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May 7, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:07:11
1657 Working It in Therapy - A Listener Conversation

A listener grapples with a conflict he is having with his therapist.

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Time Text
Alright, Mr. Nates, do you want to go to town on your therapist?
Let's go to town on my therapist.
She's a little old, but she can take it.
So, yeah, I was a little anxious about the calls tonight.
It always feels like I'm this Olympic athlete coming early in the morning to his coach and like, what's in store?
What's he going to have for me today?
How many lapses are going to make me run?
So basically, I've run into this problem with every therapist I've had and this therapist has been the best of my therapist.
I just want to give her that, you know, she's been amazingly beautiful and helpful in so many ways, especially getting back into dating and she's an art therapist.
She's helped me express myself in art again and get in touch with my ability to draw and the right side of my brain in terms of emotion.
You can sort of get around the whole intellectualization of emotion if you can just draw what you feel and things like that.
So it's been very helpful.
I'll take my art to her and she'll interpret it.
So I just want to give her all that.
She's been incredibly helpful and wonderful, and I like her a lot.
It's just this one argument that we keep coming to, and I've come to this with several therapists, is the perfectionism continuum.
You know, it's like the dichotomy that to be evil is It's not good or evil, it's perfect or imperfect.
You know what I mean? I don't know exactly what you mean that succinctly.
I have an idea, but maybe you go into a bit more detail.
Well, if I could just read what she says, basically.
She says, I totally agree with you about the propaganda, and then I've run into this, and it's interesting that this has come up.
I've met someone that I, and there's a couple of other people that I'm interested in, but there's someone that I'm going on my fifth date with tomorrow and she's kind of winning.
Oh, congratulations.
Yeah, so a lot of emotions have come up in series.
I'm feeling scared and And all kinds of stuff.
And just about how to approach people that have not been exposed to these things and ideas.
And I'm just trying to take the bottom of the brain things into consideration and all the skills that I've learned.
and she's very sweet, very kind, very sensitive, a very nice woman.
She's got to finish her degree in clinical psychology.
But basically my therapist had said, quote, "I totally agree with you about the propaganda of--" This is in response to something like that.
obviously, but like, oh, I have a good family, and then I've learned through some very difficult experiences of my own and many others that this is It's helpful to think in terms of a continuum, with the parent causing the death of the child being the absolute worst, or 100% child abuse, and the perfect parents being at 0% on the continuum.
And it's each of these individuals' rights, responsibility to figure out where their family falls on that continuum.
I'm never saying that abuse is okay.
What I'm saying is that parents are human, cannot be perfect and do make mistakes, the more evolved a parent is, the more they are able to recognize and make their amends for their mistakes, and the smaller their mistakes are, well, that would be in the percentage.
And so I responded with, um, that I think it's, I think 0% to 100% is a dichotomy, or perhaps a red herring.
Important is whether the parent quickly recognizes the mistake and apologizes and makes restitution in some way and doesn't keep repeating it.
That's how you know it's not abuse.
Instead, they make expo test expo testo justifications and excuses and defend themselves by blaming the victim, and that's abuse.
I'm not sure what's so subjective and personal about it.
That's what she had said earlier.
And though I would agree...
Oh, there we are.
I won't go into all the other details of this conversation, but this is something that really bothers me because I would really like her to see that this isn't just sort of like a continuum of mistake-making.
That it's a choice and that there's good and there's evil.
Because if she doesn't see that, for some reason I feel invisible.
I don't feel validated.
I just want validation from her.
It seems to justify what some parents do as just Mistake making.
I encountered the same argument on Facebook when I posted about earlier this week.
I stood up for this child who was being verbally abused and yelled at in the park.
And I told her mother, no, you don't want to do that.
And I talked about it on Facebook and then a bunch of people responded with Well, your parents get it said, and, you know, they make mistakes, and yada, yada, yada, and it's just like, this person that I was stood up to, you know, was not, was not somebody who would have apologized for her quote-unquote mistake.
You know, it was, she was, she was not doing that.
She was being incredibly, you know, verbally abusive and yelling at the child who was standing there crying.
So, It's very frustrating for me to have to try and get my therapist to see things on a more objective level than just subjective relativism about what someone perceives as abuse versus what someone else perceives as it and how many mistakes makes them do.
Does that make any sense? It makes complete sense to me, and I really appreciate you bringing this up.
I think it's a really great topic.
Do you want to talk some more, or would you like to get some feedback?
What's your preference? I think I've said all that I can to explain it, unless you're confused about one part or another.
I can try to clarify more because maybe I'm myself.
I've written about...
Are you there?
Are you there?
Can you hear me?
Yes, sorry about that.
Somehow we got...
Can you hear me now?
Yes. Okay. Do you want...
Sorry, do you want to keep going? I heard what you said, and I've got some things to talk about, but I'm certainly happy to keep listening if there's more that you wanted to bring up.
Oh no, if you need any more clarification, I can try.
But let me hear what you have to say.
