breakup, losing a bunch of my stuff and then also losing my dog, that made me feel so much more alone and misunderstood and almost ashamed to be in that position than to be in the position where when I was actually on the show and practicing connectedness through different means. So connectedness through feeling the spiritual guidance of the ancestors of a land or reaching out to my grandfather who passed away.

And feeling that connectedness never made me feel alone on that show, not even once. So I would say the sensation of alone or that feeling of loneliness really helps with your perspective and what practices you have and how you connect with yourself and your surroundings. I think codependence is a popular topic on TikTok, like, yes, codependency to a certain degree, since it's a spectrum.

As a therapist, it can be maladaptive and harmful. But I think the reason for codependency, or the real reason to eradicate codependency, isn't just seeing a therapist, per se, it's to learn how to accept the good, the bad and the ugly about yourself. Because I say this all the time and clinically it's been proven where if you don't know how to love yourself and embrace the good, the bad and the ugly about yourself, you really don't know how to love others.

And it's almost impossible for you to receive love because self sabotage or other character defects will surface inevitably. Any thoughts there? Absolutely. I 100% agree with that.

And I feel like it's difficult when you and your partner may not be at the same kind of path or journey at the same time. Because for me, I don't have a problem failing. I don't have a problem embarrassing myself in public.

I progress the fastest when I fail, I fail fast. I get up and then I progress forward. And when I look a week down the line, a year down the line, I've gone so much further than I would if I was waiting for that Opportune moment or that perfect storm to start something or to be brave enough to ask the girl out or anything.

So I would say the majority of the people that I've had relationships with, both romantically and as friends, don't share that sentiment and don't share that approach. And it is hard when there is some dissonance within relationships like that. Yeah, and I wasn't responding to your breakup.

I was just saying generally where that's where I feel like we need to shift the focus from these buzzwords like, oh, codependencies or relationship issues or attachment theories, which it's one of my expertise for relationships. Rather, we need to really reground ourselves and getting back to the root cause of why am I exhibiting or why am I prone to being in a codependent? Relationships. And I think you're right.

Circumstances, realities, not everyone's dealt with the same cards. And it's hard to break assumptions too, whether it's with relationships or just general habits. One of the things that I hear a lot is, I can't do this because I'm too tired, or I've never done this before, all these assumptions that you make, but it just takes one person that you may relate to doing that thing, and then you're like, oh, that's probably possible for me.

And then that one time where you're like, okay, I'm tired, but I ended up going to the gym. And then things become possible. Atomic Habits by James Clear right, start small, stack your habits, and over time and compounds.

So, speaking of habits, do you remember specific moment on the show out of the 63 days where you had this exercise moment? Like, holy crap, this is what I've been preparing my entire life for. And if it weren't for the discipline and the consistency, I would not be at day 40, day 41, and so on. I would even go further into not only my training, but how my mentors and people that I look up to raised me to be.

As a kid, it was my godfather who made me look at the world with a sense of adventure and curiosity and a sense of playfulness. So everything that was kind of, oh, I didn't expect that to happen, was almost a game for me and my mom. I think out of all the people that I've ever met, she has the biggest heart to do things for others, even at the detriment of herself.

And for me to potentially give that back to her was also something that prepared me more than, I would say, my military training, my medical training definitely was helpful because it helped me ride that line between this is too dangerous and this is okay for me to ride out. But it was a really cool experience where I got to combine everything that I've learned and to strengthen everything that I am passionate about and to hopefully provide some value to the general public, whether that's through education or just inspiration. I Love Your Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck Right? You talked about it.

You love failing because you learn the fastest and you fail forward. It's almost like failing forward, and you have the same sentiment here. And growth mindset is everything.

Like, of all the people I really respect from afar or on the show or interpersonally, every single one of them demonstrates and has embodied growth mindset, not just intellectually, but they truly practice by heart. Because I think a lot of people don't know the gap between intellectual and heart knowledge. And I think you have that heart knowledge.

I mean, you wouldn't be here, gone through a homelessness medical school, being a physician, survivalist, Canadian army, being on the show now, being more intentional with your content. But I really feel like we can't talk enough about Growth Mindset, even though it's an older concept, but it's such a powerful thing, especially now, I feel Growth Mindset, it's almost something that should be incorporated into mental health therapy sessions and also just in general, family practice. If I learned how to weave that in into motivational interviewing for my primary care patients, for anxiety, the depression, or even changing habits, for diabetes or hypertension or obesity, that would make me feel so good as a provider.

But also, I think you would actually see change. And we don't get enough training on the motivation side of helping people, and I think that's a mistake in our education. Let's go into change.

