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June 23, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
51:37
1095 Kidnapped - Listener Convo

Shrugging off the burdens of your history...

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Hi, John. Hey, how you doing?
Good, how are you? Well, I got a little thrown off there by your intuition, I guess you could call it.
But I think this was long overdue, ultimately, anyway, if I want to really participate, you know?
Well, I assumed unconsciously that's why you were talking about what you were talking about.
So just for those who don't know, this is just a listener call.
So if you're not, John, if you could mute, that'd be great.
And just for those who weren't in the chat room, John, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you were talking about a book, and I don't even want to repeat the name of the book because it just sounds too vile for words.
And it was a book that held a kind of twisted fascination for you insofar as you said it was very short.
You felt compelled to read it.
I mean, obviously it troubled you emotionally to a great extent.
yourself compelled to laugh at how ugly and gross and terrible and hideous it was and and so you had a defensive reaction of humor but what happened was you you had a series of I assume pretty vivid nightmares since you remember them now about the book right yes and then sorry to interrupt but then in the chat window you came and you talked about this book for 10 or 15 minutes if that if I I don't know the exact time, but it was something like that.
Yeah. And so I was pointing out that, of course, if the book is this hideous, then a number of questions would arise, right?
Which is, why would you read it?
Why would you continue to read it?
Why would you laugh at it?
Why would you have nightmares about it?
And why would you talk about it with other people for a long period of time, if that makes sense?
It's sort of like, you know, what's really gross is dead raccoons with maggots in them, so what I'm going to do is push my hand into them and feel around.
You know, it's like, well, if they're that gross, then why would you seek them out and do that, right?
Well, it was almost like self-abuse and then maybe even a desire to...
Extend that outward. Well, I don't think, yeah, I don't, I mean, I think that you're a positive and friendly person.
I don't think there was anything cruel in what you were doing.
But what I got an intuition about was that you have trouble processing horror, right?
And I would imagine, and this is just based on my own Simon the Boxer theory.
I don't know if you've read Real-Time Relationships.
Sorry, is that a yes or no?
Yes, yes. Okay. So I got the sense that you were drawn to managing horror, but you weren't conscious of that.
So you were drawn to this book and you said that you actually wanted to create a play, a radio drama about this book?
Yeah, I wanted...
What's the best...
I'm trying to be as...
Well, it doesn't matter. I wanted to eviscerate it by mocking it, basically.
Right. And what that means is that you feel to some degree that the book had eviscerated you, and I think based on the nightmares that you had experienced, that would seem to be somewhat the case, right?
Yes. And so because you had trouble processing this horror, you were drawn to it, it kind of infected you, you had trouble processing it, you were telling other, you felt driven to tell other people about it, if that makes sense?
Yeah, so yeah, well, that's a less...
Yeah, so my first reaction is I don't want to condemn myself, so...
Oh yeah, no, there's nothing wrong. But that's a much more...
That's a much more...
Cheering way of putting it than I would, but yes.
Right, and look, I mean, to your eternal credit, you didn't actively recreate horror in other people.
You simply told them about something that was horrible, right?
So you weren't doing to other people what this book did to you, but you were describing it, which is a huge step forward and I think something you should be justly proud of.
Oh, thank you. Well, I didn't want to...
The point wasn't to actually gross people out with the details of what was going on, so I, you know...
No, I don't think it was the case.
And, you know, to put on my psychology hat, I think it would be the case that you were saying, I'm fucked up about this book, right?
Which doesn't mean anything other than I have a problem, a historical problem with horror, right?
And that's why I asked you, you know, have you experienced – what is your relationship with horror and craziness?
Because the two things that I got out of the conversation on the board where you were talking about the book – It was that you felt very much overwhelmed by a kind of crazy, insistent horror, and that can't have come from the book.
But the book must be a symptom of that, and that's why I asked you about your historical relationship with both madness and horror.
Yes. So perhaps you'd like to talk a little bit more about that?
Sure. Well, it's not a unique story, but my family was...
There was madness and horror, for lack of a variation on the theme.
It was...
There was a lot of that sort of thing.
I guess in recent months it's come up again through my process of separating myself from my family.
Doing the things that are going to be healthiest for me.
It came up again when I went through my DFU process.
It's been on my mind.
In other ways, not related to this specific thing, but it seemed like this triggered that kind of a repeat of all that cycle in the last few days as well.
