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June 22, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:07
806 The Gunner's Dream (note - this podcast refers to a prior podcast that was not published)

A young woman guns down her emptiness...

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Time Text
Alright, dream-o-analysis time.
A fine young lady has posted the following dream.
We shall call her...
Gabrielle.
A few nights ago I had this disturbing dream.
I had not been sleeping well for three days and had woken up several times already that night.
I fell asleep again around six o'clock in the morning and had this dream.
I woke up in my room, though the room was different from how it is now.
The room was clean and more or less what it was when I was about ten to thirteen years old.
The only notable deviations from this were the glow-in-the-dark stars over my bed.
I brought them for my brother years ago, but he never used them.
them.
I finally put them up in my room just this year.
And one other change that I'll get to later.
At the foot of my bed was my ex-boyfriend, Danny.
Not his real name. I went out with him when I was fifteen.
The relationship ended badly in the dream.
He was just standing there, a blank look on his face.
I told him to get out, but he didn't respond.
I threw things, stuffed animals and pillows, at him, yelling at him to get out of my room, but there was no reaction.
I get out of my bed and grabbed a toy gun off the top of my dresser, except in the dream it wasn't a toy.
The toy gun is really my brother's, and it is currently located on the top of my dresser.
It's an antique we bought two years ago, and it's the second deviation from my 10-13 year old room.
Pointing the gun at Danny, I told him to get out of my room, or I'll kill him.
When he just stood there, I shot him in the face six times.
The gun is a pistol, not a revolver, so I'm not sure why six.
He fell over straight backwards, and everything was messy and gory.
Then I woke up. It was about 8 o'clock in the morning.
Originally, I wasn't going to post this because I didn't want to talk about it, but I realized I wasn't thinking about it and trying to shove it to the back of the mind, so that's that.
So then I asked her, what's up in your life?
Hmm, summer break, not so much.
A lot of watching movies with the family.
A board game party the day after the dream.
Dad left for a trip on that same day.
A lot of grad parties last weekend.
Went to my old crush's grad party last Monday.
A rather strange sexual encounter on Monday as well.
My friend told me on Monday, Danny dropped out of college and has been here in the Twin Cities for months.
Really busy Monday. Other than that, I've been hanging out at my house, reading and writing.
I said, why did you want Danny to leave your room in the dream?
Why did your relationship end in real life?
And what happened on Monday? And...
She wrote back, So...
There's more stuff here...
Which I'm not going to get into.
She's written more stuff, which I'm not going to get into.
But I think that I can talk a little bit about this situation and what I think the dream might be telling you.
So let's have a look at the dream again.
I woke up in a room, though the room was different from how it is now.
The room was clean, and more or less what it was when I was about 10 to 13 years old.
The only notable deviations with this were the glow of the dark stars over my bed.
I had brought them for my brother years ago, but he never used them.
I finally put them up in my room just this year, and one other change I'll get to later.
At the foot of my bed was my ex-boyfriend Danny.
I went out with him when I was 15.
This was a couple of years ago, I don't know exactly, graduation, 18, 17?
The relationship ended badly.
In the course of the dream, he was just standing there, a blank look on his face.
I told him to get out, but he didn't respond.
I threw things, stuffed animals and pillows at him, yelling at him to get out of my room, but there was no reaction.
I got out of my bed and grabbed a toy gun off the top of the dresser, except in the dream it wasn't a toy.
The toy gun is really my brother's and is currently located on the top of my dresser, an antique we bought two years ago, and is the second deviation from my 10 to 13 year old's room.
Alright, pointing the gun at Davies, I told him to get out of my room, or I'd kill him.
When he just stood there, I shot him in the face six times.
The gun is a pistol, not a revolver, so I'm not sure why six.
He fell over straight backwards, and everything was messy and gory.
Well, there's a clear issue of, for me at least, there's a clear issue of boundaries in this dream.
And I think that this is very telling as to why people end up with no boundaries.
So, again, total theory, total projection.
