The Psychology of Sandy Hook - Chapter 2 - Parenting

0:00All right, Bert O, this is chapter two and our deep dive on the psychology of the sandy hook shootings. This is the psychology and Seattle podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirk Honda. I'm a therapist and a professor and let me introduce Umberra Kastigneta, who has a new job as a YouTuber. That's right. I mean, in addition to my normal job, which everyone knows, I prune, prune trees, but I am now officially a YouTuber as well. Chapter two, Bert O, take us away. All right. So I said, I ominously said at the end of last chapter in the patron zone that we were going to get worse. So where we last left off, Landsa was finishing seventh grade. And although there are a few years of mostly his progression seemed to be the same where he was withdrawn. He was kind of didn't like participating, but he was getting good grades, and there were no major reports of problems. All of a sudden in the seventh grade, what was really

1:00already there just started coming more to the surface. So much so that he was withdrawn suddenly in April of so that towards the end of the school year of seventh grade enrolled in a Catholic school. And then even there, he only lasted one quarter. And there were reports that he was writing very destructive and violent graphic graphically violent things. Yeah. And in the patron zone in chapter one, we reviewed a lot of data points that we had, but we don't have a lot of data points. So I speculated as to the range of possibilities that were happening at home, at school, and how it might relate to autism spectrum. It might not relate to it, it might relate to the mom's struggles with her health, how it might relate to the divorce, how it might relate to Adam's ability to socialize school. And we just don't really know. But what we do know is highly

2:01concerning. And now I am scared to find out what happens in the eighth grade. So take it away, Bruno. So right before the eighth grade, I want to do a quick rewind. I had mentioned the big book of Granny, which he had actually written in the fifth grade. So several years prior. And he had co-written it with someone whose name will emit. But essentially, this was potentially a school assignment. And it was presented as like a mix bag of things. It had jokes. It had short stories, all related to this character, Granny. And it was meant to apparently be humerus and in the style of Calvin and Hobbes type irreverent humor. But still, good nature, if you will. But it was. This was pretty brutal stuff in here. So as an example, the first section of the big book of Granny is 85 Granny jokes. And there's things like, stop nying on your leg. You don't know where it's been.

3:09Or hamsters are not part of our four food groups. Or put this tape on your tongue and lick that electrical socket. These are things that Granny is saying as jokes. These are 85 Granny jokes. Stop chewing your diaper. Put your seatbelt back on. Do you want to fly out? Oops, too late. Again, 10-10 year old fifth graders, right? So when you described the big book of Granny, the first time, I was under the impression that we were going to hear and maybe you're leading up to this. I know just graphic discussions of killing people and dismembering and eating them. But what you're describing thus far is just, you know, fifth grade jokes. Yeah. So this is page one out of like tons of pages. This thing is giant. And yes, there are things like, Granny, you stink like a boulder with sink. The smell lasts as long as this song. You hurt the children. You abuse the children. You are a mean to the children. You eat the children. They scream,

4:14they cry. You wonder what? It goes on. And like, there's so much stuff here. I can't even imagine a 10 year old writing this much. I don't know. Maybe you did. Yeah. This is so knowing where this is. Well, knowing where it heads, obviously, it's notable. Because, you know, if you remember this stuff that the Columbine shooters were writing about, in high school. Right. But that was, you know, obviously more concerning with this, you know, would it be concerning to a teacher or a parent to come across this if a fifth grader were writing this? Sure. But kids will joke around and laugh about all sorts of things. You know, eating a diaper. I mean, that's pretty normal fifth grade humor. Yeah. Eating a hamster or, oh, no, you weren't wearing your seatbelt. Oh, too late. You're dead. Like that's just, yeah, totally pretty typical. I mean, not all fifth graders are going to make jokes like that. But I wouldn't be alarmed at all about a fifth grader making jokes like that. Right. So the overall content, obviously, we're not going to read the whole thing. But,

5:18first of all, to me, it's striking that it is very, very long. It is not like, oh, I had to write three pages for my assignment. This is like dozens of pages. The children are not just incidental targets like there's some story and then some children get hurt. The writing specifically places the children inside of violent situations throughout. It is often the granny victimizing the children or another adult victimizing the children. Well, again, that's just one way of describing it. And if I just heard that and I extrapolated from that, I would imagine a larger storyline of granny sneaking into a kid's room and cutting off each limb and then eating them and the blood is dripping down the granny's face or something. But we're hearing of kids in a car without a seatbelt and then it's implied the kid gets