I do know that whether it's therapists or physicians or any helpers, our biggest struggle is Lauren's helplessness as clinicians. Oh, it doesn't matter how much training I have, how many skill sets, how many honorifics fancy degrees, years of training. But sometimes we have to recognize and reconcile with that.

They can only change if they want to. And I say that on the show where change is always from within. You can't change people through love or will.

People have to change. You can support them through mi, through inspirations for being there. So for you as a physician, how do you deal with this learned helplessness and this topic of change? So, as a physician, I find it's a lot easier to deal with people who are not ready to change.

Because, again, if you don't want change, I'm not going to force it. I may plant a few ideas that may spark your interest, like, oh, maybe this thing has this amount of success rates for quitting smoking. If there's any disciplines, maybe like teasing, that a little bit to get them thinking and to push them slowly along that line.

But what becomes very difficult is when you have that same conversation with family and you know that that's not going to change. And it hurts you so much that you can see change in your patients and you can be part of that change process, but for some reason or another, it is just not happening with your own family. And it feels like almost the biggest failure.

And it's something that I've had to reconcile myself, because I can't be the therapist, I can't be the provider for my family when I see them going down that path, and they're not going to change it. Man, our moms keep coming up. I resonate with that too deeply, because, as we talked about during our discovery call before we hopped on recording, that's my biggest defeat moment since I became a psychotherapist is where I utilize motivation interviewing.

I utilize all these interventions and engagements trying to foster change or inspire change, because my mom has I know she's going to listen to this because she listens to all my podcasts, hey, mom. But she's been diagnosed early with onset arthritis, like, six years ago. And stress is the number one contributor for most health conditions, especially arthritis and physiologically degenerative disease.

I'm sure you know this way more than I do, and stress is the one thing we can semi control, especially. She's retired, so she has some buffers to, I guess, enjoy her life as herself, not as my mom or my sister's mom or someone's husband's, but as herself. That's like the emptiness syndromes.

A lot of parents, especially Asian moms like us, especially single mom who raised us, go through that. But that's one of those ongoing struggle I deal with for the last four years, and ongoing, and it's very defeating. And that's when I wanted to reach out to you, because that's when I was watching Alone Season Nine on Netflix and heard about your stories, and it was so captivating.

I'm like, Holy crap, is he talking about my mom? What's going on? But, yeah, I struggle with that day today. It's a hard journey. It's a hard journey effortful.

But like I said, we will go deep. We'll have a therapy session for both of us in the second half of the conversation, but I do want to go deep into the survivorship, which is another very big identity that you wear. So I want to get philosophical for a second.

If you don't like philosophy, please bear with me. I love philosophy. All right, here we go.

So I've always been fascinated by the space, the space between life and death. Nietzschen calls it the void before birth and then the void after death. And I think the thrill is what connects the two destinations, life and death and Hypomania is describing the daredevils of the world where they lack adequate amount of fear regulation mechanism like genetically a lot of times that they have increased propensity towards world seeking like free solo climbers, special forces, Cliffjumpers and survivalists like yourself.

How much of your obsession with wilderness survival is related to thrill seeking versus an innate curiosity towards approximation of death? I would say my fascination with survival is very much rooted in where I see our world going in let's say two lifetimes. So I always gear what I learn and what I obsess about around what I want to pass on to my kids and my grandkids. And if they are dealing with forest fires up the wazoo floods and civil unrest and wartime type of stuff, I want to be building children who can pass on that knowledge to really solidify their best ability to thrive in that environment.

And I think surviving and military skills and medical skills are three pillars of many different things but three solid pillars that give my progeny a fighting chance and it's really fun to learn. It does put back control into things that you think you might not have control of. Just putting anyone butt naked in the middle of the wilderness and saying survive and imagine the amount of self efficacy you feel after that being like okay, I had a piece of rock and I was able to survive for like god knows how many days just with that.

Now you build up to that for sure but to say that hey, I can do that and I can teach my kid how to do that and they can probably do that better than anyone in their adult age whether that's the key thing that roots everything that I do it's for the family. So not the proximation of death but actually as far away from death as possible for your offspring. I don't do things because I think it's super dangerous, I do things in danger knowing that I can do it safely and I want to pass that on to as many people, as many families as possible.

And I want to start building a community where 5100 years down the line they know that survival, doctors, everyone in that community can lend a helping hand and know how to survive and know how to treat emergencies and that's the legacy that I want to pass on. That's awesome. Not what I expected but makes sense given your family medicine, emergency medicine.

So how do you slow down and enjoy the valleys in the view? Because I think for people like you who growth mindset go go mode always the next evolutions leveling up especially like I don't know if your mom was a tiger mom, mine was. So I definitely have that characteristics. Of course my biggest struggle is when I have meaningful milestones.

