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Jan. 30, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
59:17
1271 Sympathy for the Heroine

A brave woman speaks up.

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Time Text
So I did food. I got away from my parents.
And um...
What's this say? Close.
Okay, and um...
Well, I don't really know where to begin.
Okay.
I guess I'll just say, so I moved in with my friend and I've known him so I moved in with my friend and I've known him for several months and things seemed good until I moved
And he was critiquing me on the way I behaved.
like it was awkward. He thought it was awkward.
And he pointed that out.
And I was okay with it at first, but...
I'm sorry, but what does he mean by awkward?
I asked him that a lot.
And at first, he was like...
Like what I was saying or doing didn't seem genuine.
Like I wasn't genuinely expressing my feelings.
Right. Which I understood.
I'm like, oh, that's a good point.
I should keep an eye on that.
But then there were other things that I didn't understand that he started pointing out.
And we didn't resolve that yet.
And we got into some conflicts over it.
And I decided to move out.
One issue was...
I mean, I think the critiquing went from...
it went from critiquing to criticism, I think.
And then that's why I moved out.
Because we were...
It would just be better for me to live with my aunt anyway, because I had a job waiting for me.
And so that's where I am right now.
I've moved in with my aunt.
Um...
And, uh...
I really...
Oh yeah, one problem that I think I have is...
I don't pay attention to things that bother me until I'm already very upset.
Um...
And then even expressing that is difficult sometimes.
Sure, sure. Like with my aunts, my aunt would say some things to me and they bothered me and I was getting angry but I didn't know how to express that I was angry.
And normally in my family, What we would do is when we're angry we just yell at each other and it was very violent.
And that's not what I want to do anymore.
Another thing is I kind of talk in a monotone voice like I'm flat and I didn't always used to be that way.
You mean the intonation, the voice that you, the way that you speak, you mean is flat?
Yeah, I've been told that by both my friend and my aunt.
Right, okay. I mean, I don't know what happened with your family, unless you want to talk about that.
Oh, you're kind of breaking up right there.
Oh, did I? Okay, give me a minute.
Let me switch computers. I'll call you back in a sec.
Oh, okay. I'll call you right back.
Hello. Oh, hi.
Sorry about that. Okay, so, yeah, I was just saying, I don't know what's going on with your parents, and we can talk about that if you want, but I suppose that my concern at the moment, based on what you're telling me, would be more, we could just talk about your friend.
We can call him Bob.
Is that okay? Okay. Okay.
Okay. Just in case.
I mean, this may go out as a podcast if you think it would be useful to others, but it's up to you, so don't worry about that.
Just don't use any names.
But you feel that he was critical of you, this awkwardness, not being emotionally specific.
Authentic or spontaneous, and as you say, this sort of flat voice, is that what he was talking about?
Yeah, also, another thing that I remember is he said it made it hard for him to empathize with me.
Right, right. Yeah.
Right, okay, okay.
And would you like to know what I think about that, or is there something else that you would like to talk to about?
Yeah, you can tell me what you think.
Well, a family separation is a brutal, hideous, and ugly thing to have to do, right?
I think we can agree on that, right?
Yeah. I mean, it's god-awful, right?
It dragged on a little bit, so that was...
They all do.
They all do, and it is nothing that should ever be, I mean, taken lightly.
I know you didn't, or I'm sure you didn't, but it is a big, brutal, emotionally exhausting, terrifying, ugly, unpleasant, hideous, difficult thing, right?
Yeah. I'm not overstating it, right?
I mean, that's what your experience was?
Yeah, it was more than I can express.
It was more than I could...
Comprehend, you know? It was too much, and I felt more weary than anything else.
Right. Right.
So, again, I don't know the details.
I trust your judgment, and the reason that I trust your judgment is I know how horrible a thing it is to do, and that nobody does it.
Oh, yes. Oh, my goodness.
Actually, I remember the first night I came to my friend's house.
I was really nervous and just shaking all over and kind of spazzy.
I couldn't calm down and at the same time I was tired and I couldn't think straight.
My friend didn't know what was going on with me.
Well, I would not assume that, for sure, because it doesn't...
Well, anyway, go on.
Let me not interrupt you.
I apologize. Go on. Oh, okay.
And I... I don't know.
I was just tripping out. I can't really describe it too well.
And, of course, I didn't cry or anything.
I wasn't crying.
I wasn't angry. I was just kind of...
Freaked out and tired.
Very, very exhausted.
Sorry to interrupt, but I just want to...
When it happened, when I did it, or when it happened to me, a defu is not something really that we do, it's something that happens to us.
We get rejected continually when we're trying to be honest.
Everyone thinks we're rejecting the family, but it's quite the opposite.
It's the family who's rejecting us.
But what I experienced the night that I did it was I felt kind of like almost outside my body.
