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May 24, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:58:00
1366 Sunday Show May 24 2009

Family separation - a listener trembles on the brink.

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Alright, so let's get going.
Thank you everybody so much for joining us.
It is May the 24th to 009 for our Spanish-speaking friends.
And I thank you so much for joining us.
It is a beautiful day. We will be enjoying some philosophy.
And actually, I've just sort of realized there was somebody posted on the board the other day that there are four known FDR suspects in the Philadelphia area.
And it just sort of struck me that, because Christina was asking me when we were out buying some flowers today, in a very masculine way, she asked me, what does it feel like to have these, you know, people who sort of came together because of FDR and, sorry, satellite groups sort of all over the world, and I said, oh my god, do you know what it is?
It's Thought Club!
It's like Fight Club, but with mental...
Stuff. It's Thought Club.
That's what we're creating.
It's not Project Mayhem.
It's Project Sanity. And it will soon be a film starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt.
I will be playing Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, of course.
But yeah, I just thought that was kind of interesting.
It just sort of got that idea.
Thought Club, the new movie.
So, other than that, everything's going fine.
I did a video that I thought was kind of interesting.
I might do another one.
William Molyneux of Dublin, an ancestor of mine born in the Late 17th century, shockingly, if this is all true genetic or not, I hope to bring the determinants back if I can, but the first rule of Thought Club is that you don't think about Thought Club,
right? Exactly. It's interesting because he founded the first Irish philosophical society, so founding philosophical societies appears to be entirely genetic, and I have abandoned free will completely.
And he has...
An absolutely fantastic Brian May hairdo.
And so apparently that is not passed down on the paternal side.
But he also has one of these honking hook schnauzes.
Oh, he's got a... I mean, that's a ski slope, that is.
Your nose was on for time, but you were five minutes late, right?
He's what? His lips and my lips are identical?
That's because she's found me pressing my lips up against his sultry photo on the cover of the book.
Anyway, so I thought that was sort of interesting.
You might want to have a look at that as a video.
It's sort of a change of pace for Free Domain Radio.
It's called Free Domain Radio in the 17th century.
And the number of parallels is very interesting.
A great deal of sympathy for children against John Locke, who was pretty aggressive in his suggestions about how children should be raised.
So, well worth trying it out.
All right. I can't believe people are actually correcting me.
NERF equals French, not Spanish.
Yes, I am aware of that.
My last name is Molyneux, and I lived in a French-speaking city, Montreal, for four years and took French classes for my master's.
But yes, thank you for pointing out what probably was not a very funny joke.
It's just so much fun to tweak the nitpickers.
Don't you think? Oh, sweetie, a hair of yours is out of place.
Oh, I'm doing it again.
Out of rank jealousy.
All right. Well, thank you so much.
This is your show, not supposed to be my ramblings.
My ramblings are available.
Are what? Are in the podcast.
And so, ask away if you have questions, comments, issues, problems, and so forth.
And so, just a reminder, you can sign up for the barbecue.
Is it too late? Yeah, it's too late.
Sorry, we've already ordered. We're renting...
Well, we're renting a number of things.
A hot dog machine, we've got a karaoke room, candy floss maker, 33 clown suits, a trampoline, a human cannon firing, a mud pit, a wading pool, what else?
A trapeze? Well, obviously that goes without saying.
And an entire vat of baby oil, which we're still working on the application thereof.
But it will have something to do with creating some of the most spectacular sunburns this size of an Apollo mission.
So we have 33 people coming, which if you count the MECO system, we're feeding about 4,000.
So we have about 33 people coming, which is great.
We're really looking forward to meeting everyone.
But please, if you're going to come, let us know in the next day or so, if you can.
Yeah, we're going to have to order the food and all that kind of stuff.
We actually have ordered the...
We get tables and chairs and stuff like that because it's more than we can reasonably steal from our neighbors.
Sorry? We got patio furniture and...
Yeah, we've booked a restaurant for Friday night and so on.
So... Somebody has just said, uh, Steph, I don't have a mic, but could you talk a few minutes about the nature of addiction?
Is it more physical or psychological?
Well, uh, both.
And, uh, so, um, uh, if you ever heard of a system for addiction called rational recovery, is it an online thing?
I'm going to get an, there was a great article.
I've been meaning to do a podcast on it this week.
An article in Maclean's that just came out.
I'll put the link on the board. If you remember way back at the dawn of FDR, back in the days of Thought Krakatoa, there was a very interesting podcast I put out, at least I found it interesting, called The Million Dollar Proposition.
And there is a fair amount of research that is really supporting that now that it's just coming out, which is that...
Addiction is not a disease.
Addiction is a choice.
And of course, it has physical components, for sure.
But it is, I think, quite important to recognize that the research seems to be leaning towards...
Yeah, I can't find it, but I'll post it online.
It seems to be really leaning towards that addiction is a choice, not a disease, simply because you can...
Pay someone for a million dollars.
A million dollars not to have a cigarette for 20 minutes, but you can't pay them a million dollars not to have cancer for 20 minutes.
The disease metaphor doesn't seem to be particularly valid, given the latest research.
Now that, again, is not conclusive or final.
Maybe something will change again, but that's where stuff seems to be heading.
Like most things, it goes from choice to physical grooves within your neurobiological system, right?
So you get into caffeine.
I've recently cut out almost all caffeine and first couple of days it was giving me some pretty wicked headaches and tiredness because I was about two or three cups a day and I almost have no caffeine now and it is quite a change.
Your body gets used to it and kicking it is a little tricky.
Of course this is very true with heroin and nicotine and so on that it's It's highly addictive.
And there are physiological aspects to the addiction, right?
Which is that nicotine, your brain starts to wire up to need it and then you get anxious when you don't.
But there is also the physiological habit that, you know, this is what I do with my hands.
There is the whole ritual.
It's behavioral, sorry.
Yeah, there's the ritual and all that kind of stuff.
There is the social aspect of addiction, right?
So one of the reasons that people find it so hard to quit drinking is that their social life revolves around Not necessarily going to get drunk.
That's more of a sort of party frat boy thing.
Some people like that, but everyone around them drinks to some degree during most of their social engagements, right?
Like Christina's Breakfast Mommy and Me group.
Holy crap. Bunch of vodka-sucking luscious.
It's astounding. And certainly, though, when Christina goes to those morning pound-a-thons, I must say that after Isabella's next feed, she is pretty relaxed.
Jeez. She just watches her hands and sings songs from the 60s.
Go see Alice when she's 10 feet tall.
Go ask Alice. So yeah, gambling addiction or sex addiction.
I don't know much about...
Actually, I should say I know a little bit about gambling addiction.
I am very keen on gambling.
Daddy likes to gamble.
It is. And I don't do it for that reason.
I get very excited by it.
I get a very strong physiological response to gambling.
So I haven't gambled in In years, other than I guess in Vegas I put a couple of bucks down and then I punched myself in the head.
But no, it's a physiological response.
And that probably comes from my years in Dungeons& Dragons because Dungeons& Dragons is a form of gambling, right?
Because it's all about probability and dice and success and failure.
But of course it's much more complex than that.
And also video games is a kind of gambling as well, I find.
So that's how I sort of get the harmless side of that out of the way.
But yeah, there is a physiological response.
I'm very much, the way that I look at personality, if I were to take a very broad swipe at it, is something like you have a range of animals in your zoo called the personality, and some you feed and some you don't.
And the animals you feed get bigger and stronger, and the animals you don't feed get smaller and weaker.
And I'm very much around which animals am I feeding today, right?
So there's an animal called hate, and desire, and need, and lust, and all of these kinds of things.
And which animal are you going to feed, and which animal are you not going to feed?
And it's sort of roughly in line with the MECO system, but that's a metaphor that I use.
I'm listening to an audiobook by Agatha Christie called Death on the Nile, where Hercule Poirot is...
It's trying to talk a woman out of an evil action.
And he says something like this.
I'm going to carve it out of the audiobook and post it on the board because it's really well read too.
The guy who does the reading is fantastic.
And he says, do not let evil into your heart, madame.
Because if you do, it will make its home there.
And after a very short time, you will not be able to get it out of your heart.
And I think that's, you know, there is a kind of, if you let your thoughts go down a certain way, it does become grooved that way.
I'm very, I mean, the mind is a pattern-making machine, and what is a pattern is a habit, right?
And so everything that we do, everything we think, everything that we approach is a way of habituating ourselves.
And this doesn't mean be paranoid and, you know, letting your mind wander and daydreaming is all great, but when it comes in particular to contemplating action, that is where you stop, right?
When I had this little ailment recently, I was worried about it.
Christina was saying, the doctors say everything is fine, it's just going to clear up.
You have to sort of will yourself not to worry about it.
You have to just say it's going to be fine.
You have to intercept those thoughts.
Because I was feeding the beast called anxiety.
I was feeding the beast called worry.
And if you think about it, let your thoughts go that way continually, then that beast gets stronger and bigger and can take over.
So that's, to me, addiction is all about controlling a thought.
And I know this sounds like a bit sort of Calvinistic, you know, control and repress your thought.
But it's about engaging, you know, when I saw an ad warrior, I'd say, okay, well, what is the evidence?
There's no evidence that anything's wrong, everything's going to be fine.
And so, you know, it's about appealing with reason and evidence to some of the scarier thoughts that we have and stopping them.
Which is really the rational, cognitive approach, which is to cross-examine your repetitive or anxiety-provoking thoughts and say, well, what is the evidence?
What is the rationality behind this?
I don't know much about sex addiction, but certainly with gambling addiction, the first time I really seriously gambled was that I was best man at a friend's wedding.
Oh, man. Maybe 15 years ago?
This was out in British Columbia.
And for his bachelor party, we went to a casino.
And this was the first time I'd been in a casino.
First time I really got into it.
And I started playing blackjack.
And I was just like, oh man, this is great.
I could seriously lose a lot of time and money in this occupation or in this habit.
Because I found it's very engaging.
You're really in the moment when you gamble.
You're not distracted. It's a way of avoiding...
the chaos of distracting thoughts, right?
To me, at least most addictions are a way of organizing your life so that you have one worry, one focus, one concern, one thing to manage, which crowds out the rest of the ecosystem.
And so it's really just about a kind of monomania to get rid of or to control or manage the general ambivalence and confusion and complications of life.
