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Nov. 9, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:56:23
1785 Stuck in Therapy - A Listener Conversation

A listener breaks through.

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Time Text
I'm feeling sad, lonely, and hopeless.
This is going to be a post about my experience in therapy and what it's been like and the solid muck I find myself presently mired in.
I've been seeing my therapist for a little over a year.
In fact, the first year anniversary of seeing her weekly was just a few days ago.
I like my therapist.
She isn't scared to tell me the truth of what she observes and goes to great length in my experience to avoid enabling the irrational behavior I have that we've identified together.
But I feel stuck.
I feel I've been stuck in my sessions for a long time.
She acknowledges this too, and I've heard countless versions of the phrase, you can come here and you can do this, or you can come here and work.
It's up to you. I am scared of my therapist.
Early on in our therapeutic relationship, she started to call me on my confessed emotional states.
Maybe I should just clarify.
I would tell her I felt certain things or talk about certain experiences, and she started to claim that she didn't think I was being sincere.
And it's kind of led to this theme and therapy that I'm just sort of putting on this big act and it's happening in therapy as well.
I don't know how to drop this act.
I do not know how to be me.
I don't know who I am.
I sit down in these sessions and I think I'm doing good and I'm figuratively slapped upside the head by my therapist again who tells me for the hundredth time that I'm readily engaged in trying to beat her at her own game or Trying to sort of just defeat her in therapy.
I've kind of felt at odds with my therapist for a long time.
I've recreated the relationship in therapy.
I feel that I've created in all my relationships with women, each of my ex-girlfriends.
I begin by putting on an act, pretending to be someone I'm not, but eventually they get too close and something in me is breached and I am no longer able to maintain this act.
I withdraw from the relationship emotionally, shut down, and I wait for it to end.
Like I had to beat my mother at her game, I'm now bunkered down with tall barricades, hellbent on proving to my therapist that I am invulnerable.
I'm writing this post because I don't know why I'm in therapy anymore.
This is something we often talk about sessions.
Many times unconsciously I've attacked the integrity of my therapist and tried to level the efficacy of therapy in general various times.
She reminds me of this and it feels like an attack.
I'm losing hope.
I don't know if it makes sense to continue.
I don't know how to be genuine with myself, never mind with her.
And when she tells me she doesn't receive some of what I'm saying as sincere, like when I told her in this week's session that I'm scared of her, she didn't buy it.
And my reaction, I felt it was telling, and this has happened to me before.
I didn't protest. I just felt angry that she had called me on that.
But I'm not even sure...
Sometimes it's like a surprise that I'm called on, that I'm doing it, that I'm actually doing it.
I just wanted to pause.
Did you want me to continue?
Yes, please. I just don't know how to drop this act.
How do I know what's me and what's an act?
The only honest and sincerely genuine thing I feel I can say in therapy is that I don't know how to be genuine or sincere.
We talked about how I try to act as a therapist to my friends.
I've been attracting a lot of attention from female friends lately because I've been willing to help them overcome emotional difficulties.
And how I try and give everyone the impression that I'm truly present and listening, but it's just a front.
It's an act. I'm just hiding myself in shit I can cite from books I've read and psychobabble.
I'm going to go.
I feel as though I've been fumbling around the dark, wasting valuable time, but maybe not wasting, just not progressing.
It's just a constant struggle to just sit in a chair across from my therapist and be genuine.
When does one say, enough is enough?
Am I bound too tightly by history?
Part of me is saying, don't ask for help.
This is your problem. You want people to tell you what to do.
You want people to veer you away from cultivating greater powers of introspection.
Stop asking for advice and asking other people to solve your problems.
Focus on yourself.
And that's the end of the initial post.
And how do you feel reading it?
I feel I've gotten a lot more emotional since the beginning of reading that post.
I feel very, very tense and I'm just wringing my hands a lot lately and I'm doing it now again.
And what do you think you're tense about?
I'm really scared.
I feel a lot of fear about this call.
I feel like something bad is going to happen in this call.
I feel like I'm going to get some really bad news from you and some bad sort of...
I don't know.
I've got this just...
I'm just trying to think clearly here, but...
Like, it's not...
I don't have any... I can't logically reason why...
Oh, sure you can. Sure you can.
Of course you can. Well, you know why I might be mildly nonplussed with you, right?
I can think of some reasons, yeah.
Well, let's be real then.
So tell me, I mean, you want to be real?
Let's be real. There's no roadmap.
There's only honesty in the moment, right?
So what are your thoughts on that?
Well, first of all, I think you could be nonplussed with me about the fact that I haven't gotten back to you about this website deal.
Again, right? Again, exactly.
Again. Yeah, exactly.