Maybe I'll know if you got it or not.
Right. Well, the first thing that I would have a problem with, and again, I can't speak anything about therapy or your therapist.
I can just talk about my...
My thoughts and feelings about what you're saying, and maybe they'll be useful.
And if you have a mute on your phone, if you could just mute while you're just listening, that'd be great.
Okay. The first is the idea that it's a zero to 100%, and that the scale is a mistake.
Mistakes. The problem is that to get angry at a mistake is...
Almost to be abusive, right?
So if I say I'm meeting a friend at 6 o'clock and there's a time change or there's a daylight savings and then he shows up at the wrong hour, to get angry at him for a simple mistake would be kind of abusive.
Or at least it would be immature or intolerant or whatever, right?
So to get angry at someone for a mistake...
Places, I think, the bad behavior on the part of the person who's angry.
And I think that's probably some of the frustration and the injustice that you're feeling.
You know, it's always bothered me when I have critics, critiques of groups of people or whatever.
Let's say parents or whatever, right?
And people say, well, you know, parents make mistakes.
They're not perfect. You know, that to me is an incredibly annoying and frustrating thing to hear.
Because there's so much that's contained in that that is manipulative.
And again, I'm not talking about your therapist.
I'm just talking about my experience of having heard these kinds of things.
There's so much that's manipulative.
That's my experience. Yeah.
There's so much that's manipulative in that.
So first of all, what it's saying is that you have a standard of perfection And you lash out or get angry or get upset or reject people who don't meet your standard of perfection.
Well, that portrays, let's just say they're talking about me, that portrays me as an immature, self-righteous, aggressive, petty, vindictive perfectionist who has these massive standards, high standards of behavior for other people, And yet it's falling so far short of any reasonable level of morality that I'm simply using these standards in order to lash out at people and to make them wrong and to make myself...
Like it's the actions of a...
I don't know, a brain-scarred five-year-old.
So that's what happens when someone says to me, well, aren't you aware that people make mistakes?
And of course, it is a very condescending thing to say.
I'm very sensitive to this kind of stuff because I get it a fair amount, right?
So a condescending thing to hear is like, well, aren't you aware that people make mistakes?
And the thing is, I'm 43 years old, right?
If I've gotten to the age of 43, and I'm not aware that human beings are capable of making mistakes, then I'm clearly so fucking retarded that I can't even put the shoe on the right hand, let alone the right foot.
Right, exactly. Right, so I find it really...
I experience it as very condescending when someone says to me, aren't you aware that people make mistakes?
Because if I'm genuinely not aware of it, then there's no point them telling me.
Because if 43 years of living in the world with human beings have not taught me that human beings are going to make mistakes, then someone telling me they make mistakes clearly isn't going to do it.
So it's...
Clearly they don't think that I'm unaware of it.
What they're doing is they're just sort of trying to position themselves as the wise person and me as the immature person and they're appealing for tolerance for people making mistakes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And so I find that...
Like, you know, when people write to me and say, well, you've just made basic logical errors here.
And it's like, well...
If I've studied philosophy for 20, 25 years and I'm still making basic logical errors everywhere, then clearly I'm just too retarded to even have a conversation with.
And so the fact that people would engage in a conversation with me while saying I have a functional IQ of about 60 is kind of ridiculous, right?
Like, there is a girl with Down syndrome who plays at the park sometimes where Izzy and I go.
And I don't walk up to her and say, Are you aware that quantum physics is complicated?
Because she doesn't have the mental acuity to even process the question.
I'm closer to understanding that human beings make mistakes than...
I'm further from understanding that people make mistakes than she is from understanding that quantum physics is complicated.
So I just don't do that because I don't go up to people with subnormal intelligence and engage them in complicated topics.
So I always find it's a very manipulative and destructive thing.
To say to somebody, aren't you aware that people just make mistakes?
I find that it's very passive-aggressive.
And again, I'm just talking about that phrase.
I know your therapist has some great qualities, so we're just analyzing the things that are occurring for you and for me, certainly, with these kinds of statements.
So that's the first thing that I would say.
The second thing is that to say that there's a continuum of 0% where I think it was the parents directly kill the kid and then 100% where they're perfect in every conceivable way and that all parents fall somewhere in between and it's a continuum, this, that, and the other, is to me an exceedingly irrational approach to what we're really talking about is morality.
We're not talking about moralizing.
We're not talking about defensive, you know, just damn them all to hell, Satan take them because they've said to me that God doesn't exist or anything like that.
We're talking about a child abuse.
Right? So... Obviously, a good parent is one who does not abuse the child.
100% does not abuse the child.
Is that possible?
Well, hell yes, it's possible.
Of course.
I mean, it's like 100%, at least a bare minimum for 100% good parenting is you don't abuse your child.
In the same way that the bare minimum for being a good husband is you don't beat the shit out of your wife, right?
Or scream at her and call her a stupid and a bitch and a whore and whatever, right?
I mean, that's the bare minimum, right?
Right, and that wouldn't be a mistake.
