EP. 106 — Tyler Henry

Jameela [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast that really just has no time for shame. I hope you’re well. I’m OK. I am. I’m I’m sort of left a bit shook from the podcast today. I’ve interviewed Tyler Henry, who, if you don’t know, is a world renowned medium, as in someone who connects the living to the, I don’t know, like the unliving the the the people who’ve passed over. And that is not something I’ve ever really believed in much, partially because I’m just really afraid because I saw the Sixth Sense when I was way too young and I really just don’t want to believe it’s real. So I I think for that added to my skepticism, but I did watch Tyler’s documentary and it did. You know, it was one of a few things that made me start to question whether or not I’m just being ignorant and denying the possibility of the existence of something that has an ability that existed allegedly throughout history. And so I asked Tyler to come onto this podcast to explain what he does, how he does it, how it makes him feel, how it alters his life, what he’s learned from doing it. And then I also it’s it’s deep and shallow this interview, guys, because I’m me, you know, and so I did have some stupid, embarrassing questions, but I believe they’re the questions that we all want to know about if there is spirits. What are they watching us do? What aren’t they watching us do? OK, so I go there with Tyler. And it was a very friendly, lovely chat. He’s amazingly normal and grounded for someone who is such a ridiculous life. He’s been famous since such a young age because of his ability and and it was just it was just bonkers to talk to someone who just so casually talks about things that I cannot even fathom. But I found it super interesting. And whether or not you’re a believer, there’s so much that’s thought provoking in this episode that I’m just dying. I mean, dying is there’s no pun intended, but I’m really excited to hear what you have to say afterwards. Do you think it’s bullshit? Do you think it’s true? Do you have similar experiences? Do has this episode made you think differently about the way that you are currently living your life? It’s definitely made me just check myself a little bit as to how I’m living mine. I am straight after saying goodbye to Tyler I went and immediately started booking a holiday for me and my boyfriend, which I never do because I just put everything off for work and and Tyler gave me this kind of sense of urgency in making sure that I enjoy life while I have it. And and I’m someone who often talks about life being a privilege and also, you know, that was there are a lot of themes of The Good Place that I guess we kind of explore also in this episode. You know, a show about the afterlife and someone who who says that he can communicate with people in the afterlife. It’s fucking bonkers. It’s it’s just it’s almost too much for the mind to comprehend, but it’s a lovely chat. It’s a lovely episode. He’s such a soothing person. Which one wouldn’t expect from someone who can see something that would scare the fucking shit out of all of us, so have a little listen. Have a think. Have a tea. And then message me because I really want to know how you feel, because I’m not even totally sure how I feel. But I’m so glad I had this conversation. What a fascinating human being. So I highly recommend his his new show. It’s on Netflix. It’s called Life After Death. It’s an amazing watch. And I think you should buy his book and and find him online. He has a waiting list of 300,000 people, so there has to be something to this extraordinary young man. This is Tyler Henry. Tyler Henry what a wildcard for this podcast. Welcome to I Weigh. How are you? 

Tyler [00:04:48] Thank you for having me. I’m so thankful you asked. I’m glad to be here. 

Speaker 2 [00:04:52] I’m so excited and curious to have you. I must confess, I have not been a believer for the longest time and and your work has been part of what has made its like existentially shaken me to the core. And now I. And now I’m just I just want to pick your brain about a million things, as I’m sure everyone does, which must be so exhausting. My first question is, how are you? 

Tyler [00:05:22] You know what? Thank you for asking that I’m doing good. I feel really thankful with the whirlwind that has been the last couple of months. I had the Netflix show come out. I had the book and it’s been a lot. You know how it is with, you know, when things are really hot professionally, sometimes you got to kind of do extra work to compensate personally. So I definitely have been just trying to take it one day at a time. 

Jameela [00:05:42] Do you find that because you are in a sort of service industry in that you spend so much time taking care of others or passing on important messages to others that people don’t often wonder enough about how you’re doing? Because so many people, because of this extraordinary gift you have or skill you have, so many people can’t help but see you and want to know like how you could maybe get them a message or help them in some way. 

Tyler [00:06:08] Sure. Yeah what I do is definitely something where I think everybody can have something to gain in one way or another, and it does put me in a lot of meaty positions socially. I have a very tight friend circle. I don’t really let a lot of people in, in part for that reason. I’m sure you can relate to the feeling of sometimes kind of being only equated to, you know, your job or your role, and we are so much more than what we have to offer professionally. So navigating that and keeping people in my life that, you know, treat me as Tyler the human being versus Tyler, the medium is really essential. 

Jameela [00:06:40] Yeah, I think it’s really important. I I have a friend who has a similar ability to you, and I watched him have to navigate the fact that it is hard to know who is really your friend or who is really interested in just getting to know the actual you. And I wonder how it is that you I mean, you’re obviously an incredibly intuitive person, but how do you manage that? How do you manage that feeling because it’s a bit of a heartbreaker sometimes. 

Tyler [00:07:08] It can be. Yeah. You know, I would say I liken my job to that of like a dentist. And if you’re at a party and you came up to a dentist and was like, Oh, can you take a look at this tooth? You know, it might need a pull. It’s a very similar thing I have to show, you know, a lot of grace on some level. When I go out in public and I’m at the supermarket, people will sometimes recognize me and they often will come up to me and share with me what the show meant to them. And often they’ll kind of explain to me some of their own loss that they’ve gone through. And so you deal with a lot of intensity of emotion and people just kind of burst into tears crying sometimes. And I have to honor that and honor where they’re at in that place and try to leave them better than I find them, even in those interactions. So, you know, just a lot of patience and an understanding. I view it as really a sign of validation that people respond so strongly to it. So I view it as positive. 

Jameela [00:07:58] Yeah, 100 percent, and I do want to get into the kind of mental health aspect of what something like this would do, especially the isolation of there being so few people who can do what you do. Obviously, you know, you and I both reside in L.A. where there’s a lot of people who claim to be able to do what you do. 

Tyler [00:08:16] Absolutely. 

Jameela [00:08:16] And I’m sure some of them are real. Some of those, some of those neon signs have bullshitters behind them. And so I imagine it must be quite isolating. Can we just get into how it all started just for anyone because I mean, I imagine there are so many skeptics. I’m sure you’ve met so many skeptics and people who’ve tried to maybe test you, et cetera. Would you explain the first time you realized you had a special gift that was different to everyone else’s? 

Tyler [00:08:44] Absolutely. So for one, I consider what I do to be an ability in the sense that it’s a capacity I have something that started when I was 10 years old, and in April 2006 I was 10 and I woke up one night and I just had this knowingness that my grandmother was going to die. And at the time, I called it a knowingness because it just felt like almost like a memory that had already happened. But it hadn’t. And it was really confusing. And so I went into the room to try to explain this to my mom, this kind of sense of urgency. And as I was describing it to her, we were interrupted by her phone ringing and as she picked up her phone. It was my dad on the other end, and he was there to give her the news that my grandmother had just died in front of him. So that was really the catalyst it was an immediate validation of that feeling. But at 10 years old, you don’t really recognize that as an ability. It’s really just something happens. And I didn’t give it much thought. 

Jameela [00:09:35] I mean, how did your family react? 

Tyler [00:09:36] So my mom just kind of wrapped it up to, Oh, you know you, Tyler was close with this grandmother. Maybe there were some spiritual bond there. He clearly, you know, had some knowingness that she was going to die. My dad actually I didn’t tell until I was 16, and I had to kind of come out of the psychic closet. I graduated high school very early with the goal of trying to become a hospice nurse. And while I was in school to become a hospice nurse, I was doing readings through word of mouth. But in order to do that, I had to get permission from my dad because I lived in a small town. And so I had to kind of come out in that way and was quite an experience. 

