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May 23, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:02:33
1074 James and Beth and Death (couple convo)

How the past doth grasp like a hand from the grave...

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Time Text
Hello.
Hi, it's Stephanie.
How's it going? Hello.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yeah. Excellent.
I can hear you fine. Beautiful.
Beautiful. So, I'm all ears.
Shockingly, not all talk.
All ears. Um...
Okay, so what happened the other night?
Um... Well...
Where do we start?
With my classmate's death?
Or... The joke I attempted but failed at?
Oh, no. That was last night.
No, I'm thinking the night before or Tuesday.
Um... From what I recall...
You were telling me about a podcast you listened to, and I said, I don't know what to tell you.
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
And, um...
What happened was...
I... I just was, like, taken...
Taken aback, and...
I didn't know what happened.
I was like, what the heck just happened? Um...
And then what we did was...
It took...
There was a little bit of time that passed, and then I said...
I started talking about how that really...
I didn't even say it hurt me yet, right?
I said something else first, right?
I can't remember. Yeah, I think you said it was sort of a pirate thing, if I remember right.
Oh yeah, yeah. I realized that it was kind of a pirate thing, that the whole coming back with I don't know what to tell you, just sort of that cut off.
And I think that's when I realized that it hurt.
But there was something...
I really can't remember, but there was something in there where you said you apologized, right?
Yeah. And then I realized that I felt hurt, and then...
I think that was okay.
But what I was...
What I was unclear on was how did that...
And this is something that I was talking about in the chat later, how we got to there, where you said that and then I felt hurt and how the whole interaction played out.
Is that about right?
Yeah, I believe so.
And I appreciate that.
But Beth, you were saying that there was something about the death of your friend, which of course I'm really, really sorry to hear about.
Was there something that occurred for you then?
Because it sounds a little more fresh or something that was more immediate for you, if that makes sense?
It wasn't a friend, but a classmate who I had good interactions with throughout middle and high school.
And... After graduation, we didn't keep touch or anything, but just reading about his death the other day sort of sent a shock through me.
For me, I guess in a sense, it was kind of unreal.
That sort of thing shouldn't be happening.
I don't know what else.
I'm trying to remember. And was it something that...
I mean, how was it for you guys to talk about this death or this thing that happened, which obviously is shocking and sad?
I remember yesterday morning when I was talking to James over Instant Messenger and I mentioned the classmate's death and, you know, feeling shock and whatnot.
And... There was something you said that made me feel a bit angry, where he mentioned, well, you know, it's a good thing you're not close to this guy.
Ah, the minimizing. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's...
I admit that.
Yeah. And that's good.
I mean, in a sense, it's easier to, because you've had a shock, and again, you know, much sympathy and empathy for it, Beth, but you've had a shock that's kind of recent.
I think that going back before that is going to seem almost trivial, if that makes sense.
Mm-hmm. So, I mean...
I agree. Yeah, it might be worth talking about that more so, if that makes sense.
Okay. Okay. So, when you felt...
How did this guy die, by the way?
He's so young. Oh, gosh.
From what I understand, sometime after high school, according to the article I read, he was diagnosed with bipolarism.
He was on his way back from Medford, Oregon.
And the highway from...
Basically from the Grants Pass area, Medford, out to the coast, you know, it's in Oregon, then it dips down into California and comes out, you know, near the Oregon-California border.
And it was in this little town called Hiuchi, California, where, if I remember right, the police there saw him driving rather radically And I don't know if they pulled him over or what, but apparently he had two dogs with him.
One, he told the dog, you know, sick boy or girl, whatever the dog was, you know, dog starts charging, dog gets shot, and then they shoot him.
Huh. The police did.
Right. Okay.
And, yeah.
Yeah. And did he have any, or was there any indication that this was a, did you know anything about this when he was in school with you?
No. As far as I know, he didn't have, you know, bipolarism in high school.
It wasn't until afterwards.
Right, right. Okay.
Okay, and so you heard about this and you pinged James on I Am, is that right?
Yeah, we were talking on I Am when I found out.
Right, and so then for you, James, there was something which occurred, right, which made you feel uncomfortable, is that right?
Well, we were talking about it a little bit, and...
Well, okay, so what happened was I sort of...
Well, sort of.
I got this information and relayed it into the FDR chest.
Like, you know, gee whiz, you know, my girlfriend just found out that a...
That one of her classmates from high school died.
We're still in our 20s, so that's still pretty young.
Well, and it's a little more than just died.
I mean, in the sense of the shock.
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, right.
No, he was murdered.
No, you're right. You're right.
That's right. And...
You know...
And for me, it's kind of like...
You know, and I'm just starting to feel it now, actually.
I felt like I was a million miles away.
And I'm like, tell me about your feelings.
Why are you feeling shocked? I mean, not why are you feeling shocked, but describe it to me.
Because I felt like I wasn't understanding it at all.
Well, but in a sense, you must have been understanding something or you wouldn't have felt a million miles away, right?
Right, right. I mean, if she was just telling you, I went to get my hair colored and this and that, you wouldn't feel a million miles away, right?