Again. And I've made no effort to stay in touch with you.
It's been, I think, about a month since you initially...
Just, you know, replied and said, that's great.
You know, I look forward to it, and I haven't been in touch whatsoever.
Right. And I know that you haven't done anything on it, right?
I haven't done anything, no.
That's fine, but just being honest, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
I haven't done anything on it.
I've done some, like, research, but no, there's nothing I could show you.
Yeah. Yeah, and I can totally understand.
Because, I mean, I came to you when I was visiting in Mississauga and said I was interested in helping.
And for me, I felt this was an opportunity for me to try to gain back some of the credibility I'd lost.
So, here I am coming to you saying, listen, I did a bad thing and I want to, or at least I did something that I regret and I think put you in a place that didn't help progressing the website in any way.
It actually slowed you down because you thought I was on something and I wasn't.
And I came to you and said, listen, I would like to help again and I did the same thing again.
Well, and that's fine, right?
I wasn't hugely expecting you to do much.
But then you said, I've sent you this book, and you said you were going to get to work on it, right?
Yeah. And I appreciate that, and I got the book, and I'm looking forward to reading it when I get a chance.
But then I think it was either the same day or the next day, you said that you wanted some help, right?
Yeah, so...
So you know how that looks, right?
Yeah, I do. Well, tell me.
Tell me. Just make sure we're on the same page.
I'm not criticizing. I'm just sort of, you know, again, it's hard.
It's not common that people reflect their experience of you, but, you know, you do these nice things for me, and then, right, you immediately ask for help.
Then I know why you did the nice things, right?
Yeah, no, exactly.
I'm basically just trying to buy your attention.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand.
Like, I was like, oh, he said something really nice.
That's great. And it's like, oh, no, he wants something.
Right? So, and that's a tough place to be in, right?
Because it means that you don't feel that you can rely on my affection or my interest or my friendship, for want of a better word, or something like that, that you have to sort of send me something.
And then immediately, and while you were sending me the stuff, you must have known that you wanted help in this area, right?
Yes, I think so.
Yeah. Yes or no?
That was a little foggy, huh? Yes, yes.
Okay, and again, I'm not, you know, trying to come down hard on you again.
I'm just sort of, there are some basics that you have to do.
If you want to start living a better life, there are some basics that you have to do.
And there's no shortcuts, I don't think.
I don't think there's any magic bullet.
There's no pole vault.
There's no rocket ship that gets you from A to B. There's just some basics, right?
So if you have a conversation with me where I say, listen, if you're going to make a commitment to me, do it or tell me that you're not going to.
And then you do it again with no reference to it, right?
Mm-hmm. Then those are just some basics, right?
Now, the reason that I'm saying this is not because I think that you're bad or mean or dishonest or manipulative.
That's not why I'm saying this.
Why I'm saying this is what are the secondary gains that you get from acting in this way, right?
Because we all know, you know what it costs you, right?
I mean, that's all clear, right?
So the stuff that it costs you is pretty clear, right?
So if you put some work in, as you sort of committed to to help me with the website, then I'd be like, dude, absolutely, right?
We'll have the call or whatever, right?
And so then you're in the position where you know I'm going to say something because I said something last time, right?
And that's a pretty nasty position to be in, to have not fulfilled a commitment to someone and then to have to ask for their help.
I mean, that's just not a... I mean, I sympathize.
I really do. It's a tough position to be in, right?
Yeah. No, if it's not, tell me.
I mean, that's what I think.
I mean, you sound like hesitant.
I'm hesitant to...
I have sympathy for myself because of the situation.
So the fact that you're empathizing with me, I'm finding it difficult to accept.
I feel like, no, you should be attacking me.
Right, right, right.
But that's the feeling that's no fun.
Is needing something from someone that you've kind of done a minor wrong to, or two, I guess, in this situation, or three, if you count me thinking that you're doing something generous and then it turns out that you just need something or want something, that's not a fun position to be in.
I mean, I really get that.
And so my question is, what are the secondary gains?
Secondary gains is sort of a term that stands for what you get, right?
That is a hidden benefit, right?
So, I mean, a sort of example is, you know, a guy who's 25 living in his parents' basement, you know, he...
You know, like Wolowitz from Big Bang Theory.
I guess he's not living in the basement with that big screaming bomb of his if you've ever seen that show.
So everybody can see the problems, which is that he's not getting out of the house and not living on his own and blah, blah, blah.
But the secondary gains that he would get from that is not having to live on his own means not having to be lonely.
He's already got a companion.
With his mom, he doesn't have to go out and face his fears and anxieties of rejection in the world, of standing alone.