Jameela [00:10:09] Hold on a second. Okay, so ten years old is the first time. I mean, it’s very it’s giving Sixth Sense and yeah, and 10 years old is the first time. And then do you not have any more visions until 16? 

Tyler [00:10:22] So I had a number of issues between that time, but between 10 and 13 it was kind of figuring it out right at 10 years old. We’re just trying to figure out who the heck we are. We’re just stepping into our identity as if puberty isn’t hard enough. You know, I had that whole other element. 

Jameela [00:10:35] I’m still trying to figure out who I am. 

Tyler [00:10:37] Well, I feel you and I both. And so, you know, that was really a self-discovery process and get little moments of knowingness around students and around teachers and eventually had the courage to share those with very interesting results. 

Jameela [00:10:50] Was it ever scary? 

Tyler [00:10:52] It was more scary as far as the living. The living is scarier to me than the departed in the sense that I dealt with, you know, cruelty and devision. And I grew up in a very conservative Christian community. So some people thought what I do or did was a gift. Other people felt like it was the devil and, you know, dealing with having to have a prayer circle done for my soul as a as a kid that actually. 

Jameela [00:11:15] Oh fucking wow. 

Tyler [00:11:15] A friend I had shared this very personal thing about went and told her mom and her mom recognized this in her belief system as the devil, and I ended up sharing through word of mouth that a whole group of adults were praying over, you know, the soul of a child. And that was quite a blow when I was trying to still develop who I was and come to terms with that, and be confident with them. 

Jameela [00:11:38] Yeah. Also, I imagined sexuality comes into it when you live in a very religious place. Are you religious yourself? 

Tyler [00:11:45] I’m not religious and but I’m very spiritual. You know, I view a view religion as kind of a cultural language with a higher power, very heavily dependent often and where we’re born, where we grow up, the beliefs of our parents, that kind of thing. 

Jameela [00:11:58] And so school was hard because of I mean, I had a really rough time at school because I was very different. Not not in the same way that you are, but I I can appreciate that must have been extremely isolating, especially when you’re going through so much and you already feel like there’s no one you can really fully explain what you’re seeing to. Because I mean, how old were you the first time you met someone else who could genuinely do what you can do? 

Tyler [00:12:24] You know, it’s hard to say. Genuinely, I met people who had definitely had strong intuitions, and there is a difference. We all have an intuition, an inner intuition. We all get first impressions. Some people are a little bit more connected than others. But it wasn’t until I was much older where I met John Edward, who is a very famous medium that I finally was able to connect with somebody who could really relate. But if there’s anything for the viewers that I could kind of emphasize, I’ll say those early years really taught me that my interests were indications of my calling. And so for all of you out there who are listening, if you really think on what that means, your interests are indications of your calling. That sentiment really changed my life and gave me the courage to kind of lean in and recognize that and pursue those interests, because that’s really what makes us different. 

Jameela [00:13:08] Yeah, I mean, my first interest really was Keanu Reeves, and I thought, I’ve got a boyfriend, so I’m not really supposed to be seeing him. 

Tyler [00:13:17] Is he calling us back? I don’t know if he’s 

Jameela [00:13:19] I am listen, I am in an animated movie with him that’s coming out later in the year. We’re going to meet at the red carpet. 

Tyler [00:13:26] Congratulations. 

Jameela [00:13:26] Who fucking knows Tyler right? 

Tyler [00:13:29] Exactly. There you go you just indicated your calling. I love it. 

Jameela [00:13:36] So how old are you when you met this person who could do exactly what you did? Because I mean, there is you’re you wouldn’t call yourself a psychic, you would call yourself a medium. You’re not someone who’s predicting the future or you know what I mean? Like, there’s this people who read tarot. They’re also people I don’t even know if you believe in what they can do, but you’re a medium. 

Tyler [00:13:56] It’s tricky. Yes, because I am a medium and I am a clairvoyant medium. Clairvoyant is a French word. It means clear sight, and it just refers to the means of which someone gets intuitive impressions, typically through very strong imagery. Sometimes it’ll feel like a waking daydream, sometimes still it’ll feel like kind of a memory that isn’t my own, but clairvoyance is the mechanism that I receive intuitive information there being a medium that is somebody who acts as kind of a conduit in the middle or between two things. And that role is one where I have to use my intuition to deliver messages about people. And so it’s all kind of interrelated. But there are technical differences. 

Jameela [00:14:34] Were you were you worried that it could be a severe mental illness when you were little and you didn’t really, you know, if you’re saying you didn’t really come out of the medium closet until you were 16. There’s a six year gap in which you’re having all these visions and and hearing these things that you can’t completely understand. 

Tyler [00:14:52] If anything, I think the responses I got from people indicated to me that I was working with something that was valid. I would get shock. I would get people bursting into tears. I would get people running away from me. There was an instance when I was in middle school where I was washing my hands in the school bathroom and I heard the door open from behind me. I turned around and saw my childhood bully coming into the bathroom with all of his friends and I realized ok I’m probably about to get beaten up. They had watched me go in there. They blocked the door and I turned around and the weirdest thing happened. I looked at him in the eye and these words left my mouth. I said, Your aunt knows that you were crying with your dad last night and you need to leave me alone. And I just said that to him and just left my mouth and tears welled in this kid’s eyes. His friends looked at him, he looked at them. He rushed out of the bathroom because his aunt had indeed passed away a few days prior. But the night before, he was crying with his dad having a very emotional moment. And so when that came through, it was so jolting and he never bullied me again. But it was an experience that really showed the effect that these readings could have. There was no doubt in my mind as to what I could do. It just dealt with a lot of divisiveness around it. 

Jameela [00:15:59] It’s a it’s a fuck of a job. I have to say, like as amazing as it is, I’ve watched your whole documentary I loved it has kept me company while I’m in Germany and I’ve been religiously watching it and really just it’s been blowing my mind. But yeah, it’s such a huge thing to take on, and it’s something that obviously, you know, you’ve benefited from and you have a wonderful life and access all these amazing experiences, et cetera. But. It’s it’s so relentless and you don’t have full control, I know you say you can kind of dial it down a little bit, but you don’t have full control of like being sort of invaded by this. Was there a was there a kind of, I don’t know, like a fork in the road where you’re deciding if I like I don’t think I want to do this. I don’t think I want to live my life this way. Was there a choice? Was the fact that you’re driven by, like, you know, you wanted to work in a hospice, you want to like, help people and et cetera soothe people. Was there a choice where you were like, Well, this is this is going to be bad? 

Tyler [00:17:00] I think life seems to kind of be a series of choices and really a matter of kind of divine timing I found in my case. Timing was everything. I graduated high school early. I enrolled in community college. I was taking the classes to try to get into hospice. So meanwhile, I had people through word of mouth who had heard about me, who were showing up to my front door. They were leaving notes. They were giving notes to my mom. So there was a huge demand and I had to ultimately kind of satiate that. I had to deal with that in some way. So I felt like I was able to ultimately achieve their readings, what I wanted to achieve with hospice just in a different way. I always knew I had this ability. I knew I wanted to share it. I just didn’t know that life would take me in such a kind of a public way. And the adjustments with that, as I’m sure you can relate to, are hugely affective. How it affects one’s mental health, being in the public eye. You know, I always say you can be the biggest, juiciest peach and there are still going to be people out there who hate peaches. And it’s true. 