Like surreal.
It felt surreal. It felt like I had become a kind of different person and I wasn't exactly sure who I was.
Like a boat that lost all its anchor suddenly, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, like that. Yeah.
Yeah. For sure.
Or like a snake that shed its skin and has turned into some completely different kind of creature.
It's weird. It's a weird, weird, weird feeling.
Yeah, for sure. There's this thing called depersonalization, which I think is what it is.
Because it says...
It's the subjective experience of unreality.
And common descriptions are watching oneself from a distance, out-of-body experiences, just going through the motions, feeling as if one is in a dream or a movie, not feeling in control of one's speech or physical movements, feeling detached from one's own thoughts or emotions.
And the last one is true for me.
I was still feeling what I was feeling, but I was kind of detached from it.
Sure. And I still kind of feel that way.
And I think I felt that way throughout the whole two weeks that I was with my friend.
Sure. So...
I don't know what to do about it.
Right. I guess I just keep trying to, you know, examine everything that's going on in me.
And... Hope I get back in touch.
Well, I'll tell you that my, again, you know, as I always say, this is just me talking nonsense over the internet, right?
So, you know, talk to a therapist.
Are you talking to a therapist or do you have plans or have you?
I have plans, but now that I've moved out, I don't know how I'm going to pay for one.
But as soon as I can pay for one, that's what I'm going to do.
Okay, you might want to talk to a therapist.
Sometimes they will give reduced rates for people who are in distress but don't have a lot of money.
So it might not be that you have to pay full fee, but just talk to them and say, look, I'm a broke-ass XYZ or whatever, and they may...
Many of them will give you reduced rates.
So I just, you know, pound on the doors, make the calls.
I know it's horrible, but, you know, just explain your circumstances and you may get...
You probably will get someone who will give you a pretty good rate.
So I just wanted to mention that to help you don't have to save up an arm and a leg to start.
That's sort of what... Oh, okay.
Yeah. If you want to know...
What I think you need to feel.
I think you need only one thing to feel, but unfortunately you can't give it to yourself.
That's the challenge of this, and I think this is why you wanted to call, and I think this is why you're bringing up not the defu, but your friend and your aunt first.
The thing that...
I believe that you need in order to process this emotionally and to reconnect with yourself is sympathy.
Sympathy? Yeah.
For myself?
Yeah. Like, if you were wounded in a war, right?
Yeah. People would have sympathy for you, right?
Right. If you were struck down with some illness, cancer, leukemia, or multiple sclerosis or something like that, people would have sympathy for you, right?
Right. Okay.
I do have a journal, so I can...
Well, I can practice that sympathy as I reflect over everything.
Sorry, I don't think you can do it for yourself.
Because you need someone, and I can't be the guy because I'm not a friend of yours or a family member, but I can at least tell you what I think is essential in this situation.
And it's really hard to come by.
If you lose your cat, people will give you sympathy, right?
Yeah. Yeah, you know, what I'll probably come by first is somebody saying, oh, you just need to get up and go on with life and stop dwelling on this.
Right. That's not sympathy.
That's being a jerk.
I mean, I hate to be so blunt, but that's just being an idiot and a jerk and cold and stupid.
Yeah, even if they say it nicely.
Yeah, especially if they say it nicely.
Then they know they have to be nice.
Yeah. But they're not being nice.
If you lose a cat, people will give you sympathy.
If you lose a family, everyone's like, they don't want to talk about it, right?
Right. They're uncomfortable.
They blame you. They start picking at you.
Why? Because you create anxiety in them, right?
Yes, that's true.
I did that.
See, I left my therapist for that because she went up and she told me, oh, you need to get a job and go back to school and all this other stuff.
And she wasn't trying to look in as to why I was unmotivated.
Right, and I think it's a good idea to dump the therapy, and if I remember what you said in the chat room, your issue with your parents was that they were narcissistic, as you say, self-involved, and they did not, as those kinds of people, to make big leaps, they're not going to be very good at sympathy because they don't fundamentally recognize the emotional needs of others, right?
Right. I want to understand the difference between sympathy and empathy.
Sure, I can give you a two-second thing, and again, this is not official, this is just my way of looking at it, but I think it has some utility.
Okay. Empathy is when we accurately perceive the emotional state of another person.
Okay. Right, so if some guy is belligerent and is trying to pick a fight with me, I can empathize with him and understand that he wants to pick a fight.
Yes, I see.
But sympathy is when I feel sorrow and pity and care and concern and affection for someone whose suffering I accurately perceive, right?
Oh, okay.
So you experience it with them.
Right, so it's empathy plus affection is...
You know, empathy for sadness with affection is the way that I look at sympathy.
Yeah, that's a different way.
I was having a hard time separating sympathy from pity.