He doesn't have to face maybe the negative feelings that he has towards his mom who's holding him so close, even into his 20s.
There's lots of secondary gains.
And so my question to you is, what are the secondary gains from acting this way?
What's the payoff? The first thing that pops into my mind is it makes sure that I... It maintains the distance between me and other people and makes sure that I can't strengthen relationships.
Okay. Does that make sense?
That's an effect.
That's not quite a secondary gain because what you're talking about is a negative, right?
And again, I appreciate the negatives.
I think that's very honest. That's very true.
But there's a gain that we still need to find, right?
Well, I gain a lot of anxiety.
Yeah. That's not a statement that makes a lot of sense, right?
It's like saying I gain a sharp stick to the eye, right?
That's not a gain, right?
Nobody wants that kind of anxiety, so it's not a gain, right?
It's a tricky question, right?
I mean, don't feel dumb, right?
This is a tough question. If you can't see the secondary gains, then you can't solve the behavior.
Because then you just focus on the negatives, but you already know the negatives.
So focusing on the negatives doesn't help you because they're very vivid to you.
What's under the surface are the secondary gains of why you're doing what you're doing, the hidden payoff, if that makes any sense.
I think it makes...
I guess I'm just not...
I'm not seeing it, or maybe I'm trying not to see it.
Let me give you an example from my own life, because it's a tough question to ask.
And I don't want to give you an answer, because this is something you'll have to get yourself.
So I stayed in a relationship.
It had its good points for sure, but it was a pretty crummy relationship overall.
With a very verbally, I shouldn't say, a fairly verbally aggressive woman.
And I stayed in this relationship off and on for seven years.
We were living together. I even proposed at one point.
And the secondary gains for me became very clear after I began to stand up for myself in this relationship and no longer take that kind of stuff and all that.
And the secondary gains were that When I began to stand up for myself and began to define my preferences, I so remember we were sitting on the couch, we were watching a Queen live concert.
And one of my favorite songs in the whole world is Somebody to Love.
And it was a live version.
I'd never heard a live version before and I was really excited to hear it.
And this woman was sitting down and she was complaining about some damn thing that I was doing or whatever, right?
And I turned to her and I said, you know what?
When we first met, I was a broke-ass, unemployed student of the arts.
And now, since then, in the last seven years, I've gone from that to running a software company, to running the technical side of a software company.
And you are a secretary.
And There's nothing wrong with being a secretary, I said, but I've traveled some real distance since we first met, and you completed a degree, and now you're working as a secretary.
And I said, you know, I think I'm kind of getting that the level of complaints that you have about me over the last seven years have barely diminished, but your life has Has barely improved.
In fact, in many ways, it's gotten worse.
Because seven years ago, you were in the middle of getting your degree.
Now you've had it, and you've had a couple of years to do.
She wanted to get into the film business, and you haven't.
You know, you've wanted to write a screenplay for seven years.
In seven years, I've written three novels.
So, your level of complaining is about the same now as it was when I was...
A broke student having no idea fundamentally what I was going to do with my life, you still have the same complaints.
So I get that it's not about me and it's not about my life, that the complaining is your thing.
And I wasn't mad, and I said it kind of just like that.
And I can tell you, just that one, sticking that one flag in the ground, sticking that one border in the sand, one line in the sand...
Oh my God. It just began to unravel everything.
The secondary gains that I was getting by staying in that relationship was that by staying in that relationship, I got to stay in all of my existing relationships.
But since that evening, gosh, I can't even remember it.
Twelve years ago now? Eleven years ago?
Something like that. Twelve?
Anyway, since that evening, I have no relationships left.
From the dozens of relationships I had at the time.
The secondary gains for me...
Look, this may not be this dramatic for you, I'm just sort of pointing out...
...was that I couldn't draw a line in the sand in one of my relationships.
Nothing ever happens to one of your relationships.
It only ever happens to all of your relationships.
If it's a philosophical line, like if it's a line of principle.
I mean, in that moment, I really got...
And that knowledge arrived to me fully formed.
It's like giving birth to a 30-year-old.
That knowledge arrived to me fully formed.
I had thought that she was complaining about me.
And I got that this was just a broken woman spinning her wheels in the sand.
Getting nowhere in her life.
And taking it out.
It had nothing to do with me.
It had nothing to do with me.
But once I got that her criticisms of me, her perspective, her opinions of me, had nothing to do with me, that I was just a stand-in for her own fears and failures, that changed everything.
Because once I had that line with one person, that line was there.
I mean, I'm a UPB life form like everybody else.
I can't make a decision about one thing.
So my secondary gains was that pretending that it was about me When I was around, this kind of narcissistic person was only having the illusion of a relationship.
