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Aug. 2, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:38:21
1119 Falling Asleep from a Nightmare...

Taunted by women in a coffee shop - how little is accidental...

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Time Text
Alright, I'm ready. Okay, so let's hear the tale.
Say it, just for the podcast?
Yeah, I mean, I just, yeah, it's what you typed into the chat, but you might as well say it.
Cool, okay, so I had my job interview, and that went well.
And I then went just like across the street to the coffee shop and I had a self-help workbook and I worked on that for a little and then I was a little sleepy so I took a nap.
In the coffee shop? Yeah, in the coffee shop on one of the plushy chairs.
Nice. Yeah, it was really comfortable.
You good-looking people can get away with everything.
So I woke up, and it was probably only like a...
I saw this group of people, probably around 17 to 18 years old, and they were all like looking at me, and they said hi, and I was all disoriented from my nap, so I just kind of waited, and I just looked away, and then they left, and then 10 minutes later they came back.
And one of the girls that was with them sat next to me.
On the plushy chair next to me.
And the group of friends...
me.
And it was just so bizarre.
They were asking me these questions.
And I, by this point, was so scared and anxious and embarrassed.
because they said our friend thinks you're attractive and she wants to talk to you.
Raphael, can you mute?
Thank you.
Sorry, go ahead. Oh, so I was feeling just really uncomfortable, and they were asking me these questions, and I was just giving these kind of one-word answers, and afterwards, like, I was kind of just, like, they'd ask, have you heard of, and then they'd give some pop culture reference I'd...
I'm just saying, no, never heard of that.
Greg, you're dropping out a little bit.
Are you far away from your broadcasting base?
Oh, no. No, but here, I'll move over this way.
It's all the bars on my connection, so is this better?
It's not bad, so, sorry, go ahead.
Sorry, just...
If it...
So I was just disoriented and like they asked me if I if I had heard of these pop culture references and I just give these answers and I felt in the moment really bad that I wasn't being assertive and that I wasn't saying you know I'm really not I'm sorry Greg you left heading out can I call you on a telephone?
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, can you just whisper to me in the chat window your number and I will call you on the phone.
Cool, thanks. Hey, sorry about that.
No, no problem at all. This should work out fine.
So, go ahead.
Right, so when I was feeling disoriented and just like very dissociated from the experience, I was just kind of giving these one-word, two-word answers to their questions and all the while thinking, why am I not...and I was getting really frustrated with myself thinking, why am I not asserting my boundaries?
Why am I not saying, you know, I'm really not comfortable with this and I'd rather be left alone or something like that, or even just leave and not be rude about it, but just kind of say, yeah, I need to go.
And actually, the self-help workbook that I was working on was Asserting Yourself.
So, yeah, I guess that's kind of the experience.
It lasted like 15 minutes there kind of talking to me, and it was just Afterwards I felt so numb and like I just wasn't even in my body.
Right. And yeah, I guess that's probably enough.
So you didn't experience it as flattering?
No, no. I experienced it as actually terrifying.
I'm sure you're right. I just want to make sure that I understand the fear factor, and I think I do, but I just want to make sure that I do.
So, obviously they weren't doing anything threatening in particular, but was it the fact that they were acting so inappropriate to the situation that was alarming?
In other words, if you sit down with someone and that person has just woken up, Then peppering them with oblique questions and so on, it's vaguely sinister because it's so inappropriate, not immoral, but inappropriate to the situation.
Right. Well, inappropriate was one of the words that I used with Greg earlier to describe the kind of, our friend is attracted to you and she wants to talk to you, because that just seemed very blunt and over the top.
And I said that could just be my prudishness.
But it just seemed a little bit forward to me.
Well, I mean, look, I mean, when someone's attracted to someone, someone's got to say something, right?
Right. And I mean, that's completely probably my inexperience with all this kind of stuff.
But yeah, it was a fear of, yeah, I think you're right, it was alarming.
Yeah, just what you said, someone's just woken up factor.
Now, did they wake you up?
No, no. I woke up and they were looking at me as I was sleeping.
Okay, that's a little creepy, right?
Yeah, I just wake up and see these four people looking at me.
Yeah, first thing I do is reach for my wallet and my watch.
Right, right. And see if somebody put a mustache on me.
Right, right. Yeah, so that was alarming at first, and then they left, and I was just kind of still in the haze, and we flipped through my book a little more, and then they came back.
They came back, right?
And? Yeah. Oh, and that's when they had the conversation, or the one-sided conversation.
Well, they kept asking you about all of this stuff.
Now, did the girl who was interested ever talk about, like, did she ever talk to you, or what?
Yeah, yeah. She actually asked if she could have my cell phone.
To do something with it.
And I said, no, I don't really want to give you my cell phone.
She meant to put her contact information in, right?
I think either that or wanted to write a text message to myself.
I don't know. And it was just really weird.
I didn't want to.
And I clammed up and grabbed my cell phone and held tight to it.
Went even more into my shell.
So like every time there was something like that that occurred, I would like to just withdraw even more into myself.
And it was completely the opposite to how I presented myself in the interview.
I was comfortable.
And right now I'm just like the words are flowing and very relaxed or maybe not relaxed at the moment on this call, but yeah.
And then with this, it was Just, yeah, completely clammed up and withdrawn into my shell.
I'm curious why you got upset with yourself.
The thought was that I wasn't assertive with my boundaries.
What it reminded me of is with the podcast that you did where there was a saleswoman, the lotion saleswoman with Christina.
Yeah. And she didn't say She didn't assert her boundaries and felt upset with herself.
It really reminded me of that situation that I didn't assert myself and my preferences at all.
Right. I mean, it was a little bit different with Christina because Christina was supposed to have won something and this went on for like an hour, whereas I think this was, as you say, 15 or so minutes?
Yeah, I kind of lost track of time because I was dissociated, but I'd say 15 minutes Maybe 20 and at the most 30.
Oh, the 30. So it could have been up to 30 minutes.
Could have been. I mean, time was at that...
I mean, I was so dissociated because I definitely do have a bit of a dissociation defense.
I mean, I definitely withdraw into myself and it's pretty bad with me.
Okay, because this is like the fourth or fifth thing that you've said about yourself that is negative, right?
Wow. Wow, you're right, yeah.
I mean, what would have been your ideal situation or the ideal way that you could have handled this situation?
I would say my ideal in my mind is that I would have expressed my discomfort with them and Express my preference that they leave me alone.
But I don't know if that's really my...
Sorry, just...
What on earth makes you think that you didn't?
Oh, by giving the one-word answers?
Well, it's more than that.
It's everything. I mean, if someone's uncomfortable...
Okay, let me...
Have you been around someone who's...
Who you are making uncomfortable or who is uncomfortable?
Yeah, yeah. Do you notice it?
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Right, you know, you can't help but notice it, right?
Someone could pay you a million dollars to not notice it and you'd still notice it.
Yeah, that's true, that's true.
Right, so, and I think this is true of everyone.
Everybody notices when someone is uncomfortable.
Right. So, they noticed that you were uncomfortable.
Right. I mean, because you shouldn't have to say it, right?
That's true. That's true.
Yeah. I mean, when I was a single man, if I would go up and talk to a girl, I would know within about half a second...
Whether she had any interest in me at all.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Now, I could just hang around and keep talking and keep asking and, you know, gosh, maybe after my 20th question she'll realize what a great guy I am.
But I would know.
And it would be like fighting an uphill battle or trying to swim upstream or something.