Jameela [00:17:55] Tell me, tell me more about that. Elaborate on that. Like, what has your experience? You were so young. We kind of came up. We kind of came up around the same time. But there’s a huge age gap between, I think I’m ten years older than you. And so I I remember the first time I kind of saw you on television. What has your experience of fame been like? 

Tyler [00:18:15] You know, it’s been interesting because what I do is so different than an actor or singer in the sense that it is ideological. So kind of like, you know, religion and politics. Those are things that are kind of idea based and being in a spiritual job, it is ideological. And with that comes a lot of divisiveness. People who are always going to fall on both sides of the aisle and anything ideological, that’s just kind of what you have to expect to deal with. So on my end, you know, in some ways I’ve dealt with, you know, overwhelming support in other ways. I’ve dealt with overwhelming criticism and, you know, getting the show when I was just a teenager. It was so surreal. As a teenager, you don’t even know who you are. So when you are looking out into the world and the world trying to tell you what to believe about yourself, both positive and negative I don’t know if you can speak to this, but you have to be really self-aware. You have to be very grounded in who you are and knowing what you are in order to navigate that. It’s a lot, a lot being thrown at you. 

Jameela [00:19:09] Yeah, I mean, it’s taken me. It’s taken me a long time and also probably meds to be able to fully come to terms with it because it’s also, you know, we are an increasingly vocal and desensitized and cruel world when we’re online. What kind of I never knew that you were getting any kind of pushback. What kind of pushback were you getting? Was it just from people who also thought you were the devil? Do people think you were a charlatan? 

Tyler [00:19:34] Sure. Yeah. You deal with kind of the fun, both ends of the spectrum and I mean fun in a very not fun way. You know, you deal with religious extremism and then anti religious extremism, people who you know, are extremely atheist who would view it as a threat to their beliefs or lack of beliefs. So, you know, you deal with it all. But I really like to be able to contribute to the discourse to the conversation. I’m OK with many people not believing in me. I have a lot of people who do. And I think that for those in life, we can only kind of try to help the people we can help the people who are in our tribe. And at the end of the day, that’s that’s all we can do. 

Jameela [00:20:06] I feel, yeah, I feel very similarly. There are some people who I’m very, very divisive. It’s a no, no one is just OK with me. People either like me or hate me, and there’s nothing in the middle and and I just made a kind of decision to not try to win over those who who have made up their mind otherwise or have settled on an idea of me. So that’s their own projection. That’s their own responsibility. And I’m here for the people like the people who listen to this podcast, who who do care and I want to interact with them because we’re probably more like minded. 

Tyler [00:20:39] Exactly. Absolutely. And going back to the peach analogy, right? It’s like you got to find your people who like peaches. 

Jameela [00:20:45] You’re you’re so like sweet and personable and kind and like even tempered. Now that also might just be editing. How do you how do you master that? Do you have you had to kind of learn a level of kind of self control because you became famous so young? Like to to be to emanate so much sunshine, is part of that kind of learned? You know what I mean? Like, because it’s fucking it’s fucking hard and it’s exhausting. 

Tyler [00:21:15] Yeah, it it is. I will say part of it is I need like, I’m somebody who even as a teenager, I would go and I would check out at stores and the cashier would literally on more than one occasion say, Why are you smiling? I really live life with a smile on my face, so I think that gives a sense of ease to people. In reality, you know, I’m just kind of a smiley person. I have my own anxieties and fears and things, but I generally am pretty just upbeat chemically. I guess I got lucky in that way. 

Jameela [00:21:41] Can I ask, do you have therapy? 

Tyler [00:21:44] You know, not as much as I should. Not as much as I should. And we actually share something in common around OCD. That being a huge, huge source of difficulty, I think for people who deal with intrusive thoughts, distinguishing between an intrusive thought and intuition can be really challenging. And I, as somebody who deals with OCD, have to navigate that dichotomy in every reading. Being able to tell the difference. 

Jameela [00:22:08] Can I can I ask how your OCD manifests or is it personal?

Tyler [00:22:12] Typically through intrusive thoughts. So mine is kind of more purely obsessional in the sense that I don’t necessarily wash my hands or have rituals or compulsions. It’s really more so just rumination and kind of intrusive thoughts about oneself, about the world. And as somebody who has to connect to truth and the essence of truth in a reading, I have to make sure that doesn’t kind of muddy the waters consciously. 

Jameela [00:22:34] How do you do that? 

Tyler [00:22:35] I’ve learned how to tell the difference between intuition and an intrusive thought, and I’ll tell you this. I think intuition kind of gets this reputation as being a gut feeling. I think more often than not, intuition is actually a knowing that sometimes we then will have feelings about. So, for example, like if you have, let’s say you had a boyfriend and the boyfriend ended up being gay 10 years ago, and you’re in the dating pool and you’re looking for boyfriends and you meet a guy and you get a gut feeling that he might be gay. Most likely, that’s not intuition. Most likely that’s an intrusive thought because it’s tapping into a previous trauma. It’s coming through as oh god that feeling of shakiness, that feeling of, Oh no, this is hitting something sensitive. This is a soft spot. Those, strangely enough, are very rarely intuitive. Those are very often more kind of trauma responses. True intuition will usually come through a little bit more agnostic. It’ll come through as just a knowingness. It’ll be something you can’t shake, if you ever shook someone’s hand and you’re like, Oh, I can’t shake that icky feeling. And it kind of sits with you as you’re conversing with them. It’s kind of a similar thing. It’s it’s rooted in knowingness. 

Jameela [00:23:36] Yeah. I also believe that, like human beings must have a higher level of intuition than we know, purely just from the way the animals behave, though, you know their response to natural disasters or things that are going to happen like it’s beyond just their hearing or their senses. Like, I believe genuinely that they are able to tap into something an instinct that we all have that is just being kind of piled on top of with social media news, constant chaos that we don’t have still lives anymore. We don’t meditate. If we do, it might be at best for 20 minutes like we live a life of chaos where we’re just being kind of like further and further pulled away from ourselves. 

Tyler [00:24:14] Totally. 

Jameela [00:24:15] And so I always wondered, like, you know, whether or not this perhaps like people like yourself, were maybe more common in a slower, more simple time. I imagine you must have to like, tune out from the world quite long. 

Tyler [00:24:28] Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I and to your point, I do think people were probably a lot more intuitive, interconnected in a time when we weren’t so distracted. And that really is kind of the key. Now we have the beats and the buzzes of our phones. Even when we’re meditating, we’re using an app. We just live in such crazy, overstimulating times. 

Jameela [00:24:53] Now, I’ve got one very hard hitting journalistic question to start with. You ready? 

Tyler [00:24:59] I’m ready. Hit me with it. 

Jameela [00:25:00] First of all, are we call them ghost or spirits, just so I can be respectful. 

Tyler [00:25:04] Spirits, spirits, good question.

Jameela [00:25:06] Spirit spirits, OK. Are they watching us when you know we wank? 

Tyler [00:25:12] So I don’t think that they see the point. And the reason being is, I believe when we die, we process our humanity. We realize that nothing human is foreign to us. It’s a famous Maya Angelou quote, Nothing human is born to us. I really believe we realize that when we pass. So the hang ups, the judgment, the criticism that we might carry throughout life. I just believe it kind of gets processed on the other side. Their priority list is not watching you shower. 

Jameela [00:25:41] But is is that just your wishful thinking or your lack of common sense, do you how can you know?

Tyler [00:25:46] Well, there was a time I did a reading, I did a reading on a Hollywood medium where that actually got referred to. I said, Your grandmother is showing me that she appeared to you while you were in an act of intimacy. And indeed, he about shit the bed because,  

Jameela [00:26:00] Oh my god, that’s so fucked up.