And once I drew that line of the sand, I was like, wait a minute.
The empirical evidence says that this has nothing to do with me.
That flowed outwards into all of my relationships like a fire, like a massive napalm fire in a tinder-dry forest.
So my secondary gains for staying in that relationship was that That was my tribe.
That was my village.
That was my family.
That was my life.
These were my friends of 20 years.
I got to stay small.
I got to stay insecure.
I got to pretend that other people's criticisms and attacks had something to do with me, were defining me.
Once I stepped out of that bullseye, once I stepped out of that target, I began to grow.
And I very quickly saw...
But people really didn't give a shit about me.
I mean, I hate to say it, right?
But that was the reality, that people really didn't give much of a shit about me.
Like, they were happy with me if I was there, and I was joking, and I was making them feel fine, and I was making them feel good, and I was making them money with my talents in business, and I was, you know, they tolerated me as long as I was pleasing to them in these sort of material ways.
But the moment I actually began to have standards for myself, the secondary gain that I got by not having those standards was maintaining the illusion of these relationships, that they were relationships, that people were interested in me, that they were thinking about me, that they cared about me.
I avoided the reality of standing up for myself, of having rational values, of thinking for myself, of challenging people when I was being treated poorly.
So I don't want to go on this whole long spiel, but that's sort of an example of secondary gains.
I get to avoid the illusion of relationships that I was living in.
I got to avoid...
I got to stay in the pleasurable delusion that I was in relationships, that people cared about me.
I mean, now I've been married for eight years, and of course I have a daughter, and I know...
As clear as day and night, I know the difference between this relationship and those shitty little thin as string relationships, pseudo relationships, relationships of convenience for others, and the mutual empty masturbation of maintaining each other's bullshit.
But there were lots of shit to work through, lots of harsh stuff to go through between there and here.
But there were a lot of secondary gains in staying in those other relationships, pretending that they were relationships.
So that's just an example.
I know it's not particularly clear, but I wanted to give you something that was more specific, right?
There are secondary gains to what you're doing.
And yeah, it's true that it keeps you anxious and it keeps you insecure and it keeps your self-esteem low.
The question is, why do you want that?
What's the benefit for that?
that how does that serve you well it's what i know i'm Um... It's something that's familiar.
Sorry, I've got this. Generic Simon the Boxer isn't quite enough, although it is tempting to run off in hot pursuit of my own theory, but no, that's not going to be specific enough.
Do you want me to ask it another way?
Please. Okay, so you made a second commitment to me after I chastised you to some degree about the first time that you flaked out on your commitment to me.
You made another commitment to me, right?
After the barbecue.
Yeah. And, you know, we'd met face to face, we'd shaken hands, we'd broken bread together, we'd held bad songs to the moon together.
And so you made the commitment, and I'm sure you made the commitment with the intention of following through, right?
Yes. But when you noticed, and I'm sure that it came up to you from time to time, like, oh, that's this thing, right, that I said, right?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It came up, right?
And you were like, you know, I'll start it tomorrow.
I'll have a little bit of time on the weekend.
I'll look at it or whatever. Right.
And then you're doing other things.
You're watching TV. You're reading a book.
You're going out. It's like, I'll get to it.
I'll get to it, right? So, let me ask it this way.
For you to sit down and to write to me and say, listen, I know I made this commitment, I can't believe I've done this to you again, but I'm actually going to withdraw this commitment because I'm just noticing empirically that I'm not acting on it.
I'm really sorry. That to me would have been an honorable email to receive.
Mm-hmm. So, I'm sure that you thought, because we actually did have that conversation, right?
Do it or say you're going to not do it is the basis of working with anybody, right?
Yeah. So, what's the feeling that you had when you thought about that email?
I just... I didn't want to let you down again.
I didn't want to, but I was letting you...
No, no, no, no, no. Come on, don't give me that bullshit story.
I had already told you that letting me down was to...
You see, this is not about me, right?
Because I had already explicitly told you that this is not about...
We're only talking about this because it's an example we're both familiar with.
This is not because this is a big deal that's kept me up at night.
But we're just focusing on this as a way of getting through to something bigger.
I just want you to be aware this isn't a big thing about you need to do my graphics.
It's nothing like that. It's just something we're familiar with.
Because I had explicitly said to you, do it or tell me you're not going to do it, right?
Yes. That's my preference.
So if you said it's something to do with me, it has nothing to do with me.
Right. I understand. Okay.
Right? Because if I said, you know, I want chicken or I want beef.
And you said, okay, I'm going to bring you chicken or I'm going to bring you beef.
And then you bring me monkey brains and coconut and you say that's because I wanted you to have a good meal.
That has nothing to do with me.