So like, you know, when you're running from a bear, you're not worrying about how much you need to save in order to retire.
And addictions are all about putting a bear in your life so you get to run either to it or away from it so that you don't have to worry about some of the deeper, more complex things.
But I was just, I was very aware.
I noted my physiological response.
I noticed my excitement.
I noticed the thrill. I noticed that I dreamed about, I dreamt about gambling.
That's a big, a big sign, right?
That something's dangerous or not dangerous, but something that's important to you.
I dreamt about gambling that night and I just didn't do it again.
Because it's like, well, you reason yourself ahead of time and say, well, I'm not going to pretend I can play with this because I have such a strong physiological response, so I'm just not going to do it, right?
So that's the same thing as why I've never taken drugs.
I have no particularly innate opposition to them on a moral level, but they're either not as good as not taking them, right?
In which case... Why take them, right?
I try not to stub my toe either, right?
Or they're about the same as not taking them, in which case, why bother with the risk, expense, and legal exposure?
They're a little bit better than not taking them, in which case, why worry about the risk, the cost, the legal exposure, and the risk of addiction?
Or they're so incredibly great that I'm going to be addicted, right?
So there's no situation under which taking drugs is a net positive, at least in the way that I look at it so.
I just don't do it.
To me, sexual addiction, and again, obviously everything I'm saying is just nonsense, amateur stuff, but everything that I'm saying is just my opinion.
Sexual addiction to me would have, the first place I would look is for sexual abuse or dysfunction in childhood.
It doesn't have to be, sexual abuse is not necessarily a sexual assault or inappropriate behavior with a child.
To me, it is sexual abuse if the parent is sexually inappropriate with other adults in the range of the child's hearing.
So if you hear your mom having sex with men, and this happens repeatedly, that to me is a kind of sexual abuse.
It is, yeah.
And it is actually legally a kind of sexual abuse as well, right?
To expose your children to sexual, to your sexual life.
So that to me would be where the first place I would look is sexual dysfunction, a lack of sexual boundaries within the family.
That's the first place I would look for that.
Dostoevsky's The Gambler is a great portrayal, but if you really want to look at an even better portrayal of Dostoevsky, and actually I'd read this biography of Dostoevsky before, I ended up gambling 15 years ago in British Columbia.
I mean, he went to, and I'm rebuilding from memory from like 20 years ago, but he left Russia to go, I think it was to Sweden or Switzerland or something like that for a two-week honeymoon and didn't come home for years because he kept gambling all his money away.
And I read his wife's diaries, just because I was very into Dostoevsky at the time, and I read his wife's diaries, and it was really just a sick, sick look at the hell of That a gambling addiction can wreak upon his life, right?
Because he would win, he'd be flushed, he'd be plans to go back.
He'd say, well, just to give us a little extra comfort for when we go back so that we can buy, you know, a little house, I'm going to go and just take only 5% of my winnings and gamble and if it doesn't write any, he'd go back and lose it all and then he'd have to borrow money, they'd pawn stuff and then they would get it out of Hawk and then, I mean, it's just...
It was horrendous. I mean, he blew everything.
And he lived for years in this wretched, miserable, dog-like existence, chained to the gambling table with his wife losing respect for him every day.
So that is, if you really want to read a harrowing portrait of addiction, Dostoevsky's wife's diaries are a great place to have a look at.
All right. So that's...
If addiction is choice, there's no such thing...
Well, I don't know that that's exactly true.
I think that's a black or white.
We don't all start with the same physiology.
We don't all start with the same parenting, of course.
We don't all start with the same predilections.
And, you know, people who have the example of, you know, sort of strong-willed, upright, virtuous life when they're growing up are going to be that much less likely people who grew up with self-indulgent, hedonistic, Chaos are going to be less likely to defer gratification because it hasn't been modeled for them.
So we don't all get, of course, the same starting point.
So I think that there is still such a thing as a useful term called addiction.
I've just never really liked the idea of addiction as a disease rather than...
And of course, there's a great demand from people who've messed up their lives from addiction.
There's a great demand from those people, right?
Because for the labeling of what they do or what they have done as a disease, right?
Because... That gets them off the hook, right?
I mean, one of the reasons why I stopped debating determinists is the ugliness and the, not of all the determinists, right, but of some, the ugliness and the volatility that comes whenever you try to extend volunteerism to a new area.
People get very, very tense, right?
I mean, we've seen this when we extend volunteerism to the adult family relations.
We've seen this when we I mean, if you try to privatize a state union, you are going to get some pretty aggressive responses to the extension of voluntarism.
And feminists, of course, face the same thing where they would extend voluntarism to sexual and marriage matters and so on.
But when you extend voluntarism, a lot of people get very angry and very upset because they did not exercise their free choice.
And when they are reminded that they always had it but didn't exercise it, they feel guilty, self-attack...
And get angry at others.
So there's a great demand in the world for telling people it's not your fault, right?
The people who have been, and particularly people who've done really bad things in their life, I mean, the massive demand for it's not your fault, right?
But sometimes it just is, right?
Again, with the caveat and complication that we don't all start from the same place, but fundamentally choice is only destroyed by physical injury to the brain.
In my opinion. So we still have it, even if we don't have it as an easy faculty to exercise.
And reminding people that the choice is theirs is the only way to strengthen that muscle, which so often lies flaccid as a result of early trauma.
So anyway, just a mention.
Thank you. It's an excellent topic.
And again, do your research.
I will post this article from McLean's, which I found very interesting.
I just read it this weekend. It seems to be a very well-researched investigation.
And the guy is very skeptical of AA, which I think is good too, right?
Because of the spiritual, or quote spiritual, basically superstitious aspects.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I'll be here all week.
So, enough of me.
If you would like to spreken sie up for our Scottish listeners, I would really appreciate it.
Hello? Hello?
Hello? Can you hear me?
I sure can. I've been really, really nervous about calling in here actually.
Boo! I'm just trying to scare you so that you knew there was a good reason to be nervous.
I tried calling in sort of the past couple of weeks and haven't even really managed to get into the Skype call because I've had quite a lot of anxiety around this.
Which I think has not so much to do with other people listening in, but sort of with getting the attention of people and taking up people's time and so on and so forth.
So I just want to sort of mention that.
I certainly do appreciate that.
I mean, what I would say is that, first of all, your honesty is fantastic, and I hugely admire that.
I know it's not easy to start off a conversation by saying, I feel nervous, but I mean, that is exactly what I think you should do.
But this show is entirely designed to allow people to take up other people's time.
So don't worry about that.
That's the purpose of it, right?
I mean, if you knock on my door at 3 o'clock in the morning, we might have a different conversation.
But this show is entirely about you taking up my and other people's time.
So I really do appreciate that.
And I think I'm all ears for what you have to say.
Okay, thank you. Yeah, and another thing is I'm not 100% sure what exactly my question is.
And I think I've got a bit of a better question now than I had two weeks ago.
But it's basically, I'm sort of preparing to defu.
I'm new to FDR, but it's sort of what's happening to me at the moment.
I'm quite nervous about speaking to my parents again and I think I've got a lot of anxiety around that and I just thought maybe it would help me to have a chat with you and maybe you've got some advice for me.
I mean I hope that I can help and just first and foremost I'm sorry that this is even on the table for you with regards to your family because It is an unbelievably difficult thing to do.
It is tragic.
It is heartbreaking. It is scary.
So it's nothing that anyone takes lightly.
And so I'm certainly happy to hear some history if you want to talk about stuff.
No names, of course. Write a few no details.
But if you wanted to talk about what has brought you to this point, I'm certainly happy to hear that.
If you want to talk about ways to move forward, I'm happy to talk about that.
But I just wanted to first and foremost just express...
You know, really, really deep, deep sympathies for this being even on the table, because I know that it is something that's very hard to contemplate.
So I can imagine that it has not been a good history that brought you here.
Yeah, it's very hard for me to come to terms with this, as I think of...
I've sort of held my parents in quite high regard since I moved out from home.
Their behavior towards me has changed since they realized that I would move out and leave and get away from them, I think.
Sorry, I'm going to interrupt where I want to make sure that I understand precisely because you used I think three terms there.
First was moving out.
Now, of course, given that you don't sound like you're 12, moving out is probably not too much of a shock because that's sort of the point of having kids, right?
You're like a bow, right?
You pull back the bow and the arrow is supposed to launch into the air.
So the fact that you're leaving is one thing, but do you mean leaving in terms of moving out or leaving in terms of taking a break from family life?
In terms of moving out, I mean, I left the country.
I basically rejected the whole country.
I was born in East Germany originally and then my parents moved to West Germany when I was 10.
I moved out four years ago and I basically rejected the whole country.
Country in place of rejecting my parents, really.
So I really left quite abruptly.
Sort of as soon as I could, I just wanted to leave.
But that meant seeing them a couple of times a year.
So it was a big step, I think, for both me and my parents.
Right, okay. Now, this can go any number of ways to be the most helpful, and I certainly don't want to tell you how it should go.
Would you like me to ask questions, or do you want to talk about your history, how you feel at the moment, or what it is you plan to do next?
I think it would be helpful if you could ask me questions.
Okay, so there are obviously two major players that you've mentioned, which is your parents and then the culture that you grew up in.
Now, it sounds like you decultured, so to speak, by leaving Germany, right?
Yes. So that probably is not a huge source of emotional discomfort for you, so it probably would be more valuable to talk about your family history, if that makes sense?
Yes, yes.
Okay, so can you tell me a little bit about the major issues that you have With your parents that you feel aren't being addressed or responded to to the point where you feel that a temporary separation at least is the next step.
See, that's sort of the problem.
It's like they're not very intrusive anymore.
They used to be, but they're not anymore.
They're sort of very nice now most of the time when we talk because, I don't know, they've sort of put me into this position where I'm not even expecting support from them.
It's just this very superficial thing.
Conversations mostly about them and they know very well how to not sort of stick their nose into my problems and sort of under the cover of leaving me my privacy, which I've always wanted so much.
There's no open attack, really.
So it's very hard for me to sort of get a grip on reality of why I don't want to speak to them again.
Right, right, right. You were saying that, and we can come back to that for sure, but you were saying earlier that they're not intrusive now, but in the past they were.
Am I right in assuming that you're in your 20s?