Sorry, you mean this book?
Yes. Well, it started it.
I kind of had a bad dream the first night after I read it, and then after that I wasn't thinking so much about the book, but then suddenly it was all my feelings about my Family started coming up last night.
I started ruminating about it and going over it in my head again.
Right. Now, I would like to compliment you on your dogfighting abilities, your aerial flying abilities, because this is the third time that I've asked you about your childhood.
And, you know, when it comes to evasion, I think you get the Red Baron award for twisting and turning because you talk about things rather than your childhood itself, if that makes sense.
It's not a criticism. I'm just sort of pointing it out.
No, I'm aware that I was doing that.
Okay, good. But I'll stop now.
No, look, you don't have to talk about your childhood, but if you don't want to, then you can just tell me, I don't want to talk about my childhood, but I just want to point out that I noticed that you're not answering the question, and that doesn't mean you have to, but it would be helpful, I think, if you did.
Well, I want to.
I think so. So, yeah.
I... And I'm going to in a minute.
In a minute, let me warm up.
I'm on my way. Yeah, I... See, part of me just is screaming not to...
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
I just need to go ahead with it. This book is horrible, right? When what you mean is, my life was horrible.
And so, because you're already talking about it, you might as well do it sort of, I guess, bluntly, or dare I say, boldly.
So that's sort of my suggestion.
I mean, that's why, if that makes any sense.
You're right.
I guess I'm just working up the courage here.
Yeah, things were...
I'll start talking about my mom, but she's...
Obviously, my dad was a problem, too.
My mom was...
You might be able to relate to some of the screaming, yelling, incoherent at times, physically violent.
As soon as I was big enough that she couldn't use physical violence, it became more emotional, psychological violence.
I'm not trying to be too clinical here.
Yeah, no, take your time.
Getting it out, you know. My dad got a slide on most of what he did wrong for a long time.
I'm coming to grips now more recently with the fact that he was just as bad.
He got a free pass from you, is that right?
Yes, and I was made aware of additional information that I wasn't Specifically aware of.
My dad was pretty easy on me compared to my sister.
Let's just put it that way. There's a certain limit of what I can say about my sister because I kind of made a promise to her not to discuss certain things with other people.
Things that I would have never imagined and finding that out at the age of 34 and I genuinely had no Yeah, my mom was a screaming hitting, chasing me around the house kind of anger periodically, I don't know, at least a couple times a month.
My dad just, you know, primarily just wasn't there.
When he was there, he was the friendly dad kind of thing, unless...
You woke him up while he was sleeping.
There's weird things. There's so many minutiae of it.
I don't know that all of it's relevant.
If you can kind of help me on...
There's just so many things, man.
Oh, sure. Look, I mean, yeah, right.
I mean, this is like, it's like it's the same bitch photocopied throughout eternity, it seems like.
I mean, individuation gives us an identity.
Being defensive and crazy and bitchy, they're all the same damn person.
I mean, betcha we could have just swapped our mom's brains with no particular break in rhythm as far as the craziness went.
You know, defensiveness is all the same.
People who are defensive and abusive, they're just the same damn personal understanding of it from that standpoint.
Yeah. But, I mean, one of the differences, of course, is that my dad just completely bailed, but yours hung around and, I guess, created mealy-mouthed justifications and also did abuse your sister in various ways, which we don't have to talk about.
So yeah, I understand all of that for sure.
At least I think I do. So your relationship with horror remains tough.
And what I think that means is that you would stand to benefit from experiencing the horror, right?
Because it's your genuine experience.
I'm not saying it would be fun, but it is necessary, right?
So you would benefit from experiencing the horror, but your parents would not.
So – or sorry, to put it more precisely, when you were a child, if you had experienced the horror, your parents might have gone to jail, right?
It can literally be that serious.
And so when you have a criminal family in this kind of way – and I view child abuse, of course, as a criminal activity.
When you have a criminal family in this kind of way, you get as much propaganda as you would if you grew up with Tony Soprano as your dad.
And the entire purpose of these criminals is bent towards keeping the secret, not because they're guilty but because if they don't keep the secret, they face negative punishments and also they lose the ability to continue abusing the children, which is, of course, what they want.
That's why they have children, right?
Because if you don't like children, there's a fairly easy remedy, which is just to not have them, right?
So if they continue to attack children, it's because they wish to have children to abuse and they wish the children to keep those secrets to avoid jail time and also to avoid the issue where they won't have the children to abuse anymore, right?