Right? Right. Right, right.
Okay, so let's not do that, right?
So don't talk about letting me down because you knew that to not communicate, to not either do it or tell me you weren't going to do it, that was absolutely letting me down in the worst way as I'd already communicated to you, right?
Yes, yeah. So let's get to the real thing.
Okay. Okay. So you're thinking about sending the email saying, listen, I'm noticing that I'm not getting this thing done.
I don't want you to wait.
And I know that I did this to you last time and you asked me not to do it.
So I'm not going to do it. I'm going to tell you that, listen, I'm withdrawing my commitment, right?
Perfectly fine. So you're sitting there thinking about that email.
What are you thinking?
What's wrong with sending that email?
Let me ask it a different way.
What about yourself do you not have to know if you don't send that email?
Well, I don't have to know that I don't want to do it.
I think that's...
But you know you don't want to do it because you're not doing it, right?
Right. If I sent you an email saying, listen, I bought you a lottery ticket, I sent it to you, but you've got to go and collect it in the next hour, you wouldn't say, I'm sorry, I'm busy, right?
You'd get $50,000 if you get there in the next hour, you'd drop everything and go and do it, right?
I have to acknowledge to myself that I don't care.
Well, you just don't.
I mean, it's not that you don't care.
You don't care that much relative to the other things that you're doing, right?
I mean, if you were stuck on a desert island after six months, you'd probably end up doing it because you'd be so bored, right?
So it's on your list somewhere.
It's just not that high, right?
Right. This is hard.
It is hard. And you also know, at least I assume you know, that you specifically didn't do it and asked for this call because you need me to get through this rock that we didn't get through last time, which is why the behavior repeated, right?
Behavior repeats until insight is attained, right?
So because our behavior is repeating, it means that it didn't get through to the core last time, so now we're doing it this time, right?
And by God, we're going to do it this time.
Not because I want you to work on the graphics.
I mean, that's not the issue, right?
But just because I don't like repetition in my relationships.
Because it means that we're not getting through to something that's really real and important.
I just need to pause and just really appreciate that.
Okay, so we're not having luck with that.
So let's move back to your therapist.
You said that you're working very hard to prove to your therapist that you're invulnerable, right?
Yeah.
Tell me how crazy that is.
Let me tell you how crazy that is.
Right.
If I break my leg and I go to a physiotherapist, right?
And I'm like, Jesus, my leg is broken.
It's killing me. I can't put any weight on it, right?
And then I come hopping in on the broken leg, trying to prove to her that it's even stronger than the non-broken leg.
That is crazy, right?
Yeah. Because I'm coming to this person because my leg is broken and weak, and if I want to prove to this person that my leg is not broken and weak, that's nutty, right?
Yeah. Trying to prove to your therapist that you're invulnerable is a ridiculous, ridiculous thing to do.
And I mean, I'm not saying that you're ridiculous, I'm just saying that that, viewed objectively, is ridiculous, right?
Yeah, I agree.
I agree. Because if you were invulnerable...
I mean, if you thought you were invulnerable, you'd be in a psych ward because you'd be throwing yourself trains and jumping off bridges just to watch yourself bounce, like in that really bad M. Night Shyamalan movie, or however the hell you pronounce his name, right?
Unbreakable, that's the one.
Every film of his after The Sixth Sense has sacked like a vacuum.
But anyway, that's me. Yeah, you're right.
It is nuts. I mean, it's turned into – it's war for me.
That's how it feels. Yeah, yeah, I got it.
I got it. I got it.
Do you think that it's too late for you?
Do you think that there is anything real within you?
You mean like, yeah, like this is the doubt I have sometimes.
Like I've had, well, yeah.
This is not a doubt you have sometimes.
If you doubt whether there's anything real left within you, that is not a doubt you have sometimes.
No, you're right. I just, in the past, I'm just thinking of, I've thought about posting on the boards about this, where sometimes you've talked about in certain podcasts, those people, those people who have been just sort of, that are completely lost in the hell of their false self.
And, you know, it irks me because, I don't know, I've sometimes felt like, well, what if I'm that person?
Like, Well, lost is not quite the right way of putting it, I think.
It's like...
I'm trying to think of a good way to put it.
Well, you know, if you get something around your leg, right?
If you see this medical show, something crushes your leg or whether your leg is stuck under some brick that fell down or whatever, then...
If they get the brick off soon enough, they can save the leg, right?
Yeah. But if you lose enough blood flow to the leg, then you start to get...
The cells die, right?
The flesh dies.
And it can't be saved.
The only thing you can do then is cut off the leg.
Because there's no...
It's died. The life is gone.
The cells have died. The blood has stopped flowing.
It's literally dead flesh hanging off your body.