6:20dies or don't eat your hamster. So there's a lot of variety, how you would summarize this. Right. I think it varies. And I'm wondering, did you come up with that summary or did you read this summary? No, no, no, there's a billion summaries. There's a book written about this. There's lots of analyses. But it's just to give you some background in my world of, we have a whole field of assessment, not only of kids, but of humans, where there is a lot of pseudo science regarding reading into someone's personality or their potential behavior risk of this sort of thing by looking at the kinds of things that they associate, you know, like you give someone like an inkplot, you know, that's a classic. Right. And I'm actually trained in the scientifically demonstrated method of using inkplot today, which is pretty limited in terms

7:23of what it can say, but it can say some things or at least it's associated with some things. But back the old day, you would have an inkplot and someone would say, oh, that looks like a vagina or that looks like a squirrel. And people would extrapolate pretty aggressively from there. Right. And it was basically just a clinician making shit up. And especially when it's retroactive, right? If you had a serial killer and then you did inkplot with them, then they would say, oh, obviously, this guy is a serial killer when it is just there's no scientific way of knowing. Totally. So that's where I'm coming from where there's real data. The big book of granny really exists. And there are things that he and his friend wrote in this thing. But then you have people that are summarizing it and wording it as the way you just worded it, which is throughout the book, you have children that are being targeted and harmed. But then when you give me the actual

8:27quotes, I'm like, well, yeah, you know, well, I mean, so certainly, but then there's other again, the thing is very long, right? So I could say things like, um, Steinbrinner, I'll kill you with the shotgun. Granny, ha, I shot you. Oh, no, I got a wrinkle. I need to commit suicide by hitting my head with a 500 ton diamond ring. Oh, no, I'm dead. I'll be back. And I'll try to get you, Granny. Oh, Granny, uh, you're tougher than the police. Your new job is to kill thieves and hide their corpses in ditches. And then it then it goes, I'm outside, uh, Steinbrinner. I'm outside with a stick of dynamite. I will throw it in and everyone will die. But I need a match. Yes, I found one in my pocket. And I was going to use it to light the dynamite, which we'll use to kill everyone. Bye, bye, granny. And then, uh, granny, everyone is dead except you and me. Let's take the bank's money. Uh, it's so forth, right? So, so I'm glad that you're reading the data. Okay. Now, if you don't have experience with fifth graders and their random humor or statements, right? Then that's one thing.

9:29Also, and I don't think your daughter's ever did stuff like this is, is I, is I think the case, right? Which wouldn't be unusual, but, but anyway, the right, like, I'm not a 10. Well, I should probably never, but yes, right, right. Yeah. Uh, also, we know what eventually happens. So it's easy to read into this and you're like, whoa, whoa, what's, you know, clearly, now the other thing I'll say is that the chance that Adam Lanza had fantasies of harming people or proto fantasies when he was in the fifth and sixth grade, that would eventually blossom and build into eventually a plan to kill people. Yeah, it, it, it's probable whether or not that's being represented in these jokes, we can't know, but if I were to put money down, I would bet that this is an early indication of that. There would be no way to know this, even if we could talk to him back then, right? There'd be no way to scientifically demonstrate that this is an early seed that grows into what eventually does.

10:32But I just want to say that based on what you've read, if someone brought this to me and said, what do you think, you know, we have a sixth grade or the, if this was all I had, I'd be like, I don't, I don't know. I mean, it could be anything. Right. The kids, if you hang out with, and I, you know, hate to genderize this, but if you hang out with sixth grade boys, this is right down the middle humor. I mean, just look at cartoons, right? People, people fly off of, especially in the old days, I imagine cartoons don't really do this anymore, but, you know, road runner, there's all sorts of splats and dynamites and people being crushed. And that's what they laugh at, butts and diapers and people dying and shotguns. You know, it's, it's not pleasant if you hear your sixth grade or thinking about such things, but, you know, they inherently want to press the envelope and in their content and their cartoons, it's all there and they're just sort of extending that. So, yeah, and it's

