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Jan. 3, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:05:38
952 Diving to the Sidewalk - A listener Conversation

How to liberate your ambitions...

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Time Text
Uh, alright. How are you feeling?
Uh, pretty anxious, I guess.
Yeah, no problem. I understand that.
I understand that, but, uh, I'll do my best to try to be nice.
How's that? Okay.
As best as humanly possible.
Um, so, do you want to read what it is that you'd sent me, or would you like to start in some other way?
Uh, sure. Let me get it.
Let's see. Nice to talk to you finally, by the way.
Oh, same here.
Let's see. It says, I have a huge fear of other people's bad opinions of me or something closely related to that.
I've recently begun to notice it more consciously, and if I look at the particular instances empirically, I can see that they're usually baseless.
I've had trouble even sending this message since it will ruin my image somehow.
This is a second attempt after I cancelled the first a few days ago.
When people praise me on the board for an ability, I really, really like it, but I also want to run and hide.
On the live chat, sometimes I'll pretend to have stepped out for a while right after someone praises me.
Sometimes when I post something on the board, I'm afraid that it'll get me banned.
When I get a slight reduction in hours at work, I fear that I've done something wrong, and then I'm closer to being fired, even though later I find out that the guy that has the same position that I have also got the same reduction.
When you asked me for help, I felt a huge amount of anxiety, though I'm definitely going to help, since I value your opinion and if I fail.
I've made a bit of progress in reducing perfectionism at work by testing the waters to see if I get reprimanded.
The fear has been reduced there, but hasn't gone completely.
The fear in other areas of my life hasn't been reduced much at all.
I'd really appreciate any help you could provide if I can get myself to hit send to get this request to you.
Right, right, right. Well, I appreciate that.
And I know that to people on the outside, it may seem like a little thing to do, you know, blah, blah, blah.
But I get and I totally understand that it's a big thing to do.
And for what it's worth, I think it's an admirable thing to do.
It's very hard for us to...
To ask for help, right?
Particularly us dudes, right?
Because we're supposed to have it all together and, you know, be down with this, that and the other.
So I really do respect that.
I think it's a great idea to ask for help.
And, you know, if I can, fantastic.
And if not, then I'll just go back to rambling about other topics and you won't worry about doing that again.
So can you tell me just a little bit about your upbringing, your history, your family, all that kind of stuff?
Well, as far as this kind of thing goes, my dad has been kind of...
Whenever I expressed that I kind of like something, he would always put it down.
Like one time I saw a movie in some class that I had, like Latin class or something.
It was like a funny thing happened on the way to the forum.
And I told him about it when we were in a video store.
I wanted to go rent it or something like that.
He was asking what we wanted to rent, and he kind of like made fun of it because it had some actor like Zero Mistel or something in it.
I can remember him saying the name.
I don't really remember the actor, but a whole bunch of stuff like that.
In school, I wasn't treated well by my peers usually.
It was like... I was like a nerd, kind of.
Not really the thick glasses, kind of, but the kind of guy who was really quiet.
I can't really think of too much else right now.
Those are the two big things, I think, but I might be wrong.
Right, right. And are you young, middle-aged, or old?
28 or so. Okay, great.
And what's the story with your mama?
My mom? I can't really think of anything related to this.
Sorry to interrupt. Could you just move the microphone a little bit when you exhale?
It's kind of loud. Just move it up to one side if you could.
Thanks. The thing that I've been...
I don't know if this is related at all, but the thing that's been coming to mind a lot that's been making me really angry is when I was really young, when I was like four or something, I was about to go to kindergarten or something like that, so we had to go get a physical at the doctors.
And when we...
You have to take your clothes off in front of the doctor so that they can examine you, right?
And my sister was still in the room and I asked my mother if she could take I asked my mother if she could have my sister leave and she refused and I kind of got angry then and it didn't work.
And sorry, is your sister older?
Oh, she's a couple years younger.
A couple years younger. And sorry, how old were you when this happened?
Four. Right.
Okay. Okay. Before that, she was...
I don't know if it was distant or whatever, but like...
I was swinging on the swing set and...
We had a dog, I guess, then, and then it came running up towards me because it was excited to see me or something, and I was on one of those big kind of two-seater things, and I couldn't get it to stop in time, and I hit the dog, and then she just kind of blamed me in a kind of...
Angry, dry way, I guess.
Right. And then...
Let's see if I can remember...
So, at first, it was like she was distant, kind of, that way.
And then later on, when my dad started beating me and stuff like that, after he went into the...
as an officer in the Marine Corps, it started right about then.
How old were you when your father started beating you?
About six or seven.
Right. Before that, we had kind of a good relationship.
It was like he'd take me to work and I can remember some decent times with him and stuff like that.
Nothing too close, but it wasn't that bad.
But after that, I kind of attached to my mother and I guess she got more sentimental or something as she aged, so I guess that worked out that way, kind of.
Not really, but...
So at first she was dry and distant, and now she...
Well, then she was more sentimental and mushy and stuff like that.
And was she aware that your father was beating you?
Oh, definitely. And do you ever remember her responding to that in any way?
Oh no, she supported it.
And I mean, she wasn't a weak woman.
She left him and threatened to leave him for her own purposes, but never for that.
That was just what parents are allowed to do, I guess.
I don't know. And I'm sorry to interrupt you for just a sec, but you just said something like she's not a weak woman.
Oh no, she's...
It wasn't like she was getting beaten too or anything like that.
She has a strong personality, kind of like she won't get attacked kind of thing.
Well, I just want to make sure I understand what you mean by weak.