So it's not... The leg isn't lost.
The leg is dead. Yeah.
So my question is...
And I don't know the answer, because this is the conversation.
But that's what I ask when you say, do you think that it's too late for you?
It's not a question of, is it too late for you?
The question is, do you think it's too late for you?
Do you think that you've had...
So much false self, so much manipulation, so much posturing, so much avoidance and all that.
Do you think that the blood flow to your soul, so to speak, has been cut off for so long that it's dead?
Yeah, I do think that.
And what are the consequences of that for you?
Let's say that's true, right?
Let's just throw that...
Sheet over the body, right?
And say, you're standing over it.
This is your true self. I'm sorry.
It's too late, right?
You're like Peter Keating at the end of The Fountainhead.
Have you ever read that book? I have not.
No, well, he wants to be – it's not giving anything away.
It's a tiny plot thing, but he wants to be an artist.
He wants to be an artist. He does a lot of bad things, and then at the end of the book, he says to the guy who's his hero, he brings him some paintings and says, listen, I've started painting again, and his hero looks down at his paintings and says, I'm sorry, Peter, it's too late.
I tell you, when I first read that, it scared the living shit out of me.
I think I was 16 or so when I read that, that it can be too late.
That it can be too late.
And I've talked about this before.
I read, I think a few years later, in one of Jung's books about a man much older than you, right?
Even older than me. I think he was in his 50s.
A man who'd lived this life of manipulation and shallowness and vanity and all that.
And he ended up having a breakdown.
And Jung said, well, you know, there was nothing we could do for him but to try to make him as comfortable as possible because there was no going back.
There was no recovery, right?
And there's certain, right, I mean, we can be terminal before we die, right?
And I guess that's what I'm trying to get at.
So what does it mean if...
It is too late for you if there's no true self left in there, if it died and exited in a massive ship some years ago.
Well, it would mean all of this is a massive waste of time.
Well, it's only a waste of time in the future if you keep trying to, you know, like if you're like that cliched surgeon who keeps trying to, you know, I'm not going to lose him, damn it!
He's dead, Jim. You know, that guy, right, who keeps doing those chest compressions, like, Ten minutes after the guy's dead, right?
The nurse says, I have to pull him off.
He's gone! Right?
So, okay, let's say that it is a waste of time.
And we're just exploring the fear, right?
Let's say that it is a waste of time, that your soul has died, that you might as well just go back to, you know, shallowness, manipulation, all the stuff that is going on with the therapist, that you're stuck in therapy because you're trying to breed life back into something that died.
Yeah. So then what?
What does that mean? What does it mean?
I'm trying to...
Look, I mean, and sorry to interrupt, but I mean, you're a handsome fellow.
I can say that for sure. I think you're a very good looking guy.
You've got a very nice physique.
And so, you know, you can get away with a lot of stuff, right?
Yeah. You've got charm, you've got verbal skills, you're highly intelligent, you're creative, right?
So there's lots of consolation prizes.
So I just want to point out, it's not like you become this zombie that goes around eating the brains of chickens or something, right?
I mean, there's a lot of consolation prizes, and most people live with that kind of stuff, right?
We're not asking you to live in the minority if this is true, right?
But, sorry, let's get back to...
Spiritually dead, what does that mean?
I'm just, I'm, this is, this is a hell of a question.
This is a hell of a question here.
But isn't this what's really going on?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, this is the fear, right?
This is the fear.
Okay.
An idea that's popping into my head is that I'd be Again, maybe this is paying attention to the future, but...
I mean...
I don't know.
I...
Part of me is seeing it as some form of liberation, but this idea of consecration No, listen, I get it. I get that.
You want to brush past that.
I totally get that. I really do.
So, if you don't mind, this is a thought that...
I don't want to move past that, because that's a very, very important thing.
So, tell me about this liberation.
Well, it just means...
Wow.
It's just... Would feel like the world is just fair game.
Hmm. Hmm.
That's very interesting. Interesting.
Go on. Well...
If I'm dead...
If my soul is dead, then...
Who do I have to answer to?
I don't have to answer...
Is there really a me I have to answer to anymore?
Right. Right. I can just go about willy-nilly, you know.
Yeah, I get it. Hedonism, act on impulse, have sex with whoever you want, stay out all night, don't save for your retirement.
I mean, I'm kind of joking, but if I don't have a self to empathize with, then I don't have to worry about empathizing with others because I can't really do it, right?
Yeah. Again, I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Is that sort of what you mean? That's the world I'm imagining, yeah.
So like this woman who came to visit you and then you went to visit her, right?
I mean, that will be your relationships, right?