Tyler [00:26:02] He was doing an intimate act. He happened to see his grandmother at the doorway and he joked about it. It was like a ha ha funny thing, obviously something I could have never known or guessed, but that’s substantiated that she was connected. It was more of a ha ha funny moment. Not so much a Oh, I’m watching you. So clearly they’re aware, but they don’t seem to really prioritize it. 

Jameela [00:26:22] Right. Okay, fine. I just wanted to get that out of the way. It’s just somethng that 

Tyler [00:26:27] You know some interesting folks watching you shower at your current location. 

Jameela [00:26:29] Yeah, it’s just like, I just I can’t imagine anything worse. I really can’t imagine anything worse than like a great grandmother watching you have a wank or a like really any of it. It’s just it’s too much. It’s too much.  

Tyler [00:26:43] It is. Everything human, you know, we’re all human. 

Jameela [00:26:43] Yeah, so, so spirits. I mean that. I saw so many different versions of people from the afterlife through your show, Life After Death on Netflix, where you have, I mean, one of the most moving ones was was a girl who had died very young. But had kind of somehow matured to the age that she would be. She what she wasn’t still a five, a five year old you know, now in the kind of current present day have been kind of 10 years or so since she died, and she was now able to get her driver’s license. And you were talking to the family about the fact that, you know, she’s kind of developed alongside her siblings, even though she’s not here anymore. So did the. I what? What is the afterlife like? Do you know that? Have you been able to like, gain a kind of sense of that? 

Tyler [00:27:41] It’s a huge question. Now, to be clear, with like, for example, that reading was really emotional. You had a young one that had passed away in a child and in communicating, there was the reference of her being the age that she would be to get the driver’s license. And so I took that more as a sign, not that she was literally that age on the other side, but that she was aware of the passage of time in her family’s life. Which brings me to a really good point. Time doesn’t seem to exist on the other side. My belief is that when we pass, we go through a process. And although I certainly do not have all the answers and I certainly will never claim to, my belief from what I’ve seen is that there is an experiential process of introspection and this is something every single one of us will go through. This introspective process I call a life review where when people die, they see the ripple effect of how their actions and inactions affected the whole collective. And that gives people an understanding that in life they were like a drop of water. And when they transition, when they die, they become part of a vast ocean of consciousness, kind of interconnected in ways that we would never able to be to fully be aware of in this this capacity. So that understanding lends acceptance ultimately about how they lived, how they died, what they did, what they didn’t do, and that acceptance leads to peace on the other side. So that’s kind of concisely how I would word it. It’s a process. It’s experiential. It doesn’t seem to be a physical place in the way that you and I know it. 

Jameela [00:29:03] I know for sure. I mean, I made an entire comedy called The Good Place for four years, which is very, very much so about. I think that’s also part of like why I’m kind of drawn to you, you know, is that we were just going off the top of our heads, you know, as to what could possibly be there and what people think and how they evaluate. The whole show was about evaluation was about second chances. And so and it was about a point system, you know, and it was about whether or not you want to come back to Earth. And so I think, you know, there are so many historical questions and so many religious questions about, you know, once you do die, is there such thing as reincarnation? Do people come back? At what point can they? I know I’m throwing like truly the biggest questions in the universe at you, but this is your sort of day to day. And I 

Tyler [00:29:52] Of course, no

Jameela [00:29:52] Who the fuck else can I ask? 

Tyler [00:29:54] I appreciate it, and you’ll have to forgive me for my butchering of certain explanations because they are really, really heavy things. But I will say reincarnation, I certainly believe in. The thing is is, I don’t necessarily believe that time is linear. So successively we think of today, tomorrow, the day after, tomorrow, right? Reincarnation, we think of I’m alive, I die, and then I’m reborn. I don’t think of it as being that straightforward. It’s not a linear process. My belief is that the soul is multi-faceted, that it may exist in more than one place at once. It may transcend the past, present and future. It’s something that’s really connected in ways that are kind of mind boggling for us to grasp. So while I do believe in reincarnation, I also have the essence of people come through. Consciousness might just be complicated. It might be multifaceted, and we could in essence, exist in two ways at one time, in theory. 

Jameela [00:30:45] And so when you kind of help someone come to peace or help someone move on or help someone deliver a message that maybe they couldn’t move on because they hadn’t delivered that message yet? Do you know what happens to that person? Do they just carry on and they continue being there for, you know, and guiding and looking over their loved ones? Or do they move on elsewhere? 

Tyler [00:31:07] So Carl Young called this process in life individuation. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with individuation, but it’s so fascinating. 

Jameela [00:31:14] That was a lie. That was a lie. I said, Yeah, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. 

Tyler [00:31:19] So Individuation, Carl Young was one of the leading forefathers of psychotherapy. He believed that life was really a process of combining your conscious and your unconscious and being a fully self realized person. My belief is that that’s kind of what happens when we die. We become more of ourselves, we become more aware and in ways that we aren’t able to fully when we’re here. So that seems to to basically their acceptance. Their peace isn’t reliant on them getting a message across. They don’t need me. If anything, it helps the person I’m sitting in front of. So I believe that we all ultimately reunite we all ultimately connect. If anything, readings are really just predominantly helpful for the person sitting in front of me, and I’m sure it can lend some closure for the person coming through. But it’s more for the living than the departed. 

Jameela [00:32:03] Right. And I mean, this is why you have a waiting list of over 300000 people. 

Tyler [00:32:07] That’s right. And the amount of dead people is probably in probably more than that. 

Jameela [00:32:11] Yeah. And so I mean, so from what I could see from the show, like you’d be on your way somewhere or even it would be the night before or the morning of and whoever you were going to give a reading for, sometimes the person who was meant for them would come through early. 

Tyler [00:32:24] Yes. 

Jameela [00:32:25] So does that just happen everywhere you go? 

Tyler [00:32:29] It happens a lot. It’s actually one of the harder parts of my job when I’ll just be going like I have an appointment later today that I have to go for a housing, a real estate thing, and I’m going to have to consciously kind of try to not read the guy who I know I’m going to be meeting there, the homeowner. So like, I have to take all these kind of steps and measures to try to kind of anticipate impressions and then go to lengths to distract myself. 

Jameela [00:32:50] What do you mean? As in like you’re going to buy a house and so you want to not read to the person that you’re 

Tyler [00:32:55] so you’re getting the exclusive, but I just I just went into escrow with the house and it will be closing here very soon. And I’m going later on to meet the former homeowner. We’re going to do a little walkthrough. 

Jameela [00:33:04] Oh, I see. 

Tyler [00:33:05] His dad’s passed, so hopefully nothing comes in. But if it does, I have to then make the decision do I share that or do I not? And that’s an interesting position as a medium. 

Jameela [00:33:15] I mean, does that just happen with every single encounter you have? So you go to the doctor and they can 

Tyler [00:33:20] a lot of them yes, I’ve read my dentist, I’ve read my dental hygienist. Yeah, there’s there’s been a number of times where that’s happened. 

Jameela [00:33:27] My friends were like, I wonder if something’s going to come through for you? And I highly doubt it. I’ve never been close to my family like they really like. I feel like we just mutually don’t want anything to do with each other, which is always nice and hopefully a nice break for you, right? 

Tyler [00:33:40] It’s good we’re making our family in the here in the now, right? That’s what it’s all about. 

Jameela [00:33:45] Oh yeah totally. Yeah, I live with I live with a bunch of my best friends and so thankfully none of them are coming to you unless it’s in your DMs 

Tyler [00:33:53] all with us. 