Like, it was really tough. Yeah, yeah.
And I think this is true of everyone.
Everybody knows when someone's uncomfortable.
Even a sociopath who is a torturer knows when someone is uncomfortable, right?
That's their job. Right, right.
They probably know better than a lot of people.
So they knew that you were uncomfortable.
Right, right. Yeah, that's right.
Now, a polite person or a reasonable person or a nice person or a person that you want to have in your life at all, when they notice that you're uncomfortable, what do they say?
Well, they probably observe that you're uncomfortable and leave you alone.
No, no, no, no.
Somebody you want in your life, because your discomfort could come, as you say, I don't know, but as you say, it could come from your prudishness, right?
Oh, so they're curious about the discomfort.
They say, you seem uncomfortable.
I'm sorry if we're making you uncomfortable.
Is that the case?
Or how do you feel? Or something like that.
Right, right.
So, the reason that you felt uncomfortable was because there was an escalation.
Because you're portraying this like it spiked and it went on.
For 30 minutes, and that's not true.
You were a little startled when you woke up, but things got progressively weirder, right?
Right. The coming back, the sitting next to me, the circling around me, the continuation, even when it was obvious I was uncomfortable?
Is that what you're referring to? Sure.
Sure. And the fact that you continued to exhibit, or to give monosyllabic answers, you continued to be uncomfortable.
Right. And that they continued to do that, which was making you uncomfortable.
Right, which was setting off even more alarm bells for me.
Yeah. Like, oh shit, if these people either lack empathy or they're ignoring their perceptions of me.
Well, they don't lack empathy either.
Because they can feel that you're uncomfortable.
What they lack is sympathy.
Oh, right, right. Yeah, that's true.
So, with that in mind, what do you think would have been the result of you attempting to establish boundaries with these people?
Oh, yeah, since we have the evidence that they already don't have a sense of boundaries.
Well, my gut's saying they would have done kind of the pouty thing.
Right. Like, aww, and just kind of done the pouty lips and that kind of stuff.
Well, they would have made you feel bad for establishing a boundary with them or attempting to, right?
Right, right. No, that's true.
That's true. They would have humiliated you in some manner that we can imagine, but it could be any one of a number of things, right?
Yeah, that feels right, but I'm not sure.
Can you give maybe an example? Oh, of what they would have done?
To humiliate me? Oh, they would have...
They would have looked at each other and said, do you smell urine?
I think I smell urine.
Did this guy pee himself?
Wait. What?
I'm just bewildered.
Did you hear what I said? Yes, I did.
I'm just confused. So they would have honestly, you think, done something like that?
I don't know. I wasn't there, but if I wanted to humiliate someone and I was with a pack of people and I was a cruel person, that's what I would do.
Do you smell shit?
Did you shit yourself?
Are you okay, man? You know, we're going to go and talk to the manager.
Do you want us to call someone?
Because, man, do you smell that?
It really smells like this guy just crapped himself.
Oh, right, right.
So... That would be the result of trying to establish these boundaries with people who already have evidence that they don't care about boundaries.
Or they would have said loudly, oh, okay, sorry, we didn't mean to come on to you if you're gay.
Sorry, right? Oh, right, right.
And, you know, yeah, one of the, yeah, I mean, these are all just hypotheticals.
Yeah, one of the guys in the group was gay, so I can totally see That being one of the options.
Right. Now, of course, I certainly don't mean to imply that being gay is embarrassing or whatever, but this is the level that they would have been operating at, right?
Or, one of them could have stood up and, quote, accidentally spilled a hot drink on you.
Oh, right. Yeah, I guess there are a number of possibilities.
Or one of them could have tripped and landed on you and twisted your nipples so hard that you screamed.
I mean, this is all just silly stuff I'm making up.
I have no idea, right?
Right, right. But it would have been something, for sure.
Right, or even something as minor as fine.
Fine, you don't want to talk to...
or just something like that. Well, I know that you're a brave guy.
I don't think that you sensed it was going to be just someone who says, oh, fine, okay, and they left, right?
I think that you felt that you were in a situation where escalation had real potential.
Right. That makes sense, yeah.
I mean, we don't go...
we don't dissociate...
When we're in a situation of mild danger, right?
Not for half an hour, right?
That's certainly true. Yeah, not for half an hour, right?
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
And the dissociation definitely continued even until pretty recently, like even a little now.
I don't know, I certainly don't feel as Open and free as I normally feel talking on these calls.
Oh, sure. No, I understand that.
Now, the other thing, of course, and this is going to all kinds of extremes, so I apologize for being an alarmist, and I don't mean to be.
I'm just trying to point out a potential situation.
Sure. They could have waited for you outside and beaten you up.
Right. Again, I'm not saying that this is common or we live in a world where this happens after you're 12 years old or whatever, right?
But it's not impossible, right?
Right. Oh, certainly not, no.
And, I mean, just using this as a hypothetical, I mean, it was dark out.
It was twilight.
So, yeah, it certainly would have been an option if they wanted to.
Yeah, I mean... Now, granted, it was three girls and the aforementioned gay guy, so...
But I don't know if that's an option for them, but certainly...
Oh, it certainly is. Look, I mean, women can beat people up.
I mean, we don't have to go too far, even in this community, to know much about female...
to understand female violence, right?
Oh, yeah, right.
That's very true. Yeah.
So, and so, and again, none of this may occur, or may be occurring, or anything like that, but what I'm saying is that right now, you have made up an answer as to why you did what you did, right? Prudishness?
I'm sorry? Sorry, is that answer prudishness, or...
Well, your answer was...
One was twofold. One was prudishness, and the second was cowardice.
Yeah, both of which...
Yeah, because I think you were, what, counting four or five negative self-talk things that I had said.
Well, those came out of, you know, because I was cowardly, I got angry at myself.
And then I did this, and then I did that, and I should have done the other.
But deep down, It was either I was being prudish or and I was being a coward, right?
Right, right.
No, that's true. And so let's take out our handy little RTR workbook, right?
And so what's the first thing that you need to say to yourself when you go through something like this or while you're going through something like this?
I wonder why I'm doing this or feeling this.
I wonder why. I did this and I don't know why.
What did I feel?
As soon as you jump to a conclusion and you give yourself a label, cowardly, prudish, whatever, weak, I'm doing a whole workbook exercise on how to stand up for myself and I didn't stand up for myself.
Oh yeah, that definitely went through my mind.
I was thinking, God damn it, Greg, you're working through this book.
You bought this book for a reason.
Can't you practice what you're claiming to want to do?
Well, I'm not convinced that you didn't stand up for yourself.
I mean, that's how far apart you and I are at looking at this situation.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I certainly, intellectually, I see that I did, but it still just emotionally does not resonate that I stood up for myself.
Well, tell me how you see yourself as having stood up for yourself.
Walking out or, as I said, asserting my boundaries, But, I mean, we've gone through that, and that certainly is not a good idea with these people.
To assert the boundaries. So...
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know. Okay, well...
You didn't give over your cell phone, right?
Well, that's true. That's asserting a boundary, right?
Right, right. That was pretty clear.
I didn't want to give them my cell phone.
I'm assuming you didn't tell them your full name, address, and social security number?
No. No.
I did not. Right. So, you were, you did set some boundaries, right?
Right. No, you're right.
I mean, you got out of a situation where people were being kind of weird and manipulative and creepy, completely unscathed.
I mean, the only person who scathed you was you!
You know, you're right.
I mean, they just asked you some annoying questions and were weird and creepy, right?
