All Episodes
Previous Next
March 29, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:28:37
1025 The FOO Infection (Listener Convo)

RTR is your magic shield. Do not go into battle without it.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hello. Oh, how's it going?
Oh, very good, Steph.
How are you? I am just fine.
I'm just fine. Nice to talk to you again.
How are things?
Oh, they're pretty good, I guess, in general.
Yeah. Oh, tell her, say hi.
So, kicking your butt, I think, was the operant phrase.
Yeah. Yes, that's right.
I said there was this foo issue that's been kicking my butt lately.
And so, wow, I'm not really even sure where to start, but...
Okay, how did your parents meet?
No, I'm just kidding. No, okay, I think I know where to begin.
So, what happened was that I think last weekend I was...
Okay, maybe I need a little bit more background.
Right now I'm in the process of figuring out what's going to happen after I graduate from college, which is this May.
And a part of that is finding an apartment, finding a job, figuring out if I'm going to get a car or not.
Sorry, I'm just going down the list.
You're checking for openings for groupies.
I'm afraid that we're all full up.
Unfortunately, it's mostly men.
It's just based on the listener composition, but we'll certainly let you know if anything opens up.
Oh, thank you so much.
Oh, wow. So yeah, that's kind of been the process.
And I got the job already.
I'll be starting in the summer.
So now I still have to figure out the living situation.
I definitely want to be independent.
The last thing I want to do is go back to my parents.
So that is my number one priority, just to be independent.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but congratulations, of course, on graduating, getting a job, getting all set up.
That's like, good for you.
That is fantastic. Thank you.
Yeah, definitely. I feel really great about that stuff.
But now since I have all these other little things to do, and you figure out what's going to happen with my student loans, like the repayment strategies, oh my god, I don't know anything about loans, And, oh my god, I don't know anything about apartments in this area.
I don't know anything about cars.
The last time I brought this up to my dad, which was a mistake, I guess, all he did was tell me, oh wow, they're going to want to rip you off at the dealership.
You have to be careful with this.
They're going to do this.
And this isn't true, what they tell you, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So, all these different things that I'm afraid of screwing up and that I definitely need to take care of.
Sorry, can you just hold on for a sec?
I need to put a little bit of sunscreen on.
Just the radiation, the positive vitamin D rays coming off this optimism and encouragement.
I don't want to burn because I'm very pale-skinned.
Okay, go ahead. Oh, my.
Okay, so I definitely do feel that I can do all these things, but my natural response is to get overwhelmed.
And this time, it happened...
And it was so much more intense than before.
And what I started thinking was, I feel so alone in this situation.
I feel like I have to do everything by myself.
And this is so difficult.
And I really don't have anybody who's reaching out to me and really wanting to help me and making sure that I'm doing okay and being supportive.
And I was just thinking of my parents, of course.
I wasn't Thinking about other people at work or friends or my boyfriend who actually do want to help me, I was just kind of focusing on how my parents were missing and how my whole family was missing in this process.
And the reason, I think, that I was dwelling on that is because that's been the situation with me for, what, 22 years?
Right, right. And so I just got this overwhelming feeling of insignificance and it was so, so sad.
And I got really upset and I started crying and I felt so overpowered by, I don't know, the world.
Because, I don't know, I was feeling so small and the more things I thought about that I was supposed to take care of that I didn't have help with, the smaller I felt until I was practically disappearing.
Right, right. And so I think I've thought about this situation about being left to take care of myself and my parents actually being proud that I'm so capable of taking care of myself and doing a good job of it and bragging to people about it.
So I'm pretty familiar with that situation.
I guess rationally I can think about it, but I hadn't really taken it in emotionally.
And so I had never had that feeling of, I don't know, all that sadness really hit me.
So I guess I hadn't digested the idea.
And I was just, I got really stuck in it and I didn't know how to start feeling better and how to overcome it or move on.
And this lasted a couple of days where I, every time I even thought about it, I would start to cry.
Right, right. So that's kind of what was going on.
Right. Well, I mean, that's...
I think I understand what might be going on, but it's all just theory, right?
You know me, right? All the caveats in the world, this is just me spinning out some thoughts.
And depending on your preference, I can either ask questions or I can tell you.
It's up to you. You want to try asking me a few and then you can tell me if I'm being way too blind?
Or I'm being way too wrong, right?
It could be either way, right?
It could be. I have a feeling that you have some pretty good intuition about this, though.
I don't know why, but...
It's a gift from God.
I'm just not telling anyone about that because it would freak out all the atheists.
Okay, so was the precipitating incident...
Your father talking to you about the big-ass, bad, scary world out there that was going to rip you off.
Like, was that what happened before this feeling, or was there something else, or was there nothing specific that you can recall?
I mean, the stress over...
Doing all of these things had been building up.
I had gotten upset about, wow, I have all this stuff to take care of.
Jeez, this is so annoying that my parents aren't helping me.
I had kind of thought about it, but that was definitely the incident that kind of Pushed me over the edge that, you know, he should have been helpful and he did give me some valuable advice about renting a car, or leasing a car, rather.
But he threw it in with all this, like, fear of the world stuff that just was not helpful.
And I was pretty enraged and...
I was also thinking of other things, like other ways in which I think they could have helped me so much, but that they just decided not to.
So I felt really betrayed at the same time.
And when he said all these things, I started to just, I don't know, my mind just went crazy.
So that was definitely the incident.
Right. Now, I just want to see if we're on the same calibration scale, if this is going to make any sense.
To me, when I have to do a podcast...
You're not helpful, right?
Because you don't help me with it, right?
But neither are you obstructive, right?
Like you don't throw ping pong balls at my head when I'm trying to concentrate, right?
Right. So when you said that your father wasn't helpful, what that would mean is you'd ask him, Dad, what is the population of the capital of Madagascar?
And he would say, I don't know, honey.
And in that way, he's not helpful, right?
Right. Right. And you said a number of times that your father wasn't being helpful when he was talking about how the big bad men are going to rip you off at the car dealership.
And that to me is not quite the same as being not helpful, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Now I see it.
So tell me what you see.
That I'm not angry at them for not being helpful but for being obstructive and I completely see that applying to a bunch of different things now.
Okay, right. So there's a fear-mongering thing that's going on here.
In a time when you're acutely stressed already, you know, I wouldn't even say acutely stressed, at a time when you're going through some transition, right?
Graduating from college is one of the biggest life transitions there is, right?
I mean, it's third after starting to listen to FDR and continuing to listen to FDR. It's certainly third, I think we'll do that.
No, it's one of the biggest life transitions there is, right?
And it is going to engender...
Some stress, right? Transition is good.
Stress is not a bad thing.
Stress can be a good thing. But obviously, as you know, it's one of the biggest life transitions there is.
And for your parents to provide no help or to exacerbate to a very large degree your stress, to me, would not fall into the category of not helpful, but sabotage or destructive, right?
Mm-hmm. Because here's the thing, right?
This is not the answer, but this is just sort of the lay of the land as I would sort of approach it.
First of all, you have the natural stressor, which on a scale of 1 to 100 is probably 60 or 70 of transitioning from student to tax livestock, from student to professional, to worker or whatever, right?
And that's going to give you a factor of 60 or 70.