So when you say she wasn't a weak woman, what you mean is that she wasn't cowed down by your father, but she was equally aggressive or abusive?
But just not for beatings?
Yeah, she was more passive-aggressive kind of emotional type stuff, not harsh stuff, but like distant stuff.
It didn't seem abusive at the time.
Oh no, I understand that for sure, but I just wanted to make sure, because my definition of weak includes beating children or allowing children to be harmed, right?
I don't consider that a strong attribute.
Oh, she beat me, well, not really beat me, she kind of like half-heartedly hit me with a belt once, but that was it.
Right, but it's not a characteristic of somebody who is genuinely strong.
Yeah, you're right.
Our parents own so much of her language that is unconscious, right?
I'm sure your mother views herself as a strong person, but a strong person doesn't marry a bully, right?
That's definitely true.
Now, are they still together? Yes, as far as I know, I broke off with him in October last year and had never been back.
Right, okay. And what were the circumstances that brought about the beatings from your father, and what was the nature of those beatings?
It was either that he was mad, like stressed from work or something like that, or a big thing that he used kind of as an excuse was my report cards were bad.
And so he'd give me not just beatings, but things like you can't use a computer, you can't go to the library and things like that.
So if I'd break those rules, then that would cause it also.
Can't go to the library when your grades are bad?
That seems a bit counterintuitive.
Well, I went there and instead of doing schoolwork, I went there and I read fiction or something like that.
Right, right, right. I get it.
And do you remember the first beating distinctly or do they kind of blur together?
Not really. I can remember like threatening suicide or something when I was like seven.
So I've got to guess that these beatings were pretty savage, right?
Well, yeah, they seem that way.
So tell me a little about that, if you don't mind.
I know that's tough, right? But I think it's important in terms of the core of fear that you experience, right?
So what would happen in one of these beatings?
He was like...
Well, he'd take off his belt, and then he'd tell me...
I can't remember exactly what, so I'll kind of give you the gist of it.
And then he'd bend over the couch or whatever, and then he'd start hitting me, and if I'd cry or something like that, he'd say something like, stop crying.
I can't do it like he did it, but it's like, stop crying, but he said it with words that were worse than that.
Right, like stop crying you pussy kind of thing?
Not so much insults, just aggression, more aggressive.
Like, I can't remember.
Was he angry that you were crying because it would be manly to take your punishment without crying?
Oh no, he was crying because I think it brought up anxiety in him.
Oh sorry, he was crying. No, no, he wasn't crying.
He reacted to the anxiety he felt by saying, you better not cry, stuff like that.
Right, okay. So obviously that's a viciously impossible situation to be in, right?
To be terrified and being beaten by somebody four or five, six times your size and not allowed to feel upset, right?
Because somebody beats you because they want you to feel upset and then they get angry at you for feeling upset, right?
Yeah. Okay, and how many hits with the belt would you get?
Was it on your buttocks?
What was the scenario?
It was there, but I mean, sometimes he'd miss and it hit my back.
But it was like anywhere from 5 to 20, I don't know, 30 maybe.
And these would have, they hurt like hell, right?
Yeah. Like seriously, like eyes squeezing tears, blinding pain, right?
Not so much that. It wasn't blindingly bad, but it really, really hurt.
Right. And of course, it is a terrifying situation to be in because you don't know if it's 5 or 20, right?
Would he count them off or what would happen?
Yeah, and it would be like, if I cry, I don't remember exactly, but I think he made me count them or something like that.
No, that was exercise punishment.
No, he would increase it if I cried or something like that, I think.
And did you know in advance how many hits you were going to get with the belt?
Oh, I don't think so.
Maybe a few times, but I don't remember that as a usual thing.
And do you know what made him stop, or what caused him to stop when he stopped?
No, it didn't usually go on forever or anything like that, but I guess just once he hit me a good number of times, I don't know.
And then what was afterwards, right?
Did he take the belt off from around his waist?
Did he then put the belt back on?
And what would happen?
Did you then get up and go clean yourself up?
Or what happened afterwards?
I guess I went to my room.
I'm having trouble remembering that.
Exactly what happened then.
And his emotional demeanor, or his spiritual, for lack of a better word, demeanor...
Obviously, you would perceive, I shouldn't say obviously, but I would guess that you would perceive as a kid that he was in the grip of something, right?
It was like a kind of mania, right?
It was, yeah, well...
I don't mean like he was screaming or crazy or whatever, but unreachable, if that makes sense.
Oh, yeah, I'd definitely say that, yeah.
And then would his demeanor change or his emotional, like whatever you sensed as a kid about his emotional life, would that change after he had hit you?
Like, was he calmer? Was he ever conciliatory?
Like, would you go for dinner and just, would he talk as if nothing had happened?
Like, what happened afterwards?
Oh no, the demeanor wouldn't change much at all.
You'd still keep up the anger or whatever, the you've been bad kind of look or whatever.
And how long would that take to return, or did it ever return to something different?
Well, it returned to normal after maybe half a day or something like that, but it might as well not if I was afraid.
Oh sure, yeah. I mean, if there's a viper in your room, you don't relax, right?
Yeah. And so, what was his...
You say it would return to normal, and what was his normal demeanor?
Was there seething anger often, or did it come out of nowhere, it seemed?
Or, like, what was his normal demeanor?
It was kind of...
I don't know, that kind of tension towards that, where that could just be my, like what I just said, like me always being afraid of it happening.
But he was never very happy or anything like that, which is probably obvious because of what he did.
Right. And did you feel that the beatings that you got, were they predictable?
For the greys they were, but sometimes he'd just get mad and start throwing things or something like that, I guess.
So for some stuff it was, for some stuff he just got pissed off and went off.