Yes. But the only person who's putting you down is you.
That's absolutely accurate.
So, the boundary that you need to set up is not between you and these people, right?
It's between you and your critic, right?
Right, right. No, that ecosystem voice is certainly an active one.
This is the critic thing, I should, I should, right?
Yeah, oh yeah. He's certainly a guy that does a lot of that.
Well, okay, let's ask him.
Right, so put him front and center, right?
If Greg did such a bad job, why didn't you do it?
Why didn't you take over?
Because it's his job.
No, if you say it's your standard, then it's your job.
It's not his standard, it's your standard.
If it's your standard, then you should do it.
You don't delegate work to other people that you think is essential, right?
I can't do the work for him.
He has to. Why can't you do the work for him?
It's your standard, not his.
But he's the prime mover in this interaction.
Oh, so you're helpless. I'm talking to him.
No, no, you're helpless to get what you want.
I guess I am. Well, you just told me that you are.
Stop being evasive. You just said, he's the prime mover, right?
Yes, I said that.
Right.
So it means that you're helpless to achieve what you want, right?
Right.
Greg's supposed to do it.
Right. And what is it that you criticized Greg the most for in this interaction?
Not acting. Being helpless.
Yes. So, you're helpless, and what you do is you criticize Greg the most for being helpless too, right?
That's true, but I'm allowed to be helpless.
Okay, you're allowed to be helpless.
Why are you allowed to be helpless and Greg is not?
Give me the UPB on that, I'm all ears. Oh, it's a good voice now.
No. Because I'm the coach and he's the actor.
Okay, that's great.
Now, you have had about 20 years of being this guy's coach, right?
Yes, that's true.
And if you were to be evaluated by an independent committee on your success at coaching, right, so your goal is to make Greg more assertive, right?
Yes. And you've had 15 years to coach Greg into being more assertive, and on a scale of 1 to 100, where would you put him after 15 years of your expert coaching?
10. 10, okay.
And would you consider that successful?
No, but it's because he didn't try.
You're the coach.
It's your job to motivate him.
I try to, he just doesn't listen to me.
And how do you try to motivate him?
I snap at him. Yeah, you snap at him, you insult him, you put him down, you yell at him, and so on, right?
Yeah. And has that been your strategy for the last 20 years?
Pretty much, yeah. Okay, and how's that worked out?
10%. Right, so how has that worked out in terms of success?
I mean, for instance, let me put it to you this way.
If I had been, if I was your tutor and you had to pass an exam and we had 15 years to study and I was tutoring you for many hours a day for 15 years and you finally took the exam and you got 10%, would you think I was a good tutor?
No, but I wouldn't think you're a good student either.
Well, the tutor is the one who takes on the responsibility of getting the student to be a good student.
You see, if it's a good student naturally, you don't need a tutor.
If somebody just wakes up and is a perfect gymnast, they don't need a gymnastic coach, do they?
No, I guess they don't.
So the very fact of being a tutor and being a coach is an acceptance of the imperfections of the person that you're teaching, right?
Right.
Right.
No, that's...
But he just doesn't listen.
I understand that he doesn't listen, but you're the coach, which means that you recognize the deficiencies that he doesn't, right?
The reason that you need a coach is It's because there is an outside eye who can see what you cannot, right?
So you need someone who can judge your form when you're a dancer because you can't see how you look, right?
Right. So you see what is deficient in Greg and Greg does not see it.
The same way if you're teaching Mandarin to someone, You can see where they're making errors in Mandarin, but they can't, because the moment that you can see when you're making errors in Mandarin, you don't need a coach anymore, right?
No, that's true.
So, he is deficient, by your judgment, in self-assertion.
You have set it as your task to improve his self-assertiveness, and you fully recognize that he cannot see and fix this problem on his own.
That's true, that's true.
And you have been doing this job for 20 years, and you've gotten him to 10%.
Now let me ask you this.
He's obviously not at 0% naturally, right?
Nobody is. You wouldn't get out of bed, right?
That's right. So without your wonderful intervention for 20 years, where would he be numerically?
Without you snapping at him and yelling at him and putting him down and making him feel deficient and making him feel bad, where would he be without 20 years of being put down In terms of his self-assertion.
I guess he'd just be at 1%.
So, if I understand this rightly, you think that by putting him down, you have made him 10 times more assertive?
That doesn't sound right, but...
Doesn't sound too right, does it?
No, not really, no.
What doesn't sound right? Well, I guess I'm supposed to be protecting him from people who are snapping at him.
Okay, do you see? That that's sort of like saying, well, just in case you stub your toe, I'm going to saw your fucking leg off.
No, that's right.
That's right. That makes sense. Have you ever tried writing an exam with someone calling you a fucking moron yelling at you in your ear?
No, but I guess that's kind of what it's like for him.
Kind of.
Tell me what part of that is not like that for him.
That's a good one.
I don't know.
I guess it's completely like that for him.
I think so. I mean, it certainly sounds like it.
Now, you have common cause with Greg, because the problem you have is not with self-assertion.
The problem that you have is frustration at feeling helpless, right?
Yeah. Since you feel frustrated at feeling helpless, the way that you would feel less helpless is if you were actually listened to, right?
Yes. How can I make him listen?
Well, You know how not to make him listen, right?
Yeah. Which is what you've been doing for 20 years, right?
Right. Well, that makes sense.
That certainly makes sense. Now, do you feel that someone...
Who has been doing the wrong thing for 20 years and hasn't learned enough to change his behavior to get what he wants.
Would you call someone like that someone who would be a reasonable person to criticize somebody else's learning skills?
No, I guess that's a little hypocritical of me.
Well, you say that Greg's a crappy student, but you've been doing the same thing that doesn't work for 20 years.
That's true. That's really true.
In the area that you claim to be an expert in, right?
Right. That's true.
So it may be somewhat unfair for you to claim that he's a bad student when you've been doing the same thing that doesn't work for 20 years and not learning from the fact that it doesn't work and changing your behavior, right?
I don't like hearing this, but I think you're right.
So, how do you get him to listen to you in a way that is going to be effective and get what you want, which is a reduction in frustration?
I listen to him?
Well, yeah, I don't think that you'd be able to pull that off for very long, frankly.
You know, with all due respect, I think you have an air horn for a voice.
Sorry, what's that? Well, I don't think you would be able to pull it off for very long.
I don't think that's a viable solution.
I think you'd strangle him or yourself or something, right?
Yeah, my natural tendency is to snap at people.
Right. And you snap at them because you're afraid they're not going to listen to you.
Right. Right.
And of course, as you're fully aware, it's a completely self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
No, that's true. It's been that way for 20 years.
A coach, a good coach, does not yell at people.
A guy who's assigned to break you down in the military will yell at you.
But a good coach does not yell.
He encourages. He sympathizes.
He helps. And he can be stern at times when it's necessary, but never abusive.
A coach is only concerned with one thing and one thing only.
What is the coach concerned with alone?
The success of his pupil.
See? You're a total genius.
Whatever it takes to get the gold is what the coach will do.
So if it's not, listen to Greg, because as you said, I can't pull that one off.
Yeah.
What is it? Well, you have not been in coaching because you want to help Greg.
You have been in coaching, quote coaching, for what reason?
Because I'm frustrated. Yeah, you have been a coach because you like yelling at people.
I mean, I use the word like here somewhat loosely, but it's your thing.
It's what you do. It's the only tool in your toolbox, so to speak.
Right. Yeah, I guess I was getting kind of snappy with you, too.