11:36quite plausible. You get to stuff like this. Granny's son. Granny, I found a little boy on the street and thought it was the perfect pet. Let's dig in. Mommy's boy. Mommy, I want my mommy. Granny, great idea. Stuffing it with grand spam and putting it up on the mantelpiece will be a great adjustment to our house. Mommy, where's my mommy? I want my mommy. Wow. Granny, it's running around the fireplace. Kick it in. Here. Whoa. Mommy, I'm burning. Where are you? Granny, it jumped out, punched it in the face. Ah, you're right. We would be banned from being read if you did that in in a detailed performance. Wow, mommy, I want my mommy. Granny, shoot it with your rifle cane. Bang, bang, bang. Granny, how can you miss three times? Oh, yeah, you don't have a possible thumbs. Mommy, I'm crying. Wow. Granny, throw your granny action figure at it. Mommy, I want my mommy. Oh, Granny's cool action figure comes alive, shoots mommy's boy.

12:41Is it dead? Granny, go to try to eat its feet off and see if it resists. Now you can hang it. Happy days. So, my 10 year old writes this. I don't sleep well at night. Yeah, and I'm, you know, parents out there or teachers or people even who have experienced with these kinds of kids, therapists, I'm not saying that it's like nothing. But let me just put it this way. When I have done play therapy with kids from age four to 12 and we get down on the ground and in one form of play they might grab figures or puppets. Right. And play out a scene. Maybe I'm involved passively. You know, they grab Darth Vader and Luke and I'm Leah. And it's extremely normal. Even with kids you don't have any aggressive tendencies and especially kids you don't grow up and

13:42shoot up schools. It's extremely normal for those kids. Even very mild mannered, very compliant children to get extremely violent in that play. But I and other experts would never call it violent. That wouldn't be the word that we would characterize it. We would just say that there's a lot of power involved or a lot of the child wanting to get a sense of agency or something. You know, but if we actually described it in a certain way, Darth Vader and Luke team up to kill Leah and they throw, you know, I'm holding Leah and they throw Leah into a pit of snakes and then they get a flame thrower and they burn and then they get hulk to jump on top of Leah. And in my world, it drives me fucking nuts when therapists draw firm conclusions about that play when science has looked at this forwards and backwards and discovered that all of those conclusions are based on the evaluators

14:48own personality. Yeah. That it says nothing about the individual. Now in an overall assessment of a kid, can you use that data? Yeah. But it alone says next to nothing and the kinds of things that you're reading to me, I have heard countless kids in that zone, especially at that age, that sort of sixth grade age, making jokes about stuff like that. And again, from the outside, it's the same, you know, when they would start to look at rap lyrics in the 90s and they'd be like, look at what they're saying in this song. And you know that when people listen to this music, they're not like thinking about doing what the, you know, it's out of context is the point. Yeah. I think in the general, of course, that makes sense. I think as a point in a continuum, especially knowing where this ends up, especially knowing that at the end of the story, grandma is shot and grandma is the

15:52mother figure here. And especially considering that like, again, I want to emphasize this is so many pages and there is violence throughout the whole thing. Again, that's that. Yeah, could you say it's violent. But again, if I was playing with our theater and Luke and Leia and they were repeatedly every session when we played Star Wars figures and the kid always trampled my character whether I had Leia or I had Han Solo, it wouldn't be unusual for a kid to repeatedly overpower my puppet. Sure. And I wouldn't in my notes say this kid is violent. No, I would say this kid's playing a game, you know, I and you know, best. I just I certainly never encountered this. I just think that you're a self or anyone. Right. I think that your kids are within a totally normal range of behavior and they just didn't happen to do anything in this kind of. But I'm also thinking of

16:54myself as a child and people I knew as a child as children. And yeah, I mean, we played guns, we played everything. Right. Yeah, whenever I had a chance to play a game throughout my early childhood, there was always death and killing. We would play war. Right. I would I played Dungeons and Dragons. Think about how much death is involved in Dungeons and Dragons. It's all about killing things. But like, for example, I never ever ever like had a story or a thought or a game where I was torturing a child or then consuming the child or then forcing the child to consume like, sure, are there themes especially? Yeah, but I just I'm I have a pet peeve of especially people in my field, because you can get a talking head on a documentary about Anna blanza. Yeah. And they will say exactly the way you initially described it. There were obvious themes of cannibalism and violence and murder and death. And it, you know, and and as an expert in this myself, I will scoff and laugh at