Let me know what you think. If it works, it works.
If it doesn't, let me know. The reason that we end up with no boundaries is because we are punished.
We are attacked for trying to establish boundaries.
So if we have an invasive parent who just opens their door and walks into our room...
Even when we're doing embarrassing naughty things to ourselves with cucumbers when we're teenagers, then clearly this is just an invasion.
It's a violation of privacy.
And if we then attempt to establish any kinds of boundaries, like, please knock...
Before you come in, you get upset.
The person doesn't say, oh, I'm so sorry, that was rude.
I will absolutely knock, right, before I come in.
What they do is they say, hey, there are no locked doors in this house, mister.
There are no secrets in this family.
Oh, don't be so silly. Oh, what's the big deal?
What's the big problem? Nothing I haven't seen before.
Blow your routine. Right, but there's never any...
You're attacked for attempting to establish boundaries.
Right, so... The reason that we can't establish reasonable boundaries with the people around us is because we've been heavily punished.
For a boundary set, for trying to establish boundaries when we're younger, right?
So in what is called the terrible twos, or in the sort of toddler stage of development, we get a sense of self, we get a sense of other, we get a sense of property, we have object constancy, so we want to keep our toys, we don't want our toys to be snatched from us, we don't want our space to be invaded, we don't want to be picked up, we don't want to be dragged around, we're going through the basic layer, or the basic phase, the sort of foundation of individuation, right?
Self and other and We need to have our property, which is our person, and the toys that we play with and so on, we need to have those protected according to rational standards.
So there's a section in the novel that I just published the audio for, Almost.
Which has an adult doing exactly what was never done in my childhood, which is being rational and consistent in the realm of justice with a child.
It was very moving for me to listen to that again, because that's something that I missed terribly when I was a kid.
So I'm guessing, young lady, that when you were...
Younger, you were not allowed to have your own space.
Your space wasn't respected.
So people imposed themselves in terms of your person, your mental and emotional space.
In a separate thread, this lady talked about her father's irrational rage and his verbal abuse and throwing things and so on.
Well, rage from a parent is incredibly invasive to a child's mental and emotional space, to the security of their emotional and mental space.
And so you were not allowed to have your own standards, to establish your own standards.
No consistent standards were applied to you, right?
Because it's a truism that when our own boundaries are violated by our parents, if we ever try and do the same in reverse, we are attacked, right?
So you also get that rank hypocrisy that's at the core of these kinds of things.
So this, I think, is where a lot of teenagers end up, and I think this is more true, in some ways, of women than of men.
It's not a good thing...
To be a teenager, especially a teenage girl, and to not be able to say no.
That's a highly dangerous environment.
Sexuality is very powerful.
The pathologies that are associated with sexuality with certain types of personalities can be very dangerous and destructive.
And as you say, you were terrified of this guy.
And what happened?
So... I mean, it's heartbreaking to me.
It really is heartbreaking to me.
The effects that these unbelievably ghastly parents have on these beautiful, beautiful children.
So you're at this guy's house, his mom's upstairs, and you say, okay, we'll have sex.
But you've got to get a condom.
He says, I can't get a condom. You have sex anyway, and it's not consensual.
Right? You don't even have the right to say no penis in me.
Well, you don't feel that you have that right, and I'm sure that you were taught, fundamentally, that you don't have the right to that kind of basic personhood, which is absolutely heartbreaking and has put you in an enormously dangerous situation, right?
This wasn't right, but the next one might be.
But let me tell you the realities of the situation.
My young lady friend.
The reality of the situation is you can say no anytime to sex, to anything.
You can say no anytime.
You can say no anytime.
It's funny because it is sort of related to the last one.
People say, oh, it's an implicit obligation to people.
Well, you know what? I can change those explicit obligations.
Implicit, explicit, whatever it is.
I can choose not to pay people their money back.
I can choose not to honor my commitments.
I can choose to reject my promises.
I can choose. I can choose.
I can choose. Now, I choose the consequences as well, of course, and that's fine.