Now, if your dad throws in another 10 units of, and the world is full of scary people who just want to rip you off, that's going to crank it up, right?
But that's not, the problem is not that he's telling you that the world is full of scary people.
To me, that's not the major issue.
The major issue is in a time where you're facing organic life stressors, like graduating from college, getting a job, He is throwing in enormous family stressors, i.e., what the hell is my family doing at this of all times, right? Right.
Yeah, so that's where I start to feel kind of...
Yeah, I guess betrayed a little.
And I feel like...
I don't know. They call me and tell me that they love me so often, but not only Do they remain pretty oblivious to 90% of what goes on with me because they choose to be oblivious?
Because when I try to tell them about it, it's a problem.
Sorry to interrupt you again.
Sure. Uh-oh.
No, no problem. You're going to neutral language, right?
Oh, I knew you were going to correct me about this.
You did this at the symposium within five seconds of me talking.
Please go on. Then you could run this part, right?
No, no, no, no. Please tell me.
Well... Oblivious, right?
If you come to me and say, Steph, what is the population of the capital of Madagascar?
I would say, I think it was a zebra and a lion in a zoo.
I mean, I don't know, right?
And so, I am oblivious to that, right?
But if I actively reject you when you talk to me about what you think and feel, that is not the same as being oblivious, right?
Right. And if you throw in how defensive they've gotten, that just makes it that much worse.
Right, so my mission over the next few months is try to clear Switzerland.
I don't know if you've heard any of these metaphors, right?
Oh, of course I have.
We all live in this neutral language, and I'm not trying to provoke conflict, I'm just looking at, you know, we don't want to hide under the smokescreen of this kind of stuff, right?
You know, they're not helpful, they're not oblivious, right?
They are, in these instances you're talking about, this is sabotaging, and this is rejecting, in a hostile way, right?
I mean, unless that's an unfair characterization.
Again, I want to put words in your mouth.
I just, based on what you're saying, I don't follow how the neutral language works.
No, I think you're right.
I know you're right. Wow.
Okay, so, sorry, you were saying that your parents, they say that they love you all the time, but they are oblivious to 90% of what your term was, right?
But I would say that they actively reject 90% of what goes on in your mind, right?
Yeah. And the remaining 10% is...
You know, laced with conformity and who knows how real it is, right?
Yeah, and it's...
I think the 10% that they listen to is just the stuff that they can reinvent and make it sound like what they want me to think.
Right, right, right, right.
I mean, then that's the good girl hangover, right?
From when you were younger? Oh my god, yes.
That's another thing.
I... Here's a little story that I've heard hundreds of times.
Jess has always been such a great kid.
Whoops, I threw in my name. I'm sorry.
No problem. I'll slice it out.
She has always been such a great kid.
I mean, she threw a tantrum when she was two.
And this is my mom talking.
and I just put her in a cold shower to calm her down and then she never did it again.
And you know what?
She has been so wonderful.
She's always been the kind of kid that She can't get the toy that she's asking for at the toy store.
Or if you tell her once that she can't touch anything at a neighbor's house, she will never do it.
And she behaves so beautifully and she's so clean and so organized and blah, blah, blah.
Right. So that, also, I think, I've tried to take so much control over my surroundings, over everything that I do, that, I mean, even though they never set boundaries for me, because there was way too much freedom in my house.
I mean, there weren't even bedtimes when I was little.
They really let me just take care of myself.
And put me on that pedestal that, oh my god, she can do such a great job, so of course I had the pressure to take care of myself and do an amazing job.
Right. And I think that's also coming up now, that extra stress that, I don't know, I feel like I have to pull this off perfectly.
And I want to do that for myself, but I don't want to feel this external pressure to do it.
Do you know what I mean? Am I expressing myself all?
Yeah, no, I fully follow and I have a couple of questions before we get to some other things.
The first is that, what do you mean when you say you want to pull it off perfectly?
What would that mean?
I mean, that just seems like a pretty high standard.
Oh yeah, and I don't think that's my standard.
I think, you know, if I find a job that pays...
Well enough so that I can have a comfortable living and if I have a place that's not in a really scary area of town that I can...
You know, when I live in one of those car dealerships, I mean, those places.
Oh my God, right.
Okay, I just wanted to understand that.
Right. No, but I think that the perfectly thing is just something that, that external pressure that I was talking about.
Right, right, okay. Do you remember...
This is going to be like an odd question, but let me know if it makes any sense.
Do you remember what it was like when you first went to school?
When you were like, I don't know, five or whatever.
When I first went to school...
I remember...
I might be mixing memories of what I heard my parents saying about my first days of school here a little bit.
But... I remember it being kind of fun.
It was, you know, something new to do.
I really didn't have problems going to school at first.
I think I adjusted pretty well.
And I know that my mom had trouble letting go.
And she was the one who was, you know, very sad that, oh, you know, I was leaving, I wasn't going to be home all day with her.
And I remember her telling me later on that she would go to, she would drive the car around the playground during lunchtime to make sure that I was okay while we were outside playing.
Right, so in that life transition, let's say, your mom had some real anxiety, right?
Yeah, she definitely did.
And where are you in the old birth order in terms of leaving the nest kind of thing?
Well, I have an older brother and he's about six years older.
So you're the last one to leave the nest, is that right?
Yes, I am. He left very early.
He left when he was like 17, 18.
As soon as he graduated from high school, he...
Boom! Right? Just a dust outline of your brother slowly settling to the ground.
And so for your parents, and this is not, you know, a sympathy-empathy thing, but just because I know that you're having problems with them right now, but this is just an understanding.
It is their biggest life transition since they had kids, right?
Me graduating college or...
You're leaving. Oh, me leaving now?
Like leaving their house?
Yeah. Okay.
Well, I did that four years ago because I moved...
I mean, I'm going to school in a different city, a different state.
Oh, I'm so sorry. When you said that you were moving out, I got...
I thought you were maybe going to...
Oh, no,
no. I actually, last Thanksgiving, I decided not to go back to see them and that's when a couple of things came up and I started to tell them about my unhappiness when I was at home and how I kind of wanted to take a break from seeing them.
So this is actually going to be, I guess, like a really big move away from them, but I've already been doing these smaller moves where I've skipped on seeing them for longer than usual.
Okay, okay, but then we won't pursue that.
Obviously, we try to work directly, right?
Okay, if you had been living at home, I'm just kidding.
Okay, so, and the reason that I was sort of pursuing that in my mind, and it probably isn't going to lead anywhere, which is fine, this was just an emergency backup theory, but was that if your parents experienced some anxiety when you first went to school, then there would be some similarity perhaps in this phase of their life and so on, but forget it, it doesn't matter.
Well, I mean, they have had anxiety about every single step of it.
I remember my dad offering me A car, if I stayed home and went to a local university, having absolutely no regard for which one had a better program and which one I would be happiest in.
If you stay home with us, we'll give you a car.
If you go to a different state, well, you won't have a car.
So definitely, they did try to get me to stay.
Right, right. Okay, so what you said was that you felt a kind of diminishment to vanishing.
I think, and that's a paraphrase, but I think if I understood this right, when your father started talking about the big, bad, scary world, that there was a diminishment in your mind and a sense of smallness and helplessness that continued to increase.