And, sorry, can you tell me he was throwing things?
What does that mean? Tell me more about that.
Like if he'd get really enraged and then he'd pick up something like a book or something that was nearby and he'd throw it at me.
Okay, so there was the cold calculated sadistic punishment, but then there was the explosive attack, right?
It wasn't really cold and calculated in that it's more like anger, you've been bad kind of thing.
Well, sorry to interrupt, but I'm just trying to differentiate.
Like when he would hit you with his belt, that was more cold and calculated, but then sometimes he just kind of erupts with anger, right?
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
Okay, I mean, it's important to differentiate between those two, I think, right?
I mean, not because anyone is less evil than the other.
I mean, obviously, this is a cold-ass fucking sociopath, like, I mean, to be perfectly blunt, right?
This is a really, really sick individual.
I mean, the markers are pretty clear.
He's in the military. He's...
Beating a six-year-old child and yelling at that child not to cry and so on, right?
So this is obviously a sick, sick, disturbed and thoroughly evil human being, you know, in my sort of opinion, but I'm sure that's no huge shock to you.
But there were two kinds of punishments, right?
One was cold and calculated and more sadistic and the other one was, in a sense, more violently exasperated.
Does that sort of fit?
Yeah, I think so.
Now, what about verbally?
I mean, did you experience any verbal abuse?
Oh, yeah. Mainly from my father.
I don't think too much at all from my mother.
And what was that?
What were the themes there?
What was the mythology that was being used to hack you up?
Mythology? I'm a failure.
A disappointment.
You're never going to amount to anything.
You're lazy. You know, that kind of stuff.
Yeah, not those exact words, but yeah.
Okay. Is it you're nothing?
Or were you actively bad?
Because there's two kinds of punishments usually when it comes to verbal attacks, right?
One is you're nothing, which is an erasure of the other human being.
And the other is you're selfish, you're lazy, disobedient, disrespectful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Which is more like you exist and you're evil versus you're nothing.
You'll never amount to anything.
Nobody cares about you, which is more of an erasure, if that makes sense.
I think with the words it was more...
I forget what you said.
Well, there was the erasure one, which is you're nothing, you'll never amount to anything, you don't amount to a hill of beans in this world, blah, blah, blah.
And then there's direct attacks with pejorative moral terms, you're lazy, selfish, disrespectful, disobedient, bad kid, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, it was the second one.
You're bad, you're a son of a bitch, you're...
But, I mean, the things that he punished me for, though, not the words, but the things that he punished me for were kind of like, you'll never amount to anything, like school grades and stuff like that.
Right, right. Now, of course, you are a very intelligent fellow, and I'm sure that with the proper motivation, encouragement, and support, school could have been a lot more positive, but I'm also imagining that you didn't particularly want to do well in school.
No, I would have rather been doing other stuff, which I did.
That's mainly why I got bad grades.
Well, sure, yeah, of course. I mean, you can't beat a desire to learn into a child any more than beat a woman into loving you, right?
I had a desire to learn, but just not what they were teaching me, kind of.
Well, that may or may not be the case.
It's very hard to picture out...
Sorry, I don't mean to lecture you about your own childhood, but it's very hard to picture what your relationship to learning would have been if you weren't afraid of physical violence for, quote, not learning or not getting good grades, right?
Oh, yeah. So, for sure, you didn't want to get good grades, and this is the passive-aggressive vengeance of the slave, and I talk about that in the RTR book, which should be out shortly, but...
But, you know, what your father, whatever you beat a child for doing, that child is just not going to do.
It's not going to do it well.
It's not going to do it enthusiastically.
And that's the point, right?
The point was not to have you get good grades.
The point was to have you get good grades.
Oh, yeah. Education, right?
Yeah, that's true. Now, was he actively in the service?
Sorry, was he actively in the mafia when, like, throughout your childhood?
Is he still in, is he retired or...
He was in it until a little bit after I was born as an enlisted man, and then he went in as an officer again, and he got out after I was grown.
So pretty much my whole childhood.
Did you guys move around a lot because of that?
Oh, yeah. Right, right.
So you were like a total army brat, as they say, right?
Yeah. And did your mother have a profession?
That's where she met him when she was enlisted also.
But then she didn't have a job for a while.
She was training to be a psychologist in college.
And then she said she went to a mental institution or something for some kind of training she needed to do to get the final whatever that she needed to get her a degree.
And she said that kind of scared her a little bit.
And then she wanted to – she gave that all up for us kids or something like that.
Right, because she was so devoted to your welfare, she did not intervene while you were being viciously beaten.
Yeah.
Right. Okay. Okay.
And your parents had a volatile relationship, right?
So there's like yells and curses.
Go on. It was more, she was emotionally distant from him and he was always kind of nagging her about it.
That was the main theme of it.
Okay. Can you tell me a little bit more about what his complaints were?
She doesn't want to have her picture taken.
She doesn't want to spend time with me.
She's... Stuff like that, I guess.
I can't really remember that too well.
The complaints didn't happen too often, but you could feel the thing going on, like emotional distance and...
Being disgruntled with that on his part.
And did your mother ever express any affection towards your father, even faked, or was it mostly just cold and brisk and so on?
Yeah, it was the same kind of affection, I guess, that she showed towards me occasionally.
She showed it towards him.
And what kind of affection was that?
It's kind of like... I can't really put words to it.
I don't know. We'd go to the bookstore and it'd be like spending time.
It makes you feel...
It's like nostalgic, kind of, almost.
I don't know. What you said earlier was that she had a sort of sentimental streak that has increased with age.
Oh yeah, that's what kind of increased.