Well, you know, you could, in anger, you could say something and then apologize, but the bare minimum is that you don't beat your wife up.
Beating your wife up is not a mistake, obviously, right?
Right. So, otherwise, we'd all get one get-out-of-jail-free card, right, stab some guy and say, oops, you know, okay, it's a mistake, right?
Right. And so, the bare minimum is to not initiate violence against those you love, right?
So, if it's 100%, That's just the bare minimum.
That's the minimum standard.
There are lots of people in my life who don't initiate force against me.
In fact, there are almost 6 billion people, or however many people there are in the world, minus a few, who've ever initiated force against me.
And so that's just the bare minimum.
So, you know, if someone comes to the barbecue and they don't beat me up, that's great.
That doesn't mean I'm going to be their friend, right?
Because they may get really drunk and Throw up in my carpet and, you know, they may just be a jerk in other ways.
So the bare minimum is that people don't initiate force against me.
That's not 100%.
It's not zero to 100. What happens if somebody doesn't initiate force against me is they get to zero.
They don't get to 100%. Now, somebody, like, so let's look at it.
It's minus 100% to plus 100%.
This is what this continuum doesn't get, right?
So minus 100% is they stab me, right?
Or whatever, right? And zero is they don't initiate force, they're not verbally abusive, whatever, right?
Then they've gotten to zero.
That's the bare minimum, right?
So if I run a store...
If someone doesn't shoplift and doesn't smash up my store or pee in the corner of my store, that's the bare minimum.
That doesn't make me any money, but at least they're not costing me any money, right?
So the bare minimum to have any chance of a relationship with a decent person is to not do the abusive things.
That doesn't get you to plus 100.
That just gets you to zero.
That just gets you in the ballpark of a potential relationship if lots of other positives are there.
Because this is a scale, zero to 100%, that's more appropriate for a test of your knowledge, where there's no good and evil.
In it, right? So, you know, testing your knowledge of algebra or whatever, you can get zero if you don't know it at all.
You can get 100% if you know it perfectly, but there's no good and evil there.
It's just a continuum of knowledge.
But the problem with good and evil that's different is that there's a negative state called evil, which is minus 50, minus 100.
And if you don't do the evil stuff, then you get to zero.
But then for there to be a positive relationship...
You need all of these other things, right?
Your love, and compassion, and consideration, and courage, and gentleness, and empathy, and sensitivity, and all those other integrity, all those other good things, right?
Right. And so, you're not saying, my parents were...
Sorry, let me sort of rephrase that.
So, the scale of 0 to 100 doesn't make any sense.
Because it doesn't include negative behaviors, which is what your issue with your parents really was, right?
And is. Right.
Because there's lots of people in the world, millions or billions of people in the world, who've never done you and I a stitch of harm, right?
Right, so they're at zero.
Yeah, so they're at zero, right?
So if they're at zero, where the fuck are your parents?
Right. Minus zero?
Zero with more decimal places?
I mean, where do they fit on that scale?
Exactly. Does that make any sense?
Yeah, when you put it in terms of a scale like that with a negative integer of 100, it just fits.
The... And I think what I got more from that is that it's kind of condescending that she thinks I don't understand.
It feels like she's teasing me of being intolerant of mistakes.
Right. That I am just a jerk.
And I think that's what I did in process about it.
I think that's what really bothered me.
Maybe not so much that I want validation, but that I feel kind of offended or hurt, I guess.
Right, right, right.
Well, and I think I can understand that, because in the context of your history, which I remember in vivid detail, all the way back to your dreams of the schoolhouse and the brick wall and all that, This is an issue that comes up a lot in philosophy.
It comes up a lot in philosophy.
So I think this is why it's really great that you're bringing it up.
So on the one hand, we have your parents who were violent and destructive and, you know, filled you full of superstitious terrors and so on, right?
And that's sort of on the one side of the scale, right?
So we think of a scale of immorality, right?
So on the one side, we have...
You know, nasty, vicious child abusers who left you with significant emotional and cognitive deficits, right?
Right. Which, you know, I mean, you've worked fantastically to repair and you're doing amazingly, but you didn't exactly start at the starting line.
You were like three miles back, right?
Right, exactly. So that was through violence and superstition and intimidation and manipulation and abandonment and all of these terrible destructive things.
So that's on the one side of the scale, right?
And on the other side of the scale is you saying, that was bad, right?
Right. Now, I've always had, to me it's completely mind-blowing That any sane human being would look at this scale of action, right? The scales of justice.
And on the one side is decades of child abuse.
And on the other side is the victim of that child abuse saying, that was bad, that was terrible, that makes me angry.
And to focus your...
your moral radar on the victim and say the only thing that I can see wrong in this whole equation is your complaints and that's what I think needs to be corrected that's where I'm going to focus my moral energies thanks And it's not just that,
but, like, if I hear...
The conversation started about just the women I've been dating, and one of them that I decided not to see was an example of one of those people who'd say, oh, I had a really great family, and then, you know, said...