No, no. Okay.
That's just important. You were definitely getting the emotional content, but it showed up for you as a kind of disconnectedness, right?
That's right. Yeah. Okay, so it was not...
Beth, it was you who got the information, right?
Yeah. And then you...
Did you IM James immediately?
I... Yeah, I pretty much did.
As soon as I saw who it was that was killed, because I read the initial story last week in which, you know, the guy who was killed was not named.
And then once I realized that this was somebody I went to school with, after reading it yesterday, you know, I instantly...
I told him, you know, OMG, you know, a classmate's been killed, or something along those lines.
And that was on IM? Yeah.
And James, were you at work?
Yes. And what was your, like, were you hyper busy about to go into a meeting, or was it not so bad, or what?
No, I wasn't so busy.
Okay, so you definitely had time.
I mean, we're just trying to figure out the circumstances so we can focus on the stuff that happened between you, right?
So there was no immediate can't talk about it.
So you had the capacity to talk about it.
When you got the news from Beth, how did you experience that?
that?
What was your first thought or feeling?
It was kind of a... I...
Not complete blankness or anything, but...
It just didn't hit me in any real way.
Well, it did. Sorry, just to be precise.
It must have, because otherwise you would have stayed present, right?
Right, right. What I'm trying to say is, however it hit me, I don't remember feeling anything.
Okay, and did you feel nothing, so to speak?
Because that's a different feeling, right?
Yeah. Yeah, that's what it was.
So I was kind of sitting there like, she tells me about this classmate and I just kind of, well, yeah, I pretty much feel nothing at that point.
And why do you think that was?
I mean, obviously you don't care about this guy because you don't even know him, right?
Other than an abstract human life.
But it's Beth's feelings that that would be the challenge in that sense, right?
Right, right. Because we usually feel nothing when we feel that something is required of us that we cannot provide in the moment, if this makes any sense. Yeah, I think I follow you.
Like, in my marriage, Christina used to.
to.
It's not so bad anymore.
But she used to have trouble if I was upset or unhappy, giving me comfort because she just wasn't used to it.
And she also, her dad could be a bit manipulative.
So she was cautious about it and so on.
So it was just a challenge for her to do that.
It wasn't anything that I did.
It was just, it just came out of her own history.
history, right?
But, um, so she, she wanted to consciously wanted to, uh, give me comfort in this, that and the other.
But at the same time, uh, she just didn't feel able to.
And so she'd kind of space out.
Because it's an impossible situation.
When you want to be there for someone, but for some reason you can't, then we kind of zone out, right?
Yeah. I mean, emotionally, I was, like, empty.
But I knew that I had to try to talk to Beth in some way.
Because, obviously, this is a really rough situation.
Yeah. And the other impossible situation, sorry to interrupt, but the other impossible situation, of course, is you don't want to say, well, I know that you're going through a real shock, but interestingly enough, I feel next to nothing, and I'd like to talk about it, because that feels selfish, right?
Yeah, just a bit, yeah.
Right, so, I mean, whether it is or not, it doesn't really matter, but that's sort of what it would feel like, right?
Yeah, Beth? Yeah.
Yeah, it would feel like that.
It would feel like, well, I know that you just learned about one of your classmates being murdered, but I don't feel anything.
That would be kind of...
Right, right.
Yeah, I get it. Yeah, I get you.
And Beth, does that sort of make sense to you?
Yeah, it does. And when it comes to this kind of what would be called emotional availability, and I know that that's sort of sometimes a cudgel that is used against men but will use it with all good faith, that sense of emotional availability, would you say that that is something in your relationship that is a challenge for James with regards to you or as a whole or is it just shown up once or twice?
I think it has happened once in a while, if I remember right, but I can't seem to recall any other examples.
And would you say that...
Actually, no, we'll come back to that.
So, and also, right, so James, the RTR aspect of this becomes sort of impossible immediately, right?
At least it feels that way.
Because you've got to be there for her, but you don't feel empathy, and you're alarmed that you don't feel empathy, but you can't talk about how you don't feel empathy, because then it seems selfish, right?
Yeah, and then just, you know, even circumstantially, I'm at work, and, you know, I quote, can't, although, you know, I could, obviously, but you feel that obligation there, too.
Oh, yeah, but I mean, if she needed to go, you might find a way, right?
I mean... No, of course not.
I'd be like, I'm going by.
Yeah, no, I understand. So, Beth, was James' response surprising to you here, or was it something that didn't surprise you?
Because, I mean, I'm sure that you picked up his emotional distance, right?
Yeah. It's like he's reading from the cue cards, you know, like, express empathy.
Sigh. Say, how are you doing?
Turn off the microphone so she can't hear sound of typing.
Ask again how she's feeling.
Express sympathy. It's like that.
It's a little mechanical. Is that right?
I suppose so.
I mean, I guess, in a way, I was not surprised.
I mean, considering that he has told me about...
How he felt. I remember long before yesterday's event happened that he told me about a classmate of his that died who was a bully or whatever and he didn't feel, I don't know, I think he said empathy or something.