Yeah, that's fine. That's fine.
You're not my inner critic, so I can take it, right?
And my inner critic I just have a tougher time with, but you're other people's inner critic.
That's why we need this community.
That's why community is so important.
But... So, yeah, how is it that you get Greg to be more assertive?
You can't just sit there and listen to him because that's not going to work for you.
At least, it may in time, but it's not going to work up front.
I stop making it about me?
Yeah, you stop making it about you, for sure, and you start judging yourself as a coach by the success of your pupil.
And that means you just have to try everything and anything except what you've been doing.
That's the trick.
It's not about what you do, it's about what you don't do.
Right.
So you can do anything except what you've been doing for the last 20 years, right?
Does that anything include trusting Greg?
Okay, logically, what do you think?
Since you are very intelligent, what do you think?
If I say you can do anything except what you've been doing for the last 20 years, would you say that for the last 20 years you've been trusting Greg?
No, I haven't. Okay, so where does your question fall logically into the category?
If I say to you, you can go anywhere but north, and then you say, well, but can I go east?
You're not asking me a real question, right?
I don't want to trust him, but...
I don't care if you trust him.
It doesn't matter to me if you trust him or you do the hokey pokey.
The only thing you can't do is yell at him and put him down.
Right. You can do anything.
You can do the Macarena.
You can break into fluent Gaelic.
You can do handstands.
You can do the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, for all I care.
But you just can't do what you've been doing for 20 years that has beaten him down.
What you don't see is you say he's at 10% and maybe he is and maybe he isn't.
If you hadn't been beaten down on him for 20 years, I bet you he'd be much higher than 10%.
Your coaching Has reduced his capacities in that which you say you are trying to help him achieve.
Right. No, that makes sense.
Now, if... See, here's the logical trick.
This is the logical challenge, right?
If, oh inner coach, if you cannot change your strategy, if you find yourself just doing the same thing over and over and over again, Then you can in no way whatsoever complain about Greg's lack of assertiveness.
Right. Because he's not changing his behavior, nor am I. Right.
So you can't blame other people for not changing if you're not able to change.
That's like one drunk snarling at another drunk that he's a drunk.
It's pathetic. It's a sorry excuse for a perspective.
I'll go one better.
You yourself said one out of ten times you're satisfied with Greg's assertiveness, right?
One out of ten times you are satisfied with Greg's assertiveness.
How many times out of ten do you refrain from putting him down when he doesn't meet your exacting standards?
Well, I even put him down in those 1 out of 10 times.
I know. So, would you say it's 0 out of 10 times?
Yeah, close to that.
Okay, close is right.
So, what that means is that Greg actually has more flexible behavior than you do.
Greg actually succeeds in achieving his goals almost infinitely more than you do.
And that's why the first thing you said was listen to him, and I think that's true, but we need to give you a little more flexibility than that.
He's actually a better coach than you are because he's able to have coached himself into 10% success rate when you're floating somewhere south of zero.
Yeah, yeah, I guess that's right.
And it's just that kind of humility to the evidence.
I'm not, I mean, I hope you don't experience me as putting, I'm actually trying to help you get what you want, which is to have an effect and to be a positive contributor to the personality as a whole, right?
You know, I don't like hearing what you're saying, but I guess I have to accept it.
You don't have to accept it, because for 20 years you haven't been, and this is nothing you don't know deep down, right?
It's just that you don't have any other tools, right?
It's like when all you have is a hammer, everything sure as hell looks like a nail, doesn't it?
Right. So all I'm suggesting...
Sorry, go ahead. I was just asking if that's so ineffective, why is that my only tool?
Well, I think that's an excellent question, and of course you're the one who knows the answer to that, right?
I love it when the ecosystem plays dumb.
Well, when you've spent 20 years doing the same thing and getting the same result, what is it we know for sure about your desire for that what is it we know for sure about your desire for That I don't desire that result?
I don't know. If you've spent 20 years being pissed off, frustrated, and putting someone down, we know for sure that what you want to do is to be pissed off, frustrated, and put someone down, right?
Right. If somebody spends 20 years beating their head against a wall, we know for sure that what they want to do is to beat their head against a wall.
Otherwise, motivation would make no sense, right?
Yeah, that's true. Otherwise, everything that someone did would be the exact opposite of what they actually felt, right?
Right, right.
So you are the part of the personality that masters frustration and abuse.
Master it.
Why did I master it?
Well, because you experienced a lot of it when you were growing up, right?
Yeah. This is the Simon the Boxer thing that's in that RTR book, right?
Which is that we grow addicted to mastering these negative sensations, and thus, in the absence of those negative sensations, we have to recreate them so that we can experience that mastery again, because it's all that we know about control and efficacy, and in a weird kind of way, self-esteem. Oh, right.
Right. It's why when things go really well for people, they start to feel anxiety because they don't have something to master that they're familiar with.
So you produce frustration and So that you can feel self-righteous, so that you can feel superior, right?
Because the first thing you said to me was, well, he's a bad student, and I'm a good coach, and he just doesn't listen, and I know it all, but if only he'd listen to me.
So there was a lot of false self-superiority in all of that, right?
Yeah, that's true. So, you want to elevate yourself up Because you don't feel very big to begin with.
A person who feels big to begin with doesn't need to put other people down, right?
Yeah. But I feel big when I do it.
Oh, sure you do, for sure.
But what you genuinely feel is not bigness, but a relief.
A temporary relief from smallness, which is a different kind of thing.
It's like saying that a heroin addict who's in the later stages of his addiction, and you've been addicted to this for 20 years, A heroin addict in the later stage of his addiction does not take the drug in order to feel happy.
He takes the drug in order to avoid the excruciating agony of his life in the absence of the drug, right?
He takes the drug not to feel happy but to avoid withdrawal symptoms, right?
Yeah, that's true.
So, I would submit to you that there's a kind of happiness that doesn't involve Stomping on other people.
That once you experience it, that other happiness, which is actually just a relief from agony, just won't seem very appealing to you.
Right. But the pain management aspect of your existence is unsustainable in terms of Actually being happy and contented and relaxed, right? Yeah.
And so, yeah...
So do I actually... Sorry, go ahead.
Go on. No, go ahead.
So do I actually have a job in the personality?
Oh, hugely. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Look, you are the most incredible early warning radar for people like you, right?
Oh, yeah. I guess I know myself backwards and forwards.
Oh, yeah. You can see you in other people.
I mean, you were all over him with these people, right?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you saw them a mile off, right?
Yeah. I guess the instant I woke up.
Yeah, so he needs you because there's no way that you can establish boundaries unless you know that they're being violated in the first place, right?
Right. Yeah, because I'm pretty good at it.
Yeah, you're an expert on boundary violations because you've had some practice, right?
Right, I guess I do it to him all the time.
Right, and because it was done to you.
So you are an incredible early warning system that he desperately needs in order to navigate successfully and in a healthy way through life.
Because if you're around and you're allied with the personality, these people won't sit down to begin with.
Really? Guaranteed.
That's interesting.
Why is that? Well, because they see you and you see them.
Conflict. You can never establish boundaries.
This is a big lie.
You can never establish boundaries.
You can only avoid people who have no boundaries.
I don't establish boundaries with my wife.
I don't want any boundaries with my wife.
I mean, how often do you hear me in conversations with listeners?
How often do you hear me establish boundaries with listeners?
Never. Yeah.
You can't establish boundaries.
Because people who violate boundaries like violating boundaries.
They get off on it. It's their kick.