Jameela [00:33:54] You sort of you sort of mentioned earlier that like, you know, kind of a lot of the petty thoughts or their fearful thoughts kind of dissipate once you’ve kind of passed over and you’ve had this chance to evaluate your life? Is that all the time or have you ever because I wondered this a lot, because so many of the messages that you were delivering on to other people in your documentary and in your show on E! Were so thoughtful and reassuring and kind and very measured, even people who died in really devastating ways or ways in which like that life was taken from them too soon at the hands of someone else. Like awful deaths. Do you ever like have to are there ever like petty spirits who have something like rude to say they’re still hanging on something and you’re like, Oh, you know what? I’m just going to that’s not helpful thing to pass on. I’m going to filter that out. 

Tyler [00:34:45] So, you know, I liken my job to that of a mailman in the sense that I don’t write the letter I just deliver the message. So I owe it to both the spirit coming through and the person I’m reading to deliver it as I’m getting it. However, there is some degree of interpretation, and I have to be cognizant of the person’s feelings that I’m reading so very often. You know, while I have a sunny disposition, I do have to talk about difficult things on the readings. I’ve talked about alcoholism, family trauma… With my reading with Alan Thicke, I talked about a heart problem that he later died of. I had to cover a lot of really heavy things, but I do it in a way that is jovial, lighthearted, but but also, you know, when something serious I do iterate it and make it clear, you know, I don’t believe the future set in stone. So I think there’s a lot there as far as malleability goes and my goal is just to kind of be helpful in any way that I can. 

Jameela [00:35:34] You’re talking about free will, right? 

Tyler [00:35:36] That’s right.

Jameela [00:35:37] Things aren’t predestined. And yeah, and I I think it’s really fascinating when people within your kind of line of work or existence do believe in and prescribe because I think a lot of people’s understanding of people with psychic abilities or psychics, which I again, I know that you’re not specifically that’s a huge umbrella, but they think that they think that everything is going to go one particular way. And there’s a kind of forecast for your life. I think that’s why a lot of people fear intuitive people because they don’t want to know, you know, they’re afraid of finding out. And I very much so more of the belief that we do have free will and we can alter and we can be given information and choose what to do with said information. 

Tyler [00:36:14] Definitely. I personally don’t even get readings done, which kind of surprises people. I’m somebody who, even though I don’t believe in the future set in stone, I still don’t even want to know my trajectories. You know, I’m happy just with life unfolding as it does. And for those who need to to kind of get a sense of assurance or maybe validation that they are on a path that you know, they can they can find success and it can be hugely affirmative. 

Jameela [00:36:37] Yeah, I’m definitely yeah, I’m definitely I’m I’m. I’m curious about it, I want to know more about it, but I can’t I can’t fully grasp how I could possibly feel about something so huge and something so again, as I said earlier, like existential and philosophical, there’s so much to this. 

Tyler [00:36:55] It is. It’s huge. 

Jameela [00:36:57] It has a huge physical toll on you. This line of work. Why is that? What what is happening like there is this I mean, I can’t obviously like unequivocally say that this, you know, you had a collapsed lung that almost killed you, you’ve had issues with your health. A lot of the people I know within the kind of realm of your work, the people that I’ve met all have like severe health problems that they attribute potentially to how massive and draining this work is. Do you do you drain? Do you do you find this work draining? 

Tyler [00:37:30] Absolutely. You know, I mean, it’s invigorating logically in the sense of being able to leave people better than you find them and provide relief. But from a physiological perspective, it is very draining. I always say that my sixth sense uses the other five senses to come through, so I don’t see dead people walking around. But I might get a very strong mental image or I might hear like a song stuck in my head, except it’s a memory. Sometimes I’ll get physical sensations that correspond with how the person died, and my job as the interpreter is to kind of take all that sensory input and make sense of it in a way that can be validated. But it’s very immersive, very physical, very draining. And I kind of liken it to almost being like a canvas and the spirits kind of paint the picture. And so my body is that canvas. They are conveying their messages, their lives, their deaths, all on this kind of portrait that I embody through the duration of an hour. 

Jameela [00:38:21] And what is happening to your body through all of this?

Tyler [00:38:23] Typically getting immersed in a number of sensory inputs. Sometimes it’s predominantly physical. I’ve learned to gauge nuance. So if I’m sitting with somebody and I keep getting a lot of emotive or emotional based information, I can usually infer that the person coming through might have dealt with emotional struggles before they passed. Equally, sometimes I’ll just get pain, and that’s how my way of knowing ok this was quick. It was pretty physical. There was no real emotional component. So you just kind of learn to interpret and navigate. And at this point, I’ve done thousands of readings, so you kind of learn to notice patterns. 

Jameela [00:38:56] Is it safe to keep doing this? 

Tyler [00:38:58] I don’t know. I’ve had my brain scanned at the Peak Brain Institute by Dr. Hill and Dr. Drew here in L.A. and you know, they hooked me up to a brain scan. They monitored my brain. And did it during a reading, and they found that as I would get into the state, my brain almost kind of went to sleep. They were looking at each other and they could not figure out how I was still conscious because my brainwave activity as I was scribbling was that of somebody who was dreaming. So who knows the long term effects on health? 

Jameela [00:39:28] Right. Does your mom who you’re very close to, who is extremely charming in your show 

Tyler [00:39:34] Thank you. 

Jameela [00:39:35] And and it’s almost like especially the the mild moments of like irritation or mom and son between the two of you make the show for me and I really I really I 

Tyler [00:39:47] Thank you. I’m glad someone’s getting some out of it. 

Jameela [00:39:48] No, I really I it’s must be so fucking hard to to love a family member so much and then also work with them every day and have them be they’re so close. That must be such a mixed bag of such a relief that someone who understands you better than anyone else ever possibly could, but also, like cares about you too much to the point where you’re like, oh fucking sakes. 

Tyler [00:40:09] She knows how to press the buttons, too. Absolutely. She knows how to be helpful. And you know, it’s it’s great. I’m lucky to have that kind of relationship, but working with your family is certainly unique. 

Jameela [00:40:20] But does she worry? 

Tyler [00:40:21] She does. Oh yeah. I mean, my poor mother has seen me go through brain surgery, lung surgery. When I was 18 years old, we were driving down in the car and I looked at her and I said, Mom, I think my brain’s swelling. And she looked at me and she was like, You’re so silly. Like whatever. Three weeks later, I was hospitalized with hydrocephalus, which is water on the brain, because I had a brain cyst in my near my brainstem that was causing brain swelling. So she’s learned to kind of listen when I when I say something. 

Jameela [00:40:47] And how did you know that your brain was swelling? 

Tyler [00:40:49] I just knew, just like how I looked at the kid you know when I was young with the bully situation. There were a number of moments where in my life, I just either said things. Things just kind of came out of my mouth or I just knew that something was the case 

Jameela [00:41:02] because I know that you’re saying that you can’t really like people very rarely come to you about you. 

Tyler [00:41:07] Right. 

Jameela [00:41:08] That’s not something. And that’s that’s something I’ve heard quite a few people who are intuitive say that like they can’t, you know, whatever there’s the usual cliche of like well than I would, you know, I would be able to play the lottery numbers, etc.. So did someone come through for you in that moment? And that you know, 

Tyler [00:41:26] I believe so. I think in my intuition, it’s really like life or death situation seem to trigger it. But I will say a big reason why psychics can’t read themselves or mediums is very often because of bias. We all have biases about our lives, what we hope, what we fear, what we want, what we don’t want. And that bias can really impede intuitive thinking. It’s why I prefer to read total strangers, people I have no horse in the race for. People who I don’t really have emotional connection to because then I can be unbiased in what I get and what I think about what I get versus the alternative. 