He didn't feel sad at the loss of that classmate.
And so when his remark popped up on the instant messenger, There was a part of me that was just all, what the fuck?
Do you mean by that?
And then at the same time, it's like, well, of course.
Right. And sorry, just before we continue, have you guys made attempts to get in touch with your alumni or whatever associations to warn the remaining classmates of you have how dangerous it is to be an ex-classmate of yours since they're dropping like flies?
You may need to be proactive as far as that goes and just tell people to...
karma that seems to be floating around this situation.
So what was the comment that James put into the chat window that bothered you so much? - It was something along the lines of, well, Right. And your experience of that, I'm getting some irritation, you know, call me psychic, but I'm getting some irritation,
but tell me what, because you knew what was going on there, and that's probably why, I mean, that's why you felt irritated, but what was your, I mean, your conscious thought was like, dude, what the hell, right, kind of thing, right?
Yeah. But you did know what was going on, right?
Yeah. So what was going on for him that he would type that?
Because, I mean, sorry, just objectively, it's minimizing and it's cold, right?
Yes, it is. It's like you don't have that much reason to be upset, right?
Yeah, especially with somebody that, since this person was somebody I didn't really know, you know, all I had was just good interactions with him, but other than that, I didn't know this person.
Right. And there is, at least when I was in high school, and I guess like every high school, we had one or two people die of various things.
There is a, and I'm not saying this is the case here at all, but there was a kind of hushed voice.
Everyone was suddenly his friend and now everyone was appalled.
There was a kind of drama to it, if that makes sense.
Yeah. And now I'm not accusing you of that at all.
I mean, honestly, I don't believe that for a moment.
But what I got from James' comment is almost like, if you are upset, you're faking it.
Again, and I'm not saying, James, that was your conscious intention or anything like that.
But that's kind of the echo that I get from it, if that makes sense.
Damn. No, and I'm not saying that you were thinking that, and I'm not even saying that's true, but to me there's a cap put on Beth's emotional upset.
Because you're kind of reminding her, look, you weren't that close, so there's not that much reason to be upset.
If you're really upset, then it's not about him or it's fake or something like that.
There were echoes of that, like, nothing that really emerged fully into consciousness, but, I mean, now that you pointed it out, I mean, that was certainly some of the thoughts that were flying through.
Right, and the reason that we know that was that Beth felt, you felt aggressive, right?
Beth?
Felt aggressive? - Thank you.
That question is for you.
I'm sorry, and the reason that I'm saying was that when you, and if you hear this back, you'll hear it, but when you were like, James, what the hell?
It sounded aggressive, and aggressive to me, I mean, I don't think it's bad or anything like that.
I'm just pointing out that's sort of what I got from your reaction to his post in the IM. Mm.
Mm? Mm.
Are we humming? I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of any potential aggression in this or any other moment on an IMJ. A lot of the time, I didn't really sense any aggression to tell you the truth.
Sorry, did you mean it in yourself or in him?
In him. Oh yeah, but in yourself, what I mean is your response.
Your emotional response, I don't mean you set fire to your computer.
Yeah, I guess you could say it was aggressive.
Well, I don't want to say it if it wasn't that case, right?
And I'm not saying it was only, I mean, there was hurt, but what I got from when you first commented about it was a bit of exasperation, a bit of frustration, a bit of, I'm not saying you were sort of some great lunatic, but you felt upset and angry, right?
Yeah, and I did feel frustrated, and I remember trying to Come up with a way to explain to him why, you know, the death of my classmate, you know, just leave me upset.
And I remember trying to think of, okay, who could I compare this person to, you know, and somebody in his life, you know, if there was such a person in his life, you know, and they died, how would he feel?
And that's really frustrating because now what you're trying to do is instead of being able to talk about how you feel, you're trying to help him have some understanding of how you feel and that's very different, right?
Yeah. If that makes sense, right?
It's like, you know, Saki the hand puppet is going to explain grief to the Vulcan.
Yeah. I'm going to put on a moving play with me and a high school friend or whatever, right?
But now you're trying to find some way to get an emotional connection with someone when what you're really feeling is grief and shock and surprise and fear and a desire to talk about that, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So now you're not talking about your feelings with James, but you're thinking, well, I guess I wasn't that close.
Maybe I'm overreacting, and how am I going to explain it to him so that he understands?
But the actual feelings themselves are not being communicated.
Now you're communicating about the interaction rather than having a direct communication, if that makes sense?
Yeah. That sounded almost like a dutiful yeah.
Like, yeah. See, now she's angry at me.
Oh, the fear. No.
I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
But, because we're trying to figure out the frustration, right, that you felt, right?
Yeah. That was my thought about it, though, of course, you actually felt it.
So, I mean, if you want to talk about that, more than all ears...
Oh, jeez. I don't know where to start then.
Well, when his thing comes back, it's like, well, at least you weren't that close to him.
What was the succession of thoughts that went through your mind when that popped up on your IM window?
Well, the first thought, like I said earlier, you know, was, what the fuck?