And they're exciting and they're fun and there's that flush of new romance and the sexual tension and then the sexual release and all of that, right?
And then even the excitement of sometimes the pursuit and the breakup and all of that kind of stuff.
Again, this is not a life without its rewards.
I don't...
What?
What?
Those aren't rewards.
Of course they are. Look, this is a relationship that you pursued, and I know you resolved it, I think, in a way that was good, but of course there are rewards in it, otherwise you're acting completely randomly, right?
Right. Right.
She was very pretty, right?
Yeah. Very, very pretty.
And very, very pretty people can get away with a lot.
I was reading this.
Sorry to just jump in.
I was just reading this article in a Canadian magazine about a woman you probably don't know.
We had a prime minister here called Pierre Trudeau, who was around in the 70s and 80s.
And Trudeau mania, he was very charismatic and he was a dashing figure and a sportsman and was a quick-witted and intelligent fellow and he became Prime Minister of Canada and he was 51 years old and he married a woman who was in her early 20s called Margaret and she became Margaret Trudeau.
And then she had a number of breakdowns and she ended up having affairs with all of these famous men and they ended up divorcing and it was just a big mess.
But she was, I mean, just beautiful, beautiful.
If anyone's in the chat room, just dig up, do a Google for Margaret Trudeau, find a picture of her when she was younger.
Stunning, stunning looking woman.
And in the interview, she talks about she was really into, she's still really into shame and healing and native arts and she believes in reincarnation and all this kind of stuff, right?
And it's like, well, yeah, you know, pretty women can be crazy mystics.
Because people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, I'll step over that bullshit to get to the pussy.
Let's just bypass that big, you know, I'll just pole vault, literally, penis-wise, I'll pole vault over this bag of crazy to get to the sugar honey nookie on the other side, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And this is a danger, right?
You are a good-looking fella.
And you, like everyone with hormones, is...
Attracted to physical beauty.
Yes.
Tell me what you're feeling now I'm just...
I feel like I'm just riding out these physical rushes here.
I'm just kind of... Yeah, well, tell me.
Enough of my talking. Why don't you, if you can, just tell me a little bit more about what's going on for you.
I just feel...
I just feel really tense and really...
just a lot of anger.
I don't know how to communicate it.
Go on. Well, I just...
I'm experiencing something.
This is a familiar place I've been in in therapy where I think I'm this person and I think I'm doing a pretty good job of Like, everyone's bought it.
And then I'm in my session.
I'm talking about my therapist.
I think she's bought it.
And then she... She doesn't buy it.
And I feel like I'm just being...
I feel like I'm a pile of rats just being rooted out of all these different corners in the cellar.
And I just want her to just fuck off.
You mean your therapist?
Yeah.
Right, right.
And, um...
And fuck off why?
What happens if she doesn't fuck off?
It hurts. Well...
Got it. Okay.
There's a negative thing, but what?
It hurts because...
This is where I get totally foggy I feel like it hurts because she sees me It hurts because I'm visible.
And I'd rather...
And what's visible?
visible.
What's underneath all the layers of the onion?
It's a lot of anger.
This is what I'm returning to.
This... Oh,
come on. You're standing on the edge.
It's now or never. Just open up.
Well, I'm...
It's just...
It's not fair.
Sorry, I'm just choking up.
What's not fair? What's not fair?
Just talk. Doesn't matter what comes into your mind.
Doesn't matter what comes out. Just talk.
Well... This person is...
They're...
prodding at me.
I would...
they're they're they're
prodding at me and I would much rather be left alone laughs laughs Okay.
These are the words that are coming.
I'll tell you what I'm getting from what you're saying.
I think your false self, it's just my opinion, right?
I think your false self is saying, I just want to be left alone, like stop prodding at me.
Yeah. I think your true self is really focusing on the left alone part.
Yeah. Not left alone like not bothered, but left alone like left behind, like abandoned, like left on an island when everybody sails away forever.
That kind of left alone.
Left, comma, alone.
There is security in manipulation.
I get that. I really do.
There is security in keeping people at a distance.
There is a security in appearance.
There is security in shallowness.
There is security in not keeping your word.
There is security in not actively breaking your word, but just letting it kind of dissolve into little bubbles like the carbonation in a pop.
There is security in all of that, and I really do understand that.
And there is security in being, quote, left alone, like not bothered.
The only price is that you are genuinely left alone, isolated.
And that's what you don't want, right?
Because in manipulation, in insincerity, in sexiness, in Handsomeness is staggering loneliness.
and a feeling that if somebody touches you, for real, you're going to shatter into nothing.
Yeah, I...
Yeah, I feel that.
Um, I...
You know, I was thinking, in preparation for this call, I've been thinking...