Jameela [00:41:59] I don’t want to spoil anything, but I mean one of the more riveting parts of your documentary series on Netflix is the fact that you are solving a huge mystery for your mother throughout the entire series and again, you can’t really read for her like it’s so hard for you to connect to anything that would help her. I mean, I I cannot imagine how frustrating that must be to have this gift where you can help other people in such specific, nuanced ways, and you cannot get basic information about this huge thing that involves your own lineage. But you just can’t connect. 

Tyler [00:42:32] It was too close to home. You know, quite literally. 

Jameela [00:42:36] That’s so well, that’s so wild to me, so none of the people who came through, I mean, obviously, your grandmother, I guess maybe that was your grandmother coming through again. You said it was a life and death situation. The only thing I ever had that was kind of similar to that was when I was nine years old. My uncle died in my arms. 

Tyler [00:42:53] Wow. 

Jameela [00:42:53] Which was extremely intense, like I was holding him as he passed away. And then he, my mother screamed, and then his heart started beating again, and then it flatlined again. I was holding him this whole time and seeing that, and I hadn’t been especially close to him before then and then off. And yet, for some reason, I think in that moment must’ve just really bonded us because about maybe about five days later, I was fast asleep and I dreamt that he came and sat by my bed and he talked me through the funeral. And then he showed me exactly what it was going to look like. I’d never been to a funeral. I was nine years old. And he told me everything that was going to happen and that my my mother was going to need. And I woke up extremely like, freaked out by that, but also not not super freaked out. I’d seen a lot of horror movies by this point in my life, unfortunately, because of reckless parenting and an older brother who just would let me watch anything he was watching. So I was very afraid of the idea of ghosts or spirits. But I went to the funeral that day and I I saw everything. 

Tyler [00:44:04] Wow. 

Jameela [00:44:04] And like. I knew where everything was. I knew my way to the grave. I could see every like he’d come and shown me everything, everything my mother, everything he said my mother was going to need. She did need. And that was the and you know, I think I don’t know. I don’t. I’ll never understand what that was. But I know that it definitely scared me rather than reassured me. And then I was like, Never again, la la la la la la la la la. And then I just like put my phone like just been on my phone 13 hours a day, doing anything I can to distance myself from my intuition because that scared the shit out of me. Is there a there? There is a lot of kind of talk over the course of the last couple of decades that children can sometimes be more 

Tyler [00:44:48] intuitive, 

Jameela [00:44:49] intuitive and connective. Is that true? 

Tyler [00:44:51] Absolutely. I think children are relentlessly honest. They’ll tell you what they feel, whether you want to hear it or not. And with that comes honoring their truth, honoring where they’re at in their lives. Children really don’t have a filter. But the interesting thing that happens is as children kind of start getting around puberty age, they start losing their intuition. Many of us can relate to that feeling of, Oh, we were very psychic as children, then we got a little older, and then those things kind of quit happening. I believe that the framework and beliefs that we establish really does kind of act as a filter that we see reality through. And so as we get older, we hear things like, Oh, it’s all in your head, it’s just your imagination, it’s an imaginary friend. All of those things end up kind of shutting down often a lot of kind of genuine intuitive experiences that kids are having to the point where they no longer have them, in part because they’re expecting not to. 

Jameela [00:45:40] So you really had to hold on to yours? 

Tyler [00:45:42] Yes, and and my inner child, I feel like in a lot of ways I’m very childish, but I’ve had to hold on to that. I think it’s integral to who I am and also what I do and never letting that part of me die. 

Jameela [00:45:54] I mean, I feel the same way and I have nothing to do with what you do. I’m desperately clinging on to my child self because I really believe that we’re perfect when we’re children. We don’t have racial bias. We don’t have bias against people with disabilities we don’t have bias against ourselves, against our bodies. We’re so honest about the way that we feel like when we’re hungry, when we’re sad, when we’re tired or we need a shit. Like we’re we carry no shame and we’re so integral. And that integrity gets kind of like beaten and gaslit and shamed out of us almost as soon as we can understand. And so I’m I love that part of you. I like, I really resonate with it when I when I was watching you. And, you know, even briefly when we spoke on the phone that I really I really passionately believe I talk about it a lot on this podcast. I passionately believe we should do everything we can to find our way back to who we were before we learned all of this terrifying bullshit. 

Tyler [00:46:48] Absolutely all this conditioning, right, that we have to kind of decondition. 

Jameela [00:46:53] Yeah. And and all of these things that have taken us away from our like fundamental animal intuition. I don’t think it has to be this like I think Hollywood has kind of turned it into this. It’s so ironic that Hollywood is now the vehicle through which you are able to dispel a lot of these myths that Hollywood has been responsible for turning this into a very like ethereal, scary, otherworldly thing that actually just might be much more similar to what we completely readily accept. Mammals.

Tyler [00:47:20] Exactly. It’s just a faculty, right? 

Jameela [00:47:22] Yeah, 100, 100 percent. And so do you think you’re going to do this forever or do you reckon you’re just going to take a fucking break and just like, live with your partner and have fun 

Tyler [00:47:32] in my 30s, I might just move to Bora Bora. Call it a day open up a sheep farm in Bora Bora. That’d be quite a site. 

Jameela [00:47:38] You have to be fucking careful about where you go on holiday, wouldn’t you like you couldn’t come here? You’d go, we’d lose your fucking mind. 

Tyler [00:47:45] I definitely have to be conscientious of where I go. Yeah. 

Jameela [00:47:48] Do you have to look up the history of where you’re going and like the history of the building? 

Tyler [00:47:52] I would tell you this I went to London because a client had me, flew me there and I walked through the hotel door and it was really small and I just about had a panic attack. I stayed in my hotel room the entire trip I couldn’t leave. I probably got like off off with my head, like in a past life time or something, because the UK, just like, is sent visceral fear into me. So I love British people. But the the place was it’s quite a how to deal with. 

Jameela [00:48:18] That is fucking petrifying. So it was like kind of like a violent, scary

Tyler [00:48:23] Yeah, kind of scary, weird, cold feeling. So I had to I had to leave. 

Jameela [00:48:30] Do you leave the hotel? You moved out of the hotel? 

Tyler [00:48:32] Well, I left where I was that I stayed in the hotel, didn’t leave until I got on a plane and went back and haven’t been back since. 

Jameela [00:48:38] Fuck me, I mean, that makes perfect sense. Even America, like there’s a lot of America that is just a terrifying history. 

Tyler [00:48:46] Oh, absolutely, absolutely. No doubt everywhere in the world. Some places seem to retain that more. 

Jameela [00:48:52] What do you do to block it out? Like, How do you do this? You must. You must have a mechanism. 

Tyler [00:48:58] I have certain mechanisms for sure. It kind of changes up depending on the day. If I’m doing a really intense reading and I need to decompress. Sometimes I’ll put in really loud headphones and I’ll blare music, and it’s my way of kind of just wiping the slate clean to prepare. If I’m going, let’s say, at an airport or in a place for me to be interacting with a lot of people, a lot of energy. I will often kind of consciously do visualization exercises, which for years I scoffed at. I thought all visualizations, a bunch of phooey, you know, whatever, but the therapist actually introduced to me the understanding that visualization can have really strong effects on your physiology. And so I’ll just kind of do a little white light meditations where I put myself in a bubble and all those things kind of help buffer yourself. 