Sure there is dopamine regulation, sure. But my biggest struggle is actually enjoying my milestones for how meaningful they are rather than immediate onto the next because I sense some of that tendencies. Correct me if I'm wrong, but any thoughts there? Yeah, definitely.

I need a very obvious instruction to stop and my wife is great for that. So she tells me when she thinks that I'm doing too much and 99% of the time she is right and I trust her enough to stop. So whether that's meaning taking less responsibilities or doing less projects, I'll definitely take that pause and to recalibrate and to think, okay, what's that one thing that tomorrow and the day after is going to make me really happy.

And it can be as simple as cleaning up my garage so that I have a gym space to work out again. But it doesn't have to be extravagant for me. Like I'm a pretty simple guy.

To have that little gentle nudge to stop is super helpful. So I think this dovetails into your mission statements of not just training individuals but families like you talked about. You want to cultivate and create a long lasting survival doctor's legacy and communities where everyone in that tribe is equipped with adequate skill sets to survive in any conditions, not just the wild.

That's your mission statement, which is amazing. So what would you say to those people that don't have that tribe? What would you say to those people that cannot be grounded by others because they're dealing with loneliness aloneness and maybe lack of meaningful social support or relationships. The lack of meaningful relationships and just a group or even a second individual that understands you or that connects with your ideology and mindset is incredibly isolating.

And to that, if anyone resonates with the type of things that I'm up to or interested in the types of things that I'm doing, and especially if you don't have a family, you are always welcome into mine. Yeah, he said that or you said that on the mic. So this is public record now.

No going back. Yeah, I asked that because I really want to just put the increasing prevalence of social isolations and loneliness on a messaging board because the biggest relationship or connecting point between physical health and mental health because you represent physical health, I represent mental health is really social relationships and communities. Doesn't matter your race, your ethnicity.

Like loneliness is one of the biggest killers out there, quite literally. And I really feel like people like you who are trying to create these communities and you are very interactive on social media. You respond to most comments, you follow your fans all the time.

I've seen you reposting fans like, oh, my God, I can't believe he just timonji. Just follow me. So I know you're very interactive because I'm guessing you understand the importance.

Because I think as content creators or people with social media or public presence, I think we often forget that for that one person to reach out to you, they might have mustered immense and tremendous courage to leave a comment, not just like and move on and forget about it in 2 seconds. So I think just the little gestures, like the little habits, the patterns that we talked about in the beginning really goes a long way. But yeah, I appreciate how interactive and how communal you are outside of your Asian culture and all that.

Absolutely. I want to encourage interaction because it's my followers and my students that give me the best insight into how to be a better teacher and what are the things that are concerning them and what are the things that they're worried about in their own families and in their own capacities. And that just makes me more capable of developing a good curriculum for them, but also to be a good friend to them as well.

So on the show, Timon Jean, you also reference plant based medicine and survival medicine throughout the entire season. And even right now you're talking about communities interactions, family, indigenous cultures or indigenous communities come to my like, where did your fascination begin, especially with their expertise in survivorship. I know about some of your stories, traveling, right, doing a nonprofit.

I know you also established an HIV clinic. We can go into that later. But yeah, where does the fascinations for specifically indigenous cultures and the expertise come from? So I think there's something to be said about cultures that still have a very strong verbal transmission of history and strong relationships with elders.

And I found that in a lot of indigenous communities around the world, whether that's in East Africa or South America, a lot of the places that I worked in and helped on projects, those were the communities that just had so much knowledge and so much joy to pass around. I was learning an incredible amount about the plants and the animals and every little thing that could be used for your health or rituals. And I think that's one thing that is lacking in modern or Western medicine is the ritual of healing and how that affects the whole healing process.

So it was fascinating to me to know that, okay, these people might not have these medications, but they may be healing the same rate or even faster than someone who may have Advil or something like that. This is going to be amazing topic. I engage with my backgrounds in psychedelic science, which a lot of evidence are coming up, right? FDA just completed their trial.

Three with John Hopkins maps. Psychedelic center. But I bring that in because I think there is this contention timelessly between Eastern medicine and Western medicine or even functional medicine in the west, like Dr.

Mark Hyman, like food fix, the gut, brain microbiome, things like that. They're getting more accepted because of the prevalence of research. But I think in the root there is still this debate between the holistic medicine, even though the word holistic.

Has been hijacked too many times versus the traditional emergency medicine, which is what the west is best at. Given your spiritual inclinations and your holistic multifaceted framework to view healing body physical health, where do you lie in that spectrum? And we'd love for you to elaborate whatever you feel called to. So there is a spectrum, and I would say that there is a spectrum of practice within context.