And I remember just feeling angry, and then it's like, okay...
You know, how do I explain this?
You know, trying to come up with a way to make them understand.
But while I was trying to figure out how to do that, I can't really think of anyone, to tell you the truth, who I could sort of compare to the classmate, you know, to give an example.
Right, right.
And what happened after this, after we've spent, you know, 10 minutes on the first bit, what happened right after that?
Beth, what did you type in in response to that?
If I remember right, I was silent for a while.
And then, you know, just feeling...
That's never good.
Silent is not golden, right?
Yeah, and I remember looking at the clock and I'd walk...
And I remember, you know, wanting to catch the next bus to go down to Portsmouth to get something we need for the kitchen.
So I was like, okay, you know, I'll just go, you know.
So I told him, you know, I'm heading out and that was it, basically.
Right. No, just between you and I, Beth, when James pisses me off, I find the most useful thing to do is count to about 30,000 and then I'm fine.
Yeah. As long as I'm taking heroin.
But anyway, we can come back to that.
So was it that your communication didn't, like you just had the so-and-so died, oh, well, don't worry about it, you weren't that close to him, and then howling wilderness of silence?
Yeah. Oh, jeez.
I'm such a putz. I remember he...
Hold on.
I'd have to look up the chat log here.
But if I remember right...
While you're doing that, let's switch to the muffin that's already half-cooked.
James, now when Beth was not writing back, were your testicles halfway up your spine, mostly up your spine in terms of self-defense?
fence what was happening for you there I think I was still in outer space in deep orbit So you were kind of like, hey, I'll go back to the chat window, that's shiny, right?
Yeah, I'll go back to the chat window, go back to work, what have you, yeah.
Now, James, were you ever manipulated by grief when you were growing up, like where you felt just people just milked it or used it?
I want to say yes, but I can't think of anything.
Well, don't say yes if you can't think of anything.
I think about my mother after she left my father, but I can't think of anything specific.
Did you experience your mother's emotions as genuine?
And I'll give you sort of a differentiator.
I mean, there's no easy answer, but it all has to do with the spontaneity of your own emotional responses.
So, for instance, when Christina bursts into tears...
Usually when looking at her marriage pictures and imagining an alternate life with a guy who has a paycheck.
But when Christina bursts into tears, I mean, all I want to do is go over, reach over and hug her and, you know, take care of her and make sure, all that kind of stuff, right?
However, when my mother would burst into tears, I just, like, get all kinds of tense, right?
Because I just knew it was going to suddenly switch to anger or, you know, it was a destabilizing thing.
think someone was going to get blamed or, you know, it would just be scary, if that makes sense.
Well, you know, I don't know because my...
There was...
I can't remember anything from before I was an adult in terms of this.
I mean, I remember my mother unloading a bunch of stuff about my parents' marriage when I was in my early 20s.
I'm sorry, we were actually thinking of talking about your childhood.
Yeah, I know.
Unless you were born at the age of 20, in which case I could understand that your mother might be a little testy.
Sure. It would seem hard to pick it up from there.
Yeah, no, alright. And it could be your father.
Did you experience your father's emotions as genuine?
No. Right, okay, but this is important, right?
I mean, this is probably the genesis of the response that you have, right?
Because when emotions aren't genuine, then they're manipulative, right?
There's only genuine emotion, if you can call it an emotion, it seems to be rage.
Which is not a genuine emotion, but a bullying terror tactic, right?
Right, right. But it doesn't seem like we have any track on your mother's emotionality here.
I mean, there was just a big gaping hole there, right?
It's like, well, when I was 22, it's like, right?
I mean, what happened with your mom?
How old were you when your parents split up?
Eight, nine, ten, somewhere in there.
A long divorce, okay.
Okay, so we've got, you know, eight years.
You probably couldn't remember anything before you were like three or four, let's say.
So we've got, you know, four to six years of early childhood stuff where you would have had some sense.
I mean, children read the emotions of a household like an old sailor reads a map of his home port.
I mean, they just know it instinctively and deeply.
And that doesn't mean that they appreciate it as genuine, but they know.
Little kids know what's going on in the emotional life of the household, usually better even than the parents do.
So when you were a little kid, what were the emotions that were floating around when you were growing up?
I mean, they can't have been good if your parents ended up splitting up, right?
Well, no, and it was from both of them, you know, as I'm sure you can understand.
Oh, sure.
But an awful lot of pain, like unexpressed pain.
An awful lot of depression.
I don't know if that's not quite an emotion.
No, that's an emotion because that's a stifling and a crushing of emotion.
So it definitely falls into the category, right?
Okay, right, right.
An awful lot of anger.
And anger that was turned rage and hatred that, you know, well, I got the brunt of a lot of it.
Right. And I would amend that statement around pain.
I don't think that it would be – I mean certainly not how I would categorize pain.
What that means is that there is a frustrated and bitter disappointment and there's a lot of acting out of, quote, grief and sadness.
But that's not to me the same as genuine pain.
Oh no, that's it.
It's definitely acting out.