Jameela [00:49:35] Can you can you tell me a bit more about the visualizing thing? 

Tyler [00:49:39] Absolutely. Well, I often find that like if I’m going to be, I think of it this way. I view energy is almost kind of like cigarette smoke. And imagine, you know, you’re not a smoker, but you walk into a group of people and they all smoke. When you leave that group, you’re going to smell like cigarette smoke, even if you don’t smoke. So energy is very similar. When we go into environments, I believe we kind of absorb certain things and kind of take it with us consciously or unconsciously, which is why we have to be very mindful of who we surround ourselves with and where we go. But that that happens and it’s definitely something to be processed and visualizations how I seem to kind of let it go. 

Jameela [00:50:22] And to anyone who’s listening who, you know, can’t wait for 300000 other people to see you first, who wants to be able to either maybe like maybe they’ve got someone in their house who they wouldn’t like in their house. By that, I don’t mean a shit flatmate. We’ve all had that. I mean, I mean, you know, whatever an entity or a spirit. What did those people do? Because I remember you kind of having like a I mean, I had to turn like literally closed my laptop at that point of the episode where you talk about a slightly like, I don’t, if I can call it sinister, but like, it didn’t sound amazing the experience you had alone in your bedroom. 

Tyler [00:51:02] Yes. 

Jameela [00:51:03] That definitely seemed to spook you as well. 

Tyler [00:51:06] It did. 

Jameela [00:51:06] So, yeah, I mean, I can’t stop thinking about that. I’m so fucking angry with you for saying it on the TV because I think about it every single night now and I’m I’m angry. I haven’t had like a civilized night asleep since. But, but but that’s also because I am like an extraordinary wuss like, I mean, it’s beyond Scooby-Doo, beyond anything that could be written into a cartoon. so what does one do if one is in a room where they feel as though there is an unwanted energy in there?

Tyler [00:51:40] Honestly asserting yourself is so important. And I think consent is huge, right? When I do reading for someone I ask them for permission to connect, and I think that in the same kind of vein, we have domain over our presence and we may not necessarily have control of what other people do or what other spirits do, but I believe it that it’s important to set those boundaries. If you feel like like something something’s around you, assert yourself, say, you know, this is my house. You can get out or crack a joke. Be funny. One of the funniest things I do when I if I’m having a little bit of a heebie jeebie moment, I’ll just burst into tears not burst into tears. Burst into laughter to the point of near tears, and it tends to kind of help. It allows me to kind of change the mood from anxious to looking like a maniac laughing at yourself. It works. It’s great. 

Jameela [00:52:22] Are you saying that you’re trying put the ghost off? Not the best spirit. You’re trying to put the spirit off and just be like, Oh God, Tyler’s a bit much. I’m actually gonna. He’s a bit. He’s a bit annoying. 

Tyler [00:52:32] Yeah, no. I genuinely just start doing bizarre stuff like that where I’m just like, Oh, OK, it’s not creepy anymore, because now I’ve made it ridiculous. 

Jameela [00:52:40] Well, we left out of the fuckin reality TV show didn’t we? That would have been 

Tyler [00:52:44] Season 2 we start putting peanut butter and fun, playful dancing on legs, but you just never know. 

Jameela [00:52:50] So you can just be like, I mean, what you said to that spirit in that moment was, please like, please leave. I do not want you here. Please, please leave. And do they have to leave? 

Tyler [00:52:58] No, but they did. It kind if anything, I think was a way of asserting of kind of saying, No, this is my headspace. This is my realm. 

Jameela [00:53:07] So then so then explain that to me. This is I’m not in any way trying to challenge you. I’m just trying to understand. So there’s a part of, you know, what you’re saying about the fact that they’re the the general gist of what happens post death is this kind of clarification just moving like this, understanding this moving into a kind of place where you lack the the shittier and more like primitive parts of human nature? Yeah, the fallibility. but then how do we explain the off with your head moments or the spirit that won’t leave your room or the you know that we read about there was a hotel that I was going to be put in work and I always Google if a hotel’s haunted, which again is like very for someone who wasn’t a believer. But I always do it and they put me out. They sent me a picture of this hotel they were going to put me up in and I was like, that looks fucking haunted. I’ve seen enough movies to know that, like the brown people die in that house. And then I googled it, and it was a very, very violent psychiatric institution for like 100 years, and where they did terrible experiments on the people there. And so guests had reported like having their sheets ripped off of them and like nothing like harmful happening to them. But just like very scary seeing things in the mirror, like all sorts of things, activity. And so how do you explain so so did those people not evaluate? Did they choose? Is it their free will to choose not to evolve? 

Tyler [00:54:41] Well, I certainly believe in, as we’ve discussed, free will, but I believe that just as we’re all kind of work in progress in this realm, the same applies to the other side. I don’t believe the life review process is instantaneous. I think that some people kind of reach that end sooner than others, or maybe sooner is not the right word considering time isn’t really linear, but we’re all kind of at different steps on the stairway, and some are kind of closer to the top. Some are maybe starting off a little lower to the bottom. But I find that there is a distinction also when it comes to hauntings between residual activity, which may just be kind of almost like a different phenomena, almost like something being trapped in time and just kind of repeating. And then you have non residual activity, which is the idea that you have a sentient spirit, you know, watching you. So I think a lot of hauntings are just residual activity, things being done kind of more from a place of trauma, a repetition of energy that some people who are intuitive might be able to get a sense of. So you clearly sound very intuitive. You saw this place, it gave you an immediate bad vibe and you looked into the history and you found the information is substantial. 

Jameela [00:55:44] Well I also might just be a scaredy cat, though, 

Tyler [00:55:46] you know what? True, and we have to keep in mind confirmation bias, right? I mean, we’re all we’re going to be right sometimes. But there is a genuine, you know, intuitive pull that I think people get and they just are often afraid. But it sounds like you have it.

Jameela [00:55:57] I mean mine’s. Mine no no no, I disagree. I think I disagree because if I even see a thatched roof, I decide it’s haunted. Like, I’ve gone. I’ve gone way too far like any kind of a spire. What’s it called like? You know, any kind of like pointed part of a house

Tyler [00:56:17] Anything Victorian, we’re done. 

Jameela [00:56:18] Anything Victorian. 

Tyler [00:56:18] No chimneys. 

Jameela [00:56:19] Someone made a great point once where they were I think it was a line where they were talking about the fact that, like, why do so many of the people when they claim they’ve seen a ghost? It’s always like a Victorian ghost. You know, it’s never like, but it’s never like an 80s twink standing over your bed saying, it’s Britney, bitch. 

Tyler [00:56:34] Oh, I’ve seen a couple of those my Lord you’re just going to the wrong spots. 

Jameela [00:56:41] I don’t even want to know where I can see any of these things. So, OK, so with all of this, with all of this that you take on and everything you’ve learned, something that is so immeasurably valuable about your book is that you’ve you’ve chosen to take all of the teachings from these, whether they’re trying to actually give you these teachings or not. But you’ve decided to kind of learn you’ve been gifted all this hindsight from these thousands of beings or spirits or people around the world. Will you mind? Would you mind? Because I think it’s so valuable, and I think it’s a really nice way to end. would you mind sharing with my audience what some of those things that you’ve learned are in order to make this experience on here better?  