So for emergency medicine, I will treat a heart attack the way I've been trained. But it's those moments in between where a family may be at bedside, scared, not knowing what's going on, and the patient can still hear them as they're going in and out of consciousness. Taking that time to deepen your relationship with them, I would say, is something that I actively do in part of that healing ritual where you're not only affecting their family by just giving them information, you're telling them maybe something about you that scared you in similar situations, maybe it was a family member of your own.

And I think that human connection is something that helps guide people through that process of hurt, of suffering, of uncertainty. And I don't think it's practiced a whole lot, especially in the emergency medicine context. But I would say in the primary care context, where patients may be coming in from different ethnic groups, especially our immigration demographic or immigrant demographic.

Rather they have such a rich culture in what they use for different ailments. So for the maasai, it might be for cough, colds and even sometimes sprains and other things that may require surgery. They might treat it a very specific way and you can guide them down that way.

But to completely shatter their ideology of what health is and what healing is, is detrimental to that patient. Not supportive. And you can always offer what we have, but I think if you do your own education and learn how that two can be blended, patients often do a lot better.

So you're saying that you cannot just yell at these indigenous cultures or specific minorities, saying that your practice is a hoax, it doesn't work? Yeah, you can't do that. Canceled. Yeah.

You see this? It's a trope on TVs. But I think we need to really revere and put a certain level of respect for certain cultures where their practices have survived not hundreds but thousands of years. And what is true is true.

And for any practice and wisdom and story to survive the iterations of thousands of years, there's a lot of truth there. And psychedelic science is case in point after it's been shut down in the 1960s because of President Nixon's declare war on drugs. So I think we are getting closer to the intersection between spirituality and science for the lack of better terms like mindfulness meditations.

That took years for the west to catch up, but now everyone meditates, everyone's talking about mindfulness because I think society tends to overcorrect in terms of oscillations back and mean having a physician on, I got to put you on the spot and ask you about where you lie in that relationship. So where I align in what I think about meditation, what I think about spirituality, I am all for it. Number one, from science background, I know what attention does to an individual or your ability or your perceived ability to control your attention.

So if you can control your attention, you can control a lot of other things as well. Both your perspective, your reaction to things, your actions and results as well, and even opportunities as like a business person or someone in your career. So I think the people who command their attention benefits multifacetedly in almost everything and I think there's only good things to be said about that.

In regards to spirituality, I think that touches on the realm of connectedness. So that may be something that a lot of people are facing. A real reality is a lot of people are lonely, a lot of people suffer from anxiety, depression and everything in between.

And feeling connected has been more difficult. People don't believe in religion as much as they used to and there needs to be something that fills that void. And for the majority of people it's hard to find that one thing.

So when you're faced with an adventure, like alone and you're forced to believe in something because you are praying to get another meal or to get whatever you need to last another day. I remember I was talking to my grandfather who passed away. I was talking to God, I was talking to the spiritual ancestors of the land.

And when that delivers and when you get that thing you're asking for or praying for, you feel something that can only be described as tremendous support. Like you almost feel showered with support and it just feels like something's there for you, something has your back. And that's why I think spirituality is a good thing.

One of my favorite Joe Rogan podcast episode is with the artist David Choi and he is very big into like Hanza tribe, one of the last remaining tribes. I think it's Hanza, I could be wrong, but he talks about during his time there, he's witnessed unspeakable synchronistic moments where they're so attuned and in tuned with nature and the spiritual ancestors of the lands. They can whisper bird noises and bird will land on their finger and they could almost communicate with the land truly.

And so I want to use into segue and ask you because I recall a very specific moment where you either prayed or you did some of your spiritual practices and you got squirrels back to back like two or three days. Back to back, right. Can you recall any other like holy crap, I don't know how to explain this, but this is some seriously synchronistic moments that I'm experiencing right now.

So I have one good story for you. So hunting for me is new. Hunting a squirrel is incredibly hard and there was a point where I just got into hunting squirrels and was getting a decent amount of success, but I felt bad.

These creatures have been filling my area with music and playfulness and companionship and I was putting a big dent in their population. So I remember just talking to one and saying, if you find me a grouse, I will not shoot you today. And it just squeals like it got stuck with something and ran off.

And within a minute, literally within a minute, a grouse appeared and I got that grouse and that fed me for a day or two. So it's moments like that where you do feel so connected and I think that's the magic of being in the woods as much as possible and practicing gratitude and practicing prayer, if there's a better word for it. But to ask outwardly and to receive and then feel what that feels like, I think it is something so magical and it doesn't surprise me that the Hadza have that relationship and from a different perspective, they are training their attention because when you think about hunting, you're using all five of your senses all the time.