Sadists want their victims.
That's part of the whole point of sadism.
I was just going to add that there was almost a preemptive defense on their part.
It was established early on that I was a pathological liar.
What do you mean whether you were or not?
You know? What do you mean whether you were or not?
Look, you didn't wake up lying.
Sorry, you didn't wake up saying, gee, you know what would be great?
If I just had to lie.
I mean, if I could get into the kind of family where I got attacked for telling the truth and then attacked for lying, that would be excellent.
Right? But sorry, go on.
Oh, yeah. You're right.
I was going to say, most of the lying I had to do was...
I'm psychologically supportive in the sense of wish fulfillment and things like that, and then things that would stop me from being hurt.
It's the gun to the head argument, right?
I mean, there's no ethics in that kind of family.
There's just a Lord of the Flies kind of survival situation, right?
But it's interesting that that would creep in, in a sense, because what it indicates to me is that you still have a great deal of ambivalence about what you experienced as a child.
In other words, you have your experience and you have your parents' propaganda.
And that's what I mean when I say, like, getting out of an abusive family is just the beginning, right, in terms of reclaiming the self.
Because the stories follow us, right?
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm...
Well, it explains patterns of behavior that I've had going all the way back.
The fact that because in some way, rather than letting those stories hang on to me, it would be whenever they built up enough that I would just ditch the group of people that I was associating with so that I would start over again, essentially. Whenever too much...
My experiences and myself kind of came into my social group.
You mean when they would start to learn about your history?
Yes, and whatever stories I had to tell to sustain the history that may not have been 100% accurate.
The story that I used to tell to support I guess a healthier view of myself.
Oh, so you would talk about as if you had come from a more functional family.
Is that right? Right.
Yeah, absolutely. That's what I'm trying to say.
And of course, that is something that's hard for you to say because it sounds like you would still take some ownership for that.
And of course, if we play follow the benefit, it's fairly clear to see who that story was required for.
Yeah, it wasn't helping me at all.
Well, it was helping you so far.
It was helping you because if it wasn't helping you at all, then it would be irrational for you to say it, right?
So it was helping you, but what it was helping you do was it was helping you avoid punishment, right?
Because if you told the truth about what was happening in your family, then you would have faced a great degree of punishment, right?
Right? Yes.
So I just think that aspect is important.
Now, if you had been, say, kidnapped, right?
Let's say you were on a business trip in South America, to take a cliched example, and you had been kidnapped and you had been beaten up and stuff like that.
If you were telling that story to people, I mean, you wouldn't necessarily walk up to someone and say, Hi, you know, I was kidnapped and beaten up or whatever.
had been kidnapped while you were on a business trip and you were taking every sensible precaution and so on, but it just happened or whatever, then you wouldn't necessarily feel guilty about that, right?
Right.
No, not at all.
And of course, there's even less culpability in being born into an abusive family than there is from being kidnapped, right?
So what it means is that you have internalized your personal causality in relation to the So, you feel guilty because you were abused, right?
Or you feel... Maybe, sorry, guilty may be the wrong word and you let me know, but you feel somehow that it is a stain upon your honor.
Yes, and that the...
The reactions that I have had as a result of my past, because they were less than noble at the time.
Sorry, the reactions were less than noble?
Yeah, well, the results of some of my actions, telling lies and things like that, that were outside of...
Real defense. The things that I did after I was away from my parents and things like that.
Sorry, the acting out of the survival habits that occurred for you afterwards, right?
Yes. Thank you.
While I can see the connection between those habits and the immorality of what was done to me, that ultimately...
That's like a little dwarf hammering away at me telling me that, you know, you're still responsible for your own actions ultimately.
So, you know, all that stuff is in the past.
And again, it's probably just what you're describing.
It's saying that benefits my parents.
Well, sure. I mean, I can certainly understand that the habits, the negative habits, we can say, that came out of your survival situation.
That, you know, you don't feel proud for having lied about things in order to prop up a self-esteem and so on.
I mean, I can totally understand that.
And I mean, nobody would say like, I'm really glad that that happened and I did that and so on.
So I don't want to, you know, completely say, well, you're crazy.
You should never feel bad about anything you do because, you know, otherwise then what happens is you get a get-out-of-jail-free card which we suggest that should not be given to your parents, right?