Yeah, I'm 23, yes.
23, okay. And you said you moved out four years ago.
You moved out, is that right? Yes, I moved out sort of as soon as my high school was over.
Right, right. And what was the level of intrusiveness that you were facing before That you're not facing now?
Well, when I was sort of 17, I sort of started traveling abroad and then I met my first boyfriend, who I then later moved in with.
And sort of that's when I turned 18.
So that's when I put my foot down and I said, look...
Sorry to interrupt. I'm just trying to piece together a chronology.
So you started traveling when you were 17, you met your boyfriend when you were traveling, and you moved in with him, is that right?
Well, I started visiting him sort of where he lived in Australia first.
So I started visiting him in the school holidays and then he moved to England and I started visiting him sort of every weekend.
So I sort of left as often as I could and sort of spent the time with him.
And then as soon as I moved out, as soon as school was finished, I moved out and moved in with him and left the country.
So you were, sorry, again, I'm really sorry to be annoying.
So you would leave when you were 17 or 18, you would leave to spend weekends with your boyfriend?
Yeah, when I was 18, yeah.
And sort of that sort of, yeah, because I turned 18, it was sort of like the first time when I said, I'm going to Australia to visit this guy and you might not like it, but I want you to, I want your consent.
I remember saying to my father, I want your consent, but basically I'm going to do it no matter what.
And sort of that That sort of changed the relationship a bit.
They suddenly sort of gave me a lot more freedom that they didn't give me before.
Sort of when I turned 18, they gave me more money and I had a car.
Before that, they'd always been very, very strict.
It's really hard for me to remember and to describe.
It's sort of very tight to do your homework and very controlling.
It's tough, right?
And certainly the toughest aspect, if I understand where you're coming from, some of the toughest aspect is you may or may not have heard some of the stories of the people who've taken breaks from families or who've talked about it in this conversation.
It's, to me at least, pretty unambiguous, at least, as to why they would have that option on the table, because, you know, the histories are, you know, just blindingly god-awful, right?
But for you, it's different, right?
Yes. It's like, I don't really know what exactly it was.
I just know I felt like I was in a prison.
I mean, there was no physical abuse, really.
My father hit me once when I was a teenager and then apologized afterwards.
But... It's not very tangible, really, to me at the moment.
Right, right. I just know the emotional reality here.
Yeah, and that doesn't mean that it's any more or less necessary, right?
I mean, because it's an individual experience and an individual decision.
So, you know, the fact that you can't, you know, come up with stories of horrendous abuse, to me, it doesn't have any bearing on the rightness or wrongness of a decision, other than it makes it more challenging in many ways, right?
Right. Yes.
Yes. So I do sympathize with that.
But let me ask you, and if you want to keep talking, I'm happy to hear, but I'd like to ask some questions if possible.
Sure. The relationships that don't work in very broad terms don't work either because of the two A's, abuse or alienation.
Right? And there are Marriages where the partners never raise their voice against each other.
And I'm sorry to be using marriage as a metaphor, but they don't yell at each other.
They seem relatively content.
They have an easy life.
They may even raise their kids or whatever.
And then after 20 years, right, one partner, and it's often the woman, but sometimes the man, and I've read an article about this a couple of months ago that I could also post, they're just like, you know, I'm out.
And it's quite a shock.
It actually happened to Lynn Johnson, the woman who writes the, or who illustrates the For Better or For Worse comic.
It probably means nothing to you, but her husband just up and left after like 20 years of marriage.
And that's not because there's abuse, right?
And these people sit down in front of the lawyer, and the lawyer says, well, why are you getting divorced, right?
Now, of course, if it's like, well, he beat me or whatever, right?
That's a done deal, right?
But it's really tough if the problem is not Intrusion, violence or abuse or anything like that, but the problem is, and again, I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying another possibility or way of looking at it would be alienation.
And alienation is often, you know, the alienation of affection is usually a phrase that usually means you have, you know, infiltrated a marriage and turned one partner against each other and all that kind of stuff.
But the alienation that I'm talking about is just there was not a rich and meaningful connection Between parent and child that can be recalled.
And if this is not at all the case with you, I'll drop it as a thesis because it's all just a potential way of looking at it.
But if you think it might be some value, we could look into that a little further.
Well, certainly the relationship with me and my parents is not intimate on an emotional level at all.
But sort of what I was just remembering now while you were speaking is I blame myself a lot for the problems because I think I built up a lot of repressed anger sort of from my early childhood when my mother was a single mother at first and then sort of got together with my father, my stepfather. And when I sort of became a teenager, I was generally very depressed.
I didn't have a lot of friends, but I had these rage at times where I just started raging and banging the doors and so on and so forth and that was sort of the sort of the fights with my parents and that sort of the behavior my parents would punish me for as well.
Okay, so this is important.
Now, I'm going to be completely open with you and say that my goal is to have you reconnect with your parents.
And that doesn't mean that you should or anything like that.
And the reason that I'm saying this is that is my goal with everyone.
My goal with everyone is to have them reconnect with the people in their lives.
As long as there's no imminent physical danger.
And so I'm going to make that case...
And you can tell me to get lost completely, and that's totally fine with me.
I'm going to make the case, but I don't want to mislead you about what I'm going to talk about ahead of time.
And the reason for that is that if you can connect, it's certainly better than defooing, in my opinion.
But if you end up defooing for whatever time period or permanently, you need to do so in a way that You have tried everything, right?
Closure is, there's nothing else that I can try, and I fully understand why I'm doing what I'm doing.
You don't want to defoo and not know why, because even if it's the right decision to defoo, not that that is objectively definable, but otherwise you'll just recreate whatever you don't understand in some other relationship until you do, right?
Yeah. So I'm just going to warn you about that up front, that I'm going to try and jam you guys together, you know, and it's all, again, all just my opinions and all just my perspectives, so...
But the anger, right?
You said in your early teens?
Yeah, well, yeah, but all throughout.
I mean, later on I directed it against my boyfriends, I mean, or against myself.
Yeah, there's a lot of refreshed anger.
Do you remember being angry in this way before your early teens?
Not very much.
I remember once being put under the cold shower for being angry, I think, as a small child.
I don't know, maybe five.
I don't know. And do you remember what you were being angry about?
No. No, but I remember being worried about my skirt getting wet because it was my favorite skirt.
But I think that was sort of a way for me to deal with the humiliation.
No, I don't remember.
Because you had a little laugh there, right?
Which is completely common, right?
But kind of not appropriate to the situation that you're describing.
Like throwing a kid in a cold, putting a kid, I won't use extreme language, but putting a kid in a cold shower because the kid is angry is wildly bad parenting.
Yeah, Christina is saying it's abusive, and I would agree.
It's wildly bad parenting.
Yeah, my mother would say that, but that was only once.
That's what my mother says when I talk to her about this.
Well, but... Okay, and look, every parent is going to make mistakes.
This obviously would be a big one.
But the question isn't, was it only once, in my opinion.
The question is, what happened afterwards, right?
So if it was recognized by your...
It was your mother who did it?
Was she with the guy? Your stepdad at this point?
No, no. I think...
No, okay. So it was your mother. So if your mother did this pretty egregious act and felt that it was wrong or a mistake afterwards...
Did she apologize to you?
Did she get help with anger management?
What did she do after?
It's not the mistakes that define us, even a bad mistake like this one.
It's what we do in the aftermath, right?
And if it's only once, but it's not dealt with in a productive, positive, and humane way, then you realize...
You will then realize that it's going to happen again if you get angry again, right?
So the once becomes...
The rule, if it's not dealt with like, oh man, I'm so sorry I did this, I'm going to take an anger management course, I'm going to whatever, to become a better parent, right?
So what happened after you were thrown in, sorry, you were put in the shower, the cold shower?
Well, I don't remember, but there certainly wasn't an apology from my mother.
There wasn't even...
The issues like this weren't resolved.
I mean, as a small child, I was constantly, constantly afraid of my mother being upset with me, of being angry with me.
So I wasn't ever allowed to be angry.
I was constantly afraid of making one tiny little mistake and then my mother would be angry with me for ages, for longer than I could remember what I'd done to make her angry.
And then I'd feel bad about forgetting what it was.
I mean, you understand.
That's an awful and heartbreaking thing to hear, right?
Yeah. Right.
I mean, to me, that is punitive in the extreme, right?
There are two major kinds of ways to hurt children, right?
One is through Through commission and the other is through omission, right?
So one is through attack, verbal or physical or sexual, and the other is through the withdrawal of affection and approval, which is actually in many ways even worse for the child, right?
Yeah. I mean, I don't remember much affection, really.
Now, again, I like to be precise about this stuff, because I don't remember much affection is a statement that has a pretty wide Do you know what I mean?
So, let's say, I mean, roughly, again, I know this is all rule of thumb, but I think it's important anyway.
What percentage of your time would you say with your mother did you feel that you received affection or love or that sort of stuff from her?
Yeah. Well, I was actually trying to remember today the times where I was around my mother, where I was just sort of happy.
And the only times I could remember were when I was actually surprised that she hadn't yelled at me.
Not yelled at me, but she hadn't been upset or disappointed or whatever with me all day or that she hadn't.
Yeah, or where I was just really...
I was really on guard the whole time that anything I could do would destroy this time that we had together now.
Yeah, so if like suddenly I would remember that I'd forgotten to do my homework and that would come out, then the night would be ruined and she'd be upset with me again.
So there isn't really any time that I can remember sort of before she got together with my stepfather.
Then it sort of changed.
But before that, I can't really remember anything.
I mean, I'm sure there were times, but I can't remember.
Oh, no, I wouldn't be sure.
Right? Because you don't...
I'm not saying be sure either way, but I certainly wouldn't say, well, there must be things that I couldn't remember, because children remember what is exceptional to their experience, always.
Right? I remember...
Oh, I mean, I remember so many things.
I remember seeing my first butterfly up close because it was exceptional and vivid.
I remember going on the trip to Africa, right?
I remember looking out the window when we were, I don't know, some suborbital 30,000 feet above the earth looking down and seeing the clouds.
And they looked like they were resting right on the ocean and I thought they looked like sheep.
I can remember because we remember the exceptional Always, as children.
In the same way that you can remember a vacation from five years ago, but you won't remember the week before or after it, right?