She wanted me to visit more often.
She wanted me to spend time...
I like books, and she does too, so we'd go to a bookstore and we wouldn't sit together or anything like that, except at the beginning we might have a coffee or something because they have coffee things in it.
But we'd just go our separate ways.
But it's like if you spend time together, you feel...
Kind of sentimental nostalgia something, togetherness something.
I don't know how to describe it.
And this increased after you left home?
It didn't really increase, but whenever I'd come over or something like that, it would be there.
Right. And more so than when you were a kid, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Right, okay.
As time went on through my childhood, it got more there, and then it got more after I left.
And do you have a thought as to why this might have escalated or increased after you left?
I guess if I had to say, I'd say she felt lonely or something.
I don't know. Right, right.
Okay. And what does your dad do now?
He's retired, so he just draws a paycheck mainly.
He's worked at a few grocery stores, I think.
But he always talked about, oh, you should...
He's like a person who plays the lottery.
He talks about how it would be great to be a big businessman or to be a football star or to do whatever, but he never does anything.
He kind of just sits around and if he feels like he really needs to get a job or something, he'll go get a job at a grocery store or something like that.
Oh, he, like, just like a stock, well, like a stock to shelves or...
Right, so basically his argument that you would abound to nothing...
Applied to him.
Yeah, I mean, clearly that's not very successful, right?
Yeah. Right.
Right. Okay, and...
How often would you be beaten in any given sort of month or week period?
Not too often. It was more fear than beating.
It was like once every four months on average, I'd say.
And what about the verbal abuse?
That was more common, probably maybe a couple weeks on average, but it was kind of more clustered than that.
Sorry, you said a couple of times a week?
Yeah, that's just an average.
It's more clustered. It'd happen for like a couple days, like three days or something, and then it'd break off for a week or two, and then it'd be like three days or something.
I don't know. I got it.
I got it. Okay. So home was not a pleasant place to be, right?
Oh, no. I stayed in my room, and they used to...
My dad used to order me to come out and spend time watching TV with everybody and stuff like that.
You're part of this family, you know.
Yeah, not exactly that.
Do I have to be?
Yeah. Right, right.
You'd be treating this place like a hotel.
And I'm assuming, but correct me if I'm wrong, that as you got older, the beatings tended to diminish?
Yeah, it turned more into like once he used me as a tackling dummy or something like that, but that kind of full body physical whatever only happened a couple times.
Right, so it got sort of subsumed into let's play, right?
It wasn't let's play.
It was like I had some trouble at school with computers or something and then he found out about it and then he got pissed off and then he brought my brother in and he said, this is how you tackle people.
Sorry, I don't quite understand what that would have to do with having...
Was he thinking you could tackle the computer into compiling your code?
No, it was just a way to punish me.
It wasn't a related way.
It was just how to punish me.
Right, so he couldn't openly beat you, so he set up these kind of mock instruction sessions where you ended up getting injured, right?
Oh, he could have definitely beat me, he just didn't.
I was still terrified of him.
I couldn't have done anything. Right, right.
And did he ever hit you or scream at you when other people were around other than your mom or other people within the family?
No, it was mainly glares and threats when we were out in public.
Right. And the reason that I say that, of course, is, as you know, that indicates that he fully had the capacity to control his temper if he wanted to.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right, so this is how we know it's sadism and not just bad brain chemistry, right?
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
All right. Well, I appreciate that.
I know that that's not easy stuff to talk about.
I certainly do appreciate it, but I can tell you what some of the fallout is going to be from that kind of upbringing in general.
And this, you know, some may apply, some may not.
Hopefully some will apply, but we'll see.
And you can tell me what sort of rings a bell.
I'll just give you the quick rundown.
So clearly and most fundamentally, this is a situation of zero security, right?
Any way to predict or manage the relationship between your behavior and your environment, right?
And that's sort of why I asked if things could be predicted or not.
So you lived in a state of chronic terror, which we all would have in the same, that's perfectly healthy in its own kind of way, right?
And given the situation that you were in, you would live in a state of chronic terror and you would feel no bond, no love, no security.
But you basically would feel like you are in prison, right?
But you're not in the kind of prison where you can have...
You're the 98-pound weakling in the weightlifter's prison, right?
So there's no security, there's no one you can appeal to, there's no protection.
There is both the direct physical attacks of your father and the incredible humiliation of your mother not intervening in any way.
She probably got off, so to speak, on watching the violence.
It probably satisfied some of her own sadistic urges to see you hurt.
And, you know, there are some people, like with parents, right, there's usually one person who's in the ring goring the Christians, so to speak, in the Colosseum, and then there's another one who's cheering it on, right, and getting off and watching the violence, and that would probably be...
The psychological setup, to some degree, between your mother and your father.
So that's not uncommon.
That's how you add humiliation to the violence, right?
It's actually the worst and longer-lasting damage.
So we've got no security.
Now, the problem is, of course, that You don't then learn as a kid how to negotiate relationships with people, right?
Which doubtless led to a fair amount of isolation within your peer group.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah, definitely. Right.
You don't even know what a reasonable relationship looks like, right?
The only thing that you know is that, you know, people can do whatever the hell they want to you and lecture you about how you caused it because you're bad, right?
Insults, injury. You're not taught how to express your needs.
You're not taught how to express your preferences.
You're not taught how to negotiate preferences with other people.
And, of course, you don't see your parents doing that with each other because...
Sadists and sociopaths don't have that ability, right?
In fact, the whole sadism is not negotiating win-win, but it's always win-lose, right?
So people are a threat to you overall, right?