But of course they had their bad childhoods and so on, right?
So I think that it's complex, right?
And I think that you're right to feel ambivalent about the things that you've done that are not noble but also have some understanding about the causation of that, right?
Yeah. And I think maintaining that connection between the two, building some kind of structure where I maintain that connection, where I'm trying to keep myself aware of the fact, because if I'm going by default, I forget that connection, and I just get...
Right, right. You just get down...
It begins and ends right there.
Now, I would certainly say, though, that...
And it takes some degree of psychological sophistication, and I don't know your circle, and it doesn't really matter, but it certainly was fairly obvious to me when you were talking about – well, blindingly obvious to me when you were talking about this book that it was sort of a cry for help, if that may – and I don't mean this. I mean that always sounds like you're a Girl Scout trapped in a, I don't know, bear trap or something.
But it seemed to me that you were trying to say, I have trouble processing horror, and it's unconscious for me.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, if they avoided that, I mean, yeah, ideally it would be better to not do that and I think that your work in this conversation is great and will certainly help you with that.
But again, you don't want to take full responsibility because if something's unconscious for you, then it's unconscious.
And when you run across greater knowledge or better knowledge or have the capacity for that, If you avoid it, which you haven't done, then you're culpable for your unconsciousness.
But you're not culpable while you're directly unconscious.
I mean, your parents are culpable because they hid it, right?
Because you can't get away with that kind of stuff if you don't hide it.
But I would say that this question of responsibility is highly complex and we don't sort of have to get into it too much.
But what I would say is that it's fairly clear to me that you had a problem processing horror.
And you had a very uneasy relationship with horror.
That you were drawn to it and you wanted to mock it because you felt helpless and angry in the face of horror because of your history.
But at the same time, horror had this strong effect on your unconscious in terms of nightmares and so on.
And you were drawn to forever go back to try and master that horror.
But in a never-ending cycle where you kind of couldn't, right?
Because the pattern in the past, as is true for all of us who were raised like this, was that you could not manage the horror.
It's impossible to manage our parents.
We really can only surrender and cross our fingers.
So... Yeah, and I wanted to go to war.
That's how I felt, really.
I wanted to just smash...
Yeah. Sorry, smash...
There was some rain...
Well, in the particular context of what we're talking about, the book, I just wanted to destroy it.
I wanted to make it not exist.
Right, which of course gives the book an enormous amount of power over you, right?
Like your life then becomes run by crazy people again because you have to bring them down, right?
Yeah, I was going to sit there and make a radio production out of a 60-page book.
Good God.
What that would do, of course, would bring other people to be curious about the book, right?
Yeah, it has the opposite effect of what I – and now in retrospect, obviously.
Well, sure, but I mean – and we can see even in this chat where people have said in the chat room, what's this book he's talking about, right?
So you're like, this thing is so horrible that I'm going to advertise it, right?
I mean that's the kind of paradox that we get into in the realm of the unconscious though, right?
Yeah. Right, and look, to your credit, and again, this is too, I mean, you may not be aware, or maybe you are, you may not be aware just how rare and fantastic this is, but to your eternal credit, you know, when I pointed this out, you were frank and open and honest about it, right?
Well, yeah, yeah.
That's... It's becoming kind of an attitude that I don't think that, well, I'm almost enslaved to it.
I can't not be honest about things.
I mean, dishonesty hasn't worked.
Not to make light of it, really.
Well, it works again. Sorry. Just to give you the ambivalence thing again, it absolutely works when you were a kid, right?
Yes, it doesn't work as a functioning tool as an adult when I'm no longer underneath.
Yeah, I mean, if you grow up in war, you duck and roll, but you don't duck and roll at them all, right?
So, yeah, so that all, I mean, I think that all makes sense.
And, you know, to your credit, you have, you know, taken this on and you came back with something that was very honest and very direct, right?
And I think that's great.
And you said, okay, well, shit, I'll put my balls in the cup and have a call with Steph and talk about it more directly and so on.
So, I mean, that stuff is all great.
Because, of course, the challenge is, and one of the horrible paradoxes for children who've gone through this kind of horror...
John, as you well know, right, is this, which is we don't want to lie about our past.
We don't want to pretend something didn't happen when it did or did happen when it didn't.
But at the same time, when we are frank and upfront about our histories, people get freaked out.
Yes. In some ways, I'm managing other people.
Well, it's tough. We want to be honest because honesty was not allowed.