I think we had some vacations with my grandmother that were good, I think.
That were? That were good.
That I think I remember enjoying.
Yes, now, and again, I don't want to diminish the enjoyment of that, but I was just talking about you and your mom, right?
Yeah. Certainly, I did not feel...
As scared of my mom when we were in public, right?
Yeah, well, I mean, it was a very strange situation with my grandmother as well during that time, sort of.
Her mother's, like, we lived in the upstairs flat of her parents' house.
And, I mean, she had a pretty cruel, I would describe her as histrionic, actually.
But she was sort of my ally.
My grandmother was sort of my ally against my mother.
And she sort of rode me up against my mother during that time as well.
So it's quite strange that the holidays three of us had together were, I remember, as being good.
Right, right. Right, okay.
So just with regards to your mother, though, even the good times were fraught with tension because you were scared they would end, or you knew they would end, and what would trigger them, right?
So you're kind of hanging on to something that's going away, right?
Yes, yes. Right.
No, and just, I mean, I don't know if the sharing helps, but I remember very vividly when I was about five or so, I was curled up on my mother's lap, and she was watching an adult comedy, and that doesn't mean...
Sex, right? But it was some adult's verbal comedy, and of course I was five, so I didn't understand what was going on.
But I pretended to fall asleep on her lap because she had her hand on my arm, and it felt nice.
I felt kind of cozy. And I knew, even back then, I knew that this was...
A moment where I could kind of drink deep of even imaginary affection.
And again, I'm not saying this is true of your mom.
I'm just sort of saying my experience was I remember that really vividly, pretending to be asleep just so I could stay in my mother's arms and drink deep of that, even though I knew it was not real, but it was something that I could use to get to the next oasis, right?
Fill up the camel and then get back on the desert.
And so there are those times where you can remember, even if it's not particularly real, you can remember Those moments of relaxation or affection.
My mother would read the newspaper on Sunday mornings, and I would read a comic book or something, and there would be times where if she'd had a shower, she would be relaxed or whatever.
And so I remember those times.
They weren't particularly affectionate times, but there were times of greater relaxation, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. During some time, there was a particular combination of TV shows on Sundays that we watched.
I remember that, but I also remember being scared of that sort of...
Right, and you were scared because you know it's going to turn, right?
Yeah. So you're afraid to like it too much because then it hurts too much when it turns, right?
Yeah. Well, yeah, just afraid of saying something wrong or having forgotten something that suddenly comes out, like my homework or having, I don't know, just having messed up somehow.
Yeah. Yeah, no, and I also remember, again, I don't want to, I'll just, this last time, I'll share if it's helpful, but I remember I would have floating around me like these little planets, things that I could be gotten for, you know, like I'd lost a flashlight, right?
Or I couldn't find one of my gloves, right?
So I would just have to pretend that I had a glove or, you know, put my arm up inside my coat or whatever, right?
Like things which, if my mom found out, I would be in big trouble, right?
And I just remember those anxieties kind of floating around.
And again, I'm not saying this is true of your childhood.
I just remember those things and I would always be worried, right?
Because I lived in a kind of police state, right?
So I'd always be worried that she would find these things out and then whatever moments, fragile moments of detente we had would be shattered.
And so there was always that kind of fear for me floating around at all times.
So again, I'm not saying that's the case with you, but I think that there may be some minor similarities in that.
Yeah.
Now, when she would raise her voice at you, what would she say?
I don't know.
It's sort of an air of disappointment.
I don't know. I don't know.
I've blocked it out, I think.
I changed my language.
I changed my language.
Well, let me ask you this.
When she raised her voice at you, did she call you names?
No, I don't think so.
Don't have such a big mouth is one of them.
Okay, don't have such a big mouth.
Don't talk back. Don't talk back.
Don't have bad attitude.
Don't be such a smart ass. I mean, was it stuff like that?
Yeah, but... Couldn't you have thought of that earlier?
If I spilled a glass or something, that was a big drama.
Because she would have to wipe it up.
It's like, oh, I can see that glass falling already.
sort of this constant nagging.
Or, you know, shut up and don't interrupt when adults speak, when the grown-ups talk.
I don't know. It probably would be useful to remember these things, in my opinion, just because knowledge is Certainty, right?
And it helps with whatever decision you're facing, whichever way it goes.
The more knowledge, the better, right?
So you do have the answer to these things.
We don't, you know, memories don't float out of our brains, right?
I mean, they're there. And it probably is worth journaling and exploring and sentencing and that kind of stuff.
I have been journaling a lot.
And I've been, like a lot of sentences have come up for me as well.
But I still can't get a grip on the reality of my childhood.
I know emotionally it's there.
I can see the little child, the little angry child and the little sad child.
I can feel for her, but I can't get a grip on reality.
It's really strange. What do you mean by can't get a grip on reality?
What does the word reality mean for you in that context?
It's hard for me to remember.
My mother's always been very open to talk to me about my childhood, but the way she's talked about it, she's obviously sort of twisted things.
Sort of slightly in her version, sort of, yeah, we've had a hard time, but we've also had good times, and we've played so much.
Well, sorry to interrupt, but you phrased something in a very interesting way there.
You said, my mother has always been open to talk to me about my childhood.
What's missing there? I don't know.
Well, what's missing is listening, right?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true.
That's true, yeah.
Right, and I try not to pick on everyone's little syllable, right?
But I think that was an important one.
Yeah, that's true. She doesn't want to listen.
She wants to talk, but she doesn't want to listen.
Why doesn't she want to listen?
She doesn't want to know.
She doesn't want to remember the bad things.
She's the queen of denial.
And why would...
What would it cost her to remember...
The bad things. What is her relationship to admitting fault?
Her relationship to admitting fault?
I'm sorry? She would have to apologize or she would take blame instead of me.
She would, I don't know, it would be a narcissistic injury.
I don't know. She'd feel guilty.
I mean, I know she feels really guilty inside.
I know that. How do you know that?
Well, I've had sort of a situation a few months ago.
I sort of broke up with my boyfriend.
That was sort of what really pushed me forward with my...
Introspection and development really pushed me forward in that sense.
But it was incredibly painful and I was in so much pain I actually ended up having to go to the hospital and getting some diazepam because I couldn't be alone.
I was in such a terrible, terrible state.
I rang up my mum as a last resort and she ended up hanging up the phone on me.
Because she felt guilty that I was feeling so bad.
She couldn't deal with...
I was on the phone with her saying, I feel, you know, I feel so terrible.
I don't know what to do. And she said, oh, come home, come home, come home.
And why don't she get a job so you'll be tired at night, you'll be able to sleep again.
And in the end, she hung up the phone on me.
I could hear the guilt in her voice.
I could hear... I could hear it.
She knows that it's her fault, that I'm feeling so bad.
Okay. I'm going to be even more annoying than usual now, if you don't mind.
Sure. Again, I don't know your mom.
I wasn't in on the conversation, so this is just my initial response to what you're saying, so taken with all the skepticism in the world.
But I don't get guilt out of that.
What do you get? What I do get, and this is tragically common among parents, and to zero in on mothers, just because that's what I've heard about it more from, though I don't have any evidence that it's conclusive.
But if your mother is not able...
If she hasn't processed her own emotions, or if she has a huge backlog of baggage or emotions that she hasn't processed, then she's not going to be able to be there for you.
Because what's going to happen is that you are going to feel sad, and that's going to trigger her repressed sadness.
And what she's going to want to do Is to give you band-aid solutions and make you stop being sad when you're talking to her.
Not because she cares about your sadness, but because it is evoking unhappiness within her that she can't handle, she can't manage.
So when she tells you to do stuff like get a job so you'll sleep at night, that is not a prescription for depression, right?
That is a stop talking about your sadness.
Again, my opinion, but...
That was a big wake-up call for me, like the way that those things that came out of her during that, because that was sort of a situation where she was faced with my emotions, me asking her for help, so...
Right, she actually had to be there for you in a way that as an adult you could process and wouldn't blame yourself for, right?
If that makes sense. Yeah.
But I thought that it was because she knows that Well, on Christmas, there was another situation where I sort of got into a sort of a classic fight.
Sorry, sorry. Sherry, just before we get to Christmas, you said she knows that.
Oh, you're just like, leave me hanging, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Sorry?
You said she knows that, and is that because you said earlier, you said she knows that it's because it's her fault that you ended up in this bad relationship, in a relationship that broke up and you ended up in hospital.
Is that right? I just went to A&E. I didn't go, actually.
Oh, sorry. Okay, yeah. But, well, I was too depressed to work for a whole year.
Right, right. And you know, just the state I was in when I called her.
She knows.
They both know. They both said to me that when they were afraid that when I moved out it was because of their bad parenting that I decided to move out and leave the country.
And it's true, you know?
Okay, so this is important as well, right?
Sorry to jump in.
And I'm going to give you a tiny little rant here.
So I hope this helps.
It's all my opinion, but I'm going to put some force behind it nonetheless, if you don't mind.
Sure. Now, depression is a big, nasty, debilitating ailment.
As you say, it...
It kept you off work for a year, right?
It is a black hole with no bottom, right?
It can be, in its more extreme forms, obviously physically dangerous, right?
You can harm yourself.
But even in its milder forms, it rubs the colors out of the flowers, right?
It rubs the smells out of the sky.
It rubs the light out of the world.
And it is a very distressing and debilitating ailment.
Am I off base with that or is that fairly close?
No, I could have died.
Without therapy, I might have died.
Yeah, absolutely, right? Now, if my daughter gets sick with something, let me tell you, let's just say it's called, I don't know, pig vulture virus or something like that.
Let's say she gets pig vulture virus.
And it is dangerous, right?
It might kill her. It is debilitating her, renders her effectively paralyzed, unable to function in this world.
The moment I hear the diagnosis, I'll tell you what I'm going to do as a parent.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to rip every book off the library shelf that I can find about this ailment.
I'm going to research everything I can find on the internet about this ailment.
I'm going to call up friends who have doctors and buy them a new car to have them sit down and talk to me about this ailment for as long as I want.
I'm going to become so ridiculously fully informed.
And I don't care if my kid is 30 when this happens.
As a parent, I'm going to become so ridiculously well informed.
And let me also tell you this.
If... It turns out that something I've done not only did contribute, but is continuing to contribute to my daughter's ailment.