Is that right? Yes.
First, I got really angry that he was saying all these things and I got really impatient with the conversation.
And then after we hung up and I thought about what I had ahead of me and what he had just thrown into the mix, that's when I felt like I was getting smaller and smaller.
Yeah, and I started getting the feeling, and I guess my language was wrong, but I thought, wow, they're not willing to help me.
They've never wanted to help me and to be a part of these things that I'm going through.
How insignificant am I? So that's what started happening.
Right, right. Okay.
Now, there is a thought, and again, because you're in Miami, we can use this language, right?
There's a thought that precedes that feeling, right?
And the thought, if I understand it right, the thought is something like, they're not willing to help me, I feel so alone, they don't care about me, and I start to feel diminished.
Is that right? Yes.
Right, okay. It would seem to me that the understanding of that could also be to some degree liberating, right?
Yeah, definitely.
And so you can say what you felt there, because I think you get it.
Um... Well, I mean, I don't want to have this kind of people involved in my life if they were willing to...
I mean, if they rejected me all these years, you know, why do I want them to care about me now?
This is great that it's so obvious to me that they just don't care about me.
Right. But on the other hand, you felt a spiraling sense of diminishment...
And that to me is very interesting, and I'm going to put out a metaphor, and I apologize for the geeky sci-fi nature of it, but let's take it for a spin and see if it connects at all emotionally.
Okay. If you were in a rocket that was heading up to go visit the planets or whatever, right?
Then you would...
You know, be looking forward, right?
You would be looking out into the journey, navigate the asteroid belt or whatever, right?
You'd be looking out into the journey that you were doing going forward, right?
And, you know, new worlds would be opening up before you and so on.
But if you imagine that you were standing on the ground, watching that rocket ship fly away, your perspective would be quite different, right?
Yeah. Does that make sense?
Yeah. So instead of New Worlds opening, which is the view from the rocket ship, you see something just getting smaller and smaller and then vanishing, right?
Hmm. Okay.
So I'm going to put forward a possibility, and I don't know how to ask questions that aren't leading, so I'm sorry.
Here enter the Socratic part.
But do you think that it's possible...
And the reason that I ask this is because the way that your father portrayed the world out there was that it was full of big scary people who rip you off, right?
Yeah. Now, does he also believe that the big scary people rip him off or is it just you that they're going to rip off?
I think that for him, they're out there and they want to rip everybody off, but he's wise and he can take care of himself.
So he's above that.
Yeah, so I guess they're out to rip me off because he can protect himself.
Right, okay. Would he consider it a failure of his parenting that he had not taught you how to take care of yourself in this way?
Absolutely not, because we were talking about how my brother I recently went into rehab for drug problems and he said explicitly that he didn't feel guilty at all or responsible for any of the things that happened to him and any of the decisions he made.
So I don't think that he would feel responsible at all for anything that I failed to pick up, pretty much.
But did he teach you these things?
Or were you supposed to pick them up through breathing?
I don't know.
I think maybe he tried to teach me some things, and the others I guess I was just supposed to learn by example.
Right, okay. Now, when you are feeling vulnerable, as we all are during times of transition, I mean, I remember that very clearly when I quit my real job to do this crazy-ass thing, right?
I mean, when you're feeling very, very vulnerable, Then, obviously, you're sensitive to negative possibilities, right?
Right. That's why we feel vulnerable.
It's like, you know, boy, I put a lot of work into going to school.
Boy, I hope I can get a job.
Boy, I hope I can pay my student loans back.
And that's because there are negative consequences to failing to achieve these things, which are pretty unpleasant, right?
Right. So, in a time when you are launching yourself out into the world, and with great success again, right?
Which is great. Your father wants to fill you with fear, right?
Right. That must be a leveling action.
In other words, your father is filling you with fear because there's something about what you're doing, not you, but there's something about what you're doing that is filling your father with fear and he's trying to level.
You remember the leveling thing we've talked about before, right?
Well, I... Here's what came to mind when you said that.
His own failure in life is something that I think he has not fully acknowledged, even though he's talked about how he wants to be more successful and all that.
He has not accomplished anything career-wise.
He used to live in a much nicer place, have a much more comfortable living, and after that business failed, his life just kind of got smaller and smaller, and he doesn't pursue any hobbies.
He's not a happy person, so I think he's failed in many respects, and I'm doing something really different, so...
Yeah, that's probably causing him a lot of anxiety on a lot of levels.
Right, right. I mean, and so this is all too complex for words and maybe it'll make some sense and maybe it won't, right?
But if he feels that your launching is putting him down, then he is going to want to infect you with the same kind of fear and resentment that caused him to fail, right? Right.
Now, I'm not saying he sits there and plots with his evil mustache, but this is just how the unconscious works, right?
Right. And it's interesting that I said earlier that he thinks he's above all these negative and evil forces in the world, but that I'm not, when in reality, those evil forces made him fail.
I mean, he was not successful in any of the things that he wanted to do, so the world did get him.
Yeah, of course. And I'll give you something even creepier, because Lord knows it's a good time of night for that, right?
All right. But there's something that's even creepier, too, which is that he's talking about the big, scary men who are out there who are going to rip you off, right?
Mm-hmm. That's a little something we call projection.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Go on. You're too rapid for me.
I'm going to have to lead up to this.
You're like, it comes on.
I'm like, hey, you found me.
Well, yeah, he's the biggest example of that.
Yeah, he's the guy.
He is actually the guy in the car salesman, right?
He's saying there are all these big scary men out there going to rip you.
He's that guy. He's talking about himself, not about some guy in a car dealership.
Right. And I can already see that my mom has been more successful than him.
And I think that's hit him really hard.
And he's tried in many ways to bring her down.
Yeah. I mean, he's verbally abusive in all sorts of creative ways.
I've never seen someone be verbally abusive in so many different kinds of ways.
He definitely has done that to me, but he's been doing it to my mom for, I don't know, 25, 26 years.
Wow. Yeah, so he is that big, scary guy out in the world, ripping people off and bringing them down.
Well, except, right, and this is the awful part, and there's not much of this that isn't awful, right, with all due sympathy, right?
But the reality is that some guy out in a car dealership, yeah, I'm sure there are jerky car dealers around.
I'm sure, I mean, but they want to make money and you want to save money, right?
You're both going in with the same goal, right?
Some people, they do it a lot and you do it a little, right?
So maybe they have an edge and so on.
But so what? If you're happy with the price you paid for something, then who cares, right?
You've got what you want and so on, right?
Yeah. So, when he's talking about the car dealership guys, he's talking about a rough parity in terms of buying power.
You can go buy your car from anywhere.
You can not buy a car or whatever, right?
But he's actually ripping off, frightening, in a time of great stress, his helpless, dependent, tender, And I only say this, not because you're helpless now or anything like that, but that's where the power dynamic was established, right?
Right. So when he talks about there are bad people out there who in a voluntary situation may want to take advantage of you for their own gain...
He's projecting something that is completely innocuous relative to how he used his power as a father.
Right? Because your relationship with your father is not voluntary.
Right. I mean, it's voluntary in the future.