Yeah.
Yeah. What?
What do I say? What do I do?
If I tell the truth, then people will freak out.
And if I don't tell the truth, then I feel false and that the past has sort of taken me over.
And now what I have to do, as you say, I have to maintain this fiction, right, in the future.
I was raised by wolves in the Arctic.
It's like, oh shit, now I've got to Photoshop some family snapshots with the herd or the pack, right?
Yeah, and it becomes...
It can turn into something that takes more effort than...
Really, it takes more effort than just having told the truth.
Well, except that when you – if you haven't – and there is a way out of this, right?
But we'll just – if you do talk about it and you freak out about it – and sorry, if you talk about it honestly and they freak out about it, then you have an additional problem, which is – You get that awkward silence.
People don't come back to it.
They ignore it or they come back to it obsessively or whatever.
And it distorts the relationship, right?
Well, yeah, suddenly you've dropped a, you know, whatever drama bomb right into the middle of the mix.
Right, so... It becomes a major stepping stone or road bump more so to any kind of growth between two people.
There's a couple of tips which I'll just toss out here about how to work with this kind of history so that you neither lie or feel like you have to lie about it.
You're not faced with that awful decision where the truth alienates people and lying alienates people.
The principle of isolation is fundamental to abuse, right?
I mean, you cannot abuse people if they're not isolated, right?
So abusers will always try to isolate.
And this pattern continues as adults.
Because if we tell the truth, we drive people away.
And if we lie, we drive people away, right?
And a defining characteristic of my adult life has been self-imposed isolation.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I have no doubt about that.
I have no doubt about that.
Again, these patterns are all the same for everyone.
Of course, when we're isolated and abused, we feel that it's just us, right?
But then when we stick our head up like gophers out of our holes, we realize that everybody else was thrown into exactly the same cell, that the world is just an endless row of Guantanamo Bay cubicles with children.
out there in the world having fun, skipping along, and doing the Macarena with Barney, when not everyone, but a lot of, if not the majority of children, to one degree or another, are stuck in the same cell, right?
So it's this huge prison planet where everybody dreams that everyone else is free, remains isolated in their own cell, when our experiences are so much more common than, but everybody's hiding this prison history, right?
Well, just the fact that you put it that way is in some ways a relief for me, because it, that perspective, it makes, it sounds it makes, it sounds a little, you know, distorted in a way.
the way I'm describing it.
I don't take pleasure from it, but it makes me feel less alone and more hopeful Knowing that – not that I'm not alone in that I was abused, but in the sense that I'm not really – I don't have to be cloistered away like that.
I don't have to be locked away.
Well, you can be, but all that you are doing is replicating everybody else's experience who is also locked away.
Now, people – sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, but the idea that I don't have to be gives me a great deal of...
For sure, for sure.
I'm going to run you through a couple of things that I found helpful, and I don't know whether these are universal principles, but you can let me know if they help you at all.
The first thing I would suggest, our tendency when we're abused is to look at it as personal.
I was abused.
But, of course, the fundamental thing about abuse is that it is anti-empathetic, right?
I mean, you cannot abuse somebody that you're empathizing with.
So, the depersonalization of the victim, particularly the child, is fundamental to family abuse.
In other words, abuse is never, ever personal.
Well, if you look at somebody and see a human being, it's hard to inflict...
Actually, it's impossible to... It's not hard.
It's impossible to... I'll buy that.
Okay. So, it's never, ever, ever, ever personal.
It has nothing to do with us as individuals.
It's about as personal as an atom bomb.
I mean, the guys in the Enola Gay flying over Hiroshima, they weren't sitting down there going like, man, I hate that Fukuyama bastard down there.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you're just caught in the detonation of somebody else's damage.
It's not even like they don't see you, they can't see you.
You are nothing to them.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
If you're caught in the bomb blast at Hiroshima, when you didn't declare war, you didn't vote for your leaders, you don't hate Americans, right?
You're just strolling along in Hiroshima and a bomb goes off, right?
You wouldn't feel guilt about that, would you?
No. You'd be like, man, I got hit by this bomb blast.
It was terrible.
Yeah, bad fucking luck, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
So once we detach the personal from it, there's a certain amount of relief because what we're describing is an unhappy accident.
Yeah, it isn't...
Yes, I have no...
Well, and it absolves me of some responsibility that I have carried...
Yeah, it's a heavy load, right?