18:01that kind of shit because it's like, you don't know anything of what you're talking about. Is it notable? Is it something to look at? Am I noting it? Yes. Am I looking at it? Yes. But I wouldn't describe it if that's all that we knew, which is kind of how we have to operate from this. You know, we don't retrospectively analyze something that from that alone, it's just like, yeah, it's notable that it's pretty obsessive, but it's not notable in terms of the content, really. As you have probably imagined, this was examined, right? Like because in their investigations and everything, like obviously they this came up. So here were the things that that were highlighted, you know, in that. First, as I mentioned, the children, this is not like a one-off story where like, oh, some children get hurt. The children are repeatedly targeted and set into violent situations. Also, it's being done by a caregiver like adult. The second thing. And by the way, and emphasizing that

19:02this does not foretell what's going to happen or the massacre, but it just that's what the story tends to do over and over. The mother's son imagery is there. Now, it's a granny and a granny's son, but then there's also, like I said, in the other cases, there's little boys begging for their mothers and things like that. Okay. The second, the third thing is that the violence is repetitive rather than occasional. In other words, what concerned the clinicians wasn't that the child had written one gruesome scene, but that the whole fictional universe is rife with killing, mutilation, firearms, cruelty, and that is what is the plot for the jokes and the story. So in conclusion, they felt that careful reading of this at the time should have prompted a mental health evaluation. That was what they felt. Yeah. And was it enough of a reason to look into? Yeah. But as someone that gets those referrals or are used to, what do you do with that? You know, you bring him in and

20:07you ask him what's going on. He probably, even if he were completely forthcoming, there might be nothing there. Might there be something there? You know, might he be struggling with power? Might he be struggling with some anger? Might he be struggling with some anger at his mom? Some inferiority issue, some fantasy of revenge. That wouldn't be an unusual. Certainly wouldn't be a red flag for shooting up a school 10 years later. But I would get these referrals and a typical sixth grader isn't going to want to go to therapy and they certainly don't want to open up to me. And even if I spend nine months doing everything in my power to get the kid to open up to me, which I got fairly good at, there's no guarantee that he's actually going to open up or even know what to open up about. So is it worth saying, hey, that should have been flagged by the school or by the parents for a mental health evaluation? Yeah. But I'm here to tell

21:09you that people often have this idea. I think less so now, but back then, that this quote unquote mental health evaluation is some sort of magical diagnostic procedure that will detect anything. And it's like no, the best of circumstances, you're still very much in the dark. And what I say, don't do it, no. But in terms of blame, and you're not saying anyone's to blame, but I just, I don't know, I just want to put that out there. Yeah. And so there was this group called the child advocate. I don't know if this is like an official group or, you know, but anyways, there was this group that that looked at this. And their feeling was that the content was sufficiently extreme that it should have triggered questions, like maybe an evaluation and questions such as why is this child repeatedly imagining children being murdered? What does this material mean to him? Is he depressed, angry, frightened, or experiencing other significant emotional problems? Are as child

22:09psychiatrists or other qualified clinicians evaluating the child, right? However, at the same time, there were evidentiary gaps or there were reasons maybe not to even pursue this. First of all, it's not fully documented whether this was submitted to the school, how much the school saw this, who saw it, et cetera. So that's one thing. It's possible that at the time, almost no one saw this. Maybe no one did, but it is also possible that it was actually submitted. It was co-authored, right? So do we conclude, okay, here's two psychopaths that are going to kill schools, right? Right. I was getting to bring up that point. The very material that were identifying or some people are identifying as a clear early indicator, you have another kid that is writing half of it and participating in all of it, and he didn't do anything violent later in life, I presume. He's had a reportedly psychological struggles, but has not committed violent acts. So obviously there's no correlation. There's not, and anyone who works in this field understands