You can say, yes, I want you, as the desert wants the rain, and then the guy's naked, and he's over you, and you suddenly change your mind, and you say, look, I'm really, really sorry.
I know this is, like, bad timing and all, but I don't.
I've realized I don't. Right, and yeah, if the guy gets angry, then that's...
that is a risk you take, but you don't...
you don't...
You don't say yes to sex that you don't want.
You just don't do that.
You don't do that.
You don't use your vagina as a shield, right?
I think the reason that a gun that is a toy turns out to be something that is really dangerous and murderous is that sexuality, right?
I mean, particularly for women, right?
I mean, It's a very vulnerable situation.
You have usually a bigger guy over you, you know, pounding away.
His penis is in you. It's a highly, highly vulnerable situation for a woman to be in.
And you can't use that as a toy, right?
That's a very powerful emotional experience.
I don't care if, you know, you think it's hip and cool or, you know, you're all having lipstick parties or whatever.
But... Sexuality is very core, very powerful experience.
More so for women, I think, just biologically, right?
So, if you can't say no to people, then you're going to bring people into your life who prefer people who don't say no.
This is very, very fundamental.
If you don't say no to people, if you don't give yourself that permission and go through all of the emotional crap and pain that you have to go through to get your way through back to having a sense of boundary and personal space and maintaining that, you will forever be inviting people into your life who violate boundaries.
If you don't have boundaries, people will violate your boundaries.
If you have boundaries, people won't.
This is the amazing thing about psychology.
If you are insecure, people will attack you.
I mean, in general. I know, I just had this last podcast, but in general.
If you're insecure, then people will attack you.
If you're not insecure, then people won't attack you.
Internet's a little different because everyone's got the web courage and all that, right?
But I think this is a very fundamental thing to understand.
A very, very fundamental thing to understand.
That if you can get yourself through to the place...
Where you can establish and maintain those personal boundaries around yourself, where you can have people in your life who respect those personal boundaries, who have their own personal boundaries.
As you say, this guy was desperately needy, talking about marriage and clingy and pathetic.
I mean, how sad and pathetic does a guy have to be to say, don't break up with me because I'll be sad, right?
I mean, that's negative economics, right?
It's not that I have anything positive to offer you.
It's just that I'll inflict my sadness on you.
I mean, that's really sad, right?
It's really pathetic. And obviously, if you're dreaming about it, you deserve better.
But you need to start, and again, you're still in school, or get a counselor, get a therapist, go talk to someone about boundary issues.
You should not be in a situation, ever, where you have sex with a guy when you don't want him to, and it's a quasi-rape situation.
That is brutal! And I think that that's part of what the gun is, is that it's sort of a toy, but you're not using it.
But it's actually not a toy.
Right? And that's sexuality itself.
But... And later in the post, it may be relevant, this is a penis with a vagina, like the gun barrel with the hole.
Anyway, but... The key thing is, the key, I think, that the mystery, the illusion, I think, that people have, and there's no reason why you wouldn't have this illusion.
Maybe you don't. That's just my thought.
People think, well, the only way for me to establish boundaries with people in my life is to get really angry, right?
Because I've got all these clingy, dependent, invasive people, and the only way is like pushing back a tide with your bare hands.
You know, it's exhausting. It's perpetual.
Nobody wants to get involved in it, right?
So when you're involved with a family that is invasive and destructive in these kinds of ways, then what happens is, you know, it is such a perpetual battle to keep and maintain it is such a perpetual battle to keep and maintain boundaries with invasive and empty and voided people, false self people, right, who don't respect boundaries.
It's like taking a bath with a squid and trying to keep it off you.
It's just slithering and grabbing and snaking.
It's exhausting. So you're like, oh, fuck it.
Just to the squid, tentacle me, whatever you want to do.
I can't keep this up forever.
But it's an illusion. It's an illusion.
When you have boundaries in your life...
The empty people who don't respect boundaries, they sense it and they stay away from you.
Virtue is the shield. Self-esteem is the human shield.