And that form of meditation is if you're constantly meditating, who knows what you can be picking up, what waveforms and what little nuances in nature and the world around you that you'd be picking up that someone would be oblivious to. Speaking of sensory perceptions, I've interviewed quite a few cognitive psychologists about sensory perceptions. Since a lot of people think perception is reality, it's not true.

Reality is reality. Your perception is often distorted because one through line that I've seen on every single season of Alone since I love that show, including yours, is every participant talks about, this is the greatest meal I've ever had. I practice mindful eating when I do have chances on the weekends for lunch and dinner with my eyes closed.

No stimulations, just myself in the meal with my eyes closed. And it's amazing. It does taste better, you eat a lot slower, you get full faster and so on.

So it also has like weight management benefits. Of course, my example comes pales in terms of you're in this immersive life and death situations, but can you walk me through some of your sensory changes you've noticed? But also in terms of tying this with gratitude when you do have that meal, like the savoriness of it because I'm a big foodie, just like anyone is in La. I guess, but I'd love to hear more about taste and just sensory improvements or enhancements.

Yeah, you might get a kick out of this. So, like any Asian, first Asian on the show, I brought so as one of my items I was like, I can't be the first Asian on this show and not bring rice. That'd just be not right? So for my emergency ration, I had rice, salt, and sugar.

And scientifically, I had it for different reasons to treat dysentery and kind of gut issues if I needed rehydration. So with that amount, I could have been out sick for two weeks on that and then come back to kind of starting point at zero. But for meals, adding a little bit of salt and a little bit of sugar to your meals and then also having just a few pinches of rice to make jok or like, porridge was something fantastic.

I remember for Thanksgiving, I had grouse. I had rice porridge with a little bit of salt. I had some cranberries on that.

I roasted bunch berries that made it taste like red peppers, like roasted red peppers, and all that filled my pot like a two quart pot, completely full. I couldn't finish it because of what that rice did, because it just expands, expands, expands. So you're having all these things, which may not be the most calories in probably less than 500 for sure, in total, but you just felt so nourished.

So the psychological component of that is so amazing because as a physician, thinking back and calculating the amount of weight I was losing was, at the beginning, about a pound and a half to towards the end, about half a pound a day. I shouldn't have been able to do what I was doing out there with the calories I was taking. I was taking less than 200 kilocalories a day when my requirements is at least 20 times that.

So you're taking a 20th of your intake and you are laughing, you're running around and you're hunting. How is that even possible when we know as physicians or nutritionists or even people who are treating like anorexia, that should not be a thing. How are you still doing that? And it goes back to a lot of the native tribes around the world.

They are still doing that under that calorie deficits, and they are loving life to one extent or the other. And it was such a gift to experience that for myself, to challenge that assumption. How many pounds did you end up losing by the time you left? 62.

Oh, my. I'm skinny. I'm fairly skinny, and I have a fast metabolism.

They took me almost half a year just to gain, like, 35 pounds, and I was eating like five burgers a day, drinking oil and all that stuff. And it took me a long time just to gain 35 pounds. And I lost, I would say, the majority of it for the first 30 days because my body's not used to carrying so much weight.

So it just burns. It burns, it, burns it. So I was lucky enough to look at my stats at the end, and I was burning about half a pound, pound and a half a day for the first 30 days.

And then it kind of tapers down as like, okay, this is my regular weight, so it's a little slower, and then when you become more deficit, you burn slower still. And not to even mention, like, you fell that one time on the tree trunk you caught yourself. I think that injury could have been a lot worse, and I think that's when you're like, all right, I don't know.

Maybe I'm sure you fell countless times, but I remember this so many times. Yeah, like I said, I'm not a hunter. I've done, like, target recurve bow shooting for, like, seven years, but at that point, I've never hunted before, so I didn't know what was a bad shot to take.

So I was taking tree shots and getting my arrows stuck in, like, 30 foot trees, and it wasn't the best shot, so that means I needed all my arrows. So I was climbing up those 30 foot trees like, mulan with, like, a belt behind the tree and just, like, going up there, and I was doing it at a significant caloric deficit, and I did that three times. Then I made a second shelter on the beach because I thought that was a good idea.

I thought it was a fun project. And the tree stump fell so far down the ridge that I had to haul it up, and it was literally, like, almost 400 pounds, so I had to delimit and then move it up. And I've been doing all that stuff on less than 500 kilocalories a day, and they're just laughing about it.

Yeah, I have fast metabolism, too. If I skip a gym for a week, I lose weight because I lose my water weight. I just don't have that much appetite.

But that is crazy. So on that note, you talked about increased or I guess your increased ability to master your emotions and your attention. I think that's the words you chose, you represent something unique, right? Aside from being the first Asian in the show and quick, funny ad notes when me and my partner are watching, you like, oh, finally, an Asian in the show.