23:15that there are millions of six graders that have this and worse, because we're not hearing any violence from Adam at this point, whereas you'll have six graders who have this and their violent. In fact, the other issue here is that externally, this was completely different to his perceived behavior because they describe him as normal and polite at around this time. Right. So I'm just reading between the lines that people are retrospectively blaming, either just the general public or even talking heads in a documentary or in court or I don't know, and I just have to say all that's nonsense, and I feel very defensive for those professionals, for the teachers, for the parents at the time. Now moving forward, like in the eighth and eighth grade, maybe we'll hear some things that will prompt me to say, okay, someone should have upped the ante at this point, but at this point where you've told me thus far, there's a lot, there's a pretty wide range of reactivity from the teachers and from the parents

24:20that I would deem as sufficiently reactive to the scenario. As a parent, and I have a 10-year-old, because I read most of this, I didn't actually read all of it, I read most of this. And again, I'm not therapists, I'm not in the industry and stuff like this, but I just personally would be so distraught, I wouldn't know what to do, I would be so scared. And we don't know if the schools and the teachers and the parents weren't very free, very much freaking out, maybe they were bringing their hands every night, but we wouldn't know. And plus, what would be the evidence that they were bringing their hands, well, they would be telling someone, maybe, but what do you do? And people always say, oh, mental health evaluate, and I've already been over that, that that's like, it's not a magical world of like seeing inside someone's future, you know. I do think this is a good point here, is that at the very least, when seen in the context of everything else that came later, this does give us an insight that the inner

25:24workings of his mind, the inner life he's living through is very, very different from what appears to be his outer. Yeah, I'm glad you're doing that because the larger point here of knowing where this is headed, and maybe you'll give some more connective tissue between this and the next, and you know, in him shooting up a school, but even if we don't, we could speculate that prior to the big book of granny, and the big book of granny is only a tip of the iceberg, and it would not be uncommon for an individual who shoots up a school or does a mass shooting, to have indicators of a long history of intense obsessive fantasy with violence, revenge, disbimberment. When we actually get a chance to talk to people who commit these acts, whether it's a serial killer or a mass shooter, and they live, and we generally believe, which we wouldn't

26:27necessarily, but if they're forthcoming with us in prison, and they tell us how they were thinking leading up to the event, it's not uncommon to have a profile of someone on the outside that's pretty meek and nonviolent, but they have an elaborate fantasy life of extreme violence. You know, think about Jeffrey Dahmer going back to when he was a young person, he would obsess about the sort of thing to the point where he would get animals and roadkill, and he just was something that very much entertained him, he felt very compelled to do this kind of stuff, and that would eventually grow into him wanting to do this to humans. Does everyone who does that, does lead to that? No, but it does provide a red flag, you know, to look at. I wouldn't assume every kid would be heading that direction, but it would raise a question of, especially, you know, if the kids on the autism spectrum and isn't, you know, integrating well socially, which it sounds like to some extent he was, I would assume that, you know, he's struggling, and he is expressing anger, and he's hurt. He's sad.

27:32He would benefit by having some avenue of being able to talk about that, maybe even improving his life, maybe connecting with kids who get along with him or something, but you need him to participate, you need him to be forthcoming. That could be very hard. It's not impossible, but it's not an automatic thing like you just call a mental specialist and everything's fine. And could I, if I knew the full story, could I condemn the parents in the school for not doing enough in that area? Or maybe doing nothing in that area? Yeah. I don't know. I'm just generally defensive of any kind of conclusions that people draw. Sure. And I'm also, as you can tell, pretty skeptical of retrospective analyses by psychologists that look at this and see, I see all the clear signs, and it's just a way for a talking head to get in a documentary and get paid or something, get some variety. And it's just like, you don't know shit because you either don't work with people like this in real life and see all the millions of cases where nothing ever bad happens later on,

28:37or you do know and you're just lying and trying to convince yourself that you have a crystal ball into the future. So, let's take a break. We get back. Let's continue this process of me just basically shitting on everything that you say. Let's do it. Today's episode is sponsored by Better Help. And if you sign up, please use the link below because that really helps. So first off, let's look at that name Better Help. Let's think about that first word Better. As a thought exercise, take a second to think about what you'd like to be better in your life, things that relate to therapy anyway, like a better marriage or better self-esteem or better boundaries or just feeling better. And if you're not in therapy, maybe think about how therapy could help with that. You know, we all deserve to be given the time to make those things better in our lives. Well, one place you could find a therapist is at BetterHelp. And just jamming in here on this live read ad, the rest of what I'm about to say is what BetterHelp wrote. I actually don't really comprehend what they're trying to say with this. So I'll just read it. Better is a feeling defined by you. And for BetterHelp,