Yeah, definitely. If you're winning, so to speak, if you're getting what you want, they're going to attack you, right?
Uh... Sorry, let me put it another way because that was a bad way to put it.
If you express what you want and insist upon what you want, like you said with your sister when you were four, you wanted her not in the room when you had to take your clothes off.
If you say what you want and insist upon what you want, then you will be attacked, right?
Oh, yeah. And that was a constant, I guarantee you, of course.
Any time that you express a preference, you're going to get attacked, right?
So you simply cease experiencing preferences.
I mean, you still have them, but they're like a guilty secret.
You can't express them.
So you don't know what it's like to be in the presence.
I mean, I'm just speaking very generally here.
You don't really know what it's like to be in the presence of somebody and to express a preference without fear, right?
Yeah, that's the story of my life.
Well, sure. Well, sure.
I understand. It doesn't have to be for the future, but it's perfectly, perfectly rational.
It's a perfectly healthy coping mechanism, right?
Yeah. I mean, the reason that you didn't express preferences is the same reason that children don't put their hands on a hot stove twice, right?
Yeah. Because you could have been injured or killed, right?
I mean, if your dad had just been overtaken with a homicidal rage.
And this all sounds, to some people, this sounds like, you know, it was just a beating or whatever.
But you don't know, as you say, that the belt could slip, right?
In his rage, he might grab the wrong end, the buckle side comes down, perhaps on your lower spine, perhaps on an eye, you know, like you could get seriously injured, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And that's a constant danger.
When's it going to stop? Is it going to stop?
What if he just loses control?
Yeah. Right?
So this is a state of, you know, threatened physical destruction for years, right?
Mm-hmm. So you're not going to get a very strong sense or any sense really of win-lose relationships.
So what that means is that relationships for you are going to be things that you, quote, enter into because the other person wants something and you're just used to appeasing them, right?
Yeah. And I'm sure that shows up for you professionally at work, right?
What you do is you scan the environment to figure out what people need and you just provide it to them regardless of the expense to you, right?
For the most part, sometimes if I feel like the person's not such a threat, I can express anger or something like that, but I can never talk to them about it.
I can never talk to them about what is bothering me or anything like that.
So what does it mean when you say that you can express anger but not talk about it?
Like, I was at work and I was cleaning something, and some guy was helping me, but he put something that got in the way or something like that, and I just got frustrated.
So I took it and I angrily set it down somewhere else, I guess, and he saw it, and I guess he was afraid or something, I don't know.
Well, that's not quite... I mean, and I understand what you mean.
That's not quite the same as expressing your anger.
Oh. And there's no way you would know this, right?
Because it's just any more than you would know how to speak Mandarin if you grew up where you did, right?
Assuming it wasn't Beijing, right?
But... Right.
Being able to express anger is being able to sit down and talk with that person using this sort of real-time relationship idea and say, you know, when you did this, I got mad.
I'm not saying it's your fault, but this is sort of what happened for me.
And, you know, maybe you could help me figure it out or whatever.
Right. But just sort of, you know, and I'm not saying you did, but, you know, snapping at someone, you jerk, you shouldn't have put it there or grabbing his thing and moving it away.
That's not expressing anger.
Right. That's just in your own tiny, tiny way.
That's just being a little bit abusive.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah. Because you're scaring the guy, right?
It's like, oh, you know.
Oh, yeah. So that's not quite the same as expressing anger insofar as it's got just a little bit of a tinge of bullying to it, if that makes sense, right?
Yeah. And I don't mean that you have any, I mean, I don't think you've got a streak of bullying in you much at all, but I mean, we all have that kind of habit, right?
Just snapping people and do X, Y, and Z, right?
Yeah. Right, so, I mean, but that would be called, by your dad or your mom, that might be called assertive, right?
I guess, yeah, yeah.
Right, so, I mean, you want to make sure that you examine the words that you use to describe things, because those words have, right, so if you say, well, me snatching this thing and putting it off to one side so that he got scared is me expressing my anger, then that's not going to lead you in the right direction, right? Yeah, that's true.
Right, because then you're going to say, well, I want to express my anger more, so I should make him more scared, right?
No. That's not where you want to go, right?
No. Because then you're in another impossible situation.
Either I get really frustrated, or I make somebody else nervous, right?
And you don't want those to be your only two options, right?
Definitely. Okay, so the concern that you expressed at the beginning, which is around a fear of criticism, right?
Mm-hmm. Well, I think the first thing to recognize is that it's not accurate, though I certainly understand it.
It's not accurate to say that you're afraid of criticism.
Okay. Because criticism is not a beating, right?
No. And criticism can be constructive, right?
Right. Right, so I mean, if we just look, like, rewind a minute, right, I was sort of saying that, you know, what you were doing may not be exactly the same as expressing your anger, but more around, you know, I don't think you experienced that as humiliating, did you?
Did the other guy? No, when I was telling you just now about my sort of...
Oh, oh, no, no, not at all.
Right. So, I mean, I was criticizing you, but I was doing it in a way that was hopefully, you know, somewhat helpful and gave you another way of looking at it that might be helpful, right?
Oh, yeah. Right.
So, you weren't afraid of what I just did, right?
Oh, no. Right.
So, you're not afraid of criticism. And that's one of the reasons I just did that, right?
Because you say, I'm afraid of criticism, and then if I criticize you and you're like, oh, okay, I can see that, and you don't experience, like, there's no thud as you faint, right?
Then clearly you can, you're not afraid of criticism, right?
It's like if you say, I'm afraid of spiders, and I put a tarantula on your hand, and you go, oh, that's interesting.
That's kind of cool, that tickles, right?