I will change my behavior immediately.
Immediately. And whatever support or help I would need to change my behavior in order to save my child from this life-threatening ailment, I would do without looking back.
So, your parents They found out that you had depression, right?
Yeah. What did they do with that knowledge?
They asked me to come back home and be with them so they could take care of me.
But at the same time they said that they were not great parents, right?
How do you mean? Let me come back to that in a sec.
Your parents heard that you had depression.
Do you think they read in a book that the cure for depression is to move back in with your parents?
No. No, they didn't do any research or anything like that.
Why not? Because to me, that would be the basic minimum of decent parenting.
It is an obligation upon parents to provide their children with medical care.
Depression is an ailment That has, obviously, some physiological, some psychological components.
But I was depressed all throughout my teenage years.
I know. I know.
I bet you were depressed as a kid.
So my question is, what did your parents do with the knowledge that you were depressed?
But you understand, if my kid has leukemia, I have to take her to chemo, right?
Yeah. I have to.
That's not even a nice to have.
That's a have to do, right?
Yeah. Right, so if you have an ailment called depression, my question is, what did your parents do?
Did they read out lots of books on depression?
Did they figure out what they may be doing that would contribute to the depression and change that behavior?
Did they go to therapy for themselves to figure out how to become better parents themselves because they would be fully aware, the moment that they read anything about depression, in children, that the first place you look is the parents' behavior, right?
What they did was not call so often anymore.
I used to wonder. No, what did they do when you were a teenager?
Oh, they ignored.
They denied it. Oh, you don't go out.
You don't have any friends. You have to join a basketball team.
You have to do this, you have to do that, which scared the hell out of me, but they tried to force me to do that, so I wouldn't sit at home all day.
So basically what they're saying, everything that they're doing makes depression worse, right?
Yeah. Because the child who is depressed is depressed almost always, in my opinion, because of the behaviors of the parents, right?
And if The parents take no ownership for their role in creating and fostering the depression, but instead say to the child, it's your fault, you need to get off your ass and do something.
That makes the depression worse, right?
Yeah, because I blame myself even more.
Right, so let me give you a metaphor.
If my kid has emphysema and I'm a chain smoker, right, the first thing I'm going to do is do research and say, holy shit, My smoking is contributing significantly, if not downright causing, her emphysema, right?
Yeah. And I would have to smoke outside, or I would just not expose her to smoke, right?
Yeah. And if I continued to smoke, and furthermore blew smoke into my child's face when she has emphysema, how would that come across in terms of parenting?
Terrible. Like, they really don't give a shit.
Right. There's no goddamn book on the planet on depression that says, join a basketball team.
But they loaded that on you.
Right, so they loaded you down with the bad parenting that caused the depression, with the constant irritation, fear of rejection, fear of anger, fear of aggression.
And then when the symptoms showed up, They laden you down even further by saying, basically, it's your fault.
It's your responsibility.
It has nothing to do with us, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
You don't even have friends.
You can't even do that.
Right. Like, you're unpopular.
Yeah. Right.
Which makes you more depressed, right?
Yeah. I had a call with someone else that will never be released, but this came up in another context.
So I apologize for the energy behind this.
But this is just for parents or anyone.
If your kid gets depressed, read up on the goddamn topic like a halfway goddamn decent parent and do whatever it takes to lift that load off your kid.
And yeah, it may make you uncomfortable.
And yeah, it may make you anxious.
And yeah, it may make you guilty.
But so what? This is your child's mental health we're talking about here.
Do whatever it takes to make your child well again.
And if that means sucking down a few jagged, bitter pills of personal responsibility, open up.
Right? Right.
But it was even worse than that.
I mean, for a few months, I sort of flirted with bulimia.
In the end, I decided not to do it anymore because it didn't help.
It didn't make me any happier, so I stopped doing it.
But... I'm convinced my parents noticed.
I'm convinced, but they didn't notice.
I'm convinced they noticed.
How could they have not? But they didn't say anything.
It's sort of...
They just look away.
They just look away.
I just... I don't know.
I haven't talked to them about it.
But I don't...
I still don't...
They just look away.
I mean, it's just even...
Well, first of all, congratulations on not feeding that beast, right?
Because bulimia is, eating disorders turn into these unbelievably grim, lifelong problems.
So, A, congratulations on facing that down, because that, and probably you got what you needed to know, right?
Bulimia starts out in many ways, right?
In my theory, whatever, what do I know, right?
But it starts out as a way of, holy shit, does anyone notice?
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I said I wouldn't talk about myself.
I went through, when I was about 15, a period of binge drinking.
So I would get together with friends on a weekend, I'd be 15 or 16, and we would drink to excess, right?
And I'd be sick and all that kind of stuff.
And I did that for maybe, I don't know, three or four weekends.
And I ended up...
I didn't like it, right? Because basically, you lose...
It's not that much fun to get drunk and you lose your Sunday being hungover, right?
So forget it, right?
But what I did get out of that is that my family didn't give a shit, right?
So I kind of got what I needed, right?
Which is, if I engage in egregiously self-destructive behavior...
Is anyone going to finally...
Because I had a whole series of these things, right?
When I was just saying this to Christina the other day when I was a kid, I threw rocks when I was four or five or six or seven years old.
I mean, I can go through my life and look at destructive or self-destructive behaviors that were all designed to find out if there was an edge to my parents' indifference.
Is there a place where I'll break through the indifference, right?
And if it's not life-threatening depression and if it's not bulimia, what is it?
Well, nothing. That's interesting.
I haven't thought of it like me.
But I do remember sort of getting a bit less careful, you know, just like throwing up while they were in the house or just, you know, I mean, they noticed food disappearing as well.
Well, they'd hear you throwing up, wouldn't they?
I guess so.
I mean, it's really hard to not hear someone throwing up, right?
Well, I didn't throw up very loudly, but I can't imagine them not noticing.
I mean, they were so intrusive in other ways.
I mean, if they wanted to notice, they noticed.
We've heard a lot about the indifference, and I know that the constant chronic irritation that you mentioned about your mother was intrusive, but in what ways were they intrusive in the way that you mean just now?
Well, I didn't go out a lot.
I didn't have a lot of friends, so I didn't give them much trouble, but I wasn't really allowed to either, so I always had to go to bed very early.
I had to Earlier than the others at school.
I had to come home a lot earlier.
I wouldn't really...
I don't know.
At 13, with my best friend, we met some 15-year-old boys, a couple of boys, and I'd mentioned it in front of my parents.
If I mentioned something like that, immediately they were in.
Yeah, but you're not seeing them again.
And sort of immediately restricting me in all sorts of ways, with school as well.
As soon as I sort of mentioned something, they were immediately in there, they immediately paid attention to...
I don't know.
Are you still there?
I certainly am. I was just wondering what time was your bedtime, just out of curiosity.
I don't know.
It was pretty early.
I had to get up quite early in the morning as well.
I don't really remember, but it was sort of a couple of hours maybe earlier.
I was always very tired, so their response to that was, well, you have to go to bed earlier then.
Maybe at 10 years old, maybe it was 8 o'clock or something ridiculous.
nine I don't know yeah and the tiredness was if I understand it was a sort of symptom of depression right see I haven't thought of that either but I kind of sorry that much I can tell you for sure Feeling of tiredness is, I mean, not everyone who feels tired is depressed, but if you're depressed, it is very likely that you will feel tired, but not be able to sleep very well.
Well, I was always sleeping very well.
I was sleeping a lot.
But if you were sleeping well and you were tired, then for sure it's either depression or something is physically wrong, right?
If you're sleeping a lot but you're still tired, then it's depression or some sort of physiological ailment, right?
Either way, the family needs to leap into action to deal with the issue, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I'm naturally sort of inclined to downplay everything.
And I doubt myself already.
It's like, was I really all the time?
Was I really that tired all the time?
Was it really that early?
It's I immediately doubt myself because my memories aren't.
It doesn't matter. See, let me help you out of that maze, right?
Let's say that either one is possible.
Let's say that you were a lot less tired than you think.
But then why the hell would you go into bed so early?
and if you were as tired as you think and that's why you were quote being sent to bed too early then why weren't your parents getting you to a doctor getting you to a psychologist, getting you checked out, getting into family therapy to deal with this issue shame well it doesn't sound like again
I'm going to step in and say something here which is just my impressions based on our hour call, right?
So, again, take it for what it's worth.
These are just my impressions. There's nothing factual about any of this.
But let me tell you that as a dad, and you can, again, take this with all the skepticism with my five months of pedigree, right?
I don't like leaving the house when my daughter is home because she's so much fun.
If I have to go and run an errand or whatever, it takes me 20 minutes to leave the house because I don't want to leave.
When she wakes up from her nap, I'll run up the stairs to pick her up and kiss her and cuddle her.
Yeah, Christine and I race each other.
We will argue over who gets to change her because she's a great deal of fun on the change table.
She is delightful.
And if I... If I would have sent her to bed early, I would miss out on her company.
She is great company.
She's five months old and she's great company.
That's how my mother portrays the first year of my life.
That's how she portrays it.
That's how she says she felt about me.
But I know it's not true because it doesn't make sense.
Okay, but to send you to bed early combined with the other things That you're telling me is I get the sense, I can't figure out or I can't picture how your parents or what evidence there is that your parents enjoyed your company.
Well, they always, they forced me to go on holiday with them until I was, well, 16 was the last time I went with them.
Like, they really, and now they really want me around, although I don't know why.
It's like I'm a prop.
They're not... Well, you do know why.
Come on. You know, I never let people get away with that.
I don't know why. Of course you know why.
Of course you know why.
Of course you know why.
I'll give you a theory.
I don't know if it's true. Because only you know what is true.
But I can give you a theory. Please do.
I really don't know. Well, if you're an American politician who's high up and is running for office, if you don't like your wife, why would you not want her to divorce you?
So people don't think...
I'm sorry? So your voters don't think badly of you.
Yeah, so for appearance, right?
Yeah. Right, so if your parents don't seem to enjoy your company, and again, just going from what you're saying, then the reason they would want you around is for appearance.
The primary appearance is for themselves, because if you're around, then they weren't bad parents, right?
And if you don't want to go on vacation with them, and they then have to go on vacation, they have to explain to people why you're not there.