Sure as hell wasn't for your first two states, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So if he's saying, well, out there in voluntary relationship land, there are dangerous people and I need to warn you against them, it's like, dude, look in the mirror!
Do you think I need to be worried about bad men in car dealerships when I go shopping for a car at the age of 22?
Do you think that's number one of people, of men in my life who have treated me unjustly or in an exploitive manner?
Definitely not.
I mean, I'm not even going to shop for a car, but you're stressing me out right now.
Yeah, exactly. I'm weeks away from doing that and I'm already freaking out because of what he said.
But you're freaking out more about your family than about any car during a time when you need resources because you're going through a stressful transition, right?
And one thing that also came up when this happened was...
You know, if they can't do this for me, and I wasn't thinking of it this way, but I kind of figured that this was the pattern, I mean, the logic I was following.
If they can't be supportive and want to help me and if they're doing this if they're being obstructive and destructive then that must be how everyone wants to be to me that nobody can possibly care about me if these people don't so when I saw when when people actually you know we're giving me helpful things I think I'm going to go to my show.
You know, whatever good things they could have given me, that they're withdrawing that from me, withholding it, I guess.
But they're also taking away the possibility of anyone helping me because I'm not going to be able to receive that help.
Do you know what I mean? I certainly do understand that, but I'd like to, just before we get to that, I was leading in my agonizingly slow way to the question of diminishment, right?
To the question of feeling diminished.
I didn't mean to skip chapters.
Go on. No, no. What chapters, right?
This is all improv, right?
But this feeling of diminishment, I would submit, is not your feeling.
Oh. I had not thought about that.
And that's why you can't shake it.
Because it's not your feeling.
Wow. That's why it feels overwhelming.
Because it's not your feeling.
And that's why it's escalating as you become more independent.
I mean, again, over the last couple of days or whatever, right?
Because if your father...
Is leveling against his child, and I'm going to talk about you in a diminutive childlike sense for the moment, and I apologize for that, but I think it'll make some sense.
If I'm a boxer and I get pounded out of the ring by, I don't know, some not very good boxer, right?
And then I go out and I push over a guy in a wheelchair and dance around saying victory, victory...
Can you see that would be pretty pathetic, right?
Yes. That would be a pretty sick form of leveling, right?
Any parent who levels against his own child is much worse than that.
You have to come from such a small place to bully your child, to make yourself feel bigger.
You have to come from such a tiny little place that that's what you do to feel better about yourself.
Is you frightened your daughter?
That's how you get some sense of power?
Or authority?
Or that's how you put her down for getting her life started?
Is you frightened her?
You have to come from such a petty, atomic, little, nothing place that I can't imagine that your feeling of diminishing to nothing comes from you.
Okay. I mean, if I could show you a 45 second clip of his family, of my grandparents, you would feel really good about what a great conclusion you just came to without knowing them.
What do you mean? I mean that he does come from a place that was really like that, that couldn't have made him grow into anything.
No, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no.
Don't pull the environmental card with me, young lady.
Uh-oh, okay. Right, because the first thing that you did when I said that was you made an excuse, right?
For him? Yeah.
If I understood what you were saying correctly, which I want to make sure I did, right?
Oh, yeah, I guess I did.
I mean, I saw it as the...
No, it's not a snowball effect.
It's not a snowball effect.
Look, it certainly is true that everyone who ends up broken was originally broken by someone, but that doesn't mean they have to stay broken, right?
Your father is specifically rejecting any responsibility he has for his role as a parent, as we see with the example of your brother, right?
Right. And yes, there's no problem.
You can push away responsibility in your life.
And that causes you to not have to experience pain, anxiety, suffering.
All that happens is you just stop growing and you act unconsciously in negative ways.
Nobody wants responsibility fundamentally deep down.
I mean, wouldn't we all love to win the lottery and have angel wings?
I mean, wouldn't that be great?
I mean, deep down, responsibility is like dentistry.
It's just a necessary evil.
But the alternative is just so much worse, right?
Right. Oh, I don't like that the first reaction I had was to make an excuse for him.
That kind of... But you see, that would...
Sorry to interrupt, but that would, to me, be an indication that we're on the right path, right?
Because what would your dad's first reaction be?
Yeah, to find an excuse.
Right, so this indicates that we're in dad land, right?
Alright. Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
And I think what's heartbreaking for you is that you are experiencing to 0.1% the actual reality of your dad's experience of life.
What do you mean?
The diminishment to nothing and the depression that you felt.
If depression is not too strong a word, and I don't mean clinical or anything, but down, right?
I think it's fair. I think that that sense of diminishing to nothing and the depression, I think, is what your dad experiences.
That's the cost of not taking responsibility, and that is the cost of being an abuser.
Okay. And you can't shake it because it's not even yours.
I mean, if you think it's yours, then you'll try and, you know...
It's like that bit in RTR where someone's trying to lift the bed up, but they're using the wrong control, right?
Yeah.
But as you leave and as you launch to success, your dad is going to diminish to nothing because he can't level with you anymore.
Right?
He can't use you to prop himself up.
He can't get his little thrill of power and efficacy by bullying his dependent daughter and scaring her and whatever, right?
So he's fallen off a cliff in his mind, right?
Wow. He's diminishing to nothing.
And this is just between you and I and whoever else may end up listening to this.
That is the real heartbreak of seeing our parents, if they're not great people, of seeing them for who they are.
That is the real secret heartbreak that when I think of my own mother sitting in this This revolting, trash-strewn, decaying little apartment that she lives in, scribbling endless notes about how she's going to get the doctors and get the insurance companies and photograph all this stuff.
She sleeps with a knife under her pillow.
She's so paranoid that people are going to come and kill.
Like, she lives in hell.
You could not construct...
Were you the greatest sadist the world has ever spawned, you could not construct...
A more hellacious environment, that is the wages of sin, and I can't do anything about it, and no one can do anything about it, because the hell is her history, her past, what she did, what it's far too late to atone for, right?
And I think you're getting a whiff of that prison.
Wow. It's a pretty bad stench just from here.
Well, I mean, I always try to be really sensitive to not put words in people's mouth, but that's the only thing that really fits for me, because your dad is looking at you go away, and he's feeling small, right?
The diminishment that you're feeling, it can't be you, because you're launching on something that's great.
You already have done a lot of work with your family.
Mm-hmm. So it can't be that you feel diminished because bad people treat you badly.
That can't be a shock to you anymore, right?
And I'm not saying it doesn't hurt, right?
But not to this degree.
Because you also, I mean, having plowed through some podcasts or two, right – Having gone through that process, this is not incomprehensible to you that a bad person is going to treat you badly, right?
Not at all. Again, and it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt or anything like that, but it can't be this baffling or confusing for you, right?
So it has to be something that is outside your direct experience, but something that you get a whiff of.
This is called empathizing with the non-empathetic.
It is agony.
Because you are feeling what it's like to be your father with you leaving.
That's empathizing with somebody who doesn't have empathy.
And it is just awful.
It's absolutely like sticking your hand in a body.
It is just awful. I mean, is it too much to say that...
Because this is what I sense.
And I've got a fair amount of closure with this with my own parents, so I don't think that I'm re-experiencing anything.
But what I sense is that there's an almost supernatural kind of horror to this thing that you're experiencing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right. But you as a victim of an abuser...