He told me some pretty serious things that would put him in, you know, put...
In the modern day, put, you know, parents in jail.
It's just...
I... I find...
I lost my train of thought you say that you had stopped seeing this woman because or you decided not to see this woman because she said she had a great family when there was some significant some problems And did she have any comments about your response to her revelations?
Well, this was basically her response to it, that people, that this is kind of, oh, that's where I was going.
It was kind of a moral relativism sort of argument where for this woman, her childhood was good because she thought it was good.
And for me, mine was bad because I experienced it as bad.
Objectively, there's no Like, I can't go and say that this woman had a bad childhood because...
Because she thinks it was good, right?
Right. Right, right.
So, like, just before somebody freezes to death, apparently, they start to feel very warm because their body is just shutting down, and so they no longer experience cold.
And they actually start to feel quite warm just before they die, and so I guess we can assume that they're not freezing to death because they feel warm.
Right, exactly. If it's not objective, then I'm unjust for being intolerant.
If it's just something that I'm just overly sensitive.
To me, that's a great question to be asked, right?
Because you can just UPB that mother, right?
Right. In which case, you know, if I'm talking about my childhood or whatever, right, and people say, well, Steph, you're just intolerant of your parents' mistakes or whatever, right?
You're saying, okay, so intolerance is a bad thing, right?
So, for instance, if I got so angry at my parents that I beat them up, would you consider that to be intolerant and bad behavior, right?
And they would say, well, yeah, that would be really intolerant and bad behavior, right?
It's like, well, you know that they beat me up, right?
So what the fuck are you talking about my intolerance?
If it's much more intolerant to beat someone up, then what the hell are you talking about my intolerance, right?
There's no relativistic defense against abuse and abusers because abusers are all absolutists.
There is no intellectual vice that you can throw at a victim that is not a hundred thousand times worse than an abuser.
You know, if you say to...
Someone says to me, well, Steph, you're just rigid.
It's like, hey, if you want to see rigid, try talking to my mom about anything, right?
You're intolerant.
It's like, well, how tolerant was my family of a difference of opinion?
There's no... There's nothing that you can throw at a victim that is not 100,000 times more applicable to an abuser, even if it is applicable to the victim.
And so the fact that people focus on the victim is revealing.
And it's the same argument you made about some...
We'll say that guy with the dad who was the judge, or the grandfather who was the judge, and he can be let off because ignorance of the philosophy is, you know, he can be grandfathered, and yet he was a judge, and ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Right. Yeah, I thought of that afterwards, and you're absolutely right.
I mean, you're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right. And that does bring us to another issue, which I'm happy to have you talk about unless you'd like me to talk about it.
Okay, go on. Well, the other issue is it's a mistake To, like, okay, so if I'm a clerk at a store, it's a mistake if I accept someone's money and forget to check whether it's counterfeit or not, and it turns out to be counterfeit.
That's a mistake, right?
Right.
But if I'm in my goddamn basement making the counterfeit bills and then passing them out, that is not a mistake.
Right?
Well, you can't put the two in the same category, right?
Right.
Right. You know, if someone dressed in black jumps in front of my car and I hit him, that's a mistake.
Or whatever, right?
But if I chase someone in my car across a muddy field and run them over, that's not a mistake.
Right. Of course!
And the law is very clear about that.
Even if we accept status law, it's very...
It's very clear about that.
I mean, if I'm roughhousing with Isabella and she falls and bumps her head, she hasn't yet, but if it happens, right?
That's a mistake. I was roughhousing too much, it was not my intention, right?
It's all about the intention, right?
And you would know that because you'd probably be like apologizing and all that stuff.
Oh, it'd be terrible. It'd be terrible.
That's a mistake because it's the opposite of what I actually want, right?
But if a particular behavior continues week after week, month after month, year after year, and I keep it hidden and I blame the victim and I'm abusing and harming, that's not a mistake.
And the last thing that I would say is that the UPB solution to the problem of is it a mistake is to ask the question, what standards do abusers use?
It's not a mistake For me to be held to the same standard that I inflict on others, right?
Because I'm already saying I accept the standard.
I accept that it's universal because I'm going to inflict it on others.
And also, if I inflict a destructive standard or any standard upon a four-year-old or a three-year-old or a two-year-old or a five-year-old, Then as an adult, I should probably be about a thousand times more strictly subjected to that same rule, right? Because I'm an adult and they're a kid, and kids have significant cognitive deficits, right?
Which is why Izzy is not quite reciting Shakespeare's yet, right?
Exactly. And so, for instance, if I say to my child...
You know, you just never take responsibility for anything, right?
And I just continually berate him for being irresponsible, right?
Then I can't claim in the future to be not responsible for my own actions as an adult, right?
So if I continually berate Isabella for being irresponsible, And then in 20 years she comes to me and she says, you know, that was really mean for you to keep saying that to me.
I can't say, well, I, you know, I was doing the best I could.