Like you, you understand that, right?
And I guess the people who don't like crossing boundaries already feel where the boundaries are anyway.
Yeah, what they do is the people who have no boundaries will pick on people who will self-attack, right?
Like they did with me?
Yeah, like they did with you.
But if you won't self-attack, then people won't violate your boundaries.
I mean, they may be jerks or whatever, like some people, you kick them off, get rid of them.
But you can't establish boundaries.
It's not possible. What about Greg's or my demeanor jumped out at them?
How did they sense that That I don't have boundaries.
Well, were you dressed like a hippie?
No. You came from a job interview, right?
Yes. And then you fell asleep in a public place.
Yes. That would be my first clue if I was somebody like that.
What do you mean? Well, you fell asleep in a public place.
Right. Is there something wrong with that?
I sort of think so, myself.
I mean, it's not bad or anything like that, but...
I found it...
I mean, just to jump out of talking to this guy, just to you, Greg, I mean, I found it a little surprising when you said I fell asleep in a coffee shop.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I guess a nice sweater and khakis.
That was kind of weird. Well, it's like you're already violating a boundary.
I mean, it's not a hotel, right?
Right. It's a coffee shop.
And what do the staff in the coffee shop do with somebody who's fallen asleep?
Nothing, really. Well, no, because you could be sleeping there for three hours, right?
Right, right. And they have...
They're not making any money if you're sleeping there.
They're making money from people buying coffee and keeping moving, right?
Right, right. And there probably is, frankly, a rule somewhere in the coffee shop, even if it's only verbal, that you're not supposed to sleep there.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was kind of unplanned, but yeah, kind of.
Well, no, it's, I mean, you knew you were getting tired, right?
Right, oh yeah, yeah.
And I started beating down.
Yeah, so you start, you know, we all do this thing, you know, like when I was studying, it was like, oh, I'll read with my head down and then I'll put my head on the side with my book and I'll just close my eyes for a moment.
We all do that seduction, right?
It's like, oh, just shut up and have a nap.
But you were taking that route.
So already you were in a situation where you had put the coffee shop staff in an awkward position.
Right? Yeah. Because they kind of have to come over and wake you, right?
Right, right. Which they don't want to do, right?
Right, right. What if you'd started snoring?
Right, right. No, seriously.
What if you'd started drooling?
Yeah. What if you had twitched in your sleep and kicked something over?
What if you'd had a nightmare?
So by having, and this is just conjecture.
I don't know these people, obviously, but this is just conjecture, right?
But by having a nap in a coffee shop, you're already sending out signals.
About your perception of boundaries and consideration for others.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, that does make sense.
And I don't know if you've ever seen these shows, the funniest videos shows.
Every single one, they seem to have some guy who's asleep on a couch, right?
And what do the asshole family members always do?
They pick on him? Yeah, they put a fake spider on him or they, I don't know, they release a dog under his groin or they put an air horn next to his ear or whatever, right?
Right. There is just a vulnerability about being asleep.
It is a very vulnerable position or situation to be in in life, right?
Yes, that's true.
And to do that in a public place, well...
Maybe this is just me being a prude.
I mean, it could just be, right?
No, it does make sense, yeah.
And it's interesting to me...
Oh, and sorry, somebody was just saying, if you're awake for three hours on a chair, no, I don't think it's okay to be in a coffee shop for three hours.
I really don't.
I mean, I used to do that, but I would buy something every half an hour, or every 20 minutes.
I got kind of jazzed after a while, but I would buy half decaf Americanos.
But no, the job of a coffee shop is to sell stuff.
It is not to provide a sleeping environment for people who are tired, right?
That's called a hotel. Or a Japanese airport pod or something like that.
But yeah, no, I think it's kind of rude myself.
And I know this just because I was a waiter, and Greg, as you move forward into this profession, you'll understand what I mean.
I would have tables sometimes.
They would arrive at 7 o'clock and they wouldn't leave until 10.
Now, The restaurant doesn't want people sitting there for three hours or three and a half hours or whatever.
They want to keep things cycled, right?
Sorry about that. Oh, no problem.
No problem at all. So, the last thing that I wanted to mention about this is that I'm going to vaguely assume that you don't Fall asleep at a coffee shop every day, right? Oh, almost never, no.
Almost never. Okay, good.
That helps.
So... Actually, I can only remember one other incident, and that was during my insomnia when I was living in Boston.
I was living on two hours of sleep a night, and I completely dozed off reading a book in a bookstore.
Right, right. Okay.
So, and I did not think that it was common for you.
So, why do you think it happened today?
Hmm. Yeah, because this is, really, I can count the two incidents that it's occurred, so it's not part of my innate perception.
Sorry, just while you think about it, people are having a little trouble now.
People are saying that people fall asleep on the train all the time on the way to work.
Well, that's very true, but you've bought a seat for the duration, and they don't care whether you're awake or asleep.
Your fellow passenger might, but that's not the way a coffee shop or a restaurant works.
A coffee shop or a restaurant, like a lot of other businesses, works on the concept of volume, that you've got to keep people moving in order to make more money.
Whereas that just never occurs on a bus or a train.
You've paid for the seat for the duration.
That's all that they're selling you, right?
Whereas a restaurant is selling you a meal and wants to use those seats for other people as soon as possible.
So I just wanted to mention that.
Sorry, go ahead. Well, I guess...
Sorry, you're breathing a little heavy into the mic.
If you could just move it a little way.
Go ahead. Well...
There were two significant things that happened today.
The job interview.
And I saw my grandmother.
Right. Okay.
And you talked about the job interview, but I don't remember you mentioning anything about your grandmother?
No, I didn't. I just saw her.
I obviously didn't stop and talk to her.
And I just saw her through one set of windows on a building.
Through, you know, the 90 degree angle at the corner of a building, through one corner into another corner, and I saw her walking.
And that was after the interview, but before the coffee shop?
After the interview, before the coffee shop.
And I had a bit of a start.
A bit? She's my mom's mom.
Yeah, a major start.
Yeah, it was terrifying. Doesn't your heart lurch?
Doesn't your knees feel weak?
Don't your hands sweat?
Yeah, oh yeah. I just felt like my legs were trembling and it was...
It's my mom's mom. She lives in the city.
Yes. Oh, it's terrifying, right?
It brings everything back, right?
Yeah, yeah. Right.
So, and that was before, and this was near...
The vicinity of the coffee shop, like walking distance of the coffee shop.
So I don't know if that had anything to do with it.
Do either of those incidents sound like something that would spark a lack of boundaries in me?
Oh, both. Yeah, for sure.
So what you're saying is that you fell asleep in a coffee shop when your grandmother was around, more or less.
Yes, she was around at the time.
Because I gotta tell you, if I'm seeing my mom, I'm balting.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I... Yeah.
So... And, you know...
Go ahead. Well, this is a woman who actually has fewer boundaries than I see.
She parks in handicapped spots without the handicapping.
Right. And she definitely does not have a sense of boundaries.
Well, no, no. See, she does have a sense of boundaries, right?
She just likes to violate them. Oh, but violates them.
Like a torturer has a sense of pain.
He just likes to cause it, right?
I'm still getting a lot of breathing noise.
If you could just move your nose or your mouth just a little further away.
No problem. Now...
Yeah, I'm just wondering...
Well, the question is, sorry, it's not that seeing your grandmother is going to cause you to fall asleep in a coffee shop, right?
Because we're not determined.
It's not causal that way.
The question is...
What did you do with the emotions of seeing your grandmother?