You haven't done anything to generate a supernatural horror within yourself.
In fact, you're doing all the right and courageous and noble and wonderful and amazing things To get your life cleaned up, to close the cycle of abuse within your family, right?
So, you're not doing anything that could be generating...
If you said to me, I just strangled five kittens, then...
Well, maybe that has something to do with the supernatural horror, right?
But I think with you, it's only four?
It's three and a half.
Three and a half, right. But you're not doing anything that could generate that experience, right?
But your father is.
Oh.
And so, I guess, am I...
Because I try, I was thinking about the diminishing and feeling more and more insignificant.
And I've done that with other people all the time, thinking if they don't listen to something that I'm saying that I'm not worth listening to.
It comes up in so many other places, but I guess that's just me experiencing his own insignificance in all these other areas.
Again, this is just a theory, right?
So you can listen to this and say, I don't know what Steph was smoking that night.
So this is just a theory, right?
But I'll tell you that, like, having met you in person, you don't feel that way at all.
You don't strike me As that way, right?
As like, oh my god, if this person doesn't listen to me, I'm going to just...
Like, there's a certain kind of smell, in a sense, that comes like a certain kind of emotional thing that comes off people like that.
And the reason that I don't feel that is that I don't experience you as trying to control this conversation.
But your father does that, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, he's constantly...
Sorry, I'm getting a bit of an echo here.
If you could just maybe turn your mic down a bit.
But he's constantly trying to control and manage and dodge and manipulate and fog and change.
He's constantly managing the conversation, right?
Mm-hmm. That is the action of somebody who's called a codependent or, you know, whatever we want to, however we want to describe it, but that's somebody who is genuinely hanging off other people's words for his sustenance, right?
You can't not control other people's language if their language has the power, if their approval or rejection has the power to save or damn you, right?
Yeah, that makes sense.
But that's not how you are in conversation.
Not when you were talking to me, not when you were talking to my wife, not when you were talking to other people.
I just don't get that sense from you at all.
I find you very open and curious, right?
So this sense that if people don't listen to what I'm saying, I cease to exist, that's not how I experience my interactions with you at all.
And I have a pretty good nose for this stuff.
that's good to hear now you have a you have a good heart right And you have a very agile mind.
And, I mean, you have, I think, a great degree of emotional sensitivity and so on.
And, you know, people who are really codependent and desperate for the approval of other people and so on.
Well, A, they'd never be at Miami at all, right?
But you feel that.
You feel that coming off people, right?
Because you take a deep breath and they tense up, right?
And they're just watching you and then they keep interrupting you and they keep changing and altering what it is that you're saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but, but, right?
That kind of stuff, right? Yeah.
Yeah. And that's not you, right?
No, I don't really think that's me, you know.
And that doesn't mean that you like rejection or anything like that, but it's not.
Your father is really focused on managing and controlling conversations, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I would submit that all of this is a hangover from not listening to me.
Wait. My dad's hangover?
No, your experience of the diminishment and the depression, I would say, with no humility whatsoever, was a result of not listening to me.
Oh, wow.
And that's fine. You don't have to listen to me.
I just think that there are, and of course, when I say me, I don't mean me.
The truth, right? The book, right?
But unless, I miss my guess, you did not RTR with your dad when he was talking to you about buying a car, right?
Oh my god, no. I had tried to talk to him to do some RTR like a couple of weeks before that and it turned into him screaming at me for close to two hours on the phone and I just decided I was never going to really try to talk to him again.
And right now it's just we take care of administrative things but the relationship is over.
I would not waste my breath trying to RTR with him.
Well, but you don't RTR for other people's benefit.
You RTR for closure.
For your benefit.
I see. Because if you'd have said, Dad, I feel really scared and upset when you tell me that there are all these scary people out there, right?
I don't like it when you do that.
I'm going through a lot of stress right now.
I'd really rather there be support rather than fear-mongering stories.
Yeah, that would have been a little different.
Well, what I'm saying is that the infection...
Again, this is all just...
The infection passed from him to you, and RTR always prevents that infection.
His sense of diminishment is like this psychological unconscious transfer, right?
It passed from him to you.
And that can only happen when you're not RTR-ing.
And when I mean RTR-ing, it's got nothing to do with me or the book or anything.
When you're just being honest and open about what your experience of the other person is, they can infect you with their own sickness.
Hmm. Right. And I'll give you just a tiny example, because I know this is all stupid and abstract, right?
But, you know, there are people on the board continually, and this fills my inbox and so on, who condescend to me, right?
Hmm. And there was a guy, this guy who's doing this Molyneux project, right?
Oh yeah, I've read that. He's very condescending, I find, right?
I experience him as very condescending and I find that he just makes up whatever argument he wants and I don't even need to be there, right?
Yeah, I got the same thing when I read that blog about the Molyneux project.
Right, so how is it that I don't end up feeling diminished by that?
Right?
Because they genuinely, really, and totally want to put me down, but it doesn't happen for me.
And it was in that, I don't know if you've read, there's a thread where he just came down with some, just, to me, jaw-droppingly condescending stuff, right?
I mean, if Aristotle comes back to life or Ayn Rand, they can condescend to me from here to the end of time, right?
Or whatever, right? Maybe not Rand, but certainly some of the real, you know, geniuses.
Fantastic! You know, I'm at their feet, I'm learning, blah, blah, blah.
I don't know that, you know, a young whippersnapper, you know, philosophy student is going to be the one to condescend to me in a way that is going to be particularly believable, especially when I've seen the quality of his arguments, right?
But the way that I don't get infected by these people is if they say something that bothers me, I try to be, well, I don't try, I am honest with them about my experience of what they're doing, right?
Not for them. I'm not trying to educate them.
I just want to make sure that I don't end up being infected with the littleness they're trying to inject into me.
Right. Oh, and see, I thought that if I avoided being honest, I could just end the conversations more quickly and they could just kind of disappear.
But they're actually lingering so much more when I don't do that.
Well, because they have already gotten you to break with your values, right?
Once you've decided to not be honest.
Sure.
And it allows you to continue a relationship where you can't be honest.
Where you have to hide, where you have to be controlled, where you have to watch what you say, where you have to manage these predators, right?
Yeah.
Because you gave up on RTRing with your dad, your dad can still be in your life and wreak his wreckage, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Because when I say to somebody who's trying to put me down, I experience this as kind of humiliating and condescending, a good and reasonable and decent human being will say, oh my god, I'm so sorry.
I've been reading this post and yeah, I can totally see what you mean.
I was coming off really kind of hoity-toity and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I'm really, really sorry.
You know, what can I do to whatever, restart this conversation, right?
That's what a reasonable person would do, right?
Mm-hmm. Now, a jerk will sit there and say, you know, I don't know where you got that from.
Who cares? Let's move on with the topic, right?
Oh my god. He said exactly that.
He's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
That's not true. And then he kind of giggled.
Well, my dad, when I, remember I said I gave up on RTRing with him because I had tried it before and he had such an irritating response.
That was his response.
I don't know what you're talking about.
That's not true at all.
And then he kind of giggled as if I were crazy for saying that I felt that way.
Right. And that's exactly what this Donnie with an A fellow did as well, right?