I had my own issues and, you know, I'm sorry that it was upsetting to you, but I was a hell of a lot better parent than my parents were.
Because then I'm not taking responsibility but I have inflicted absolute responsibility on somebody with far less cognitive ability, right?
Right. That's not a mistake.
That's using a moral absolute as a tool of abuse And then turning to a weird, foggy relativism when someone else gets a hold of that absolute, right?
And this is the same thing you see.
Like if some guy comes up to you with a gun in an alley and he wants to steal your wallet, the moment you get the gun away from him and turn it back on him, he's all like, whoa, hey, whoa, easy, right?
There's no need for violence.
It's like, now there's no need for violence because I've got the gun!
right?
Before you felt quite okay with the violence right?
And so the absolutists right?
Abusers are almost all absolutists, right?
When you bring that same absolute back to them, they get all kinds of foggy, right?
But that's not a mistake, right?
I mean, of course the mugger is going to turn into a pacifist when you get the gun from him.
Of course he is, right?
What else is he going to do? Is he going to give you his wallet and say, well played?
No, of course not, right?
He has to change his story.
Nobody would say that's an accident, right?
That's inevitable. But this is different from psychology, right?
Because the difference is, I think, and I don't know your therapist, of course, from anybody, but this is all just my amateur opinion, right?
But my belief is that therapists spend a lot of time looking into the root causes of behavior, and they can see how someone can end up Being an abuser.
Because they may have people in their office, right?
So before she sees you, she may be seeing some abusive parent or ex-abusive parent or whatever, right?
Who's talking about how his own childhood led him to do bad things when he was a parent or whatever, right?
Oh, I can tell you right now she has seen those people.
I'm sure she has, right?
So she sees that vulnerability, right?
Yeah. Let's even say that it's real vulnerability.
I don't know, right? What the hell do I know, right?
But so she sees that, and then she sees some kid coming in and saying, well, my parents were, you know, bad and mean and this and that.
And she's looking and she's saying, well, I just had some guy in here who was weeping about his own childhood and then was weeping about what he did to his own kids, you know?
And it's not her job to be a moralist.
If that makes any sense.
Right. Any more than it's my job to be a psychologist, because I'm not, right?
Right. But I still think that philosophy wins.
I mean, philosophy wins.
It has to. It has to, right?
Right. Because she's like a surgeon, right?
So a surgeon, if he gets a guy in with a gunshot wound, he doesn't care whether he's a mugger or a victim.
He's just got to take the bullet out, right?
Right. He's not the judge.
He's just the doctor.
Bullet in body, take bullet out of body, don't care how it got there, right?
Exactly. Does that sort of make any sense?
Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
That's true, that she's a doctor in that way.
Right. Now, you know, so she's like, emotional pain in human being.
Do my best to alleviate emotional pain in human being.
Doesn't matter how it got there, right?
And it seems possible.
I don't know because I've not really...
I mean, I don't really know people like this, but I'm sure they're out there, right?
The people who...
Who stay chronically angry at their parents their whole life long?
And I don't know if this is true or not.
I don't know if it's true or not.
Because this is sort of a mythical beast.
And I've talked to enough people in this show now that you think I would have run into a couple by now.
I can't think of any. Maybe you can remember some.
But I think...
When faced with somebody who's chronically angry at his or her own parents, let's say somebody's 40 and their parents are 70, right?
Some guy's 40 and his dad is 70, and he's still really angry at his dad.
Well, the standard, as far as I understand it, again, what do I know?
But the standard therapeutic approach seems to be to try to get the 40-year-old son to forgive the dad so that he can let go of the anger and resentment and all that, right?
You've probably heard that kind of approach before, right?
So the problem is, you know, he's holding on to the anger.
He's got to let go of the anger. He's got to learn to forgive.
And the best way to learn to forgive...
Is to try to understand where his dad is coming from, what forces shaped his dad's mindset and the times and the circumstances his dad grew up in, and to try and get him to let the death grip of anger go so that he can get on with his life without sitting and fuming for a week every time he has a conversation with his dad.
Right. I mean, I don't believe any of that, but that's what I hear is the cliché, right?
That's what you always hear.
It's chronically angry, you have to let go of that anger, you have to forgive, you have to accept, you have to do this, you have to do that, and so on, right?
Right.
And I think that's all nonsense, but that seems to be a pretty standard therapeutic approach.
And it's because, the reason that it occurs, is because adult relationships are not considered voluntary, right?
I think that would be the starting point.
Yeah, so I mean, if adult relationships are voluntary, then forgiveness is not a bad way to approach it, right?
If you hate your dad and he stresses you out and you get psoriasis and you get shingles or whatever, you get stomach ulcers and you get so worked up and you can't ever not see your dad that you hate or who you hate,
Then you have to find some way to reduce the stress, and the best way to reduce the stress is to try and empathize, see where he's coming from, and try and find some way to not take it personally, and rise above it, and so on, for sure, right?
That sounds like the logical steps from that premise, yeah.