In terms of genuine emotions, no.
It was stultified, internalized.
Just to give a silly example, when I was about five, a friend of my mother's was going to play bingo.
I believed that she said, if I win, I'm going to give you I think it was 17 pounds.
Because it was 1700 pounds, she was going to give me 1% or whatever, right?
And my complete conviction at that point was that she was going to come back from bingo and she was going to give me 17 pounds.
And then she came back from bingo and she gave me 17p because pence and cents, right?
Which is because she'd only won 17 pounds, not 1700 pounds.
And I was inconsolable, right?
I was like, oh my god, 17 pounds and I'm only getting 17 pences.
It was the worst thing ever. But I wouldn't put that under the category of genuine emotional pain, right?
It's just my expectations were frustrated and I was having a tantrum, right?
Right. Both of my parents have tantrums.
Okay, so you may have, and I would suspect do have, particularly since for you, it seems like a bit of a foggy distance to go back beyond 20, right?
Or below 20. For some things.
For some things, okay.
But in the question that I asked, right, it got all kinds of like, there's no there there, right?
Yeah. But if you do have...
Sorry, and as a kid, do you remember if these things built over time, or were they sudden?
Or is it an artificial division?
Yeah, could you run that one by me again?
Oh, sure. I mean, with...
With some parents, it's like lightning out of a clear blue sky when they get angry, right?
It's just, bam, out of nowhere.
They're just pissed off, right?
Now, with other kinds of parents, it tends to build.
You know, it's one thing, then another thing, and the air gets hotter and denser and more unpleasant, and the kids tiptoe, and it slowly builds over time.
Whereas, you know, with others, like, you know, explosion, and then it settles down.
Whereas the stuff that builds slowly over time, then there's some kind of minor eruption, and then it cools off very slowly, if that makes sense.
Yeah, um...
I don't know if this is going to be frustrating or irritating, but it seems like it was a little bit of both.
Because after a certain amount of time, he got to know what things set him off, but they were like totally unavoidable.
Like not doing my homework was a big one.
I mean, I take that back.
It's not completely unavoidable, but...
any trouble with school um i mean my mom would get angry if i grew too quickly right Because it would mean we'd have to get new clothes.
Right. I mean, that's sort of unavoidable, right?
Unless you want to stop eating protein, that's kind of unavoidable, right?
Yeah, just a tad, yeah.
No, and the answers, there's no answers to me that are frustrating because we're just kind of beating the bushes to see what comes out and hopefully we'll put Beth to sleep before we get back to her.
But, you know, sorry, to me it makes sense that there would be both strategies.
Was a strategy more common to your father in terms of was he a slow burn or an exploder or was it more your mom or was it sort of both equal?
I would say that my father certainly tended towards being the exploder and my mother was a slow burn.
Okay. Although my mother would also explode.
So, I mean... Right.
So they mix and match, right?
Yeah. My father was much less of a slow burner, but they definitely both exploded.
Yeah. Now, not to put Beth anywhere close to this category in any way, shape, or form, but, I mean, Beth, like you, like me, like Christina, like everybody, we have tempers, and that's actually a good thing, and it's a healthy thing.
But, Beth, when you get angry, do you think that you fall more into the slow burn or suppress thing, or do you do a bit more of a kind of blurb, and then it's better?
Oh, good question.
Yeah. Oh, jeez.
Never really thought about that, about myself.
Should we ask James? He might know.
He might actually know more easily than you do, but anyway.
And this is not to say that it's abusive, or it's nothing like that, right?
We're just trying to look for where a similar stimuli may have triggered a defense for James, right?
Because that, to me, would be where we would start looking for how to best talk about this, but...
Yeah. So, James, do you experience Beth's mild irritation from time to time as a slow-burn-y kind of thing that kind of simmers up and then there's a little, and then it sort of cools down, or is it more of a blurb and it comes and goes?
It's definitely much more of a slow burn.
Okay. Okay. All right.
That makes sense. That makes sense.
And, Beth, do you think that that's more or less true?
No. Yeah, I believe so.
I'm not, from trying to think back on, especially at work, I'm not really the type to just suddenly explode if somebody makes me angry.
I do tend to stew about things.
Right, like the red mist doesn't clear and you wonder where all the dead kittens have come from, right?
Yeah. That's always good, right?
Because you want to know where they're coming from.
Okay, so...
This would be my guess, right?
You could let me know whether this makes any sense at all.
But this would be my guess as to what happened.
The more sudden the stimuli that reminds us in whatever way, shape, or form...
And this has nothing to do with it being Beth's fault at all, right?
Or even James, right? But the more sudden the stimuli...
The more complete the defense.
And what I mean by that is...
If you say to a Vietnam vet...
Let's just take a silly example.
If you say to a Vietnam vet...
I'm going to take you to go and see a movie...
And there's some gunfire in it.
And you say, is that okay?
You give him cotton to put in his ears.
You tell him the scene is coming up and so on.
Then he will be much more likely...
To manage his defenses, right?
His flashbacks or whatever.
Then if you carry him sleeping into a showing of platoon, right?