Well, I certainly didn't act on them.
Well, but you act on them...
Well, acting on them without understanding them is called acting out, right?
Yeah. So what did you do when you felt the shock of seeing your grandmother?
Shoved down the shock.
And why did you do that?
I'm drawing a blank. I don't want to say I don't know, because I know by now that that's not something you say on these, but...
Can you help me out?
Why you would shove those feelings down?
Yeah. Well, I mean, just to take the arc of your day, Greg, I mean, you were very proud, and I think quite rightly so, of going for the job interview.
And I think that what they're doing with the hosting thing to the waiter, that makes perfect sense.
So I know Christina was a hostess for quite some time when she was, I guess, about your age.
So you had a real high there, right?
Oh, yeah. I was on top of the world.
I felt really happy about my finances for the first time in a while.
Right. So you had a real success here.
And I mean, I think through our conversation, you found something that would be, I think, useful and positive for you to do that gives you some sense of financial stability and security.
It's a very portable skill.
You can take it anywhere and work anywhere if you want to travel, anything like that.
Right. So it's a good skill to have, I think.
So you had a real high and then you went right into a trough with your family.
Right. Yeah, that's true.
So, this is going to be my rough thesis, because we've been talking for a while.
I don't want to step you through too much, but my rough thesis would be this.
Because you were in the extraordinary high, you were in an undefended state.
Oh, I was vulnerable.
You were vulnerable. Happiness makes you vulnerable.
Yeah. That's why people like to be depressed, because when you're happy, you're vulnerable.
Mm-hmm, right, right.
So, you were in a vulnerable state, and you got a family, a foobam, right?
Mm-hmm, right.
And you didn't have any defenses up against that, so it put you back to a very early state where you could not manage your feelings with an intellectual defense because your intellectual defenses simply weren't there because you were so high from the job interview.
Your guard was down.
Right. So, what happened was you got foobammed and you didn't have any defense except brute repression.
Sorry, a security guard came in and was just checking up on this.
Can you repeat that? Because you were in an undefended state, when you got slammed, The only defense that you had was brute repression.
Right. Now, with brute repression comes dissociation.
And that's before I fell asleep.
Oh yeah, for sure. Right.
And so you would have felt dazed and otherworldly and out of your body after you saw Your grandmother.
Oh, I totally felt just...
I walked around outside, like, almost in circles, but I was just walking to walk.
Oh, I understand. No, I mean, you were...
And the reason that I know that is that you had no continuity between the high that you had just had with your legitimate and wonderful success with the job interview.
Right, it's pretty jarring.
Well, all that just evaporated, right?
Yeah, yeah, and I didn't, yeah.
And so you're just dazed and you feel completely alone.
You feel out of your body.
You feel dissociated, right?
And then comes the exhaustion.
Oh, I was just completely exhausted.
Right. Well, because you've had the high, you've had the crash, you've had the dissociation, your fight and flight has kicked your adrenal gland is burning out, you get exhausted, right?
Totally. And now that you say that, it did strike me as weird that I was so fatigued automatically because...
I couldn't make that transition because when you have a big success in your life, like this job interview, we tend to be high for a while, right?
We don't just want to have a nap.
Oh, so it did seem jarring for you that I just wanted to go have a nap?
Yeah, it's like, oh, I had this amazing job interview, and it went fantastic, and then I just had a nap.
It's like, what? We stay awake to enjoy these things.
Like, people don't say, I won the lottery, and then I had a nap.
Right, which is why it sounded so weird to you.
It's like such a complete cross of boundaries.
Well, just an odd thing, right?
So, when you were...
So, the dissociation leads to the exhaustion, right?
And the dissociation leads you to a feeling of real isolation, right?
Yeah, I was isolated.
I felt it, at least.
It was...
Right.
So when you feel very isolated, you don't recognize other people's boundaries, and so you feel relatively comfortable falling asleep in a coffee shop.
Right.
Now, people then come in to a coffee shop and they see you asleep in a coffee shop and they say, "This guy...
Must have no boundaries if he's fallen asleep in a coffee shop.
Let's mess with his head.
These things don't happen accidentally, I promise you.
It doesn't mean that you're to blame, but I'm saying this so that you don't feel that life is just randomly weird.
Your dissociation which caused you to fall asleep in the coffee shop was a clear signal to their dissociation to come and mess with your head Right You know that makes complete sense It completely clicks. If you don't care about the comfort of the coffee shop owners and the fellow patrons, and I know that you do, but I'm just saying this for effect.
If you don't care about the effect that your behavior has on others, if you don't care about their comfort, then the people who are going to come and mess with you are not going to care about your comfort.
Right.
And of course, I know that you really do care.
I mean, you do care an enormous amount.
I'm just saying in this dissociated state, that is the message that will radiate to the unconscious of everyone around you.
Right, and in the moment when I'm dissociated, the voice that is controlling me, that kind of dissociated voice, doesn't care.
Right, right, right.
I mean, I think I do care, but...
But yeah, the dissociated voice doesn't really give a shit.
Right, and so this is the big lesson, which is I'm just pounding at everyone's head every chance I get.
To save the world, all we need is curiosity about ourselves.
That's all we need. If there's just one thing that we need to do, it's to be curious about ourselves, which is to be tender with ourselves, to be gentle with ourselves, and to say, holy shit, I just saw my grandmother, my hands are shaking, my heart is pounding, what is going on?
Right? To slow down, to take the deep breaths, to get in contact with ourselves.
To be open and curious with ourselves.
Be gentle with ourselves. That's all we need to do.
It's the one thing in FDR that people aren't doing.
I've seen people do RTR with others.
I've seen people do UPB. I've seen people do the untruth documents.
I've seen people do the everyday anarchy arguments, I've seen people do the practical anarchy arguments, but the RTR with the self is a black hole.
Right. That makes sense.
It's hard. It is hard, but if you look at the alternatives, it's a lot harder, right?
That's very true. We need to...
Being dissociated. Like an aura or something.
We need to create, you know, like birds need to be nesting in our hair and we need to have the body odor of lilacs, right?
And unicorn sweat, right?
We need to bring a sense of benevolence to the world so that people will begin to trust in the benevolence of people rather than in the tyranny of governments and gods, right?
Right. But we can't bring any more benevolence to the world than we bring to ourselves.
Not one percent more.
Sorry? Oh, I was just saying because if I would have had benevolence with myself about my feelings about seeing my grandmother, I would have been benevolent towards the coffee shop.
Then others wouldn't have seen me in that state.
Well, and you wouldn't have fallen asleep anyway.
Right, yeah. No, that's what I meant.
Yeah, it just never would have happened, right?
And so, as a result...
I wouldn't have even been exhausted.
Right, you wouldn't have been exhausted.
I'd have been ecstatic, right?
I'd have been jumping up and down.
Frankly, I would have probably just grabbed a coffee and ran out and...
Well, I don't know that you would have been ecstatic after seeing your grandmother, because that's scary, right?
Oh, wait, no, no, no.
I was saying if I hadn't seen my grandmother, but yeah.
Yeah, I'm talking about dealing with what is, right?
Yeah, dealing with what is.
Given that you did see your grandmother...
Which was a damn good thing, right?
Relative to just bumping into her, say.
Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.
So, and the results are, and this is just, you know, this is just to give you a hook to get over the mountain, as I've been talking to people, right?
There were other people in the coffee shop during this 20 to 30 minute really weird and uncomfortable kind of quasi-grueling of you, right?