Then clearly you're not afraid of spiders, but of something else, right?
Right. Because if you think that you're afraid of criticism, then what you're going to try and do is you're going to try to avoid criticism, right?
Obviously. But if what you're afraid of is not really criticism, then you'll be avoiding the wrong thing.
Right. Okay, so now the question is, given that you do feel anxiety in particular situations, as Lord knows we all do, What is it that you're scared of?
Because I think if we just say criticism, that's an answer that is not really an answer.
I sort of point this out in the book.
People say, where did the world come from?
Well, God made it. We all know that's not really an answer.
That's just a story. But the problem is, it has you stop looking.
Because if you have a false answer, then you stop looking.
Yeah. So if you've got an answer called, or a story called, I'm afraid of criticism, then you stop looking because you think you've identified your fear.
But if you haven't, then it's not going to be very helpful, right?
Yeah, that's true. So can you give me a situation wherein you experience the kind of fear that you were talking about?
Oh, I can give you a good one.
I've never been able to go for a job interview in a career that I wanted.
Okay, that's a very good one.
That's a very good one. Okay.
So, when you are getting ready, have you not even tried to go, or you go, but you kind of freak out, or what happens?
Oh, I've not even tried.
Okay, well, let's say that you were going for a job interview tomorrow in a field that you wanted.
What would you feel? What would your emotional response be to that?
Okay, tomorrow, 9 o'clock, kind of thing.
A huge amount of anxiety, worried about how I look, not knowing what the expectations for what I'm supposed to look like in an interview is, that kind of not so important.
Like, not to the point of what the real problem is, kind of.
Stuff. It would get me distracted, I guess.
I don't know. But it would be a lot of anxiety about the guy...
Not knowing what to say.
You did a podcast or a video cast or something on interviewing.
I'd know what to say if they ask questions like that because you brought them up and I can think about my answers ahead of time.
Just to answer this question, I'm going to play this little YouTube video for you.
But I mean, if I'm not prepared for it, sometimes it takes me a while to answer questions.
And when we have, let's say, a block there, what is your perception as to why that is the case?
Just that I need more time.
I don't like Wikipedia so much anymore, but I liked it at first because you can do a first draft and a second draft and a third draft.
Not to get it perfect, but just to work on it a little bit and give it a little bit of time.
Why is it that you feel that you need more time?
I kind of go blank sometimes, I guess, especially when I'm under that kind of anxiety.
And why do you think that you go blank and why do you think that you are under that kind of anxiety?
I can't think of it.
Well, and that's important, right?
Because the one thing that we always want to make sure of when we're evaluating ourselves, which we all do all the time, right?
The one thing that we want to make sure...
Is that we're being accurate, right, about what is going on for us.
Because otherwise, we tend to, especially if we've gone through the kind of brutal past that you've gone through, what we tend to do is mistake scar tissue for skin, right?
So we look down and we say, well, I need more time because I tend to be a perfectionist and I tend to be insecure about things and this and that and the other, right?
So I need more time and so on.
But I don't think that that's particularly fair, right?
So, I mean, to go back to a metaphor I've used about a million times before, you know that Chinese women would have their feet bound, right?
So their feet would curl under and so on.
And they would, of course, find it very painful to climb stairs, right?
So if you were talking to a woman and you said, why does it take so long for you to climb stairs, what would she say?
Well, I know that it would be because she hurts a lot, but I don't know what she's saying.
Well, she would say, it takes me a long time to climb stairs because when I was a kid, my feet were bound.
Uh-huh. Right? Yeah, that's true.
And the reason that that's important is that you don't personalize what happened to you as a kid and mistake it for your personality, right?
Uh-huh. I think I did that a lot when I was a bit younger.
Well, sure. I'm sure that you do, right?
So, if you're walking down the street with some guy, you know he was in Iraq, right?
And a car backfires when it goes by, and he dives to the pavement, right?
Yeah. Well, you don't dive to the pavement, because, I mean, you were raised by a soldier, but you weren't in Iraq, right?
So, when he dives, and you say to him, why did you just dive to the pavement?
What would he say? Because it reminded me of Fire Rack?
Right. He wouldn't say because I wanted a closer view of the sidewalk, right?
He wouldn't say because I'm a coward, right?
He wouldn't say because I'm easily startled.
He wouldn't say anything like that, right?
You're right. Do you see what I'm saying?
Yeah. Because you gave me answers that would be indicative of a character, but that's not the truth of the situation, right?
Yeah. So tell me what's processing for you right now.
Uh... I was giving stories like that.
Like, uh... I don't know.
I do this because of the way I was treated, I guess.
I can't get more detail.
Well, sure, okay, but if you say to me, well, Steph, in interviews, I don't know what to say because I'm socially awkward or anxious, whatever it is that you say to yourself, right?
Uh-huh. What would be...
A more accurate way of rephrasing that.
I... can't do it because...
I... My opinion didn't really matter when I was a kid, and it never happened, I guess. That situation where I was asked questions about myself.
This doesn't feel like a good answer, though.
No, but that's close. Look, that's much better than the first stuff you gave me, which was a load of religious nonsense.
And of course, this is your parents' language.
Your parents' language is that you are deficient, right?
That you have problems because you are deficient, right?
So we internalize that, because if we don't agree with our abusers, we get more abused.
We nod and we say yes, and I am part of Al-Qaeda, just stop waterboarding me, right?
But the reason that that answer didn't feel accurate is because it's not that your feelings were ignored.
That's not the problem. It's not that your preferences were ignored.
God, you would have loved it if all they did was ignore you, right?
Yeah. So, what was the truth about how your preferences and feelings were handled?