29:40it's a BetterHelp therapist who really gets you. It's a focus on global emotional well-being with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries. So sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash Kirk. That's better H-E-L-P.com slash Kirk. All right, back from the break, I will stop you hammering. Take it away, Rudeo. Yeah, just to conclude this big book of granny section, there were a couple of chilling things that again, just in just knowing what ends up happening just nine years later or whatever it was. It's it's it's chilling. So one of the things that happens in those many various stories is that the granny goes to a marine boot camp and shoots all the soldiers to death. Another thing that happens is that the granny goes into a classroom and threatens to shoot and kill children. Oh, another thing that happens is that a character in the story says, I like hurting people, especially children. So this would have been written in the year of like 203 or 4 or something like this,

30:50this earth to. Yeah, this was right in that early 2000, 2002. And Columbine was what year? 99 right 90. Right. Yeah. So interesting that our deep dives are sort of in conversation with each other. Yeah. You know, because Columbine shooting was so prominent that in all likelihood, Adam Lonza knew about it. And oh, absolutely. Later on, we will find out how obsessed he was with mass shooters. Yeah. Interesting. And copycat is a thing. Anxiety could be a thing, right? Yeah, especially if you feel powerless, you could feel like, look, either I'm a victim or I'm the perpetrator, you know, who knows. But he's of that generation where this was because now it's interesting that I don't know. I don't really have a good sense of this because my echo chamber algorithm doesn't really focus on those kind of things. But I feel like in a weird way, the shootings of the past, although probably fewer in number, were more covered

31:55for longer periods of time, but they were cultural phenomena that would occur. Now, I assume every day, there's a mass shooting in a school. And unless there's something notable about the story, then I probably won't ever hear about it, you know, like Ovalde happened, but that was a big story, that had an angle to it. There was a new aspect, a novel aspect to that very mundane new story, depressingly so, that had to do with lack of response from the law enforcement. But if it wasn't that, then we might not have ever even heard. We obviously wouldn't even know the town of Ovalde. So, so I'm Yammer again, but it just makes me wonder about what role that played Columbine, because he would have been in grade school. And if he already struggled with some kind of inferiority and anger and hurt, which is total speculation, you would imagine a black and white thinker like that

32:56when you're young. I wish I could shoot up the school and then that sort of gets perseverated on and then you see. And so the themes throughout the writings are like, so I said, Granny goes into Marine Bootcamp, shoots all the soldiers in depth. Granny goes into a bank with a gun hidden and robs the bank and causes violence. Granny threatens to murder or the children in the thing. One that affects us directly, Granny travels through time and murders the Beatles, which is kind of an odd addition. It is odd. Yeah. And in the end, Granny's son, so it's funny, it's Granny, but it's Granny's son murders Granny in the end by shooting Granny in the head. So one interpretation is Granny's son is the son of Granny. Therefore, Granny is really the mother and Granny's son is the son. Yeah. Right. And all the other children that are hurt throughout the

33:57story are the other just other children. So I'm not saying cause and effect, but it is interesting that less than a decade later, he would basically play out a lot of aspects about this fantasy. Right. So I, to basically erase everything that I have been saying up to this point, if we had a God's eye view on causality and on the progression of the fantasy, I would put money that there were early fantasies that were being manifested in this play that were either half concrete or fully concrete fantasies of wanting to kill his mom, wanting to kill other kids at school, wanting other people to die, wanting to die himself, maybe I don't know. Right. Right. wanting to humiliate, wanting to have other kids at school go through horrible things, you know, teachers, I wouldn't be surprised if they were half overt fantasies if not full of him