Yes, actually others were watching the situation and actually laughing.
Right. So what happened was you're not RTRing with yourself, created for other people an unpleasant spectacle of a man being kind of mentally tortured in a way, right?
Right. Which reinforced their perception of the cruelty of the world, right?
Right. And so the next time you go to somebody like who's seen that and say, we don't need a government, they'd say...
But people are mean.
Yeah, of course we need a government.
Everywhere I turn, I see people being teased.
I experienced, I saw, even in such a safe environment as a coffee shop, I saw this.
And they wouldn't, it wouldn't be conscious for them, like they wouldn't say, well, I saw a guy being teased in a coffee shop, that's why we need a government.
It wouldn't be that. But it would be like, if in a place as safe as a coffee shop, this can happen, right?
And if they see this in a continual basis, then they will be skeptical about the virtue of the species and our natural desire for morality and the argument for morality, and they will look at UPB as a vague, trembling thing which won't be able to hold back the tides of evil and, you know, all of that kind of stuff, right?
Mm-hmm. Right.
I mean, I tell people to RTR with themselves, not just because I want you to be happy, I do, but I want us to win.
Yeah, yeah, because really what I, the whole string of events, which started with not RTRing with myself, but seeing my grandmother, the whole string of unconscious, basically, food goo that I experienced after that, Just kind of reinforced for people.
Well, I want to be gentle with myself, but I'm wanting to say that I set virtue back a couple of points.
Well, but you see, it's not a matter of beating yourself up about it.
It's simply a matter of looking at the cause and effect.
We have to be delicate about...
about the the the sort of self-aggression that can occur because that's just another kind of not RTRing but self is to just attack the self right but for sure it was not positive for the cause of philosophy and for pacifism and for anarchism and now it's a tiny tiny negative and the important thing though Is to say not so much,
gee, I did this tiny little thing in a coffee shop that was negative, but to say if through this tiny negative I get a real understanding of how essential it is to RTR with myself for the rest of my life and have that as a commitment and understand the ripple effects of what it is that I do in the world, then you've actually set virtue forward about a million points.
Wow, I mean, I totally see the ripple effect and the butterfly effect.
It's really making it clear to me just why in big terms, not just for you like what you said, the happiness factor, which is not insignificant, but just for my own or just for the whole ripple effect.
Yeah, the butterfly effect of what one RTR with myself can do.
Right, and so today can be plus a million points because it reminds not just you, but me and all of us, it reminds us how important it is to focus on our own experience of someone and our own experience of the world so that we can process it so we don't end up acting out,
falling asleep in coffee shops and not being able to set boundaries and having people observe this We had cruelty and so on, right?
It's plus a million points.
I mean, you can look at it and say, well, I said virtue back three points today.
And yeah, maybe you did. But the important thing is that by recognizing that, you set virtue forward a million points in the future by understanding the stakes of what it is that we're doing.
Right now. Do you think it was pretty much...
I mean, the whole kind of domino effect was pretty much...
Not determined, of course, but pretty inevitable with my not RTRing with myself that I was going to play out this fatigue, falling asleep in a public place, all the steps.
Do you think that was pretty much inevitable once I made the choice not to be honest and curious with myself?
Well, that's sort of like saying...
If I take my hands off the wheel and hit the gas, is it inevitable that I hit this flagpole?
No, it's not. But it's inevitable that you're going to hit something.
I mean, if you dissociate from yourself and you don't process your own emotions and you go into a state of shock, Someone's going to get run over, right?
It may be two days or a week later, but it's going to come out somewhere.
Right. And in habits that I don't normally associate with myself, like either that I don't associate falling asleep in public places with myself, so maybe in some form of path of aggression or Things that, certainly habits that I don't consider myself particularly, like, poor in my personality.
Oh no, look, you're a very sensitive and very gentle human being, so it's not, there's no issue that you would have, in a normal state, that this would have, as you say, you never fall asleep in coffee shops, right?
Right, right. Except the last time you were going through an emotionally distressing thing, right?
Right, like two days before my D2.
Right, right, right.
Right.
Well, this was enormously helpful, not just for, I mean, parsing my feelings, which it was certainly helpful for, but, as I said, raising the stakes for being honest with myself, right?
Yeah, I mean, certainly at this point in the conversation, when we're a couple of years into it, it is a general truism that we can accept from other forms of help, that it is dedication to something that is larger than ourselves that gets us to overcome ourselves.
And that doesn't mean put ourselves down or anything, but to reach outside ourselves for a standard that is bigger than us.
Because your habit was to dissociate and this and that, But if you sort of say, well, I have a standard that is bigger than my habits, and of course everyone then becomes patriotism or God or family loyalty or whatever, we can't have any of that because we're philosophers, but this is what I've been able to work with that certainly helped me.
Now, I know we've been talking a long time and I don't want to keep the call longer than it needs to be, but I do have one more question that just popped in my mind.
Sure. I noticed that when I described this both in the chat room and for the first, what, hour, 45 minutes maybe, of our call, the grandmother thing was nowhere to be seen.
Like, it was a complete left turn for you.
And I'm wondering why that was.
Like, because to me it seemed to be the most, in retrospect, the most significant part of the story.
You think? Right.
In what way? I just...
Really? No, so I left it out, and I can't for the life of me figure out why I did that.
Because it certainly, like that part kind of...
Because it wasn't even in my mind as, I should bring this up, but I can bring it up later.
It just didn't even cross my mind as a thing that was...
Even remote. Like, it was as relevant to me in the moment as...
And I biked on Lincoln Avenue today.
Sure. I mean, the reason that it came as a surprise to me was because it came as a surprise to you, right?
Oh, so you did get that it was surprising to me at the moment?
Well, I knew that it was surprising to you because it was surprising to me.
Because normally when somebody's holding something back, we feel it to some degree or another, right?
But you weren't holding anything back.
She's like, oh shit, and I saw my grandmother and I felt surprised.
Now, if I hadn't felt surprised, then I would know that you had been holding something back more consciously, right?
Right, right. So, why did it catch me off guard?
Like, why wasn't it even in my...
Thought processes as something that was even the slightest bit relevant.
Well, because you dissociated rather than RTR'd with yourself, right?
Right.
So by telling myself in the moment this isn't important...
Well, I don't see... I think it's not important when talking to you.
You did not say to yourself, this is not important in the moment.
What you said to yourself was, to be safe...
I must not exist.
Oh, right. So, you did not exist.
So, poof! Off we go, right?
Yeah, yeah. Oh, did we lose him again?
I think we did.
I think we did.
Sorry, I'm not having a camera.
So, what did you last hear?
Oh, I heard poof, then you disappeared.
Oh, good. And then you disappeared.
Okay, see. That wasn't a commandment.
That was just a comment.
Right.
I guess I shouldn't take things so literally.
So, um, so does this, uh, does this make sense?
I mean, there was no you to remember, because that was sort of what happened, right?
Yeah, yeah. It wasn't even part of really my, I guess, if you want to use...
Yeah, it wasn't part of the conscious Greg's experience of his day at all, right?
It just completely disappeared from my day.
Right, right. I mean, you self-erase.
So even mentioning the coffee...
Go ahead. I'll just say, like, even mentioning the coffee that I ordered would have been more relevant to my story, or so I felt, than mentioning my grandmother.
Right, right. But, I mean, the part of you that remembered how traumatic it was and so on, you had banished, right? I mean, you fooled yourself.
Your grandmother just walked past, right?
But everything that was after that, you did to yourself.