Because we feel like... We feel like...
We feel like our parents focused in on us and they either hated us as individuals, that it was personal, that they knew us, they understood us and they hated us, or that we were weak in some way and that's why they picked on us rather than the other kids or rather than someone else.
So we're either hateful or we're weak or we're both.
But it's what children cling to.
It's got to be personal.
Because if it's not personal, then we're completely invisible.
And I don't think children can psychologically survive that.
You've got to think at least if your parents hate you, there's a bond of some kind, right?
They need you for something, right?
Mm-hmm. So it seems that's a pretty universal survival tactic on the part of children to take it personally.
It's the only way to create a bond when you're being punched in the face, right?
Yeah, how could you get up every morning?
Well, if you realize that your parents just didn't care, that you were just like a punching bag, inanimate, like a dead ghost, if you were nothing to your parents, yeah, I mean, how could you?
You couldn't get there. It would be too long a prison sentence, right?
Yeah. I mean, it would be like, you know, it's that old question, if you're floating above life before you are born in some sort of Rawlsian or Platonic sense, right?
You're a soul floating above your own life, John's life.
And you said, someone said to you, and they said, okay, here's what happens between 0 and 15.
And you're only going to get to live to 15 and then you're going to die.
Do you want to be born or not?
I'd be like, thanks, I'm going to take the amniotic abstract fluid that I'm floating in with all these perfect chairs and tables, but I don't want to be born, right?
So there's a fundamental nihilism and desire for death when we think of our first 15 or 18 or however many years it is that we're under its control.
15 was different.
Yeah, again, it was 15 for me too.
It's the same kind of pattern.
Because 15 is when you can plausibly survive on your own, and that's what we do, right?
So, for a child who is not, I mean, obviously we're not given that choice before we are born.
And so the death worship, right?
What Freud called the thanatos, right?
The death worship, the desire for death, is a chasm, is a bottomless chasm.
That children who are being abused are constantly hanging over with the rope constantly fraying, right?
I don't want to live.
I don't want to live.
I don't want to live. I don't want to live.
That is the constant, right?
Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily mean I want to die.
You could just be stuck there and paralyzed.
That's at least been my experience.
And if we accepted that we are completely invisible to our parents, that they do not care about us at all except as a punching bag, then we would simply just not get out of bed, right?
But we don't have that option biologically.
The defense mechanism kicks in when you're in a helpless situation where you're being sadistically abused and controlled.
The defense mechanism that kicks in is, if I take it personally, I can pretend to have control.
Yeah, because then you can focus your own efforts toward yourself.
If I change my behavior...
I am abused because my behavior is X. So if I do the opposite of X... I should not be abused.
But we pretend to have control.
Of course, the purpose of that kind of parental relationship is abuse.
So it doesn't matter where we go, right?
We are still...
It's like being in a fish tank saying, I'm going north.
It's like, who cares? You've got a fish tank, right?
So we take it personally as a way of avoiding this death impulse, right?
Of avoiding the hopelessness and the helplessness and the catastrophic depression that would result from that, right?
Sure, because you can express it in rage and other ways that can kind of vent temporarily.
That's right, and of course our parents are very happy to foster and facilitate this illusion that it is our behavior that is causing the abuse, right?
Parents never say, I screamed at you because I'm selfish and immature.
Or if they do, it's a moment of guilt that they say it and then it goes right back to it, right?
Yeah, it would only be a loss of control and a lashing out that the truth would come out in that context.
Right, because if they said that and they accepted that, then they would go for psychological help, right?
And they would also put you someplace safe until they got the help that they needed, right?
But abuse is a drug that helps you avoid growth, right?
Abuse is a drug that – and it's an ever-escalating drug, right?
Because you abuse because you hate yourself.
And the more you abuse, the more you hate yourself and therefore the more you abuse, right?
So for me, the way that I have described it is like, man, you know, there are families and there are families and I drew a really short straw.
It was just a bad fucking luck for me, right?
And there are families who have shorter straws, and that's, you know, God, I mean, but I drew a really short straw when it came to family.
It was really bad luck, and I, you know, I struggled to do my best within a very difficult situation.
I got free of them as soon as I could.
I was left with some bad habits, which I've been working on.
And now I've got them out of my life completely because they're just a train wreck, right?
I was just born into a plane with no engines, right?
And it was a long, slow, ugly crash.