Let me ask you this. Are your parents involved in social or communal activities like church or politics or other kinds of things?
No. Do they have a social set or a cultural group that they hang around with?
Well, the neighbors, I guess.
Do they have a circle of close friends?
Not a little bit.
More since I moved out.
My mother hasn't been very much like that.
I mean, I guess I've sort of inherited that from her, that habit.
No, they don't seem to have a large circle.
It's strange. My mum works in a hospital, so she knows everyone in the village and she'll chat to everyone.
There weren't really any close friendships.
They didn't really have friends over a lot or things like that.
Right, okay. So, I mean, because to me it's kind of incomprehensible why parents don't take care of kids who are depressed.
Whatever it costs, right?
Because I know for sure, if you were hit by a car, your mother would take you to hospital, right?
Yeah. But there is something about Depression, which speaks ill of the family, right?
And if she's well known in the village, as you say, she knows everyone.
It may be, I don't know, right?
But it may be that she just would find it really humiliating to be thought of as a non-ideal parent.
I know she had a great, great fear of being seen as a bad parent when I was little.
She had a great, great, great fear of that.
I think she told me she felt suicidal at some point, thinking she was a bad mother and I didn't love her.
It's definitely a fear of being seen as a bad mother in her.
Right, and you understand that's a whole lot different than a fear of being a bad mother.
You understand those are almost complete opposites.
What fears? Of being seen as a bad mother and being a bad mother?
If I have a fear of being caught for stealing, that's a whole lot different than not wanting to steal, right?
Yeah. In fact, if I have a fear of being caught for stealing, that means it's because I really want to steal, right?
Well, I guess she did portray it as a fear of being a bad mother.
I guess I always thought...
That she's afraid of being.
She was afraid of being.
Afraid, sorry, afraid of? Of being a bad mother.
No, no, no, no. Listen, if someone's afraid of being a bad mother, like if I'm afraid of being a bad driver, I'll take a driving course, right?
Yeah. If I'm afraid that I have a toothache, I go to the dentist, right?
If I'm afraid I have a mole that's growing into some bizarre elephant man shape on my leg, I'll go see a doctor, right?
Yeah. But if I'm only afraid of being perceived as something, then I won't change the underlying behavior.
I'll just change whether I'm perceived of it.
I guess it's also how she perceives herself.
I don't know. You sound like you're getting more depressed as you go down this road.
And that's fine. I mean, I just want to point out.
And I think...
I know why, but again, I don't know for sure.
What do you think?
Why? Is my observation correct?
Your voice has gotten softer and heavier, like somebody is slowly piling rocks onto you.
I haven't noticed that, but you're right.
You're right. Right.
Yeah. And do you have any thoughts as to why?
Because I'm losing the image of my mother or I'm blaming myself or...
I don't know.
That sounds good. Keep guessing.
I'm sure that's how you...
Because I don't like...
Yeah, I need to know the right answer. Because I think I'm a cross-hopper.
I'm sorry? I need to come up with the right answer.
No, you don't. You can say that you don't know and then I can say, aha, you do, right?
But... Yes, yes.
Tell me what I know, please.
Tell me what I know.
That really is just the definition of philosophy, right?
Tell me what I already know. Well...
I would say...
And this is, again, layperson, nonsense, amateur, opinion hour, right?
So, again, take it for what it's worth.
I would say... That you are much less depressed than your mother.
And as we talk about this, you get closer to your mother's depression and aspects of craziness, right?
Which we all have, but your mother is concentrated around parenting, it would seem.
And as you get closer to your mother's depression, you get closer to your mother's defenses.
Which is why you get more and more confused, right?
Because defenses are fundamentally designed to confuse.
And then if the confusion doesn't work, to frighten.
Right? So I'm basically protecting her.
So I'm using her defenses.
No, you're not protecting her.
She's protecting her.
I mean, she in your head, right?
Right, yeah. Because I've got to tell you, the evidence that you're talking about is really not good.
Right? The evidence of Of parenting and quality is really not good.
No. Let me run through some of the greatest hits for you.
Single parent, right?
It can happen, but I assume that your biological dad didn't die or wasn't abducted by aliens.
Is that fair to say? No, I kind of was always under the impression that he left her, but it sort of came out recently that she left him.
And did you have any relationship with your biological father?
No, not at all. Why not?
He didn't want a relationship with me.
That's the story. When I was 19, he called me once and suddenly wanted to meet up with me, and I just didn't want to meet up with him.
I spoke to him on the phone briefly.
Now, again, what do I know about your family history?
But I would put forward the strong possibility that it's not that he didn't want a relationship with you, but a relationship with you came at the cost of a relationship with your mother.
Yeah, but she left him though.
She left him. Right, but...
Oh, right, right, right. I see.
I see. Oh, that's really interesting.
Yeah, I haven't thought of it that way.
You may have heard people who are taking a break from families in this show, or who've talked about it in this show, talking about the tragedy of cousins and nephews and so on, right?
Yeah. They really do want a relationship, but unfortunately it comes with a relationship with abusive parents and It's not sustainable, right?
Well, she always portrayed it as he didn't want to have a baby around.
He wanted to go out to the disco.
I'm sorry, your mother told you that your father basically didn't want you around?
Yeah. Oh, and how old were you when she told you this?
Well, all through whenever we had the conversations.
How old were you when she first told you this?
I don't remember.
Give me a rough guess.
Were you 20?
No, no, no, no.
I didn't think so. How old were you roughly when she first told you this?
When I first asked, I guess.
So I must have been quite young.
Do you understand how unbelievably egregious that is?
I don't think you see that clearly.
No, I don't see that clearly.
It is actually, I think, if I remember rightly, don't quote me on this, I think it's illegal.
That is called alienation of affection, right?
So if you are divorced from someone...
Let's say, Christina and I were divorced.
Isabella goes to Christina's house and Christina says things about me that will alienate Isabella's affection towards me.
That's actually illegal.
You can get a court injunction against that.
And the reason for that is that it's so unbelievably destructive to the child.
On two levels.
One, obviously, It gives you the perception of being unwanted by your father.
And two, you also then have some fucking questions, to say the least, about your mother's choice of a guy to father her children.
And what that means about your mother.
And third, let's make it three, your mother's decision to tell you this when you are a little kid...
Is shocking and egregious beyond words.
So that's the judgment that your mother possesses, which you recognize innately as a kid as well.
The judgment that my mother possesses that, Yeah, like your mother thinks it's a good idea to say to her kid, your dad didn't want you.
Yeah. To me, that is staggering.
That is such a fundamental...
To me, of course she doesn't.
That's what she's like.
Of course she doesn't what? She doesn't think about these things.
She's quite childlike.
Oh, then she'd have no problem discussing it, right?
Because she doesn't think about them and she's childlike.
So when you bring this up, she's not going to be at all uncomfortable, right?
Well, she would Don't give me the childlike defense, please.
I mean, you have more respect for me than that, right?
Because you've already told me that she doesn't like to listen to you about your childhood, right?
Yeah, yeah. Right, so if she genuinely had amnesia and was like a child that had a brain injury and didn't remember, she would listen with sympathy, right?
She doesn't, yeah.
So if you bring up with her, you talk to her, right?
Call her after the show and say...
Help me understand how it was appropriate for you to tell me that my daddy didn't want me when I was a kid.
And she may say something like, but it's true, right?
Yeah. But it's also true that your mom has sex.
That doesn't mean she has sex in the room with you, right?
There is appropriate information to provide to children.
It's also true that there are movies out there Called Soar, which depict people getting their limbs hacked off, that doesn't mean you show it to preschool children, right?
Well, she would say she was only 20 years old when she gave birth to me, and she did her best, and it was East Germany, and she didn't know any better, and she...
Ugh, long line of excuses.
Well, but this is... So if she would say she didn't know any better, right, then the question is, why don't you know any better?
Right, so you're pregnant for nine months, read a fucking book or two, right?
Oh yeah, but there weren't any books in East Germany.
Sorry, you're what, 324 years old?
I must say you sound fantastically young for your age.
Are you telling me that 23 years ago there were no books on parenting?
Yeah.
Right.
We're not talking about the 17th century here, right?
Yeah, I mean, but the parenting practices weren't very good.
I mean, I was put in daycare from as soon as I could walk.
I was put in daycare, which was lucky because had I been born a year earlier, babies were put in daycare.
Right. So this is what your mom would do, just change the topic, right?
Because that's what you're doing, right? Yeah, yeah, you're right.
Yeah, you stay on topic. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
That's exactly what she does.
Yeah, well, you say, no, no, no.
I don't want to talk about me in daycare, and I don't want to talk about what books were available 20 years ago.
Tell me the theory under which telling a child that her father doesn't want her is a good idea.
What were you thinking?
I can't believe I'm doing this.
I can't believe I'm doing this.
What do you mean? I'm doing the same thing she's doing.
This is good. Seriously, I mean, this is good, in my opinion, because this is the kind of stuff that you need to practice and rehearse to talk about how you feel with your parents, right?
And you've got to recognize that she's going to misdirect, she's going to redirect, she's going to change the topic, she's going to fog, she's going to get irritated, she's going to shut down, she's going to get angry, she's going to try and guilt you, she's going to claim to have a headache, she's going to hear the phone ringing, she's going to whatever, right?
But you stick it.
You stick it and you stay in that conversation.
Because there's no other way that you can reconnect with your family other than by being heard and having valid, legitimate complaints listened to and addressed, right?
Right. I mean, this is how crazy our thinking is about the family.
I'll give you a stupid little example, right?
The other day, I pick up a burger and fries and my fries are cold.
Nah, not cold. They're just not hot, right?
So I have a relationship with the restaurant, right?
It was a drive-thru.
It was a drive-thru. Harvey's, I think.
Yeah. It's on the way to the gym.
So I have a relationship with Harvey's.
And I have a legitimate complaint about my french fries.
And I walk over to the drive-thru window and I say...
Sorry, can I get some more fries?
These ones aren't very warm.
And do they say, well, how warm are they?
Come on. How warm do they need to be?
This is the best we could do with the fries we had at the time.
Right? These people worked very hard to bring you these fries.
What the hell are you doing bringing them back here?
Don't you have any gratitude for how hard people have worked to bring you these?
These have been trucked in from PEI. Don't you have any sense for...
Carbon footprint you're creating by asking for additional fries?