Integrity is the human shield.
So the option in life is not to either A, just give in to people because otherwise they'll get mad, or B, to shoot them in the face six times if they won't listen to you.
Because you're saying to this guy, quite reasonably so, get out of my room.
I'm naked. I'm scared.
You're not giving me any response here.
This is unnerving. So you're attempting to establish boundaries.
But of course, he's already violated those boundaries by being in your room at night.
So your situation here, which I think is just starting to be highlighted by your unconscious, which I think is fantastic, is that...
You're saying, oh great, so my option is to either get engaged in these horrible quasi-rape situations where I think that I have to honor some obligation I made to a guy, even though he's not honoring his obligation to me to go get a condom.
I either have to acquiesce to people.
Or I have to get explosively and murderously angry at them.
Those are the only two possibilities.
And of course you are explosively and murderously angry at your parents for violating your boundaries and for not launching you into sexual maturity without self-protection.
It's unbelievably horrible to launch, especially women, but boys too, men too, to launch them into sexual maturity, which is going to happen inevitably, according to nature, without basic self-protection.
That just means, well, I can't abuse you as much anymore because you can leave the house, but don't worry, I've outsourced the abuse to everyone you're going to come in contact with now from a romantic or sexual standpoint.
That's the horror of this kind of situation.
But I'm telling you, there's another road, there's a third way, other than compliance or rage, which is assertion, assertiveness.
And there's lots of ways that you can get trained on assertiveness to avoid falling into the false dichotomies of compliance or rage.
Because you don't want to be screaming at people your whole life to hold them at bay to keep the squid off your body in the bath.
You want to not have to deal with this issue.
You want to have people around you who respect you, who don't violate your boundaries, who don't Let you violate their boundaries and so on.
But you need to make that transition out of this underworld of people whose personal sense of identity is sort of like a swirl of fog in a cloud of mist.
And you need to get yourself more trained in your expectations around people and in what you will bring to the relationship as well.
And this is particularly urgent because, of course, of your sexual life, right?
I mean, the fact that you are a sexually active woman, it means that you better get this stuff down, like, relatively quickly.
And I would sort of, I mean, if I were you, I pretty much don't, certainly don't use your vagina as recreation, right?
I mean, that's not a good idea.
And I know this sounds prudish, and I know this sounds square and so on, but just don't.
I mean, don't. It's not a toy, right?
It's not a toy. I mean, it is a sacred channel in a way, right?
It is the unity of lovers.
And it should be, as we talked about, exclusive, right, with the polyamorous debate.
It should be exclusive, and it should be intimate, and it should be, you know, give it up for virtue, right?
I mean, give it up for virtue.
Don't hand out your Gucci like Halloween candy, right?
I mean, that's not going to make you happy.
It is going to cheapen the wonder and the beauty and the joy of intimate sex.
And it's only that way for you because of this horrendous family situation that you've had where you've never been able to have an effect on the world around you, where you're at the whim of others, where other people overpower you with rage and manipulation, and your only response is either to get really angry back and scream and throw things or...
To simply comply and in real life you complied, in the dream you're shooting people, there is a third way.
Which is, you know, go to a counselor, get some books on assertiveness, and make a commitment, right?
Make a commitment to only deal with people who treat you with respect, to only deal with people who bring positive things, really, genuinely, not like a relief of loneliness or whatever, scratch the orgasmic itch or whatever, but real value and virtue to your life and real joy to your life, who make you feel stronger, who make you feel better, who make you feel energized and like, you know, the world is your oyster and anything is possible.
Not the people who sort of drag you down with guilt and obligation and emptiness and compliance and, you know, sexual predation of the kind that you experience.
There is another way, but it is going to require that you confront the destructive abuse that you suffered at the hands of your family, that you train yourself on techniques, some of which are somewhat technical in terms of assertiveness.
But most fundamentally, just raise your expectations and don't settle for this kind of nonsense.
I hope that this helps. Let me know what you think.
And I look forward to everyone's donations.
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