Oh lord. Right.
Right, because then it's going to be like, bang, you know?
Explosions, Viet Cong, you know, like gunfire and so on.
He's not going to have really any control when he wakes up in that environment, right?
Right. And so what I mean by that is, the more sudden the stimuli, the more complete the defense that arises.
And I went pretty deep into a defense.
Well, your stimuli, and this has nothing to do with anything that Beth did, there's nothing wrong with what she did.
I mean, she was unhappy, right?
And it's nothing wrong with your response.
We're just trying to figure out what happened, right?
Yeah, yeah. So, when you got a BAM emotional communication from Beth, it caught you by surprise, right?
Mm-hmm. I mean, you weren't sitting there going, hey, I bet you today's the day.
Because, you know, they've all been dropping like flies.
Today it's Beth's classmate's turn, right?
To get shot down by whatever, right?
So you weren't expecting that.
You just, you know, dum-de-dum.
You're going through your day just waiting for another goddamn email from me for another programming favor that I won't pay for.
Right? Looking for your chisel scam artist folder to fill up with my requests.
But... But you get this bam, in a sense, emotional communication from Beth.
And because it was a surprise to you, your defense has kicked in.
Now, when you were a kid, and this is true for every single kid, this is every kid who's been in these situations where you have these emotionally volatile emotions.
People around you. This is not you, Beth, right?
We were just talking about the dim, foggy histories of James' Paleozoic area.
But when you have these people around, when a parental...
When the parental units go haywire, what do the kids do?
I mean, assuming they can't leave and they can't hide and, you know, this kind of stuff.
Uh... What are we...
The only thing I can think of is get my ass whooped.
No, there's strategies that all kids have before that.
Oh, no. Dissociate.
Even before that.
Even before that. The dissociation does happen for sure, but children are very resourceful and we all forget because all we remember is just being plowed over, right, by these steamrollers and parental emotions.
But we were cunning little bastards when we were children and there's things that children do to either get it over more quickly or to try and minimize what's going to happen.
Oh, um...
It's like right in the tip of my brain, is it?
No, it's good that you can't think of it, because if you could, the theory wouldn't be working.
Because it would be a defense, right?
So we're trying to find a defense. So it should be on the tip of your tongue, but you can't say it, right?
It feels like something provoking it.
Or, like, what you said about getting it over more quickly resonated, well, maybe it's the other thing because this one's coming to mind more easily, but provoking the situation so that it happens and it's done.
Okay, and that certainly could be the case, I would say, if the emotion that was coming at you was anger, I bet you that would be your response.
But this wasn't anger.
This was grief or shock or fear or whatever, right?
Now, let's say that you're in the car.
You're, I don't know, eight years old.
You're in the car with your mom. She's driving around the parking lot of a mall and she can't find a parking space and she's getting more and more angry.
What are you going to say? Oh, look, there's a parking space over there.
Well, if you can't find me, you're too small, you can't see a pocket space or whatever.
It feels like my brain's made of putty.
No, that's good. That's good.
This is what we want to get people to, right?
Right. What do I do with...
Because I know this had to have happened.
Almost this exact situation had to have happened.
Oh, sure, yeah. I mean...
Yeah.
Beth, do you want to take a snap and help him out?
Well, two things came to my mind.
First one was...
Something like, Mommy?
You know, kind of a worried thing.
That was the first one that came to my mind.
Then the other, I don't know why it popped into my head, was, Mommy, I need the bathroom bad, or something like that, just to make things worse.
And I agree with you, that would be around the get it over.
Like, if she's going to blow, let's have her blow early rather than late, so it's not as bad.
Or let's have her blow here rather than in the mall, where it's embarrassing, right?
Yeah. But that's not the strategy that James was trying out on you, Beth, and that's why we'll keep asking that question.
Mum's getting progressively more and more upset.
What does the sun do?
Maybe what we need to do is move it a little further forward in time.
So now that you're 13 years old, you're in the eye-rolling phase of being a young man, right?
And your mom is getting all upset about some parking lot, some parking space she wants that she can't find.
What does the young gentleman say?
Oh, let's just go home.
Thank you.
No, that's not right.
That would be more provocative, right?
What is it that the young man is going to say to try and gain the upper hand?
Because he's at the eye-rolling phase, remember?
He can't be hit now.
If she starts yelling at him, he can get out of the car and take a bus home.
He's got some more freedom now, right?
Mm-hmm. I'm trying to put myself there.
I swear I can't see it. Do you want me to just say it, or do you want to keep thinking of it?
Go for it. Well, I'll tell you, and this is not you, right?
This is telling you what a kid could say, and you can tell me if it fits.
There are sort of two primary responses, and they're both related.
The first one is the kid's going to say, Mom, it's only a parking space.
Stop being ridiculous.
Hmm. And that would be a more provocative way of doing it.
And the other would be like, Mom, it's okay.
okay, it's no big deal.
And that would be to try and put her emotion into perspective so that she could try and get a grip and not embarrass herself.
That runs, like, down my left side of my body in a very strange way.