That makes sense. So maybe what she doesn't see is that adult relationships are voluntary.
Right. And, of course, everybody accepts that adult relationships are voluntary when it comes to husbands and wives, right?
Or boyfriends and girlfriends, right?
Right. You know, if...
And I don't know.
Therapists have lots of different approaches, and I don't think therapists are supposed to say...
You need to leave your husband, but I would assume that if a therapist was informed, like some patient went to a therapist and said, my husband is beating me up, that she would say, you need to get to a safe place, right?
Particularly if there are children involved, right?
Yeah, I think if it's a burning building situation, that's the way they approach it.
You know, I don't know, again, the legalities.
They may even be compelled to report a crime, right?
Right. And so, the first thing you would say is, not only do you not have to stay, but it's unhealthy to stay, right?
And so, we accept that adult relationships are voluntary unless the adults happen to be parent and adult child, right?
Exactly. Now, if we were in some culture or society where divorce was unthinkable, impossible, Then, if you knew of somebody who was being beaten up by a husband, some woman, and you were trying to help that woman, I think that the only thing you would be to do would be to say, well, try not to upset him.
Try to find out where he's coming from.
Try to minimize conflict.
Try to rise up.
Try to see what triggers him.
Try and find some way to minimize whatever causes the escalation to violence and You'd find some way to appease in some way, right?
Right. And that's all that I've ever heard being talked about with adult children.
Rise above it. Find what triggers him.
Find some way to appease it.
Find a different approach. Find a way to solve it.
Find a way to minimize the conflict.
Find a way to not be so upset.
Find a way to not take it personally.
find a way to not react, right?
Right.
Right.
Like I did my whole childhood.
Right, right, right.
So, the reality of adult volunteerism in parent-child relationships is so new.
It's so new that it's just not part of people's thinking yet.
And look, that's just happened before, right?
I mean, it took a long time for feminists to get across the idea that abuse in marriage was a deal breaker, right?
It took a long time, like 150 years to get that across to people, right?
Yeah, and we're just, you know, we're a couple of years into it, right?
I mean, it's not even had the slightest dent on...
Sorry, I shouldn't say that.
It has had the slightest dent on contemporary thinking.
It is a topic that is bubbling up.
I've seen some references to it, and not always in a negative way, but the idea that adult relations are voluntary, and in fact, if there is a voluntary standard to be applied, it should be applied to adults, parents, and children.
More so than it's in marriage.
Because marriage is chosen, whereas parents and children, children don't choose their parents, but to some degree, at least a woman does choose her husband, the husband chooses the wife, right?
Right, exactly. It's a large degree.
Yeah, and it will take a long time.
It will take a long time.
And it won't take intellectual argument, it will take better parenting, right?
Right. Yeah, yeah.
That's like the whole striking the root of what we're trying to do here.
Yeah, I mean, the people who are in power in society are like 60 and 70 years old, right?
The people who are judges, the people who are the heads of media organizations and so on, right?
Yeah. Right.
So they're like 60 or 70 years old, and they're mostly dealing with unprocessed historical childhood garbage that was inflicted on them by people born at the turn of last century.
So really, the 21st century is being run by people at the tail end of the 19th century in terms of their mentality, right?
Right. So it's going to take a hell of a long time even just to catch up, right?
So even if everyone became a great parent tomorrow, it would still take probably two generations for real change to occur because those people have to then, those healthy children have to grow up and float up within society and get some sort of power, right?
Right. I do my best by trying to take the PET book and...
And put it in front of the James Bosch Dobson book so that they can't be seen.
You know, every bit helps, right?
But it's very early in this idea.
Right. And I was not always aware of that as I should have been in the past, but I'm aware of it now, that it's very early, this idea that Parent-child relationships are voluntary when the children become adults.
And, of course, the degree to which society is fearful of and hostile towards this idea is exactly the degree to which parents feel guilty, right?
Right. I mean, when feminism said, abuse in a marriage is a deal breaker, It was the abusers who were the most anxious and angry, right?
Right. Right, of course.
I mean, the good husbands were like, yeah, right?
And that's kind of a good way to approach this whole...
another way to approach people with the whole voluntary society thing.
Right, right. I mean, there are some radical feminists who say, you know, all marriage is rape, right?
Because property and this and that, right?
Now, I'm not frightened of my wife hearing that, right?
In fact, we've talked about it, right?
It's an interesting critique of the institution, right?
Right, exactly.
But if you do actually rape your wife, you're going to be pretty terrified about her hearing this statement, right?
Right. And about her getting any support, and about her standing up for herself, and so on, right?
So the degree to which society is hostile to voluntary adult-parent-child relations is exactly the degree to which those in power are not proud of their parenting.
Like, in the same way that if some guy knows deep down that he's really incompetent and he works at the post office, he's going to be the most hostile to the post office being privatized.
Whereas the guy who's always had secret dreams of turning the post office into a great corporation, he's going to be overjoyed at the idea of privatization, right?
Which explains the response to my Facebook.