Right, right. Now, pity alone, I mean, pity can, it has two sides, the way that it's not always bad, it's not always good, right?
Pity can be, you know, I pity this poor person and I elevate myself.
Because I am strong and they are weak.
It's a kind of jumping on the back of someone who's down to give yourself a few extra inches of emotional height.
That's pretty sad.
But we can, I think, experience genuine pity for someone whose heart is broken, and especially a child, right?
I mean, there is real pity in that, and that's because our heart breaks in turn, not because we're trying to dominate them or feel bigger or better than they are by putting them down.
Oh, okay. But there's sympathy in there too, right?
Yes, yes.
Yes, I think so. There's sympathy in the...
When I have pity for someone because both of our hearts are breaking, there's sympathy in that for sure.
When I have pity for someone because I'm making myself feel big, there's no sympathy in that, right?
Okay. And I wonder, how do I... So in order to get out of this depersonalization...
All I need is sympathy?
Well, that's a short menu item but a very tall order, right?
And the reason I say that is that when we are struck down by an illness or by a very bad fortune, people will have sympathy for us.
But for family issues, it's very rare to find somebody with the wisdom and the maturity and the Care and basic humanity, as far as I see it, to have sympathy for the victims of an abusive family.
Everybody gets really, really, really uncomfortable about it.
Yeah, we've seen that on the website.
Yeah, we've seen... Well, you've seen...
I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but have you not?
I mean, this is the way that it strikes me on...
You can tell me where I'm completely full of nonsense as usual, right?
But it's like you have just come through the most bruising, bloody battle of your life.
I fought with them physically and emotionally and yelling and It was really bad.
And the only reason that we stopped physically is because I turned 18.
Because then we'd go to jail.
Right? Right. So what we're talking about is extreme physical abuse, right?
Yeah. And the war metaphor is not misplaced.
It's like a child soldier.
It's like growing up in a state of war.
Yeah, that's how I've often felt.
I've explained it like that to my friend.
Like a soldier with PTSD kind of reacts to...
I bet you that is an accurate...
I mean, down to if you had a brain scan, it would be an accurate way of looking at it.
Yeah, because you end up reacting to just things that aren't exactly real dangers anymore, you know?
Well, someone yells on the television and you break out in a sweat, right?
Well, I'm not really sure about that.
Sorry, let me not give you symptoms that you don't know how that's going to happen.
Sorry, what do you mean then?
Well, I know I experience tension in my body sometimes depending on like when I'm angry and sometimes I feel like I want to hit for some Some time.
I'm not really sure when or where because I often forget.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you want to hit someone, something, yourself?
Yes, like that.
Although not myself anymore.
I've resolved that because that's self-abuse and that's not good.
Are we just down to someone or something or what?
I guess it's something now because...
Because, well, let's see, I stopped hitting my parents also when I turned 18.
You know, because they hit me and I hit them back.
You know, we were fighting. Sorry, let me just...
You can tell me if I'm off base as always, right?
But it seems to me that you're looking at it like a boxing ring, or at least that's the way you've described it a few times, like we hit each other.
Yeah. Yeah, that's not...
That's not even close to true.
Oh. Because they're my parents and they're the authorities.
They shouldn't. They're the adults.
If they are, I mean, obviously you didn't wake up in a peaceful house for a hold with parents that you loved and respected and you say, hey, I'm just going to clock dad, right?
Right. Of course, right?
Of course. It ended up, you know, like, I don't know, say in the morning that I didn't want to wake up, my mom would Start yelling at me to get up, get up, get up, get up.
And eventually she'd start hitting me to get me out of bed or something like that.
And other times we'd just get really angry at each other.
And she decided to hit me.
And I just decided to hit back.
Well, that's self-defense, right?
Yeah. Oh, then I don't feel so bad about it.
No, seriously, I'm telling you this because that's a fact.
Children... I'm not responsible for the violence in a household, and children do not suddenly want to start attacking their parents, right?
This is a state of self-defense, right?
And I think it's really important, really important that you understand that.
Yeah, because I'm kind of easily, yeah, I'm easily pushed around.
I was pushed around very easily in my family.
Okay, I'm going to stop you again, right?
Because this is language that is horribly imprecise, and I totally understand why, but that's not the truth.
You are not easily pushed around, and I can guarantee you that.
What is true is that you were violently punished for standing up for yourself.
Do you see the difference?
It's a very important difference.
Yeah. And what about my siblings?
How does that count? I mean, they can't punish me.
I don't want to go through everything in such a fast clip that we don't process anything, right?
But when you say, I didn't stand up for myself, that is a judgment that you're making about yourself in relative isolation, like you're just weak or something, right?
Right. And I don't want that and I don't feel like that.
Well, it's not true. First of all, people who don't stand up for themselves...