I think that resonates just a bit.
Well, good. Which one was it?
Was it both or one or the other?
No, it wasn't the first one at all.
It's the second one where you say, Mom, it's just a parking lot.
It's okay. It's okay. It's no big deal.
We'll find it. Don't worry about it.
Yeah, I mean, I know that...
Well, of course, by the time I was 13, mom was four times a year.
But I wonder if I ever...
Well, would it make any sense if I had used that strategy on my father?
Oh, totally. Yeah, totally.
We just picked your mom because she was in my mind, but absolutely, completely, totally, it would make sense.
This happens... Fortunately, thank God, I did not grow up with a car.
Because the car is like the nightmare prison for children, right?
Because you get short-tempered parents in a car...
And they get all sorts of crazed about traffic, about other car drivers, near misses, you know, people who drive badly.
Oh, yeah. Right? They're fucking little Alcatraz's on wheels, right?
They're just little roving torture chambers, right?
Right. I've been there a couple times.
Yeah, and I know that's just with James, but...
No, no, no. It was with my ex-stepmom.
Right, but we...
So what children do in cars is they spend the whole goddamn childhood just trying to talk their parents out of a tree, right?
Yeah, but you know, I spent so much time in the car just looking out the window and trying to zone and not be in the car at all.
No, no, I understand that, but that's only because your strategy fails, right?
Oh, right, because...
But you went through a period of trying strategies, and the strategies change with the age of the child, right?
It's more whiny, and I need to go to the bathroom when they're younger.
It gets more eye-rolling when they get older.
But when the children get even older, like 16, 17, 18, there's no other strategies.
Now they're just fucking biding time until they get out, right?
Yeah, but I think that that happened a lot earlier for me.
Sure, it could well be, for sure.
But the response that you gave to Beth fell into the category you couldn't think of.
Right, exactly. It's minimizing, it's trying to give Beth some perspective, it's trying to cool down the sudden emotionality of the experience, which for you, James, as a child, would always result in disaster, right?
Right. So you're trying to manage her, you're trying to minimize her feelings, you're trying to separate her from her emotions, right?
To put her in an ironic way of viewing herself, to sort of jump her out of her own skin by placing some sort of control perspective over her emotionality, right?
Set her up in the Vulcan test chamber.
Yeah, I mean, for sure.
And that is an aggressive action, right?
Because what you're saying is, Beth, you're insane and dangerous.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Beth, you have no perspective, and you're about to go mental, right?
So, I have to give you perspective.
But I can't even tell you that I'm giving you perspective, because that will also make you go even more mental, right?
Oh, God, yeah.
And so, of course, Beth, feeling that kind of...
Not such a flattering portrayal.
And again, it's not of Beth. It's a history.
It's going to react with some not so positive responses, right?
And if I remember rightly, Beth, you had a sort of three-part response to this.
The first was angry, like, what the hell?
The first was angry, and then like, what the hell?
And then the second was, how can I explain it?
Yeah. Yeah. And of course that is falling into the trap because now – and that means that his strategy worked because now what's happening is you're intellectualizing your feelings, which means that he doesn't have to be as scared of them anymore, right?
Yeah. You're not actually going to ralph up a bunch of genuine emotions all over his pretty new white suit, right?
But now you can diagram it and you can put some blueprints out and say, you know, well, okay, if we were human beings who were spontaneously emotional, this is what it might look like.
These Aztec symbols, you know, a couple of stars.
Right? Suddenly it's archaeology.
It's no longer, right?
It's no longer the tango.
Right. And so James feels a reduction in anxiety because he doesn't have to deal with the emotions and he can go back to happy philosophy intellectual land, which Lord knows we all like sometimes a little too much, right?
And then by having to explain your emotions to him, you've fallen into the pattern that your emotions are not valid, right?
Or he's like not able to feel, in which case why would you go to him first?
It's like going to a restaurant to get gas for your car, right?
Right. Well, see, here's how you'd put the gas pump in by the salad bar.
See, I'm going to give you some blueprints, and it's like, but, you know, the wrong place, right?
Right. Now, just to talk about you, Beth, I'm sorry that we focus on James, but just to talk about you for a few minutes, there's no way that you don't know this about James deep down.
Right. Right?
Right. Right.
You can't have been surprised at his reaction.
I mean, again, deep down.
Just between us girls. Yeah.
I mean, if this is an unconscious defense for him, then it's going to arise whenever there is sudden emotion that comes into the interaction.
He's a little skittish, right?
It's like trying to get a chipmunk to feed out of your hand sometimes with the feelings, right?
Yeah. And what that means is that, I think he's inflicted the torture of RTR on you, is that right?
The living endless hell that is the book I tried still to make as short as possible.
But you've gone, I don't know if you've read or heard that?
I did listen to the audiobook, but when I tried to read it, I didn't, I don't know how far I got into it.
No, no problem at all.
But I don't know if you remember the bit about Simon the Boxer.
Yeah, I do.
Okay, so that's good.