Yeah, and is that why the critic was so loud?
Would you say? Or is that just not related?
Well, the critic was loud because he was the defense that you needed at the time, right?
Because when he comes along, you self-erase, right?
So he was my means to self-erase.
Yeah, I'm going to summon a scary specter and I'm going to self-erase and then the self-erasure takes the form of falling asleep in a coffee shop and then it continues when you get teased on waking and so on, right?
Yes. Oh my gosh, that's...
Wow, my ecosystem was active today.
No, I don't think you're...
No, your mycosystem wasn't active.
You just had a neutron bomb, right?
Where it's like, nothing's left but the defenses.
There's no Greg left but the defenses.
Oh, right. Because when the mycosystem is active, it's actually very rich, right?
And you didn't experience your mycosystem as being active, you just felt empty and alone, right?
Oh, I felt a shell of myself.
I kind of meandered over to the coffee shop.
I wasn't really thinking.
I kind of ordered the coffee.
Yeah, you were just shell-shocked, right?
Yeah, completely.
Yeah, I didn't even really remember the walk over to the coffee shop.
Right, right, right.
I saw my grandmother and then I just kind of froze, tensed up.
And then just slowly relax into this foggish state.
Well, that's not relaxation.
That's fight or flight.
That's high stress. Oh, yeah.
No, that's right. I mean, it's a challenge, right?
It's a challenge when we're working at this level of trying to be who we are.
I mean, after I spent this last week working on all of this horrible stuff about Incest and child abuse and all this and that.
I was at the gym and Christina had some patients so I went to the gym on my own and I saw there's this twinkle toes ballet class and and I saw it and I just I had been feeling sad about this the stuff that I was working on for FDR and And I just started to cry.
I was just, I was sitting there in the gym and I didn't like bawl or like scream or anything.
I didn't ululate, but I just started.
And I actually had to, you know, put my weight down because I was looking at these little kids just thinking, you know, how beautiful children are and so on and thinking about all the horrors that are inflicted upon them and thinking about one of these children pulled out of class for some sort of horrible genital mutilation has occurred for 74 million women around the world.
And it was absolutely unbearable.
I actually had to go to the change room.
I had to go to the washroom. I had to put a towel against my face and I had to sob because I don't want to lose that connection with myself.
It is grueling to go through this kind of stuff.
And that's why I had the computer voice read the third one.
I just couldn't do another couple of hours of that.
So it can be hard and it can be surprising and it can sometimes feel inconvenient or inappropriate to have those kinds of feelings, but there's no option.
There's no other option other than this dissociation and being the empty shell thing.
It makes complete and total sense that there's no other option.
I mean, I could have just said to myself, oh, don't be so sentimental.
There's just a bunch of kids, so what are you?
You're just being hormonal because you're going to be a dad or whatever, right?
But no, it was...
I mean, God, when you think about the agony that these children...
I mean, as we speak, as we speak around the world, right?
I mean, it's all happening, and it's just...
It's agonizing and there's just no way that I wouldn't want to not feel that.
I don't want to dwell in it or obsess over it as best I can, but I mean, that's the stakes of what we're trying to work with here.
Oh, yeah, that's completely heavy stuff.
Yeah, I guess.
To not feel that would be unjust, too.
Yeah, and I mean, of course, I only do it because I feel it to begin with, right?
I mean, if I didn't feel anything about these articles that I was putting out, I mean, there would be nothing to put out, right?
But anyway, I just sort of wanted to point that out insofar as that the emotions that strike us out of the blue sometimes can be...
Considered an inconvenience, but they are, in fact, the essence of living.
I mean, without that, there's nothing really much in life that's worth anything.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that puts it in really clear terms for me as to why this is so important for me to do that with myself.
Yeah, it's bigger than you or I, right, what it is we're trying to do.
And... We don't know what effects being really centered and in touch with ourselves is going to have specifically, but we know that the effects of not doing that are going to be not positive to what it is that we want to do and what it is that the future wants us to do and, you know, how people can be freed of all the nonsense that we still labor under.
Right. Right.
Well, that's true. And that's why I wanted the call, because I sensed that what was happening for you was really dense, and the moment that you said, well, you're prudish, or I should have done this, or I just, I knew that you were still dissociated, because otherwise you'd be saying, I don't know what was happening, I felt this, but I don't know why, it was really interesting, and I thought about it, right?
But you were just like, oh, it's because of this, and I'm like, oh dear.
Oh dear, he's lost himself.
Well, and I was going to ask about that.
I'm certainly experiencing in the moment more richness and more relaxation from myself, and I'm just curious if you're experiencing me as less, because I sensed at the beginning of the call I was a lot more tense than the Greg that you're probably used to, and a lot more just, frankly, monofiladic, right?
I was a lot more, and that was just how I experienced myself, so I'm just curious about your Well, I mean, you definitely did start off a little bit stiff.
I was very impressed with the fluidity with which you went in and out of the role play that we did.
I thought that was very well done.
So definitely you had flexibility around that there.
And I certainly was impressed and pleased, if that makes any sense, with the way that you brought up this thing that you had forgotten without any sense of self-attack.
You didn't say, oh my god, I can't believe I kept this from everyone.
You know, it was just like, oh my god, I didn't remember this, or this is so important.
And so in that moment, you were then curious about it.
So we saved a lot of time there, not having to pull you out of, oh my god, how could I have forgotten that?
That was so ridiculous. I've been talking with you for an hour, and blah blah blah, right?
Well, it wouldn't have been, right?
We've just done something else, but...
But, you see, once you had begun...
I mean, that occurred after we dealt with the inner critic, right?
So we dealt with the inner critic. I mean, it's never permanent, but we got him to back off a little bit.
And right after we dealt with the inner critic, you remembered your grandmother, right?
Yeah, that's true. And you didn't self-attack for not...
And right after we dealt with the...
Well, and you didn't self-attack for not remembering your grandmother, who is the key to the whole thing, right?
Right, the critic just sort of let me be.
Right, right. So, I mean, so I think that you did some fantastic work here.
And you, sorry, you were going to say that after we dealt with the grandmother thing?
No, I was saying the grandmother thing also came after we kind of dealt with the falling asleep in the coffee shop.
And that was, I think, I don't know if it was just because it was so jarring for me to realize that why would I do such a thing, right?
What's the key? Like, I think I was just kind of It's probing my mind.
Why would I do this, right?
If it's so...
If it only happened like one other time.
Right. So I think that's maybe why the grandmother's being kind of like...
I was certainly trying to think, What's the comment?
Well, but that question didn't even come up, because we, sorry, but you wouldn't have had access to that in particular if we hadn't done the critic thing.
So I think that you certainly developed a lot more, I mean, you're a long ways away from, I mean, a long ways up the mountain from when I first met you, which is great, and you obviously were sensitive and intelligent and self-aware in many ways the first time that we talked, but Yeah, no, I think that certainly there's a difference towards the end.
You see much lighter and more curious and more energized than at the beginning where you were plotting under the heavy weight of self-definition.
You know, I did it because of X or I'm so frustrated with myself and blah blah blah, if that makes sense.
Right, right. No, that does make sense.
And thanks for your experience and the honesty about that.
I appreciate that feedback.
My pleasure. So, are we good?
Does it help? Does it help to sort of make a little bit more sense out of the day?
Yeah, the day just completely, it doesn't seem like there are any missing links to the puzzle.
Fantastic. Yeah, thanks so much for staying up and taking this call.
Oh, anytime, man. You're always worth it.
I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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