Like, haha, I don't know where you're getting that from.
Anyway, enough of your craziness.
Let's get back to the topic at hand, right?
Right. And it's like, okay, so you obviously don't care about me as a human being.
I will not be instructed by people who do not care about me as a human being.
I will not be. It is way too dangerous to be instructed, to be lectured.
I won't even take directions from somebody who isn't a nice person.
It's way too dangerous to take instruction from people, even if they're completely right.
It is way too dangerous to to take instruction from people who aren't empathetic, kind, and considerate.
And that doesn't mean that you never get into conflicts, but it's treated respectfully and decently, right?
So if people are kind of condescending and I say, you know, I really experienced that kind of negatively, and blah blah blah, and they're like, who cares?
Then I'm like, okay, so you don't care about me, you don't care about my thoughts, you don't care about my feelings, you don't care about...
So, if you don't care about me, But you want to lecture me?
Then what do you know about truth and wisdom?
Right? Because the truth, reason equals virtue equals happiness, right?
If somebody is able to deal with you in a positive and productive way, then they obviously understand something about two equals talking to each other, right?
And if they put you down or if they lord it over you or if they fog you or if they, you know, condescend or whatever, then they don't know smack about truth and it's just a play act for their own vanity.
It's got nothing to do with you.
It's got nothing to do with me.
And that gives me closure.
Then I don't feel diminished anymore.
I don't feel hurt because it's like, okay, I opened myself up to this person.
I said what my experience was and bam, right?
Yeah. So it's like, okay, so when they condescend towards me, it has nothing to do with me.
Because I said, oh, listen, by the way, that wasn't very pleasant.
And they don't give a shit, right?
Yep. We're not talking about my guy, right?
We're talking about your guy, right?
Yeah. Because wisdom, knowledge, wisdom, and...
Should make you kind, right?
Yeah. So when people lord it over me or you with their knowledge and they brush aside, it's like, you don't have that much knowledge if you're a jerk, right?
Not about philosophy.
You may know a bunch about geography.
You may even know which page number Aristotle says the word prophylactic on, right?
But you don't know anything about wisdom.
And so, why should I listen to you about ethics if you are rude, right?
If you can't even master rudeness, why would I listen to you about ethics?
And so, with your dad, if you give up being honest, that's because he wants you to, right?
Right? So I was right.
He is controlling me.
Yeah, look, you gave him what he wanted.
He's like, if I piss, scream, and moan at her for two hours, she'll stop this bullshit, right?
And what did you do? I stopped the bullshit.
You're like, here's a kibble, right?
You had your tantrum for long enough, here's a big bowl of ice cream.
I'll give up my values and I'll stop being honest.
And the funny thing is that your mother is so proud about you not having a tantrum, right?
Right?
Oh yeah. But your dad has all the tantrums he wants, right?
Yep. And gets exactly what he wants from that, right?
Yeah, every time, I think.
Right, except for that one time, right, where you stayed in the conversation with him, RTR-ing as best you could in this horrible storm of abuse, for two hours, right?
Yeah. But then you said to yourself, oh shit, well that wasn't fun, but I still need stuff, so I'll continue this, but I'm dropping the RTR, right?
Right. And that's how he could infect you with his own experience, right?
Yeah, I saw it as, this is hopeless.
Why am I wasting my breath trying to get them to see what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking right now?
If I'm telling him this, he's reacting like a complete jerk, yelling at me, and my mom is in the background, and I can hear her feeding him lines, finishing his sentences.
Oh, they were tag-teaming, right?
Oh yeah, they were ganging up on me big time.
So for you, you have an out, though, called, I'll stop being honest because there are technical things that I need, right?
Yeah. But that's, see, RTR is a one-way street, seriously, with people, right?
Because once you've RTR'd, you've shown something vulnerable to people, right?
You've shown what you need.
You've shown what you want.
You've shown that you need something from them, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So then if you stop RTR-ing, because they're cruel and abusive, you're like, hey, it really hurts when you do this, Mr.
Sadist. Want to do this some more?
Like, RTR rips the veil off, you can't put it back on.
I mean, you can, but this is the result, right?
Because if only the shield gets you into battle, don't stay in the battle and drop the shield, Oh, wow. That's a good analogy.
Hey. An hour!
I got a good... Let me make an...
An analogy.
Right? Oh, no.
No, but seriously, right?
Because people will say, oh, shit, RTR didn't work, so I'll stop RTRing and stick around.
It's like, no, no, no, no, right?
If RTR doesn't work...
then keep doing it until you don't want to be around these people for any reason.
Right?
But don't turn off the truth for you.
Because it's out there now, right?
She needs something.
She wants something. We now can control her again in a way that we haven't.
When she was blank to us, right?
When she gave us nothing but smiling compliance and emptiness, we had no hooks in her.
Now she has shown us her raw heart.
she has shown us her needs.
that's blood in the water for a shark right yeah
it is because you felt worse with regards to interactions with your family after you RTR'd than you had for years before.
right? Yeah, of course.
I had never been yelled at in 22 years.
And I've always been really anxious about that when someone raises their voice.
I get really scared.
I'm really unfamiliar with that.
And for him to yell the way he did, it really was...
I don't use this word a lot, but it was terrifying.
Right. Well, it is terrifying.
It is terrifying. Because that's how small they feel.
That's how pitiful it is that you're asked honest questions by a curious child that you claim to love and you scream at them.
That's how sick and desperate and, frankly, evil they've become.
And I bet you it happened when you were very young as well.
Because there's a reason you hadn't done this for two decades, right?
Talk about what I was feeling?
Yeah. We're all born talking about what we feel, right?
We're hungry, we cry, we're happy, we laugh.
I mean, we're all born with that direct, clear channel of communication, feeling and communication, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And I also think that watching my brother get into trouble and getting punished for it, and he was beaten, not a lot, but he was beaten enough for me to be scared of that.
I mean, that also wasn't a very good motivation for me to do anything that I didn't perceive was going to be desirable for my parents.
Sure, sure.
And, in fact, you did a bit of neutral language there.
Oh, really? Oh, shoot.
It wasn't very positive motivation for me to speak my mind.
Okay, fine. Right?
You didn't want to get assaulted, right?
Yeah. Oh, and the yelling, you know, I said I had never been yelled at in 22 years, but I saw them yelling at my brother, and that was really, you know, really scary.
Right. And there's also a reason why you didn't start off by telling me this rather important fact about your dad, right?
That you'd RTR'd with him and yelled at for the first time in your life for two hours?
Yeah, why didn't I bring that up?
That was such a big deal back then.
Because we were in dad land, right?
And your dad doesn't want that out.
Nope, he doesn't. Sorry, let me just, I just want to, because I think that's important, right?
Just spend a second, I don't want to interrupt your thought, we'll go right back to it.
But, you know, we started off in dad land, and you didn't tell me, because my jaw just dropped when you said, oh, I tried RTRing with him for two hours, and he screamed at me, and my mom was feeding him lines.
Right, that would be pretty important information to start with when you're talking about what's going on with your dad, right?
It's not really that much about a car dealership, right?
Oh, no. I know.
This has nothing to do with cars.
Right. But if we're in dad land, you're not going to bring that up.