And of course, he's a doctor. I mean, stereotype all the way, right? Yeah. Got to represent.

But I think what really makes you unique is, as you talked about on the show, your competitive advantage, so to speak, is you understand the nuances that separates actual medical emergency versus perceived self perceived medical emergency, which is your edge. So dovetailing that into your increased ability to master your emotions, attention. How did that work out? Were you even more fine tuned and yeah, just anything in between there.

It's definitely a double edged sword. I would say at least 50% of All Alone contestants in our history of the show have pulled themselves out for what they perceive to be a medical emergency. Now, there are things that I would definitely recommend.

Like, if you're a 50 year old male and you're complaining of chest pain, get out of there. The hospitals typically are very far away, and if you're having a heart attack, that's not worth it. Or if you're having stroke symptoms, that's not worth it.

But sticking yourself with a hook or feeling like you're a bit constipated and worried about sepsis or having even your knee swell up and you're thinking about that's a septic joint before you kind of do proper compression and rest and all that stuff. It does give you advantage in that sense, knowing that, okay, this is not something that I would go to the emergency department for so I could fix it myself. And a lot of the times, if I were to do a bunch of different things, like, let's say if I cut open my leg, there is a certain threshold of what I would treat for myself.

I have that advantage of having more medical experience than the people rescuing me, right? That's a fact. These are medics and paramedics, and they're highly trained, but I have more experience and knowledge than they do. And I could probably fix it in the field just as well as the Er doctor in a rural Er that has not a whole lot of instruments anyways.

So that was definitely an advantage. Now, the flip side is what happens when you hit that red flag, what happens when you see that line and you will walk it or you choose to walk it? Then you have to have that really deep conversation with yourself is, okay, is that worth it? Half a million dollars for a physician is not a whole lot of money. I don't mean to sound like a particular way, but it's not worth losing your ability to be a physician, right? So if you injure yourself and lose your hands or your ability to walk and you hinder that ability to be a physician, not only are you canceling out your whole reason, because I think physician identity is a very strong identity.

So killing that for half a million dollars is not worth it when you're walking that line. And in addition to that, you're also thinking about recovery time too. So in my head, I knew my start date, no matter what happens, was January 1.

So I was thinking about, okay, what's rehab going to look like? I don't have a family doctor. I don't have all these things set up for me. How am I supposed to move to a different country, Canada, to the US.

Start a new job and be okay working? All these things were going through my mind as well. So that is definitely a double edged sword and definitely played into effect in addition to my main reason to be out there, which was to send a message. Could I deliver that message if I was pulled out? And I don't think the answer is yes.

So those were the two big factors that ended up causing me to tap, and I'm pretty sure your physician insurance does not cover voluntary participation in a loan, right? No, I would doubt that. They would say like, oh, yeah, sure, here's 80% of your salary for the rest of your life. Yeah, my partner, she told me about physician insurance.

Makes sense, right? Especially your motor functions. Timonjian, I think this is finally when we reel back our conversations about mom, because as you talked about one of the two biggest reasons where you tapped because to you, you've achieved this inner peace and you fulfilled your why to be on the show, which is for your mom. So I have a fun question for you, but it is also very personal and I would love for your unedited raw response.

So before you chose to leave alone season nine after 63 days, you said you were going to call your mom after the said epiphany, right? Before you dialed the satellite phone, did you call her and what did you to talk about after not speaking for quite a long time due to the learned helplessness and frustrations we talked about earlier in the show. So I actually didn't plan to call anyone until my refeeding program was done because I had so much to process. The one thing that I really wanted out there, if I was allowed an 11th item, was probably pen and paper because you could just write down all your thoughts.

I had all these amazing ideas, revelations, things that I wanted to do, my Costco shopping list, all of that needed to be down on paper. So I literally did not sleep for 24 hours to write down my whole alone experience from day one all the way up to day 63 on paper. So I filled a journal up and then after that I was still processing things and I was planning on calling my girlfriend at that time first, and she ended up noticing that my iPhone tracker, my location just popped up and then she ended up FaceTiming me.

So I was kind of ill prepared for that. But we ended up talking first, and if I was talking to her first, I told myself, like, I probably should call my mom, too. So I called her within the first few days of refeeding and she was just really glad that nothing bad happened to me because from a family or a support for alone, it is quite isolating as well because you're in the dark, you don't know what's going on, especially for the first few weeks.

Did they hurt themselves? Are they okay? Are they starving? And then it's just a lot of silence. And it was very hard on her to know that there's a lot of uncertainty. A lot of my other family thought I was going on Survivor, so they thought it was like a game show.

They're like, oh, it's just on a game show. So they were great. I want to dive deep into the internal landscape or your internal psyche.