They took them and they used them against me.
Well, I think that's a pretty sophisticated way of putting it, but I would go a little bit more simple than that.
I can't see that.
I can't see it simpler.
Well, I'm going to say it and then you can tell me whether it fits or not, right?
Okay. And then if it fits, you'll listen to this again and go, oh my god, every time I've listened to one of these conversations, someone gets to a blank spot and I know exactly what the answer is.
It's true, right? Yeah, that's true.
Okay. The reason that you get anxious when you have to express a preference or be spontaneous is It's because when you expressed preferences, or were spontaneous, for many, many, many years as a child, you were viciously attacked.
Yeah, I was.
Yeah, it wasn't neutral.
They weren't, like, using yourself against you.
I don't even know what that means.
But it's much simpler than that, right?
You were beaten. You were screamed at.
You were verbally abused. You were terrified.
You were hounded. You were put into these god-awful, sadistic, impossible situations.
Right? You dived to the sidewalk because you were in Iraq.
Yeah. No other reason.
No complication. Because, you know, when I didn't dive to the sidewalk in Iraq, I could have got my fucking head blown off, right?
Yeah. So the reason I can't express myself with people is because whenever I did that, I got the shit beaten out of me.
So I'm averse to it.
That's what I mean when I say we need to differentiate our true selves from our scar tissue.
Thank you.
Because, I mean, the Chinese women's feet never regrow, but we can regrow.
Yeah. But first we got to accurately identify what's going on.
It's not because you're a cow.
It's not because you're deficient. It's not because you have an anxiety disorder.
It's not because this, that, and the other.
It's not because you're insecure.
It's not because blah blah blah.
It's because you were attacked for doing it for many, many years.
Alright. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I can remember what I brought up at first when that video sticks out in my mind that I wanted to rant or whatever.
Yeah, there's a preference.
You get attacked, right? Yeah.
And humiliated.
Yeah. So for you, and this is the horrible paradox, right?
And this is what the genius of this kind of sadism is, right?
For you, existence...
is being attacked, right?
Because if you pretend that you don't exist, right, like I don't have any preferences, tell me what to do and I'll go do it, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, whatever, whatever, right?
Yeah. If you do that, then you're less likely to be attacked, right?
Yeah. But only because you're already attacking yourself, you're already repressing your own preferences, right?
Oh yeah, you're right.
The level of attack remains constant.
Either you attack yourself, in which case other people will attack you less, or you attack yourself less, in which case other people will attack you more.
But I'll tell you this. Attacking yourself is way safer than having other people attack you.
That is a perfectly sensible, valid, healthy, beautiful, if that makes any sense, survival mechanism, right?
You're not going to lose an eye by attacking yourself, right?
Yeah, I can remember explicitly trying to use that tactic when my dad got mad, when some of my bosses got mad.
I'd make up a face like I was really terrified or something like that, and it would reduce that.
Right, right. So when you're trying to do all of that, when you're avoiding doing a job interview in a field that you...
What you're trying to do is avoid being attacked, being assaulted.
So, again, if there's some dark alley in a neighborhood that every time a woman walks down it, she gets raped, and women don't walk down that alley, you say, why?
It's because I want to get raped. Yeah.
And that doesn't solve all your problems.
I mean, I'm not trying to pretend that this does.
But I think that you really want to just say, well look, fuck, I was in war.
I grew up in a war zone.
So I have developed fight and flight and self-attack neurological habits.
You can't control it, right?
But I have developed the incredibly fast, protective, self-defensive reflexes that go along with growing up in a war zone.
Right?
Yep.
And again, I'm not saying that solves all of your problems, look at them in a context that at least helps you to not internalize these survival strategies in a war zone as deficiencies in you?
I think it will.
It's going to take some work, I think.
Because if the guy back from Iraq thinks that he's a coward, because every time someone drops a plate he almost pees himself, then what he's doing is he's internalizing a perfectly healthy survival strategy and calling it a personal deficiency.
Yeah. Right?
But you want to thank those reflexes, because they may have saved your life, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
They're actually helpful.
Now, I get that they're not that helpful now, right?
Oh, yeah. Definitely.
It's kind of getting in the way of...
I have kind of a crappy job, and I don't know.
I don't want this kind of life.
I mean, it's a lot better that I got rid of my parents, but it's nowhere near where I could be.
No, of course. I mean, I understand that.
I mean, you've obviously got an amazing mind and great communication skills and so on.
But the first thing to do is to just not personalize the absolutely healthy and necessary survival strategies that you had to enact to get through the unbelievably horrifying childhood that you had.
That's not you. That's just scar tissue.
And it was hugely beneficial, right?
It's just not beneficial now.
But you don't change it like, I'm deficient and I've got to fix myself, right?
Because you did everything just right.
You got through it. You didn't become a criminal.
You didn't become a child abuser.
You didn't become a soldier, God help you, right?
So you did some radically great stuff.
with what happened to you.
And it sounds weird, maybe, but you should be proud of your ability to be anxious.
Yes.
And that doesn't mean that you now have to change it or anything like that.
But that's a badge of honor.
You got through a childhood and did not become An evil guy.
Right? You didn't become a sadist.
I'm assuming, right? But I don't think you did, right?
That's magnificent.
Sorry, go on. I did actually go into the military, but I was kind of not...
I wanted to get out of it the whole time I was in it.
And you did get out of it, right?
Oh, yeah. I don't hear any roadside bombs in the background.
No. But, I mean, so yeah, you went into the military based on whatever, whatever, right?
But you didn't become an evil guy, right?
Oh, no. You didn't, like, say, I'm going to find me some woman, I'm going to have me some kids, I'm going to beat them black and blue.