Well, you have... You have no more accountability for it than...
Yeah, it's just accident.
It's like feeling guilty for being born with a hair lip.
It's like, hey, I didn't do eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
What kind of lip do I want? Yeah.
And so when we remove the personal aspect of that, which empirically is true.
It's not personal, right? When we remove that, then we can look at it with some objectivity and just say, you know, it's not personal.
A lion doesn't eat you because he hates you.
It's like bad luck, right?
Born into a family of lions, right?
There was a whole lot of tension and stress in this combat situation, right?
Yes. Yeah.
And I couldn't help but leave that with wounds and scars.
I can't sit there and blame myself for not being tougher or whatever nonsense...
Yeah. Well, that's right.
I mean, physiologically, your brain changed as a result of what you went through.
Like, physiologically, your brain changed.
And this is measurable, right?
This is measurable through brain scans, right?
So, if you don't get enough protein when you're a kid and you grow up too short, it's not like, well, I should have been braver so I could be taller.
It's like you can't invent food out of thin air.
If you didn't get the food, you didn't get the food.
Right? It's not because I was weak or bad or whatever, right?
And so you end up with a different brain when you've gone through this kind of thing.
It doesn't mean that you're stuck with that brain.
You can do a lot. The brain is incredibly adaptive.
You can do a lot. And you gain a lot of strengths out of that too, right?
We wouldn't wish it on anyone, but there are a few silver linings in that cloud.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. My ability to judge...
Emotional cues in another person is near supernatural.
Hypervigilance has its benefits, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I would say that you are describing an accident which befell you, right?
Okay. Yeah, I have to...
Well, I mentioned earlier, I'm going to have to get to a point where I can discipline myself in such a way to recognize that consistently.
Yes, for sure. And that's just something that's a matter of practice.
And it's dull repetition, right?
Like, literally, you have to say every morning, did I ever draw a goddamn short straw when it came to families?
What a bad luck it was.
And how amazing that I escaped this crazy, violent, destructive family with nary a scratch on me.
Yeah, things could have been a lot worse.
Well, if you had not been so cunning with your survival tactics, of which personalizing is one, right?
Personalizing isn't weakness. Personalizing it is strength.
It's what helps us get through it.
Sure. To have, I mean, admiration for how you got out of it.
I mean, you got out of it. You danced across this landmine on gut instinct and came out with both feet, right?
I mean, it's something to be proud of when you're born in a deep hole.
Climbing out of it is something to be proud of, right?
Yeah, I didn't...
I didn't fall apart.
Well, you didn't become an abuser, right?
Under the strain. Right?
You didn't go out, find some crazy bitch, have kids with her, and scream and beat them up, right?
No. No.
I went through... In my early 20s, I went through a phase where I gathered groups of friends and I was probably fairly abusive toward them verbally.
And then when I saw...
When I saw that pattern...
I withdrew from those people.
I don't know that I actually dealt with all the things that were building that kind of personality in myself.
But when I saw that I was being unnecessarily – well, when I saw that I was being cruel or nasty or something like that, I would just withdraw and remove myself from those people.
And so, I mean, this kind of PTSD, which happens to two victims of child abuse, as I mentioned on yesterday's show, to an even greater degree than happens to soldiers in combat, which of course makes perfect sense, right?
Soldiers in combat have a lot more control than children do, right?
Yeah, and usually they only have to deal with four years of it.
And it is trauma that is inflicted on an already adult personality and therefore it doesn't reshape the brain in the same way as when it is imprinted upon a still somewhat blank and still forming personality, right? In the same way, not getting enough calcium as an adult doesn't mean quite as much damage as not getting enough calcium when you're a toddler, right?
Yeah, well, it's not a developmental thing.
So, I think that if you can just say, you know, I was thrown out of the birth helicopter, I parachuted at night, blindfolded, and I landed in this family and I couldn't get out.
Right? There's no responsibility in that, right?
I mean, there are occasional Buddhist assholes who will tell you that you chose your parents for a reason, and those people I can only hope that there is reincarnation and they get born in some future life as a child of my mother, and then they can understand what an offensive statement that is to make.
But... But it's not true, of course.
Empirically and just scientifically and psychologically, it's not true.
So it's just this shitty accident happened to me.
It was really tough.
It was horribly traumatic. I've had to deal with a lot of fallout from it.
And I'm still working through some of the challenges.
It's given me some strength. It's given me some weaknesses.