The kind of response I got to that announcement of what happened.
In the park, there were two mothers that responded, and they were not...
They kind of got a little defensive about, and they brought up the whole mistake thing, the continuum thing.
Yeah, it's because they feel guilty.
Right. And I got that.
Right. And rather than deal with their guilt, rather than talking to their kids, they're typing on Facebook, right?
So it's kind of circular, right?
Right. Or rather than saying, gosh, this statement really bothers me, I wonder why.
I mean, the thing that's really important to get in life, this is my little fortune cookie moment, right?
But the thing that's really important to get in life is that 99.9999% of people are not talking to you at all.
They're just managing themselves.
These people are not responding to your argument in some objective way.
They're not evaluating it, comparing it to reason and evidence.
It causes them anxiety, and so they type some magic words that make the anxiety go away for a little while.
It's all about self-management.
Right? There's very, very few people in this world who can actually contact you as an individual.
Everybody just manipulates everyone else around them to manage their own anxieties.
And my therapist is a parent.
And I am kind of wondering sometimes when she says these things, if it's not relevant somehow.
Like, like that she's not really, it's not about me.
Maybe it's about the person she, or one of her other clients.
But like...
No, no, no.
Nate, you're missing it.
You're missing it. And it's not surprising that you're missing it.
Right? It's not about her kids, and it's not about her other clients.
What's it about? Oh, you're going to kick yourself.
I got it. Guess so, because I can't see it.
Well, not everyone has kids, but everyone has parents, right?
Oh! Duh.
Yeah. I know. That's what I mean, right?
Right. Now, there may be some aspect of her parenting in there.
And again, I don't know.
This is all just nonsense theory, right?
But this is just a general statement that...
She's not talking about your parents.
She's not talking about you.
This is what Alice Miller goes into in depth, especially in her book, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware.
It's all about psychologists and their not having dealt with their parents.
Well, Daniel Mackler talks about this as well, right?
That most therapists haven't dealt with most people, right?
So I think that's really, really important to understand.
I mean, we all know this, right?
That we have arguments about politics or economics.
People, they aren't talking about facts.
They aren't talking about evidence or reason or any of those things.
All they're doing is, oh shit, this argument makes me feel anxious.
So I'm going to say some magic words to make my anxiety go away.
You understand? Everybody lives in this Lord of the Rings universe where they have these magic wands of bullshit that can banish the demons of anxiety.
Unfortunately, and reality too.
But we live in a magical pseudo-universe.
Right. And that's why it's so important not to take things personally.
And I'm not saying it doesn't happen.
But that's just a hard lesson that I've had to learn.
It's not about me.
And do you remember a couple of months ago I had a conversation with a guy who trawled FDR pretty hard, right?
Yeah, I remember that. And all the shit that was going on in his own life was so intense and so overwhelming.
That It had nothing to do with FDR. I lost you.
No, sorry, go ahead. What were you saying?
It had nothing to do with FDR, that guy who trolled, right?
Well, of course not. It had everything to do with the thing.
Right, right. And that's just a basic reality.
And that's...
So, it's...
I know it's frustrating and so on, and I really do understand it, but it really doesn't have anything...
When people bring this kind of stuff up, in my opinion and experience, it doesn't have anything to do with you or me or anything like that.
Right. Right.
So, oh.
I had Synerphy on Saturday, which is a good Saturday too.
I told her that I'd be talking to her about this frustration that I'm feeling.
Or that I felt with the email interaction that I had with her.
I don't know If I should approach it from this angle, or this philosophical angle, the UPP, trying to get her to see the...
No?
Well, no, I wouldn't.
I mean, I don't mind not getting paid to lecture, but I won't pay to lecture.
Right? Oh.
Yeah, your job is not to educate her.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, so I'm kind of at a loss of what to do.
Well, you can just say you can do anything, right?
I mean, this is not a contract, right?
You can just say, I've decided not to talk about it.
You can ask her questions about her own family.
You can ask her questions about her own parenting.
You can do whatever you want.
You can talk about your feelings without getting into the intellectual argument and all of that, right?
Right.
Right.
I really have a strong urge to educate them.
I can understand that.
I can understand that, but You know, what would RTR tell you to do in that situation?
I have a really strong urge to educate you.
Exactly, exactly.
Because I feel that I need or whatever, right?
That is the level that I would work at.
I've gotten pretty good at that level.
You know, it's just that you don't act on it.
You just talk about the thoughts and the feelings, right?
Right.
Get me here.
Get me here.
Thank you.
I was talking to Adam and left him here when he gave the speech, but today it was about the book P.E.T. and how it was so much like a second part two to RTR and a practical how-to, like practical RTR. I'm sorry, what was that?
PET. Oh, right, right.
It just has so many of the same principles and it's kind of like a step-by-step with examples and all kinds of stuff.
I've just found that really useful in dating.
I find it useful like starting off relationships with IPR or starting off even on the first date, you know, like I want to ask questions.
But yeah, and so that's my suggestion.