Oh, look at the time. My shift's over.
Don't worry about it. We'll deal with this another time.
No. What did they do?
They said, I'm sorry, sir, and they gave me some new fries.
Why? Because I have a legitimate complaint that was listened to and responded to by a fucking stranger in a booth.
And we expect that from our economic dealings, right?
Right? Why would I have a higher standard for having a complaint listened to and addressed?
Why would I have a higher standard for somebody who's giving me a goddamn cheeseburger than somebody who's my flesh and blood and family?
Do you understand? Yeah.
And the problem is I don't want to speak to them because I know this will happen.
I know there's no way for me to get through to them.
No, you don't know that.
Because if you did, you wouldn't be ambivalent.
Because you started off this conversation, the problem is that you feel torn, right?
You can't justify it to yourself.
Yeah. Right?
And that's what I'm really focusing on.
Trying to help you with that.
If you genuinely had tried everything to connect with your parents, you'd been open, you'd been honest, I don't know if you've read or listened to Real Time Relationships, Do, if you haven't, my suggestion.
It's free. It's on my books page on my website.
If you had tried absolutely everything, if you'd been begging and sobbing on the floor trying to get a connection through with your parents, if you had been patient and tried a number of different times in a number of different ways with a number of different approaches and if you'd kept your temper and you'd kept your cool and you'd been persistent and you'd been curious and you'd not jumped to conclusions and you'd not been abusive, if you had tried everything The beautiful thing is that you get to earn the walkaway medal free and clear, right?
Because there's no ambivalence then, right?
Yeah, I feel like I don't want to try.
I guarantee you that's not your feeling fundamentally.
You absolutely want to try.
Your parents don't want you to try.
But you absolutely want to try.
Because this is consuming you, right?
This problem. Yeah.
Right? It consumed you as a kid.
It consumed you through your teens.
Right? You had a breakup.
You spent a year not being able to work, right?
So this problem is consuming you.
So you absolutely want to take this backpack of bricks off you, right?
Yes, absolutely. And the only way to...
Look, I'm not saying it's not scary.
It is. It is terrifying.
And it is horrendous and a horrible thing to sit down and have these conversations.
So please understand, I'm not saying that you don't want to like...
Sorry, you want to and therefore you're not going to be scared.
You are going to be scared. But if you look at the benefits, right?
The basic argument for this series of conversations with your parents is that Sweet mother of God, if it can work, right?
If they'll go into therapy, if they'll do right, if they'll find a way to outgrow their histories, if they can apologize, if, if, if, right?
Yeah, I mean, I've already...
I have started to talk to them about it, and sort of I have sent them the book, Alice Miller, The Drama of Being a Child, and my mom's been reading it, so...
Because initially I sort of had that reaction of, yes, yes, she can change and she's willing to, and you know, all this kind of stuff.
And then sort of the reaction came, yeah, but in the first year of your life I only held you and stared lovingly in your eyes.
And sort of that was her first reaction to beginning to read this book.
And since I haven't spoken to them in five weeks, they haven't really tried to call me.
Right, so in the only time where you really have no memory, I was a great mom, right?
Yeah. See, that also puts ownership on you, right?
Because it's like, well, I have the capacity for great affection, and therefore if I'm not affectionate towards you, it must be at least half your fault, right?
Yeah. Yeah, and I'm very scared because during that conversation, I actually started to believe her.
During that conversation, I actually started doubting myself and started thinking, oh my God, maybe they weren't that bad or maybe I was lucky.
Yeah, but sorry, and I understand that's probably the purpose of why she says that.
But all you have to say is, I can't discuss things that I can't remember.
I only want to discuss the things that I can remember, right?
Because this is a conversation about the difficulties and the problems that I have with this family, right?
I mean, if I go to the Harvey's drive-up window and the guy says, well, the fries I handed out yesterday were really warm, it's like, that doesn't have anything to do with my issue, right?
Yeah. So I just have to go through that.
Sorry, if you bring up issues to do with your childhood and she starts talking about how she was when you were an infant, you realize she's no longer listening to you, right?
Yeah. No, I don't think you do because that was a very tentative yeah.
Yeah. No, I have sort of tried to speak to her and I had to bring her back to the reality ten times to, but I'm talking about this, but I'm talking about this, or like, yeah, but we've been playing so much and I was like, yes, but it wasn't enjoyable for me because I couldn't relax because I was always afraid you'd be angry with me and sort of had to get her back to that reality so many times.
Right, and you need to, sorry, this is a tool...
I'm so sorry to interrupt. This is a really important tool for this conversation.
I don't think I've unveiled this one before, right?
It's really important, in my opinion, to ask your mother in this conversation, what are the issues I'm bringing up?
Why do you think I'm bringing them up?
Right? You know, if you've ever given people complicated instructions, it's usually a good idea to have them repeat them back to you, right?
Right. So I ask her, why am I talking about my child?
Well, first you say, what are the complaints that I'm...
What are the issues that I'm bringing up, right?
Like, if I were to give you a phone number, you would read it back to me, right?
Yeah. And that way, I know that you've understood the phone number, right?
Yeah. So what we try to do is we try to repeat ourselves, we get frustrated, they get defensive, and so on, right?
But you can... If people are going to be able to come over to your side, or to...
Any kind of side of intimacy.
Then say, what are the issues that I'm bringing up?
And then why do you think I'm bringing them up?
And if she says, I have no idea what issues are.
What the issues are, right?
Then that's important to know, right?
And if she says, I have no idea why you're bringing these issues up, or you're bringing these issues up because your therapist told you to, or because that bald nutty job on the internet told you to, or because you're depressed, or because you're spiteful, or because you're looking for someone to blame, or...
Like, if she just makes up whatever she makes up, that's important to know as well, right?
Is she actually hearing what you're saying?
You read out a phone number and say, read that back to me.
Let me make sure you got it right.
You say to somebody, these are my issues...
And then you say, what did you hear?
What are my issues?
And if she doesn't hear, I don't think she hears me.
Well, that's important, right?
Because if I say to you, do re mi, what did I just say?
And you say, I have no idea what you just said.
Then there's no point saying do re mi again, right?
Yeah. But it's important to not just keep firing things at people like a cannon, so to speak, right?
But to play catch, right?
Lob them a ball called, this is my issue, and say, okay, throw it back to me.
What did you get? What do you understand about what I'm saying?
what are my issues?
Right, because if she can understand them, and I'm not saying you have to agree with them, but what are my complaints?
Because if I go to the guy and give him my fries and he gives me another burger, he obviously hasn't understood my complaint, right?
So I'm not satisfied.
But I'm not sure if I understand my own complaints yet.
That's the problem, somehow.
Well, you can listen to this again if you like.
Yeah, I will. I definitely will.
Aggression, fear, intimidation, alienation, a lack of care and concern over the medical problem or the psychological problem of depression, blaming you for social isolation, blaming you for depression, blaming you for lack of energy, sending you to bed early, and not listening in the present to the issues that you're bringing up.
Yeah. And you will probably, because what people try and do in these situations is they will try to, like you're in a court of law, like you have to establish something objective.
So you'll say this happened, and they'll say, well, but doesn't this happen which counteracts that, right?
Like they don't try to argue out or say you forgot something very important about our childhood, right?
Or they'll say, well, I was doing the best I could, right?
And it's like, but this isn't about you.
Okay. Yeah, this is what I think.
But if I say, my fries are cold, and the guy says, I have a headache, it's like, I'm sorry you have a headache, but my fries are still cold.
Yeah. This isn't about your headache.
You're not paid to tell me about your headache.
You're paid to fix my problems as a customer, right?
Yeah. So your mother will start to be defensive, and you say, but mom, this isn't about you.
This is about me. I did the best I could.
This is not about you. This is about me.
Yeah, I'm quite scared of sort of slipping into that role again.
And you will. And you will.
Absolutely. And you will fight your way out of it, like we all do.
Right? This isn't a one-shot thing.
If you fail at this, well, first of all, you can't fail at it.
Because just having the courage to do it.
Sorry? At the moment.
Sorry? Hello? Yeah.
Did I cut out? Hello?
Oh, am I muted?
Hello? Yes, I can hear you now.
Okay. Yeah, you can't fail at this, right?
You can't fail, right?
Because if you succeed in breaking through, fantastic, right?
Then there's some cautious basis for moving forward, right?
If you can't break through...
Then at least your ambivalence will be diminished, right?
Mm-hmm. That sounds wonderfully unconventional.
Yeah, fine. I can always say, uh-huh, whatever.
I'm telling you, this is one of the beautiful things in life where you simply cannot fail.
I'm sort of at the point where I don't even want a relationship with my parents at all.
No, come on. Now you're backing down because that's what you said at the beginning of this conversation.
I didn't spend an hour and a half with you because you already had certainty.
If you had certainty, you wouldn't have started off the conversation by saying, I'm confused.
And you wouldn't have said to me not five minutes ago, I don't even know what my issues really are.
Yeah. Right?
So, nice try, but I'm afraid that one just won't work.
Although, you know, A for effort, and I must say, you're good.
Just not yet.
No, you're right.
You're right. It's a bit of a cop-out.
Well, it's not a bit of a cop-out, right?
I mean, it's an understandable fear before doing this act of immense and liberating courage, right?
And I think I've been having sort of a lot of anxiety about this.
It's really impacting, having an impact on my life a lot.
Right. I need to really sort this.
And I can't make the anxiety go away.
I really can't.
Other than to say, you can't lose.
If you have something in your head, like I have to get my mom to understand this, then you won't succeed.
Because you can't have, as your goal, in any interaction, the other person's response.
Right? Right.
Because you can't control anybody else.
So if you go in saying, I need to get this across to my mom, well, you can't control that, so it's an irrational goal, right?
Mm-hmm. The only thing that you can control is your own honesty and vulnerability in the conversation.
And if you find it impossible after a while to be honest and vulnerable in this conversation with your mother, then you have a new piece of information, right?
Yes. Which is that you cannot stay open, honest, and vulnerable in the presence of your mother, at least in the first go, right?
And you'll keep having goes at it until you go, this is not possible.
Until I know. Sorry?
Until I'll really know.
And then I won't have to call in anymore.
Right. Yeah. And when you have that closure, it won't show up in your other relationships.