But yeah, I definitely had a bad start of it, for sure, accidentally.
Yeah, but... And the start doesn't define the finish or the work in progress.
And that's something that I'm going to have to...
I don't have to define what I am now solely by that.
No, not at all. Not at all.
Well, it's a trap that I've gotten into, and that's something that I'm going to...
Well, it's tough, right? Because if you grew up in a situation of abuse and mental illness, then it does stick to you.
The temptation is to be special because of that, right?
Like, I was separated.
I was set apart by how bad my childhood was and so on.
Health can feel weird, right?
It can feel wobbly and unstable.
Yeah. And the fact that these things keep coming up is irrelevant.
I'm sorry, say that again? I'm sorry.
I'm telling myself that the fact that new...
Nightmares, new horrors, new things about my family keep coming up to this day is really irrelevant at this point.
Well, I'm glad you said that again.
It's not irrelevant at all.
It's not irrelevant. Your unconscious isn't just punishing you with nightmares.
Your unconscious is trying to digest the history, right?
Okay. But, I mean, in this...
in the sight of new history that is coming out well sure no i understand that i'm not saying go back or anything like that but if you like you're unconscious when it gives you these nightmares because with regards to this book there was a lot of useful information about that as we've been talking about just now with regards to this book you were drawn to it you tried to keep a humorous and ironic distance from it and you had nightmares right so your unconscious is actually trying to help you because you had this conscious attitude of ironic distance which was a defense mechanism
Right And yet you were drawn to the book and you want to do a radio play of the book and so on, right?
Whereas your unconscious is saying, no, this shit is pure horror.
Like, don't fool yourself. Like, you were drawn to it consciously.
Your unconscious is giving you the nightmares to say, stay the fuck away from this shit because it's poison.
Sure. Sure.
Why go in...
And battle it with...
Yeah, yeah.
Why go and have a war?
Because the only person involved is me, you know, ultimately, when it comes to that perspective.
And yeah, you can't win with crazy people.
You can't win with corrupt people.
You just don't engage, right?
You can't win. You can't beat them.
Yeah, that other person isn't really even there.
They're not going to listen to you.
I mean, if they've done what they've done, they're beyond reason, right?
Yeah. Yeah, you can't...
Mocking a man...
Well, it's crazy yourself, right?
So that's how the infection spreads.
Crazy people will try to goad you into attacking them.
They will poke and provoke and poke and provoke and be snarky and be mean and be vicious and be catty and be bastards.
They'll try and get you because that's how they're trying to spread the craziness, right?
So that they feel less crazy because if they can make the world as hostile and freaky and creepy and angry as they are, then they feel less creepy, freaky and angry, right?
Sure. It's like that one incredibly self-conscious monk with the bald spot at the beginning of it all who said, right, that's it.
Everybody has to shave that part of their head, right?
It's like, what? So you feel less bald?
Give me a break, right? Sure.
Sure. If you're a rat, it pays to make the world into a trash heap.
Right. Yeah. I mean, either they change to conform to the world or they change the world to conform to them.
So getting into fights with crazy people, it's crazy yourself, right?
And that's how this history replicates itself.
Yeah, and it was an overwhelming compulsion.
I mean, I faced that same compulsion, and I have to remind myself that there's no point going back into a cell if I actually have the key now.
Yeah. Just make that one connection and say, okay, I can just turn around and walk away from this.
Man, the engaging when I don't have to engage is...
This is going to make things easier.
It's our crack, but we have to put it down.
It just doesn't move us forward in a way that's going to make us happy.
Now, I would suggest, and obviously it's just my suggestion, but I would strongly suggest that the degree of trauma that you experienced, and with all due respect to what you're doing right now, the level of unconsciousness that you're still experiencing with regards to this, I would absolutely, completely and totally invest in some therapy.
Not because you're broken, not because you're sick, not because you're weird, not because there's anything wrong with you, but it's just that once you start to try and get full mobility back into this damaged limb, you're just going to need some physiotherapy to help you with that.
Yeah. Yeah, I will. And has this been helpful for you?
I will. Has this been useful or helpful for you?
Excellent. Yes, sir.
Okay, well, I will send you a copy of this and you can let me know what you think.
I certainly think that there's enough useful stuff here that it would be fantastic for other people to hear it, but you can let me know what you think.
Oh, thanks.
Don't worry about it. Bye.
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