Don't have the courage to separate from abusive relationships.
Guaranteed. So I know that it's not true because you've taken a break from your family, right?
Because of violence, right? Right.
So first of all, you've done what is just about the most courageous and difficult thing that a human being can do, other than face death itself, right?
Right. So I'm not going to hear you talk about Not standing up for yourself when you just have walked out on a violent family to your detriment when you're not rich, when you're not educated as yet, right?
So I won't hear you talk about yourself that way because it's disrespectful to what you've done, right?
Right, that's true.
And it's also, it's not true from that standpoint and children, and I can say this with a minor degree of authority now because I have a daughter, are Are born incredibly assertive.
Oh, yeah. I work in a daycare right now, so I know.
Those little fists, the red face, you know, they want what they want, and they won't take maybe for an answer, right?
Right. And it's beautiful.
It's a beautiful thing. And you were born that way, and I was born that way, and it took a lot of blows to knock that stuffing out of us, right?
Right. So it's not that you did not stand up for yourself, it's just that whenever you tried to stand up for yourself, you would be attacked, right?
Right. So that's a very different thing, right?
So that's why I experience kind of a fear when I try to stand up for myself.
Sure, because you're...
You know, anxiety, right?
Hugely punished for it.
It's like if I got punched every time I said the word egg, right?
And I went to a therapist and I said, you know, I just have this weird irrational fear of the word egg.
That would be kind of confusing, right?
Right. Well, not really.
Well, it would be confusing if I never mentioned that I was punched every time I said the word egg, right?
Oh, right. If I just said, you know, I have this phobia about the word egg.
I don't know where it comes from.
I don't know what it is and blah, blah, blah, right?
We could work for years on all kinds of associations, right?
But if I eventually said to her, well, I got punched every time I said the word egg, she'd probably punch me, right?
All this time, right?
And the reason I'm pointing that out is that you have to look at, you have a natural personality where and a healthy personality and an assertive and a strong personality which is still there but you were subjected to the enormous pressures of violence and abuse and if you talk about yourself without having one foot on yourself and one foot on the violence of your environment you won't be saying anything that is true and you will only be saying things that will continue the abuse against yourself in a verbal way Does this make any sense?
Standing on...
Like you want to...
When you look at yourself, right?
You look at yourself and you say, okay, I just...
My parents and I got into fights.
It's like, no. They're the parents.
They defined how interactions occurred within the household.
They attacked me and I fought back.
Yeah. Right? And if you say, well, I just didn't stand up for myself.
It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
I was in an environment where when I stood up for myself, I got violently attacked So I stopped, like any sane child would, right?
Right. And also, but it carries on, it carries on with, uh, in my relationships with other people.
And, yeah, and that's what I'm really worried about.
So, let me just, before we get to that, but let me just finish with your friend, Bob, and maybe this applies to your aunt as well, right?
So, the way that I see it is you come, you know, broken and bruised and bleeding from the worst and most terrible battle, war, and escape that any human being should ever have to suffer, right? It makes prison break look like a walk in the park, right?
Yeah. And...
To be criticized by someone in the aftermath of that, to me, is incomprehensible.
It was hard to process.
It was hard to understand.
Well, I know it's hard to understand, and it doesn't matter.
You don't have to understand it.
You just have to understand that it's Kind of inhuman, if I can use a strong phrase, right?
Yeah, and another thing that I should add about Bob is there was another friend that I had about...
that I had for...
until January of this year.
So, I mean, it was about two years.
And he was also critical.
But I didn't really, you know, listen to him as much.
And... And his advice, as he called it, advice wasn't really helpful or anything.
And both of these guys, I gave it a shot, but I tried not to let them...
You know, I tried not to...
You know, I tried to keep standing up for myself.
Right. Okay, why?
You mean with them, you mean?
Well, I didn't know how far it would go.
I didn't want it to get too far.
Sorry, how far what would go?
The, quote, advice with my other friend and this critiquing with Bob.
Okay, I'm going to give you a totally annoying piece of advice.
As usual, right?
Don't Don't try to stand up for yourself.
Okay. Let me put it to you this way.
Do you feel that you have to stand up for yourself when you're talking to me now?
No. In fact, I have said some things which have been incorrect and you have easily corrected me and I have apologized and we have moved on, right?
Right. And so you don't feel that you have to stand up for yourself when you're talking to me, right?
Right. Right.
Why do you think that is?
Because you're more empathetic.
Well, I wouldn't know that they are empathetic at all, but okay, let's say that I'm more empathetic.
Okay. So that's good, right?
So when you're with people who are empathetic, who are sensitive to your needs, who are sensitive to...
And it doesn't mean that I'm not being assertive, right?
I mean, I'm correcting you where I think it's appropriate, and you can either tell me if I'm right or I'm wrong, and we're having that conversation, right?