35:03just loving the idea of killing people and getting revenge and humiliating them and getting rid of them and getting back at them because that is a common profile of these kinds of shooters. In fact, one could argue that it's near universal. We can't know that of course because we don't have even if we have them telling us we don't have a God's eye view into their mind because they might not be aware. They might be not be forthcoming to us. Plus like what's a half conscious fantasy like? How does that manifest? Right. The person doesn't even really know. And even if you didn't tell me in this big book of granny that there were these very specific analogs to the eventual crime, I still would have said this, you know, it's not right. Right. Right. Uh, uh, uh, you know, it's a common thing that people, it's actually kind of funny that or not funny funny. I run it. It's ironic, weird that it gets so specific in some ways. Yeah. Right. But when you're writing literally tens of thousands of examples of it, it would be weird if at some point granny isn't

36:10shot by the kid or something like this. But yeah, it isn't. And it also isn't just the word granny. And maybe that's like nothing, but it just makes you wonder the genesis of that nickname for mother that it's like just a whole. And why wasn't it the why wasn't the second character, the grand kid? It's interesting. Yeah. It could be nothing. It could be literally two 10-year-olds going, ah, it's granny and there's granny's son. Right. But it is interesting that the son shoots the mother in the head. Yeah. And that again, not saying cause effect, it is simply possible that fantasy was a recurring fantasy. It shows up in the paper. It shows up in reality. But man, okay. So yeah. And it just before I forget, for those who remember my deep dive on limmerance, this might sound like a really weird segue or intro. But in that deep dive, as I was recording it and in between chapters, I would do more research and more thinking, you know, more literature review and all that kind of stuff and looking at different models of thinking and addiction and

37:11compulsion and this sort of thing because limmerance in a certain way has that element of addiction in that you can become addicted to your own thoughts, which isn't commonly considered. But you can give yourself a euphoric high. Oh, really? A hit. Yeah. Neurologically with your own fantasy and with limmerance, with addictive limmerances, I think I eventually called it. People will have a fantasy that this other person where their reciprocation of romantic feelings is ambiguous. The individual with limmerance, with addictive limmerance will give them self this idea of, ooh, they liked my Instagram post. They're secretly in love with me. And there's this euphoric high that occurs. You know, one could argue that the reason why we even have the mechanism of euphoric is to motivate us to couple and have sex and procreate. That makes sense. You know, but it gets misused. It's why it's why cocaine and falling in love

38:17light up the same areas in the brain that, you know, all the drugs and all that kind of stuff basically just tap into the motivation not only to, you know, I was going to use it, not only to roll around with someone that you're attracted to, but also potentially, you know, eat foods that are fatty and salty and this kind of thing. But anyway, so I eventually landed on this conceptualization and then thought, oh my god, you are your own drug dealer. You have the drug dealer and the addict in your own mind. And there's no intoxicating effects. Like if you use cocaine chronically, things are going to start happening. If you drink, things are going to start happening. Even if you smoke cigarettes, you're going to smell. But if you're just in your mind, there's no outward indication that the consequences aren't as you're not going to hit bottom as well. And also, if you're an alcoholic, you can get rid of alcohol in your house. Yeah. You can

39:19delete your drug dealers phone number from your phone. You can't delete your dopamine in your brain. Yeah. Yeah. At any point, the drug store is in your mind. You just have to invent it. And so with fantasy, now I'm wondering if there could be a euphoric high there. It could. And I think there is, I'm going to maybe in between chapters, I'll look this up, but I think there are models. I'm not, I'm not, there's a pretty good possibility. I'm not inventing this idea. But it is occurring to me that it might have been invented or discovered or looked at by other people that you could have someone. And again, people with autism spectrum can perseverate on certain things, but anyone can involve themselves in this kind of thing, especially if you're isolated. And anyway, and one could have mad. And given the amount of things that were being discussed in this big book, Granny, and that's just tip of the iceberg is that's just stuff they wrote down. You know, that just speculate speculation that the euphoric high that comes from the power play in one's

40:25mind is you fantasize about killing and other people having misfortune can become an addictive cycle that you can't stop. And you're just like, you know, compulsively in this loop and you're getting this euphoric high. And then, and then you have the come down, you know, because like with cocaine, you use euphoric high, you know, you get all the, right, the flood of all that kind of stuff. Then as it starts to drain from your system, you have withdrawal symptoms and people with limerence will experience that that it's not all, it's not all euphoria. There's the other side of the coin, which is the come down and how low you feel and how desperate you feel for the substance, whether it's cocaine or your own fantasies about reciprocation or your fantasies about about about power, it makes sense. And as with limerence, even though there's no indication that the other person is reciprocating, you know, they're in love with their, you know, the other person's married, the target of limerence is married or might not even know that you exist in some cases.