I'm no therapist and I certainly can't evaluate or judge anything that your therapist is doing, but I would really try to avoid Once you're aware, I mean, this is the tough part, right, Nate, is that once you're aware of how much other people manipulate you to anxiety manage themselves, the next step is to realize how much we do that to others.
Right, so you would try to To lecture your therapist on moral philosophy because you'd need something from her, right?
Right. And that's a way of anxiety managing yourself, right?
Oh, wow.
Wow, right.
Do you see what I mean? Yeah, it's the same...
I'm basically doing the same thing that she's doing to me.
Well, it's not the same thing because I think it's more in reaction than it is in initiation, and self-defense is not the same as an attack, right?
To use a silly metaphor, right?
So it's not the same because it's in response, but the big invitation...
Like when somebody is manipulating you to manage their own anxiety, the big invitation is for you to respond in kind.
You know, like when somebody is trolly on the board, the big request from them is for you to respond in kind, right?
Right. And to break that cycle is really important.
Right? So if she's doing something to manage her own anxiety, who knows?
I'm not going to analyze your therapist for heaven's sakes, right?
But if that is occurring...
Then the last thing you want to do, or the first thing you want to do, but the last thing you should do is respond in kind and then attempt to engage her in an intellectual argument which is used to cover up an emotional need that you have.
Right, which would be the really good purpose in talking about the emotional experiences.
And I urge it to educate her on law philosophy because I need something from her and I need to tell her that.
so that we can explore that.
Yeah, explore why you feel the need to lecture her, what it's covering, what's going on underneath.
Because if you lecture her, you're just paying money to debate someone or to argue with someone.
But to me, and I can't tell anyone how to do therapy, right?
But this is just my thoughts about it.
And certainly it was my experience in therapy.
With therapy, you want to do something really new.
You want to do something you haven't done before.
And you want to do something that's really important to your life that you can take outside.
Of the therapist's office, right?
And you know how to argue ethics with the best of them, right?
So that's not going to be something new.
You're going to walk out of that ethical argument.
You'll either have succeeded or you'll have failed, but you won't fundamentally have learned anything new.
But the reason you go and sit down and plunk your hard-earned money in the therapist's pocket is so that you can practice doing something That is really hard, that is really new, and that is really important, and that you can take with you when you leave the office.
And that, to me, is radical honesty and curiosity and vulnerability.
Like, oh man, I really want to lecture you because I've been feeling anxiety, and I spoke about it with a friend, and I've been thinking about it, and I was going to drop this conversation, and I don't know why.
It's all so tense and knotted up within me.
That is a really, I think, very honest statement to make, and that's something that's worth paying for.
I need to lecture you about minus 100% and plus 100% in terms of ethical responsibility and the hypocrisy of absolute standards defended by relativism, right?
That's not new to you, you understand?
And that's not something you can usefully take out of your therapist's office.
But talking about the feelings driving that, that I think is really worth it.
Yeah, I think you just saved me $75 a year.
Well, good. And hopefully more, right?
And, you know, that's the whole idea.
But that, to me, you know, in a sense, open your heart as wide as possible when you're with your therapist.
And if you trust your therapist, of course, right?
Which sounds like you do. It sounds like you guys have a great relationship.
You say, she's the best and fantastic, right?
You know, we all have creaky heart lids, you know, the, you know, it's like, it's like that lid over that station in Lost, you know, that they had to open up in the second season with dynamite or something like opening our hearts.
When we've gone through harsh histories, opening our hearts is really hard.
It's creaky, it's rusted, it's, it's booby trapped sometimes.
Right.
But opening your heart is, is I think what you go to a therapist for.
Learning how to open that hatch.
Yeah, thanks, someone just posted that.
The hatch, I couldn't remember the lid.
It's a terrible name, like a pop bottle, right?
But learning how to open your heart in the moment, learning how to be vulnerable in the moment, learning how to process and communicate your emotions in the moment.
That is, I think, the most valuable thing that I got out of therapy.
And it was something I was happy to pay $20,000 to get.
I mean, that was, you know, half a semester of school when it came to lost earnings and costs, right?
So that's no problem.
But that's something that I have continued to use and I have continued to grow with in my life.
And that's what I would always try and suggest to people.
it may not be the end goal of your therapy, but it's, I think always the best place to start.
That's excellent.
It sounds like I have a project plan there or a plan of action there.
So, I think that's a good question.
Good. Well, it sounds like you're all set to go, so I won't beat a dead horse, but I really do appreciate you bringing this up.
I think it's a really great topic.
Oh, no problem. It was very helpful.
Thank you so much. You're welcome, man.
Have a great night.
Let me know how it goes. I really like your video, by the way.
I never just gave you goosebumps, so it's all up and down.
Oh, thanks. Yeah, I was definitely the happiest with the emotional content of these videos, so I appreciate that.
Thank you so much. And great to chat with you again.
It's been a while. Yeah, it has.
I'll talk to you again sometime.
All right. Take care, man. Bye.
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