You're going to bring up something inconsequential because that's your dad's way of doing it, right?
Yeah. Oh, man.
But after we separated, and again, this is all just theory, right?
But after we separated your dad's feelings from yours, what happened?
Right. That's funny.
I don't know, that became such a big deal, what happened there.
I started thinking about how scary that was, about what I was really avoiding by not RTRing with him this whole time.
Right. After we separate your feelings from your dad's feelings, you can tell me what was actually important to you, not what your dad would like hidden, right?
Right. And he made it so obvious that he wanted to hide what had just happened.
On, I don't know, whatever level, he saw that what he did was wrong because he started telling me how much he loved me, like, I don't know, minutes after the yelling spree.
And it made no sense and I was really disgusted.
Right, right.
And of course, in hindsight, you can totally understand why my jaw just dropped when you talked about that, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Like, 911, there's a rat in my kitchen.
And then it's like two hours later, oh, and my arm fell off.
Right? But that's, I mean, what that does, though, is that it supports the thesis, which, of course, is that it's just a thesis, right?
But it supports the thesis that you were experiencing your dad's feelings, right?
Not yours, right?
Because he didn't want this talked about and this of course would be by any objective standard this would be the most important thing to tell me, right?
That you had a massive break with your dad and the first time he's yelled at you ever, right?
Yeah.
And that you listened to this crazy ass RTR book and look what happened.
*sniff* Thank you.
So that would be, you know, on any objective scale of values, right?
And I would say, I would dare say on your scale of values, that's the most important thing that happened, right?
And that was 50 minutes after we started talking, right?
So this just indicates that we started off in dead land, right?
Wow, yeah, and now that whole conversation with him just kind of came back, and I started replaying it, and I remembered why that was so devastating to hear.
I mean, he did things like, he told me that I had no feelings, no capacity to understand anyone else's feelings, because, you know, other people do have feelings, I just don't.
And that I, he said things about how, you know, he couldn't believe that If there had been a listening problem and that I had been unhappy with them and I had had issues, that I would let it get to this point where I was destroying all the family relationships instead of just bringing up, oh, hey, Dad, you know, I'm not feeling like you listen to me.
But that is so absurd that he would say that when he's not listening to me as I'm saying it now.
And why was I the one who was responsible for figuring out that there was a problem?
Why didn't he see all this?
You know, everything fell on me.
He blamed me for all the problems right now.
He was yelling it, which is scary.
And then, not confusing me, but like grossing me out by saying he loved me right after all of that is...
Well, and we don't have to spend too long on this conversation.
Yeah, no, no, not that I want to.
I'm sure you get a lot of it, but I just wanted to point out one or two things.
About that conversation.
And it sounds completely demonic, in my opinion.
Like, it sounds like, I mean, there is an metaphor that I sometimes recall or springs to my mind.
Like, trying to get close to my mom is like sticking my hand in a skull full of maggots, right?
Like, it really is a revolting, revolting place to be.
This kind of demonic and abusive conversation is a layer of human hell in the personality of certain people that I am absolutely and totally sorry that you had to see, let alone experience, as parents.
We just should not ever see this kind of stuff.
Of course, people who don't take responsibility open the floodgates wide to every form of projection in the planet, right?
Because any bad feeling they have must be other people's fault, right?
When he is screaming at you that you have no feelings, he is treating you as if you have no feelings.
But he is the one, of course, who has no feeling, right?
Yeah. When he says, when you bring up a reasonable problem, or a problem in a reasonable way about the family, when he says, when he screams at you and abuses you and says, you are destroying this family, who is destroying this family?
He is. And I bet you if you went through every single goddamn complaint the son of a bitch had about you in this conversation, it would be an exact mirror of what he himself was doing, and you were not.
Oh yeah.
Definitely.
And I'm sorry.
I mean, that is just an awful...
And, of course, earlier you had talked a little bit about your long-suffering mom, right?
And now she's like feeding ammo to this asshole, right?
Oh, yeah, my mom with her anxiety.
No, yeah, yeah, with her, she suffered under his whip tongue and she's more successful.
And now she's like, fuck yeah, let me hold her down while you kick her, right?
Yeah, I think they deserve each other.
They're both really, really a mess.
Well, they're bad people.
They've chosen that life.
They have chose to act it out.
Your father did not sit there with his hands shaking and say, oh my god, I just screamed at my daughter for two hours straight.
I'd better go and see an anger management counselor because I am out of control.
It's not just what people do.
It's what they do or don't do afterwards, right?
Right. That tells you who they really are.
I mean, Lord knows nobody's perfect.
We can all lose control. We can all snap.
We can all be mean. We can all say cutting things.
I mean, we can all do that, right?
So that is not the standard by which I judge people, right?
If somebody's mean or snarky to me or whatever, I try to say it and I see what they do, right?
And if they don't do anything or if they come back even more aggressively, it's like that is now how I know who you are.
Not some off-the-cuff remark or some wounding thing or some snappy thing, but what do you do with that?
What do you do when you realize you've done something wrong, right?
And with your dad, he's like, oh shit, I better start burying the bodies and lying.
Yeah. He just covered it up with, oh, you know, I love you, Jess, and he was all cheery, and then everything was erased and fixed, and everything was perfect.
Right. And his outburst worked.
You stopped occurring, but you didn't leave his life, right?
And I thought it had been a liberating experience because it really pushed me to not feel guilty about leaving them, but at the same time, look at how much he's been controlling me this whole time.
Well, and I would say that it's because...
I think that you were like, if I don't RTR, I'm safe, right?
Yeah. But, of course, you spent 22 years not RTRing with them, and you weren't safe, right?
Yep. And so, if you...
Everything we talk about here has nothing to do with rules.
It's all just about being conscious of stuff, right?
Just being as aware as humanly possible, which is sort of what we're trying to do in this ridiculous project that's going on here, right?
So if you say, look, I have to get some technical shit done with my family, I have to get this, I have to get my birth certificate, like all of the standard refugee stuff that goes on with the DFU situation.
If I have to get this shit done, I'm not doing it alone.
I'm going in fully conscious that I'm in a very risky and dangerous situation.
I'm going to detox afterwards with the kindest and best person that I know who I can spill my guts to.
Right?
You just, you go in knowing that you're going to eat, you know, a big tasty turd sandwich and you get some antibiotics, right?
Yep.
I mean, if you're going to drop your shield, to use the metaphor again, at least have a couple of medics around for when you get shot, right? - All right.
But don't just limp around saying, I don't know, my legs are weak.
I don't know what's going on.
And you know what the, like, I don't know, this just seems really sad now, that after I had that little breakdown that after I had that little breakdown where I got really sad and started feeling what I was explaining at the beginning, I went to sleep that night and the
I went to sleep that night and the next day I woke up and I tried so hard to minimize it and I got embarrassed that I had had such a strong reaction to all of this.
Like, "Oh my God, I was crying all over the place." Like, jeez, you know, I'm just going to try really hard to forget about that.
Pretend it didn't happen. How embarrassing.
Suck it up, soldier. Right.
Yeah. Right.
And the reason for that is that the reason that we stay RTRing with people is because when we stop RTRing with them, we stop RTRing with ourself, right?