No, definitely not.
Right? So, like, seriously, it is, you know, and that's because you retained the ability to feel anxiety, and you retained the ability to feel bad.
Because the sociopath doesn't feel guilt, doesn't feel shame.
I mean, they feel tension and frustration and they just lash out and they don't feel any remorse, right?
But you have the capacity, you've retained the capacity to feel, you know, shame, guilt, remorse, humiliation, all these kinds of things.
I know it's no fun, but I'm telling you, brother, it totally beats the alternative.
Oh, yeah. Right?
Right? So I think the first thing to do is to honor these decisions that you made.
Not to look upon them as flaws to be fixed.
But like, damn, I'm glad I had fast reflexes.
Damn, I'm glad that I did a whole lot better with my childhood than my dad did with his or my mom did with hers.
Oh yeah, yeah. And then, again, this is all just perspective, right?
But it is about just respecting and honoring the decisions that you made that got you to a far better place than your parents were, which is how the world is saved.
It's this painful climbing up the step ladder by ladder, right?
Clining up the ladder step by step.
That's how the world gets saved. It's no big thing, right?
There's no big massive eruption, no voting so-and-so into office.
So I would say, instead of saying to yourself, or whatever you say, like, I'm deficient, I don't know what to say, and this and that, right?
It's not that you don't know what to say.
You were punished for speaking.
Yeah. Right?
I mean, if I do end up having to move to China, for whatever reason, and I end up saying, gee, nobody seems to know what I'm talking about.
It's not because I'm stupid, it's because I don't speak Mandarin, right?
So it's like, oh shit, I've got to learn Mandarin now, right?
Yeah, you're right. I haven't had problems giving answers, really, when I've been talking to you here, and I had some anxiety coming into this conversation.
Yeah. Oh, I tell you, there are about 6 billion people in the world who would rather have 10 job interviews than one hour on the phone with me.
Right? And this has been okay for you, right?
We've had a back and forth. I even criticized you a bit and it's been fine, right?
Oh, yeah. So that's good stuff.
Yeah. I mean, you've done more than most people can.
Yeah. So, I would just say to myself, right?
I mean, this would be my sort of invitation or suggestion.
Yes, there are some practical, very practical anxiety management skills that you need to develop.
Avoidance, obviously, was fine when you were a kid, but it's not working anymore, right?
Right. Right.
So, there are things that you can do.
That are relatively short, right?
We're not talking five years of therapy, but things that you can do like, you know, assertiveness training, self-management in terms of anxiety training, self-talk training and so on, right?
There are things that you can do that literally can start to have a very strong effect on this stuff in like six to twelve weeks.
And I will get, I'll talk to Christina, we'll put some stuff, we'll send it to you by email, maybe post it on the board as a general resource.
There's some very practical things that you can do that can start to have a very strong effect on this stuff.
Because at least you got your parents out of your life, so you're not re-exposing yourself to the stimuli, right?
Because you can't ever get rid of the desire to throw yourself on the sidewalk if you've still got roadside bombs, right?
It would not be good, right?
So at least you're not exposing yourself to the source violations, right?
To the abusers. Mhm.
But now, there are some practical things, because you can do it, right?
I mean, you obviously do it here, you do it on the board, you can do it.
Oh, yeah. You just have to find better ways of managing your anxiety, and that has a lot to do with, there's exercises you can do, there's breathing stuff you can do, there's centering things that you can do, there's self-talk, there's unraveling the assumptions, and so on.
That can have a very strong effect, because you don't want to sit there and say, okay, I'll have a better job in five years after I go through therapy.
You want to have some freedom to do that.
More immediately, right?
Oh, yeah. So, you can get to a cognitive-based therapist and you can start to work on ways to work through this anxiety in a much more rapid way than long-term therapy, which, you know, it's fine if you can do it, but I think that where you are in your life right now, you don't want to say, okay, in my early 30s, I'll unrooted all of this stuff from my being and so on.
You want stuff that's going to be more practical, right?
Yeah. Okay.
Okay, well, we'll put some thoughts together, but does it escalate to you with the anxiety to the point of panic attacks, or do you just avoid those situations, or does this not occur?
I usually avoid them.
With this one, I didn't, and I was kind of like breathing kind of heavy when...
You responded on the board.
I know, it's pretty sexy. What I would do is go through your yellow pages.
Just go to a couple of psychologists and just give them a call and say...
Look, I've got some anxiety management issues.
I have some handle on my childhood and so on, but I'm looking for some more short-term stuff about how to manage my anxiety in social situations.
I have a little bit of social fear or whatever, right?
And just ask them what they do and how they deal with that and so on.
And there may be some workbooks that Christina's worked with because she does a lot of this kind of work as well.
But maybe we can post those.
You can work through those. But this is a manageable issue.
I don't want you to feel like this is completely dwarfing you, you know?
I'm going to lift this tons of weight off my chest or whatever.
But this is a more practical and manageable issue.
But the first thing you've got to do is just not mistake your scar tissue for your skin, right?
Okay. So does that make sense?
Was that helpful? Was there anything else that you wanted to mention just now?
Oh, no. Thanks for that offer.
Oh, listen, no problem at all.
I will post some stuff tomorrow, but yeah, just make the call and ask whatever relatively short-term treatment programs that they have.
It's a hugely great investment, obviously, in terms of your income and your satisfaction in life.
This should be what you earn due to your amazing and heroic actions in surviving what you survived.
All right. Okay, well, thanks so much, and obviously keep me posted, and I'll throw some stuff on the board tomorrow.
All right, thanks a lot. Thanks, man.
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