If you don't get that closure, you'll simply recreate this ambivalence in other relationships.
We all do. Trust me. Trust me.
Don't waste years of your life like I did on that nonsense.
No, no more.
No more. No, listen, fucking kudos for you, my fine friend, for doing this at the age that you're doing it.
Because I was like 10 years past where you were before I started this stuff.
So, I mean, I know it feels frustrating.
Maybe you feel like you've lost some time, but holy crap, like serious medals of massive stones for doing this at the age that you're doing it at.
And to me, it's actually the perfect age to do it, but that's...
That's just neither there, right?
You don't have kids yet yourself.
You're not married. You've got the freedom, right?
You've got the liberty. You've got the distance to be able to make a real run at this.
And if you can break through, great.
And if you can't, you're not bound up in a whole bunch of other stuff, right?
Yeah, no, I'm completely...
My life has begun just a few months ago.
I'm completely...
It's like the first time, really, I don't feel suicidal.
It's not an option for me anymore.
So it's like the beginning of my life now.
Right. Do you have a therapist?
Oh, yes, yes. Oh, good.
Okay, so you're going to throw everything I say out the window and talk to your therapist, right?
Absolutely. Good, good, good.
Because look, I mean, this is something you do with your therapist.
I'm just the annoying guy who is like the gnat buzzing around your head saying, do it, do it, do it, do it, right?
But you do this in conjunction with your therapist.
I think also what I wanted to hear was a bit sort of get the reality in my head.
I wanted to hear you say...
What do you condemn my parents?
I think. Absolutely.
And I, look, don't get me wrong.
I could make that speech.
I really could, but it wouldn't do you any good.
I will say this, though.
You have some seriously legitimate complaints about your family.
You have some seriously legitimate complaints about your family.
And the point is not for me to be outraged.
The point is for you to connect with that.
Right? I've already got closure about my family of origin, right?
Which is why I have a wonderful new family, right?
But... And I know, I know, and I can feel that.
You're like, come on, give me the speech.
Come on, tell me the...
Yes, come on, man.
Do it! I've heard you do it.
Do it! Do it! Right? But it won't do you any good.
I know, and I hate to withhold it.
Don't get me wrong. You have absolutely legitimate, serious, fundamental, essential complaints that are completely valid, in my opinion.
About your family. And I think I've said things about your parenting, the parenting that you received, that are pretty unambiguous.
Would that be fair? Yes.
And I'm going to listen to this show again to remind myself.
Maybe more than once, you know, because this is important.
Not what I'm saying is important, but the conversation, right?
Yes. But you seriously have some fantastic, important, essential...
Things to talk about with your family.
You did experience significant injustice and bad parenting.
And you should talk about it.
You're not in any physical danger.
So I absolutely, completely and totally say, have this conversation.
Bring up your legitimate concerns.
Try your very hardest not to be misdirected into the ether.
But if it happens, do not feel that that is a failure because that is more knowledge for you to work with.
Right. But if I condemn your parents, I will be taking something very precious away from you, which is your knowledge and your experience.
Yeah. And your certainty.
Yes. You don't need me to be certain.
You need you to be certain, right?
Yeah. I think I've been looking for a way to not ever speak to them again.
Right. And if I condemn them, then you would say, well, that's it, right?
You know, this guy who, whatever, seems kind of wise, has said this.
And, you know, hey, if I thought that would do you good, because that's my major concern here, I hope you understand, is your well-being and future health, right?
Mental health. If I thought that would do you good, I would, you know, spark up the sky with moral outrage.
But it wouldn't, because if you run away from this conversation without discovering...
The truth about your experience and the truth about your parents' capacity to interact with you in an honest and open level, you will take that avoidance into your next relationship and end up with that same oblique stuff that I bet you happened with the Australian guy, right?
Where you just can't connect.
Oh yeah, there were a few relationships.
Right, right. So I want you to not have that revolving door of leaping in and being kicked back out again, right?
So I want you to have, I mean, it's what I want everyone to have, what Christine and I have gotten together and created, right?
Which is a very...
Vanilla creamy baby who doesn't sleep.
But you have that kind of love and intimacy, but that means having those difficult conversations with those of us in our past to really either find a way to connect or get out with complete certainty about what happened so that it doesn't ever happen again.
Yeah, that would be beautiful.
It is. And that's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right?
Or rather the light at the end of the tunnel full of bats, right?
And trains and bombs and so on, right?
So that's why I haven't talked about your parents in the way that I think you want to hear.
I mean, I think I have been pretty clear about where I stand on certain of the parenting issues, but I can't take that away from you because that is something you need to...
To feel for yourself.
Yeah. I mean, sort of listening to your podcast has really helped me get in touch with my anger towards my parents a lot.
Sort of the anger in your voice has really helped me.
It has made me cry many times.
And I've sort of moved past that phase and I'm in a place now where it's just fear.
Fear of what's going to happen.
Right, and underneath most anger is fear, right?
Yeah. Right, if someone's napping on the couch and you go up and you go, boo!
Right? Then what happens is they're startled and then they get angry, right?
And I can almost guarantee you that your anger towards your mother is the fear of abandonment that you experienced, the fear of rejection that you experienced as a young child, and that's What festered into the anger and depression of your teenage years.
Yeah. But I'm not getting anything out of the relationship at the moment.
I really have nothing to lose.
Okay. And this is why, you know, sorry, the last thing, you do need to have this conversation because you are getting something out of this relationship.
And what you're getting is the fog about your history, right?
Right. Right. I'm not saying that that's too high a price to pay, right?
Yes, it's like taking a drug for an infection, right?
Like taking a painkiller for an infection.
It gives you temporary relief, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem.
So, you know, participating in your parents' fog about your history will give you some relief from the pain of the past, but it just festers, right?
And it reproduces itself like a virus in every new relationship, and I don't want that to be your future.
Yeah. I've been sort of thinking it will increase the fog when I speak to them because it will confuse me more, but I think you're right.
I think you'll actually just make things clearer.
Yeah, see, confusion is clarity, right?
If every time I talk to someone I get completely confused about my past, my life, my history, my everything, that is a kind of clarity, right?
Yeah. Every time I go to see this optometrist, I come out and I can't see.
Well, that tells me something about the optometrist, right?
Yeah. Stop going to that optometrist, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Now, I don't want to keep you on all day.
How was this conversation for you, right?
Were your french fries warm, or were they cold?
How was this conversation?
Because I know that you had a lot of anxiety about this conversation, and this is the first time that we've talked, and obviously it was a big, meaty, in-depth conversation.
But what was your experience of me as a conversation partner and of your experience of this conversation that we just had?
Good. I'm really, really, really grateful you've spent so much time talking to me.
I'm really grateful and I feel more clarity about, yes, I do have to call them.
I feel stronger in that sense.
I'm really grateful that you have pushed me towards the direction of speaking to them again.
You know, of trying as opposed to just sort of confirming my belief that it's It's no use to speak to them, because I do agree with you.
If I didn't need that extra confirmation, why am I talking to you now?
Why am I still wondering?
And I'm looking forward to listening to this conversation again, just to remind myself what we've talked about, because my memory just seemed to kind of just let go of these things.
And how do you feel at the moment?
I feel better. I feel relieved.
Good. And just for those who are listening in the chat room, this fine friend here, our incredibly brave friend, and seriously, the stuff you're doing is incredible.
It's amazing. It's fantastic.
You should get all the medals raining down from heaven onto your chest because this is how...
The world is saved, right?
It's one generation at a time, and this is how certain destructive cycles within families can be brought to a halt, hopefully for the better, but no matter what, brought to a halt.
This is how we put the brakes on the problems and the evils of the world.
So I think... It is magnificent what you're doing.
I think that we're all there in the trench with you.
We've all done it, or we're going to do it, or we've known someone who's done it.
And those who haven't had to do it, kudos to them, right?
Fantastic to have those kinds of families.
But you're not alone in this, right?
There's a community of people who've got some knowledge and expertise about this.
Lean on this community. Ask people questions.
Get involved. Don't do it alone, right?
Because that was the isolation that was so difficult for you as a child.
But just, I hope that you will accept my admiration.
For what it is that you're doing.
The moral courage that it takes to do what it is you're contemplating and what you actually will do is staggering.
Everybody wants to imagine that it's superheroes and the Battle of Britain and so on, and this is how we fight these kinds of problems in the world.
But it is in the incredible courage and honesty and openness of what you did today and what you've been doing for the last couple of months and what you will continue to do in the realm of self-knowledge and philosophy for the rest of your life.
This is how we haul mankind to the next level.
There is no shortcut.
There is no cape.
There are no tights.
There is no action utility belt.
There are no cool-looking motorcycles.
And rarely are there the accolades of society, but it is the only way that we evolve.
So congratulations for what it is that you're doing.
If you could just type in the window, if you...
Because you asked whether you were worried about...
You said you were worried about wasting people's time, and we obviously did.
If we did waste time, we wasted a lot of it, right?
So I don't know if you can...
Are you in the chat room at all? Yes, I am.
Okay, so we got positively amazing call.
Thumbs up. Yep. Oh, right.
She kind of ran the gamut of defenses there, too.
It was enlightening to see them come up.
Fantastic convo. Fascinating.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Just magnificent. Well done, Steph, and good luck to the young woman.
Yes, you are very brave. Indeed, for the Mebles, absolutely a privilege to hear this convo.
One of the best in a while, I think.
That enrages me. No, I'm just kidding.
So if you stand up, it's good to hear people trying.
If this is wasting time, let all my time be wasted from now on.
Fantastic call. So...
Thank you very much. Thank you so much.
Right. But this is what happens when people are honest and confront their fears.
You are helping others more than you now.
And I hope that you get that.
Thank you. I'm really looking forward to becoming part of the community.
I think it's great.
All right. Keep us posted.
And if there's anything that I or anyone else can do, please let us know.
Don't feel completely alone when you do this, right?
Because I think you've had enough of that.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
All right. Well, I appreciate that.
Thank you so much for bringing that topic up.
I'm not going to take another call because I don't think anybody particularly wants to follow that.
But thank you so much for sharing.
If you send me your email, I will make sure that you get a link to the podcast link.
Thank you so much for your honesty and your openness.
I wish you all the best with your family.
Keep us posted and we will talk to you next week.
Thank you. Thank you.
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