But when you're with empathetic and sympathetic people, people who have big hearts and kind souls and gentle hands and affectionate natures and so on, then...
You don't have to stand up for yourself, because they don't attack you, right?
Right. I don't have to prove anything.
Right. Right.
But if you say, I should stand up for myself, then you will continue, I would You will continue to be drawn to people who are unempathetic and say, well, the problem, you see, the reason that they're not empathetic is because there's something wrong with me.
And that's what you told me in a few different ways at the beginning of this call, right?
Oh, man. Okay.
That makes a lot of sense.
You tell me what you got out of that because I think a big plug went into the wall there, right?
Yeah. I've been making friends who...
Somehow I've been making friends who are not interested in what's going on with me.
And I've been justifying that by saying that it's because I'm not allowing them to, or I'm blaming myself.
You're saying, well, my voice is not animated enough, or I'm awkward, or as your friend says, or whatever.
And therefore, it's your fault that they can't feel empathy.
But that makes sense.
It's not your fault that other people can't feel empathy.
No, that's for sure.
And... They may not have to, but without empathy there is no relationship, right?
I would say no.
There is no relationship.
Like, if my daughter, I don't know, when she gets older, right?
She falls down and she cuts her knee open or some god-awful inevitable childhood accident, right?
Right. And she comes running to me and I don't respond to her.
And I say, well, it's the way that you called out my name.
It seemed kind of cold.
I just, it didn't evoke empathy within me.
What you need to do is practice saying my name in a slightly different way.
You know, a little bit to the left, a little higher, a little lower, maybe with a bit of a Scottish accent.
That's how it is. Right?
If you can tweak it, tweak this, the way that you interact with me, just tweak it.
You know, like I'm going to give you 600 keys and you have to find the right one that fits in the lock to open up my heart of empathy, right?
Yeah. You know, I didn't like the way you laughed like that.
That didn't sound... Real.
Yeah, I mean, it's like...
I mean, because my kid would quite rightly say, if she could, Daddy, my leg is bleeding.
It doesn't matter what I do, my leg is bleeding.
And you need to take care of me.
And if you can't take care of me, then you need to be mature, Daddy, and you need to be...
So, yeah, she would say to me, the fact that my leg is bleeding is cause for you as someone who cares about me to take care of me.
Now, if you don't...
want to take care of me or you don't care that my leg is bleeding then you need to be an intelligent wise and mature adult and say gosh I wonder why I don't feel empathy not take the easy route of blaming someone else and saying well you did something wrong and that's why I don't feel empathy but rather to look within your own heart and see what the problem is as to why you don't feel empathy when someone you care about is suffering now a Skinned knee to a girl is nothing compared to the savagery and difficulty just of your family separation,
let alone all the years before that went into that, right?
Right. And if somebody can't feel empathy for what you went through, there's something wrong, and I would submit, deeply wrong with that person.
I mean, I'll give you one other metaphor just to be annoyingly repetitive, but if you had been in a jail and had been intermittently tortured for 10 years, right?
Right. People would have sympathy.
They'd say, oh my god, what a terrible experience.
How did you deal with it?
What happened? Oh my god, is there anything we could do?
They'd be all over themselves, right?
Yes. They wouldn't say, well, the way you talked about your experience didn't really evoke any real empathy in me.
Maybe you should figure out what's wrong with you that I'm not able to give you empathy for the torture that you experienced for those years.
Oh, yeah, that's very bad.
Does that make it a little clearer?
Yeah, it's crystal now.
And the torture that we're talking about would have occurred to an adult with a fully formed personality and possibly even a decent family behind him, but the torture that you experienced was imprinted upon a formative personality as a child without...
The wisdom and resources of an adult personality, right?
So, the metaphors that we use for the sufferings of children, like war and torture, are all wildly inadequate, because those things are inflicted upon adults, not children, right?
Right. Yeah, this makes a lot of sense now.
I... I guess I know what to do, but, um...
Well, you understand that this is not fundamentally about Bob or your...
Right. Because this is a pattern that, I mean, I can...
Tell me if I'm wrong, right?
But, I mean, this came into place from your parents, right?
Right. They don't have empathy.
As you say, they were self-involved in the extreme.
They lacked empathy. And when you would...
Call them on that.
They would blame you for not possessing the magic key that opened up their huge hearts that mysteriously were just somehow closed to you, right?
Oh my goodness.
Yeah. Am I wrong? The magic key.
Yes. Oh, you need to do it a little bit differently.
You need to do it this way. You need to do it that way.
Then you will open up the magic treasure kingdom of my wonderfully big and generous heart.
Right? It's like, your heart is so big and generous, why does it trip over a tiny little thing like a tone or a this or a that?