Of course, you're just refeeding. You called your girlfriend first, who is now your wife. Congratulations.

So I'm sure there's a lot there. So I don't want to create any artificial blinders on, but just want to create space because I could imagine the tidal waves of emotions, especially just coming off of such an intense once in a lifetime experience. Because rekindling or reconciling for Asian children or immigrant children with our immigrant parents, despite the generational gap, different understandings, different cultural context is an ongoing theme in not just my life, but almost everyone that I know.

If you're a minority, ethically so, I love to create a space to create spaces. Talk about that especially you are in such a unique position to do so. I think one thing that became very evident was I don't think my mom knew how much I cared about her from her perspective, there was this person who kept on nagging her and to do something that I thought was healthy for her.

And the moment that I explained why I was there and what I was trying to do out there and what the footage will likely convey, it opened up a different avenue in how we talk to each other. And I think that was the step in the right direction. So just knowing I remember one thing that she said is she mentioned, I didn't know you cared about me that way.

And that was something that brought me a lot of relief. But also it definitely emphasized a lot of the guilt as well, because all this time I've been trying to do something good, and that coming off as frustration or anger didn't help anyone and detrimented the relationship. Man, I really wanted to dive deep into that because I think not just like, immigrants aside, I think all children and adults and parents, because what parents are, simply put, are older children having children for the first time.

That's parents in a nutshell. And I think we grapple with intention versus impact. Right? Why are they doing this? They're nagging me also.

I am such a soccer dad. I nag my mom all the time to a point. My mom is like, oh, please, son, don't call me.

No. I don't work six days this week post retirement because of the stress conversations about her arthritis. But what I sense from your response, Timon Jean, is the space between intention and impact, and I think we need to really think about both ways.

And you talked about this quite a few times throughout. You love kids, I can tell, and you want to be a proud family man right now. You're a husband.

Hopefully, you'll be a dad soon, unless you have a pregnancy announcement on the show. Not that I know of. Okay, surprise after this.

Synchronicity. So one of your greatest aspirations is to be a great father to your future kids. How do you see these connections, not to mention your expertise in family medicine, which is, like, I guess, most obvious altogether.

I'm very grateful for the upbringing that I had, and I just know that if I kind of resembled similar principles or similar values as some of the other adults in my life that I take after, I think that would be a greater achievement than anything that I've done to date. You spend so much time with your children that literally 20 years off your life or 21 years off your life of just nurturing and trials and tribulations and just figuring out how to be a parent. And I think that's the greatest adventure.

So there's nothing really that I want to do more than that. This is going to be an OD fit, but my brain's going somewhere weird. Please bear with me.

OD adventure. I know you alluded to this about your homelessness experience. I know you shared that on that show, and you referenced it one time earlier where La has one of the most saddening endemic homelessness in the country.

I think we're closing or over 100,000 homelessness count, according to census data. So you experienced homelessness for a period during medical school. You referenced this now and also on the show.

I want to ask you, what did you learn about homelessness that completely shattered your previous beliefs and misconceptions? Because you're very passionate about education. So am I. Podcast is an extension of my attempt to provide educations and value, but we love for you to maybe dive deeper into that experience and share some of the shattered beliefs that you uphold versus, like, wow, this is what the actual reality is.

Going back to perceptions and reality, what it really made me think of is how important perspective is, how important identity is, how important how you talk to yourself is, and what you're able to accomplish if you just pivot ten degrees. And that situation is no longer that really horrible, bottom of the barrel situation. And that was the biggest revelation.

Because it took me almost a year to feel worthy enough to have food, to feel worthy enough to have a roof over my head. Because one of the things that I very distinctly remember, because in my head, all of what happened to me in that one year in my final year of medical school was my fault. So I remember telling myself, you don't deserve a home.

And to be in that mindset for that amount of time was one of the hardest things that I've done to this date. And the change in perspective only happened after I got into residency. I was doing interviews, showering at Planet Fitness and traveling the country and showing up at 05:00 A.m.

For trauma surgery with a smile on my face. And it only took that one acceptance to really turn a switch and saying, like, okay, now you're worth something now you deserve this now. And I think if I had the kindness to look at things a little differently, that would have changed that whole experience for me, that is so relevant in 2023, because I think a lot of us place our value and self worth in something doctor title, honorifics, masters, your promotion, the type of house you have, your income and so on.

Because that's what you're alluding to, right? Where when you were experiencing homelessness during your final year, you felt worthless, and you feel like you don't deserve this because it's your fault. The consequences of reactions, whether that's distorted or not, that was your perceived reality versus afterwards. Hold on. Why would just one interview change my level of self worth? Because self worth, all of us have access to it. Everyone is birth worthy. Nobody is born without worth, as your baby.