Tyler [00:57:31] Absolutely. You know, this new book that I wrote was really about hindsight and the power of hindsight. You know, it is really 2020. And in my work, I’ve seen great value in learning from people’s lives and learning from their mistakes and because of the introspective nature of the life review process. People who have lived, no matter how they let it get an insight into how their decisions affected others. And that insight is world changing perspective, perspective shifting, and we can get a lot from that. This book, for me, was really about kind of answering the question of if the departed could do it over, what would they do differently if we had a second shot at life and we could go back and we could fix everything? What would we do? I wanted to write that book because so many of the people that come to me come to me with regret, even under the best of circumstances when it comes to death. People have regrets. Situations where someone will be ill for nine months and we’re ready to send them off and then they pass and we still have regret. So it’s not only for those who deal with with tragic deaths. I think this book for me was really about encouraging people to say it in the here and now to validate our loved ones in the present moment and not lose out on those opportunities because we want to live in such a way when we prevent future regrets. I want those to read this book to be able to take something out of it and communicate to their loved ones in such a way in the here and the now that if their loved one, God forbid, died suddenly, they wouldn’t need a medium. They would know confidently that they said everything to that love one that they needed them to know. And just living as mindfully as we possibly can 

Jameela [00:59:03] is that both the loving things and also the like angry things are that you need to get off your chest?

Tyler [00:59:09] Oh yes. I think it’s essential that we speak our truth, that we communicate and how we go about it certainly they can require tact embrace, but even sometimes it’s hard conversations we kick ourselves when we don’t have them. And you never know when you might not get the chance to. So it’s it’s important if we can. 

Jameela [00:59:27] I mean, I’ve been getting shit off my chest since I tried to take my life and I was like 26. I’ve been obsessively cutting everything off my chest since then, which is why I think I have no family members around me so I communicate with you because no I’ve said everything. I’ve said it all to everyone alive, dead. I got them all I got them all before they went. Said all the good and the bad things. And like, I’m very like, I’m very, very obsessed with not living a life of regret, which is why I live such a, you know, ridiculous and maniacal life. But it is. It is so important to get things off your chest. And also we we live in a generation that, because of capitalism, is increasingly pushed to just go for the bullshit materialistic things or to work or to just impress others like we don’t. The word selfish has become very demonized. And in a way that I I don’t know how you feel, you might feel differently, but I personally feel is really troubling. Like I think we have, we stopped being self preservation. We’re on this like hustle, this rat race all leading to just this minority of people’s great, unnecessary, hoarded wealth. 

Tyler [01:00:44] Oh, absolutely. 

Jameela [01:00:46] And so what do you think about like that? What values would you also like to impose upon people from what you’ve learned? 

Tyler [01:00:52] We are so much more than what we have to offer professionally. We are so much more than the roles we take on in life. We’re so much more than mom or daughter or spouse. And I think, you know, my work has really reflected that truth, that we have to honor all parts of who we are more than what we can provide. And I think it’s often an insight people who deal with health issues are made abundantly clear because when you’re ill, you know, you kind of are stripped of a lot of those things you wear as badges of honor your career. You know what you can do for others. And it really shows us that we are really just us. So hopefully we can get to a place of acceptance around that and being more of who we are without having to deal with something world changing, like a health problem. 

Jameela [01:01:32] Well, the whole premise of I Weigh is that it’s sort of challenging the way that you look at yourself if you were to look back on yourself on your deathbed, and like even though that is like a technically a morbid thing to say, that’s the way that I’ve kind of pushed this movement for the last three and a half years is don’t look back and you look back. You’re never going to look back in your life and think about your body or your abs or your hips. I hope. Like you’re going to look back on the meaningful experiences. And that’s a big part of what I’m trying to because I’ve missed 20 years of my life. I did miss 20 years of my life being anorexic, being self-hating, being my like taking everything I learned from bullies, internalizing it and becoming better than the bullies at bullying myself. And so as I’m like, nearing middle age, I am kind of like, you know, obviously, like, I’ve been saying that since I was 20, that I’m nearing middle age. But as I’m getting into my thirties, et cetera, you know, like, I’m really trying to kind of. I can’t get back those years, but I can stop all these wonderful young people who listen to me from doing the same, and I would like to know in the format of this podcast as ever. When we ask all of our guests, Tyler, what do you weigh? 

Tyler [01:02:49] I weigh. The love that I have to give. 

Jameela [01:02:54] You weigh the love that you have to give, and it’s a shitload of love. 

Tyler [01:02:58] That’s right. Absolutely.

Jameela [01:02:58] It’s a shitload of love. I don’t I don’t know how you you must have so much. I mean, maybe that’s why you spoke about like the fact that if you go three weeks without doing a reading or something like that, you almost feel like you’re going to kind of explode. Is that just is that just the love and that what is that? What is that that’s coming out? 

Tyler [01:03:21] It feels like intuitive buildup, but you know, I definitely clearly have a role. I have this so much more than a job. It’s a calling, and I just I clearly have to do it. It’s not really been a choice for me, so I’m thankful. 

Jameela [01:03:32] And, and and so you have a you have a small circle, but you have a circle. Do you feel like you are around people who maybe even if they can’t do you have people who can? You know, I know you said that you’d met someone who could do what you do, but do you have other people in your life who can do what you do, who can understand kind of exactly what you’re feeling? 

Tyler [01:03:50] Not so much, that’s kind of the things.

Jameela [01:03:51] Do you need that? 

Tyler [01:03:51] You know, I don’t even know if I need it, you know? I think it’s one of those things we all need to feel seen or understood in some capacity. But you know, I don’t I don’t need somebody, I guess, who who can relate to everything I go through as long as I have support that’s willing to try to understand, right? I mean, do we ever fully understand each other? I don’t know. But just that willingness and that love, despite what one goes through, is really important to have that support system. 

Jameela [01:04:19] 100 percent. Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. 

Tyler [01:04:21] Aw likewise. 

Jameela [01:04:21] You did kind of confirm that the spirits might be watching us when we’re wanking because of the granola situation. 

Tyler [01:04:30] I love it but you know. I don’t know if I love that, but grandma might be. But let me tell you, she doesn’t care. 

Jameela [01:04:34] She doesn’t care. Yeah. 

Tyler [01:04:37] Grandma’s familiar with the ins and the outs, so to speak, that’s how you got here. So grandma knows the ins and the outs, alright? 

Jameela [01:04:43] But yeah, it’s just it’s so fascinating to get into the mind of someone like yourself and and find out how you cope with this because I spent so much of that documentary watching it, just wondering how you’re still how you’re still going. I think it’s super impressive, and I’m so excited for to see what you do next, and I hope that you pace yourself. And I hope that you aren’t I hope that you never look at this gift as like because you have this profound gift that not many people can do. You therefore are obligated to use it constantly. I hope that you do exercise some of the selfishness that I. 

Tyler [01:05:23] Thank you. 

Jameela [01:05:23] I hope for everyone. 

Tyler [01:05:24] That’s self-preservation. That is my takeaway from this conversation. And then the important stuff. And you’ve been amazing and you have such lovely energy and I can’t wait to talk again. 

Jameela [01:05:33] Oh, thank you. Well, so nice to meet you. 

Tyler [01:05:35] It was such a joy. 

Jameela [01:05:37] I’ll see you soon. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnigan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson, and the beautiful music you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Ask Jameela Anything. Check it out. You can get a free month Stitcher Premium by going Stitcher.com/premium and using the promo code, I Weigh. Lastly, over at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at 1-818-660-5543 or email us what you weigh at IWeighPodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners. 

Listener [01:06:32] I weigh realizing my childhood abuse did not define me. And separating myself from an identity that was never mine. I Weigh being a proud queer Pakistani, figuring out his way in life, in a world which constantly forces humans into boxes defines them and cages them. Thank you Jameela for everything. You’re an angel. The best internet friend one could ask for.