Right? Right.
Or maybe the way the house is or something.
Right. It's like me saying, oh, I totally love my wife, but man, I hate her when she puts her hair up.
I mean, it's bizarre.
No way. Yeah.
How do I find, you know, healthy people?
Well, it's good that you're not giving me any tough questions or anything tonight.
That's quite a relief. Well, the first thing is always precision, right?
And it's an annoying process of just catching your thoughts, right?
Because what happens is we get these mythologies going in our heads, right?
I fought with my parents, like it's equal, you know?
Yeah. You know, just because I'm bigger doesn't mean it was an abuse.
The violence that came over you as a teenager was all laid in like landmines when you were younger.
I guarantee you that.
Because parents, they do this.
They say, oh, my teenager, she's so angry, she's so this, it just came out of nowhere.
No, it never, I mean, barring brain injury, it never comes out of nowhere.
Yeah, it's not something that teenagers simply do.
No, it's certainly not something that teenagers simply do.
And so you say, well, I'm bigger and therefore, you know, tit for tat and, you know, six of one, half a dozen of the other, we're both equal and blah, blah, blah.
No. Because the violence that you felt and perhaps acted out as a teenager was all the direct result of the aggression that you experienced from your parents when you were younger.
And like all people with a shred of self-respect...
You submit it, and you bided your time, and then you got your vengeance, right?
Right. I mean, that's not shocking to me, and that is actually, you know, the people who don't ever think about doing that.
And, of course, I can virtually guarantee you, and again, tell me if I'm way up the base here...
That your parents would be violent towards you when you were younger, and then the moment that you dared to raise your voice at them, they would be shocked and appalled, appalled, you see, at aggression.
Um, well, maybe not appalled, but they would be enraged, and, um...
It'd be like, what's wrong with you?
Sorry, yeah, but they would consider it utterly unacceptable, right?
Well, yes, right.
Sorry, and that's, you know, my mind was, I think I was projecting a bit too much of what I experienced.
But, you know, they have these standards called, you know, violence is good, is fine, when we're a lot bigger, right?
But then when our kids grow up, and this is why violence against younger children, whether it's verbal abuse or outright aggression...
It's such a bad idea, because your kids are going to get bigger, right?
I mean, it's stupid, right?
It's like picking on the guy who's the smallest guy in class, knowing that tomorrow he's going to be the biggest guy in class.
It's like, it's just dumb, right?
I mean, fundamentally. Right.
So this was all laid in ahead of time, right?
But you have to be, you know, you were trying to survive...
A violent situation, right?
You would never have voluntarily chosen this kind of family if any alternatives that were better were available.
You were born into it.
You did not ask to be there.
You did not ask for your parents to bring the problems and the corruptions and the nastiness that they brought in.
And you were just dropped into a war, not of your making, and you struggled to survive.
And that has effects That has long-term effects.
Some good, a lot challenging, right?
So precision, precision, precision is really important.
If you think about yourself without putting it into the context of your family violence, you are only continuing the abuse.
Okay. Like if I spent 10 years in a war, a car backfires and I dive to the sidewalk, and I say, oh my god, I'm such a chicken, it's just a car backfiring, what do I care?
Without remembering that I was in war for 10 years, then I'm just putting myself down, right?
Right. Yeah.
And, yeah, it's just putting it in context.
Because otherwise, you will be susceptible to the illusions, right?
Because the story that you just fought with your parents is your parents' story, right?
It's not yours. Yes, and it comes so easily.
It takes a lot of effort to be precise, as you say.
It does. Yeah.
It does. It really does.
It takes a lot of efforts to quit any of these destructive imprints that have come into us through history.
Of course, you can see in the instance of your parents what happens if you don't, right?
Right. That's not good.
However hard it is to avoid that fate, it's worth it, right?
Right, for sure. I saw a leg off not to be like that, right?
Yeah, me too. Is there anything else like finding healthy people?
Just, you know, good, empathetic people?
Or I just need to...
Sorry, just to give you the two-second overview on that, because I don't want to move on to the next thing, because I completely didn't answer that, for which I'm sorry, beforehand.
This is why I bug people about therapy.
You need to experience genuine empathy from someone...
In a non-reciprocal environment, right?
Because you needed that when you were a kid, right?
I mean, when my daughter is crying, she wants me to empathize with her.
She's not trying to empathize with me, right?
She's not like, oh, I'm sure this is troubling my father no end.
Perhaps I should skip my crying a little, right?
She's like, no, I'm tired.
I need changing.
I'm hungry. I'm whatever, right?
I'm gassy, you know.
She's not trying to empathize with me.
She is on the receiving end of my empathy and sympathy, massive sympathy, of course, right?
Right. So the problem with adult relationships is that they're two-way, right?