But what this means is that while he's used to managing, minimizing, and intellectualizing sudden emotionality, you're used to having your emotionality minimized and intellectualized and managed, right? There's got to be something in your family that...
This is familiar to you in not a fun way, right?
Right. So when you would have strong emotions with your parents or siblings, what would happen?
Oh, jeez. Let's see.
Big hugs, a family talking stick?
No? Sorry, go on. No.
Oh, gosh. I'm trying to think.
The first example that comes to my mind is whenever I had a problem with one of my stepsisters at the time, especially the younger ones because they were, well, closer to my age than the older ones.
There were times where I'd feel incredibly upset because I felt like I had no one to turn to.
I couldn't turn to my stepmom because she would tell me, oh, you know, I've got to fight for yourself, and if I do that, I get in trouble.
And then if I try to, I have this strong feeling that if I try to talk to my dad about it, that somehow he would mention it to my stepmom, who, I don't know if she'd say something to the stepsister I had the problem with, and that somehow it cycled back towards me.
So they're pretty playful and fun at being cruel, right?
Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Right.
So it's like if you have a problem with someone or you feel upset about something, it's go talk to them.
But if you do, we'll punish you.
And if you don't, we'll say that you're a cowardly for not doing it.
And no matter what happens, it's going to be bad, right?
Yeah. I mean, that's how it was.
Because I remember, especially my youngest stepsister, she would try to...
I mean, there were times where she would, you know, throw a blanket over me and try to, you know, keep me in a tight arm lock, even though, embarrassingly enough, you know, she's three years younger than I am.
And, you know, I would try to struggle to get out from her grip or from the blanket.
And then after a while, it's like, okay, maybe if I, you know, play dead or something, you know, she'll let me go or something.
And, um... But, you know, things like that.
And, you know, she'd pick on me.
So I'd say something to, you know, my stepmom or one of the older girls.
And, like, oh, Beth, you know, you need to learn how to, you know, defend for yourself and blah, blah, blah.
But nobody shows me how to do it or anything.
You know, just say defend for yourself.
And so I do that.
And... The stepsister goes crying, and I get in trouble.
It's like, well, I was trying to fend for myself like he told me to.
Thanks for the mixed message.
Right, right, right.
Right, so when it comes to, and obviously, I mean, this is heartbreaking, and I'm so sorry to hear about all of that, and I'm sure many, many, many, many more things, but what it means is that you have a horrible degree of familiarity with reaching out to somebody with your feelings, your genuine and heartfelt emotions, and, you know, them not really being listened to, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And that, I would say, is the major deal that was going on.
And it is amazing to me.
I mean, amazing, fantastic, and with all due sympathy to the horrors of the past, it is just amazing how quickly all of this stuff works, right?
Mm-hmm. So when you felt that your feelings were rejected or minimized by James, that kicked off your defenses, which is to withdraw, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And then you came back, but not to talk about what had just happened, but rather to try and say, well, if we can build an intellectual bridge over this chasm, then we can pretend that it's not there.
Yeah. Which doesn't work, right?
Right. And just leads to more frustration, and then you have this thing where it's like, all I wanted was to say that I was upset, and then you don't know where the hell you are.
It's like six million miles away, right?
Right. Right. Right, right.
And that's the challenge of this whole RTR thing, which is that when you have something like that to just stop and say...
I don't know what happened here, but it's got to be something unconscious.
It's got to be something old.
It's got to be something historical because it's not what you're doing.
It's not the fact that you, Beth, had somebody shot that you used to know in school that has caused me to react.
It's not this now, right?
Because the defenses don't spring into being the moment that there's a stimulus, right?
They're laid in by... By old habits, old histories and so on.
And so that's where you just kind of have to take the pause, you have to take the break and you have to sort of figure out without blame what was going on in that moment that ended up with you guys being so far apart at a time where it would have obviously been better and you'd have enjoyed it more if you'd have been closer together.
So was that somewhat helpful?
Mostly useful. Yeah, it was.
Yeah, definitely.
Well, I'll jump off then if there's nothing else to you guys because it's more important that you talk to each other than listen to me, Amaran.
Is there anything else you wanted to say to me or should I just let you guys talk to each other?
Is there anything else, Beth, that comes to mind?
No, not really.
Okay, good. Well, I'm glad it was helpful, and I'm sorry.
The only thing that we can make out of a tragedy like a mentally ill guy getting gunned down, and there's not a lot of good that you can make out of that.
There's no way to pretty up that gravesite.
But my suggestion is the only thing that can come out of it that is good is that if you guys can work on this stuff and draw closer together and be more there for each other, which you genuinely want to be because of your love for each other, I fully accept that.
If you can find a way to work through these prior traumas And be there more for each other without being defensive and not defensive against each other, but against history.
That's the only flower that we can put on this grave, right?
Which is that it can be something which can help propel you guys to an even greater intimacy and love.
That does not make the death good, but it makes the most good out of the death that you can make out of it, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. All right.
Okay, well, I'll send you guys a copy of this in case you ever wanted to listen to it again.
And... I'm glad it was helpful.
Great, thank you.
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