Right. Because you were no longer curious about what happened.
And I understand this. I still have dreams about my brother or whatever.
And I'll wake up and say, damn it!
What the hell is this, right?
Six years or whatever. But Christine, of course, says, well, why do you think you're having the dream?
You know, like, use your big words, right?
You know, like...
She reminds me that my opinion about what is occurring for me isn't that important.
What is important is to be curious about what is occurring for me and assume that the feelings are there to help.
Yeah, and that's the opposite of what I did.
I completely tried to invalidate them.
I labeled them as excessive and unreasonable and just, you know...
And that's Deadland, right?
That's Deadland, right?
So that's where the infection had already occurred, right?
Right. I was covering it up for him.
Right, right. He wants you to feel that it's ridiculous and excessive and crazy.
So then you're like, okay, I know the script.
Ridiculous, excessive, crazy.
Got it. I'm off. Don't worry about a thing.
Your secret's safe with me, right?
Ugh, yeah.
Gross.
And how are you feeling now?
I mean, gross is not necessarily always the best conversation.
Like, you can't taste that shit sandwich now, right?
Well, I'm grossed out because of that situation and how embarrassed I managed to feel because I had had these feelings.
That makes me really sad.
But at the same time, it feels really good to kind of figure it out and to kind of see the script.
I really, really am not aware of it.
The good news is that your feelings were really trying to help you there, right?
Danger, danger, right?
Infection, infection, right?
Yeah, that's true. It reminds me, this is a stupid example, but nonetheless, I went to the Science Center.
I think I mentioned this in the podcast once, but I went to the Science Center last year with Christina.
And there was this big exhibit about how germs get transmitted, right?
And there was like a sneeze thing that blew in the air, and there were these little things where you could grab the joysticks and be the antibodies and stuff like that.
And the place was full of kids sneezing, right?
Yeah. And I'm grabbing all these joysticks and I'm walking through the mist covered with God knows what kind of black plague bacillus that is floating around from this, you know, room full of rugrats which have every form of scrofula known to the planet, right?
Do I wash my hands after I've watched this big video on how germs are transmitted and touched all these germ-laden things?
No! I go and get myself a stupid-ass cold that lasts for two weeks, right?
I mean, I'm sitting there, oh, that's how germs are translated.
Let me lick this child's mucousy forehead, right, or something.
It's like, this is how distracted or whatever we can be from the facts, the very simple facts in front of us, right?
And your feelings were like, danger, danger, right?
We really feel bad about this.
We're in a situation of danger.
And you're like, nope, that's bad.
We're going to minimize it, right? Yeah.
So, it's good news, right?
I mean, it's good news because if you can't taste the shit, you keep eating it, so to speak, right?
But it's good news because you were feeling...
Like, if you hadn't felt bad and minimized it, that would be really bad news, right?
Wow. Yeah, I'd be pretty lost there.
Yeah, it's like, if I get a toothache but don't go to the dentist...
Then I can kick myself, but if I don't even get a toothache, that's really bad, right?
Because I don't have any symptoms, right?
Yeah. I mean, assuming the tooth is infected and all.
Yeah, you have nowhere to start to fix things.
I don't even know there's a problem.
I'm just totally blind until my jaw falls off, right?
So it's good that you felt...
These strong feelings that you had to minimize because your feelings are like, no, no, we want to, you know, we need to help you.
We need to keep you safe. And you're like, shut up, get back in the dungeon, right?
You're asking me right now, right?
But it's really good news.
And, you know, it's the old apologize to your feelings kind of thing, right?
But it's really good news that you did feel this because it means that your defense mechanisms, your emotional apparatus, the entire infrastructure, the Miko system alarm is working perfectly, right?
You just got to listen to it. Right.
I'm just going through the list of people I've talked to recently, seeing if I've left anybody more depressed.
I don't think so. No, you have not left me depressed at all.
Guy on the ledge? No, it wasn't that bad.
No, I'm just kind of shocked.
It's... It's, I don't know, it's crazy.
I thought I had a lot of this figured out, but, oh man, I was missing some really big parts.
You do. Yeah, look, this is not all going to be this hard, right?
This was like the Olympics, right?
You went back in after having hearty heart and opened your heart to a bunch of sadists, right?
So, the reason that you want to feel these feelings is you don't have to figure something out this complicated again, right?
It's not like, oh my god, human relationships are so complex, I thought I knew what was going on, you know, an hour and a half of talking to Steph and I don't have a clue, right?
No, that's not what it is, right?
What it is is that your feelings are trying to steer you away from relationships that are this unmanageable, right?
I couldn't manage this, you couldn't manage this, nobody could manage this, because it's parents and it's history and it's hardwired, right?
So your feelings are saying, this is an unmanageable situation.
This is not a tame lion, right?
We're going to get mauled every time, right?
So it's stay out of the cage, right?
So it's not like...
And so it is that you're getting this stuff for sure, because you got the feelings after, right?
You just ignore it. So you're getting this stuff for sure, and your feelings are saying, we can't get this stuff, and nobody can, so stay away from it, right?
Right. Right, your immune system is saying, hey, I can handle a cold, I can handle a flu.
Cannonball to the head, not so much, right?
So let's not be on the cannon range.
Oh, do I still sound really depressed?
I'm trying not to.
No, no, no, don't. It was just a couple of times you were like...
At this point in the FDR conversation, the oxygen mask should be dropping from the ceiling.
Please help children and young animals for yourself, right?
Oh, no, it just seemed funny.
I can't breathe.
I've had so much help, I don't want to move.
Right? But no, I think that getting that you're feeling a little better, right?
Because it is a little bit like a climbing out of a cage of history or something, right?
It is a difficult thing, but once you're out, it's like you shake yourself and like, oh man, I couldn't believe I was in there, right?
Oh my god, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Okay, well, is there anything, I mean, this is a lot of stuff to digest, but is there anything else that you wanted to mention or talk about at this point?
I mean, I had a couple of other things that randomly came to mind.
I don't know how important they are now because I think, yeah, we dealt with the pretty big stuff.
But when you brought up something about my dad and his insignificance, I thought about how they, one pattern I've noticed is that they take credit for my accomplishments.
And I don't know, I guess that I could still go back and listen to what you said about My dad's insignificance and all of that.
And that would probably help explain it, but...
I mean, I'll give you... The simple answer is that if he can take credit for your accomplishments, then he doesn't have to feel bad about his own lack of accomplishments, right?
Yeah, it's true.
Yeah, see?
We got it covered. Well, you would have got that in 10 seconds, but anyway, so...
No, I think this is really great.
Thank you so much. This is awesome.
Okay, great. Well, of course, you know the drill, right?
I'll send you a copy and I got two notes where you put your name in.
I don't care about your name.
It's a first syllable.
It's not even a full name. But if you want it removed, just let me know.
But have a listen and let me know what you think.
Definitely. Well, thank you so much.
Well, thanks for calling. I mean, I think it was a really good thing that you did because I think it would have been really, really tough and this could have gone on for quite some time to kick without an outside view.
Yeah. Wow. Definitely very, very helpful and I took some notes.
Excellent. All right. I'll send this to you tomorrow.
Okay. Thank you so much and have a good night.
▲
Export Selection