I mean, you don't want to end up with a friend who just sits there sympathizing with you and you don't give a rat's behind about your friend, right?
That's kind of exploitive, right?
Right. Yeah, and I don't want to do that.
Right. Whereas with a therapist, it's like, you know, here's your 50 bucks, here's your 100 bucks, or whatever it is.
Now, empathize with me, right?
And you don't have to worry about your therapist's feelings, and you don't have to worry about, I don't know, asking them about their day.
And it can be entirely about you, which is, of course, what was needed when we were growing up, but which a lot of us did not get, right?
Right. Right. If you go into that situation, what can happen is you can experience what it's like to experience somebody else's empathy without immediately starting that thing of reciprocity.
Feeling guilty is like, oh, I've been talking about myself for an hour.
I need to now ask them. Without self-management, you can actually just sit in the glorious stew of someone else's sympathy and not give a rat's ass about reciprocity.
Right. And that's a really good thing.
Because when... Let me finish.
I'm sorry to be annoying and interrupt.
I'll just finish now and you can talk all you want.
Okay, go ahead. The reason that's so important is that, you know, when you've drunk the really great wine, you can really taste the crappy wine right away.
Like if all you've ever drunk is crappy wine, you're like, well, this is wine.
This is what wine is, right?
Right. But once you've tasted that really good stuff and developed a real palate and not tasted the bad stuff for a while, you know, when someone gives you a glass of that bad stuff, it's like patooey, piss vinegar, right?
Right. Okay.
And so when you've gone into therapy or, you know, let's just say that's the way you'll do it.
I hope you will. Then you have experienced someone's genuine interest and concern with you.
I know they're paid, but it is genuine interest.
There's easier ways to make a living, right?
Genuine interest and concern with you.
Then what happens is you know that you can receive empathy, that someone can give you empathy, because the therapist did.
I hope that I am to some degree in this call, right?
Yes. And that's why I said, well, do you have to stand up to me?
No, of course not, because I think I'm a pretty empathetic person, right?
I'm sympathetic to your situation for sure.
And so you know that you can experience someone's sympathy.
And therefore, when someone says, it's your fault, I'm not to, is to do the therapy thing, right?
Have a relationship with really, really healthy qualities, like the reception of sympathy and empathy and somebody who really is interested in you and wants to know about What you think and feel and what you dreamt about, right?
Which all the stuff we didn't get, right?
Right. And then what we can do is we lose the taste for bad wine.
Right? Because people say, oh, Steph, how did you know this guy was going to be so bad?
Why did you ban him right away?
Hey, I drink vintage, beautiful, fantastic wine every day.
When somebody puts that piss vinegar in my mouth, I know right away, right?
Yes. So you've got to get to the good wine, but you can't get to the good wine until you have had that relationship with a therapist.
Maybe there's other ways of doing it, but this is the way that I know that has worked for just about everyone who's tried it.
And I don't know of any other way that has, so this is just the one that I'm sort of presenting.
And then what happens is you don't waste time.
Trying to find this magical key that opens up someone else's heart when they continually tell you that it's your fault, they're not giving you what you want, right?
Yeah. You just don't waste time with those people.
Okay. That was very simple and it just puts a lot of things in perspective.
Yeah. Now, sorry, the last thing, I'm so sorry, I'm doing it again.
I apologize. This will be like two sentences.
Like, I don't know how that brings good people in your life, for sure.
There's no, you know, we don't have, you know, bullseyes on our foreheads or anything.
But, I can tell you for sure that if you have bad people in your life, good people won't want to have anything to do with you.
Yeah. For sure, right?
Because they'll look around you and they'll say, well, if she doesn't know the difference between these people and me, then she lacks a very fundamental wisdom, right?
Right. And virtue, right?
And so you have to get, that's why you have to get the bad people out of your life, because you can't enjoy the good wine when you've got bad wine in your mouth, right?
Right. And I don't want to do the wine either.
Right. Right, right, right.
So, you know, you've got to differentiate between good relationships and bad relationships.
The fastest, most efficient way to do that is through a therapist or Jesus.
No, okay, let's just go with the therapist.
And that way, you can at least get the bad people out of your life.
And then when a good person comes along, they'll say, hey, this is interesting because they're lonely too, right?
It's not like there's tons of us around, right?
And so they say, wow, this girl has really got it going on.
She's got maybe one or two relationships that are really good.
She doesn't have the junky, exploitive, narcissistic, nasty people in her life.
Good for her, right? And they're going to empathize with you because they probably had to go through that process as well.
So they're going to sympathize with how difficult it is.
They're going to understand the strength and the courage and the challenge that it took for you to take those steps to get bad people out, to make room for the good people.
So you're already going to have a lot in common.
Very good. Okay.
Okay, I promise not to talk anymore.
That's it. I'm done. I promise.