Right. And reminds me about MLK's quote, everybody's a sinner and a saint. So all of us are multifaceted, but I'm not sure this was your intention, but what I'm getting out of what you just said to me is, yeah, let's really reevaluate our relationship with our self worth and what makes us feel worthy and what makes us feel unworthy and what can we do about it? Because I also sense the undertone of ownership because we are responsible for our lives, which is, I know, a very big theme of survival medicine and just being a survivalist.

Yeah, absolutely. Responsibility is huge. Yeah.

I think one of the more controversial statements is when bad things happen to us, it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility to get back on your feet, because nobody's going to care about your life more than you do. I have a question that I think would encompass everything you represent. You let me know if that's the case.

If not, I'll edit this out. So if you could leave a quote about why you think wilderness and survival is critical for everyone's character development in every student's handbook around the country, what would that quote say? If you are able to feel connected with the wild around you, if you are able to feel the capacity in yourself, that you're able to do things that you may have never done before, that is what encompasses what it means to be a survivalist. Because you are always doing things that are probably things that you've done for the first time with confidence.

And to top that off, with survival medicine, to be able to accomplish things that may have not been done before and to save lives or to protect your own family is something worthwhile learning, worthwhile investing in, and it's something that I want to pass on to my family. Long quote, but amen. This makes me want to get out and do something with the wilds.

Not in La. Because I think you're speaking to just we need to do activities and seek meaningful and intentional discomfort to grow ourselves and get better and strengthen our weakness and turn them into strength. Which is the underlying growth mindset this whole time.

If you want, I can do a short one. No, you can stack that. But before I roll the red carpet, I have one more question. Is not a question, given your wide and rich array of experiences and expertise? Tim on Jean, I want to just create a space. Is there anything that we haven't talked about, haven't touched upon that you feel called to share with everyone and with me before the metaphorical red carpet moment we've talked about quite a bit. I would say one of the things that I hope to just deliver a message to my kids is that it's okay not to know the next step, it's okay not to know a direction, and it's okay to be scared.

And if you take a step in that direction, which you want to go, but you're kind of scared of, I'm going to be proud of you anyways. Wow. I feel like that's something I needed to hear from my dad, who's non, my biological father, who left very young ago.

But yeah, such a gracious message. And I think if all of us accept that it is okay to not be okay and it is okay to feel lost as long as we're failing forward and we're doing something about it and giving us ourselves grace and compassion along the way, I think the world would be a better place. We need to redefine failure because, honestly, it's one of my favorite Hobies.

Wait, like failing is your favorite hobby? Failing? I love doing things that I've never done before, and I love learning that way. If you define failure as your favorite activity, imagine where you can be in ten years. Imagine where you can be in a week time.

If failure was fun for you, if failure was your creative outlet, and if failure was a mechanism to get you tremendous joy and success, what would you fear in the world? If I were single, which I'm not, I will put that as my bio on Tinder dating or like, on my CV on LinkedIn. Why should you hire me? Failing is my favorite activities. Oh, that's gold.

Without further ado, aside from survival doctors, you have an amazing YouTube channel that's like a time capsule. Just like you sharing that message to your future kids, hopefully this conversation with you will be a time capsule for the kids to review because you and I both know these content will outlast and outlive both of us, for better or worse. Where can people check you out? Anything else you want to connect with listeners? And yeah, where can people check you out further after this conversation? Yes.

So you can find everything that I'm up to at www. Dot survivaldoctors. That's with an s.com.

That includes the lives that I do on a hopefully weekly basis and the content that I'll be producing for you guys. So my field guides coming up this fall. That's over 200 pages of everything that I've learned to date, including the loan experience, so things that you would not find in a textbook and my online courses as well.

So everything that I want to teach to my kids, I'll be teaching you. Amazing. We'll be the guinea pigs before you master the craft for your own kids.

I appreciate your time, your thoughtfulness, and it's cool seeing you from Netflix screen to this smaller screen, but a lot more intimate. And I appreciate your vulnerability. I mean that.

I know vulnerability just another marketplace for a lot of content, folks, but I take that to heart, as we talked about before recording. But I appreciate your energy, your presence and, yeah, just for your topical expertise and all things we talked about today, it was such a pleasure talking with you. Awesome.

And to all the listeners, you know the drill. If you enjoyed this week's episode with the one and only Timon Jean, I ask you to share this episode with your friends. And as always, I'll include all his information in the show notes below.

Check out his YouTube channel. He has amazing content. And I'm also going to release this episode in line with his field book release for the additional boost.

So you should be able to stack both of these things at the same time. And as always, I hope you choose curiosity over fear in the next week's Train of Discover More. Thank you for tuning in.