41:29And the individual, even though they're not psychotic, ends up convincing themselves because of the addictive cycle and then they pursue. They stalk the other person. So even though they're not psychotic, they're not delusional, because of the addictive cycle just gets them rip, you know, what fires together, wires together. And so you just end up believing that the other person does love you because, you know, through that addiction. And then you end up acting in ways that are otherwise, you know, harmful, that you would never have done if you didn't involve your brain in this cycle. So it makes you wonder, just, you know, it's hard to, right. I wouldn't put a lot of money on this because it's just one random possibility. But if you did get that euphoric high when you're in the sixth grade, you keep doing that. You keep doing that at first. You're not like, yeah, I'm going to do this, but eventually the brain just becomes oriented in this way. And it keeps going and going and gets bigger and bigger. And then eventually you do it in the same way that someone with limerance would never stalk someone. And then the beginning of the process would say, I don't think he likes me. I hope he likes me. But I don't think you, but you involve yourself in

42:33two years of every day, you know, every five minutes or every minute, you're, and eventually you're just like, you know, knocking on those baby reindeer situation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'm just going to add that as a possibility. Wow, interesting. So I wanted to make one correction. So the office of the child advocate is an official off state office. So this, the report they did was, it was an official report. And some of the things that were verbatim in there was that, like, by the 50 year, Adam Lans had written and submitted the big book of granny a significant and violent text. And following that school year, his struggles began to escalate. The intense violence featured in this book, authors conclude it was not the sort of creation that most children would would even know to invent. Obviously that can be debated. But, and anyways, so bottom line is that they weren't official, they are an official agency. And they weren't saying this definitively

43:35showed that he was going to shoot a school. It just said, this is something that should have been flagged for help, you know, like a health professional thing, which was done, by the way, meaning not because of this book, but he was being looked at by health professionals, right? So it wasn't like no one was, that's why we have a list day of evaluation. What sort of professionals were looking at? It's funny you should ask that. He was being looked at in these evaluations and there's one coming up that is a major one. But as we will see in a minute or in a bit, there were some potentially missed opportunities, huge missed opportunities, I should say, that the parents, especially the mom chose not to take. All right, well, let's take a break. The rest of this episode will be for patrons of the podcast. And as with last episode, I want to use this opportunity at the end to plug Amberto's new YouTube channel for those who missed it, which would be weird. It'd be weird if you are listening to the end of chapter or the way through chapter two.

44:39But maybe you forgot that Amberto is no longer employed. So he is going to dive head first into his dream job, which is as a YouTuber. We want to support Virdo in this effort. And when this deep dive ends, the Sandy Hook deep dive, Amberto is going to publish one or more episodes as the piss piggyback. How does this uncle piss piggyback? I don't know, it keeps changing. I have to come up with something stable. And so that psychology and Seattle piggyback episode, Burdo's channel is called Psycho Burdo. And he's going to publish a lot of content, but we thought a good way to frankly get our listeners, your listeners to listen to your other channel is to have related content. And whatever you do. To piggyback off of piss, if you will. But also, you know, it's not just making shit up. There's always more to say on these deep dives

45:40and other related topics that you could do solo on that channel. You're going to do a lot of other things on that channel as well. For example, in this one, I'm going to discuss how the big book of Granny was unmistakingly the single most important sign that predicted 100% what was to happen 10 years later. Well, I mean, along those lines, you know, it's up to you. But one option would be to go into more depth on the quotes, you know, because you'll have a little bit more time to think about it. And maybe to reflect on what would I do if my little girl had and you know, and then sort of walk yourself. You know, anyway, I'm not suggesting anything, but so Psycho Burdo, subscribe, watch, comment, share, like. Yeah. So all of the above subscribe a second time. Oh, no, no, because then they unsubscribe. Don't don't tell them to do that. Hit the bell. Hit the bell. And take care yourself because you deserve it.