Okay. But, I mean, does this help?
Is there anything I'm missing that's big?
Is this useful?
I mean, I know I was blabbing on a bit, but...
I think so.
Yeah. I think this helps a lot.
And no, I can't think of anything else.
You're just afraid that I'm going to go off on another speech.
You probably have a big list there, but it's like, you know what, calculating 25 minutes per point, I have five more points.
No, I'm kidding. I think my big list of things was, it pretty much covers everything, I think.
Yeah. Okay, great. Well, I'm glad that you, I mean, look, I mean, I'm totally, totally sorry.
Just so you get this right at the end, because we raced a little around because I wanted to cover a lot.
But, oh, I'm so, so sorry about what happened to you as a kid.
I mean, nobody, nobody, even if I believed in afterlife and karmic retribution, nobody could be that bad to be born into this situation.
So I'm really just so sorry about what you had to struggle through.
off your chest, right, of feeling that you did bad things or, you know, you didn't stand up for yourself or you fought too much.
You struggled through and you got out and you got away.
And that is something to be hugely admired.
And I hope that you will give the respect to yourself that you deserve.
And I hope that you will give the sympathy for the trials and the struggles and the violence that you experienced as a helpless and dependent child that...
That is just heinous and my heart completely goes out to you.
I mean, that is just a terrible, terrible thing.
And that doesn't even count what you had to do recently, right?
Which is this taking a break from the family and so on, which is a whole other level of hell, right?
It... Well, taking a break, it was nice, you know, just to be away.
It was hard to get around because I had to scrape from money before I left.
But once I left, everything was just better in comparison.
Right. You know?
Yeah, but I mean, leading up to it and going through the process is really...
I mean, of course, it's out of that sort of situation, but it's...
It's no walk in the park, right?
Yes. It was really hard to get out.
My parents were...
I was just scraping for money from them because I just wanted to get out so soon that I didn't want a job because jobs are hard to find around here.
Right. And luckily I did get enough money and I left on the train.
So sorry. What a sad thing.
And what a terrible thing. What a burden to put on a young person like yourself.
What a horrible bootstrap situation.
I mean, God, wouldn't it have been great to be born into a reasonably nice, positive, friendly...
No, no, no, perfect. Nobody's perfect, right?
But wouldn't that have been just a wonderful history and a wonderful future to look forward to with your family for the rest of your day?
So I just...
I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry that they did what they did and that you were put into this kind of situation.
It really is terrible.
And it's also terrible how few people can show sympathy for people who've had to face this kind of journey.
Well, thank you for all your sympathies and for this talk.
This has been very...
I know it must have been easy, but just for me, I guess emotionally, it was hard to reach.
Yes, it was...
But it makes sense, intellectually.
And I'll just have to...
I just gotta work through it.
Sorry, you said it was hard to reach.
I just wanted to make sure I understood what you meant by that.
Just alone, it was hard to understand.
To work through.
I reflect a lot.
I'm very introspective, and even through all of that, I couldn't get to such a...
I was thinking about all of these details, and I didn't think of something so simple that I just needed sympathy.
Yeah, and there's no reason that you would have thought of that, right?
Because you've got to get to the place of safety first, right?
Right. And then when you, I mean, you're unconscious.
I hope you also get, just this is my last bit, but this is, you know, really, really for you, and I hope that you will really take this to heart.
I hope you get how freaking smart you are.
Like, seriously, I mean, you got some serious horsepower between the ears, young lady.
That is like, I've got sunglasses.
I actually got not just sunglasses.
I have sunglasses and a welding goggle set on, and I'm blindfolded, and I'm in a dark room.
No, you are really, really bright.
I must say, when you listen to this call again, I mean, you'll hopefully notice it.
You get stuff so fast!
So quickly. I mean, we covered a huge amount of ground, and I would literally say two sentences, and you'd be like, got it, right?
And then, of course, I got one for another.
Thanks. But I hope that you get, like, emotionally and intellectually, you are really plugged into some serious horsepower, and that is going to serve you very, very well in your life, and be a real treasure to bring to, you know, future husband or children or employers or whatever, right? But you've got...
A really first-class brain on your shoulders, and that is really something to be happy about.
Thank you so much.
I'm flattered. Well, I'm honest.
I'm telling you the truth, right?
So I hope you'll accept that.
Okay, well, I don't want to drag this out.
I mean, I'll send you a copy of this.
Clearly, I think it would be helpful for people, but you have a listen to it.
You let me know what you think. If you want it to go out, we can put it out mainstream.
We can put it out in a premium section.
It's completely up to you, but have a listen and let me know what you think.
And congratulations again on the courage of what you've done, the abilities that you're doing it with, and the courage to ask for the call.
Thank you. All right.
Take care. Good night.
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