I don't know. I've been having these memories of hiding in my parents' home.
I had these great hiding places.
And I remember...
I'm just throwing this in here, but...
I had night terrors when I was young.
I would... I'd get up in the middle of the night and scare my parents because I'd be talking and hysterical.
The one I remember the most vividly was I was pacing up and down beside my parents' bed saying that...
I don't know.
I was saying there was too much money.
There was just too much money.
I was pacing back and forth and what preceded A conscious memory of me actually pacing up and down beside the bed was just this view of a lake, and there's a dock.
And what I think about now is just how there was nobody there.
That's what sticks out for me, is that there's this view of this beautiful landscape, but no one was there.
Right.
Right.
Beauty is empty, right?
Right.
Right. Right.
I'm sorry, just remind me where you saw this landscape from in your parents' home.
Oh, I'm sorry, this was...
This was the image I saw in my dream before I woke up and realized I was pacing up and down.
This was part of my dream, this vision I saw.
How old were you? I don't think my head was much higher than my parents' bed, so I could have been, I don't know, six or five.
Probably younger than that.
Yeah, maybe younger. Yeah, I mean, Isabella is younger than that.
I would imagine two or three. Yeah.
Yeah, young anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When you were a kid, do you remember anybody who struck you as authentic or real in that way?
What? In any way. When I was a kid, I don't...
For a long time, I kind of felt like I had an aunt, my dad's sister, who...
She seemed like the only person that was kind and She would take me out to a movie on my birthday.
In my teens, she would hand me books on Buddhism.
I thought, oh my god, here's someone who's actually taking an interest in me and trying to help me be happy.
But that's...
So you said she would take you out on your birthday?
Yeah. What about any other times?
Like once a year? She would visit other times.
No, but I'm talking about taking you out.
No, just on my birthday.
Why do I groan?
Tell me why do I groan.
Well, I've got lots of reasons to groan about that ant now, but I think you're groaning because this person just ignored... but I think you're groaning because this person just ignored...
There's just...
This child is starving, and I will feed him once a year.
Yeah, tease him with...
Yeah, it's almost crueler, right?
yeah once a year once a year I'm so sorry I'm so sorry. My God.
Was there anybody else? I can't...
No.
Did you know when...
Did you know that you were missing something when you were a kid?
I guess you did, if you remember these once a year.
Evenings with your aunt.
And a movie is not what you needed, right?
I mean, fuck, movies are on TV every day.
A movie is not what you needed.
What you needed was a real conversation.
I'm not saying that that didn't happen, right?
Maybe it did, right? But I'm just saying that a movie is kind of like...
not what a kid needs at that time.
But anyway... Yeah, so when you were a kid, did you...
I had a friend who's actually a guy I played volleyball with when I met my wife.
And I met him when I used to work as a programmer at a bank.
And he came from a...
His family was rich, rich, rich.
Very wealthy. And he said, you know, all the other kids envied him because he had all the toys in the world, right?
And he said to me once, he said, you know, in my family, everybody wanted to be me.
Because I always got the latest toys.
If I lost a bike, we'd just get another bike.
but I had to learn to write it on my own.
That's very sad, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
But now he knew that there was something wrong when he was a kid.
I knew, and this is not a contest, right?
Because it really just depends how subtle it is.
I knew that there was something wrong when I was a kid, because, I mean, it's fucking nuts, right?
When you were a kid, with your family, with your extended family, with whatever, with friends, teachers, I mean, did you know, did you feel that something was not right?
Yeah, sorry about that. sorry about that.
Yeah, so sorry, the question was, did you know that things were wrong when you were a kid?
Or that there was something wrong? Yes, I think I knew.
Yes, I knew.
And... The reason that I want to say I... I just wanted to...
Why would I have wanted to hide if I hadn't known something was wrong?
And the feeling that you had about the dream was that the landscape was beautiful, but there was fear and anxiety, if I understood you correctly.
Tell me if I'm wrong. Because it was empty.
Yes, and I was in an extremely anxious state when I was finally woken up or brought back to consciousness.
And you were standing by your parents' bed?
I was pacing up and down beside it, yeah.
And are your parents physically attractive?
They are. Well, they were.
They were, yeah. I understand, I understand.
Right, so there's something, again...
It's really tough to do a dream analysis decades ago, but my first thought is that this dream was telling you that there is loneliness in beauty.
There is emptiness in beauty.
In the beauty, at least around you.
Wait, you sound unconvinced, which means that I could be completely wrong or may mean something else.
I'm... That's just...
I've just kind of thought about that dream.
I don't think I've tried to analyze it that much, and this is the first time that...
Oh, dude. You've got to analyze your first dreams.
You've got to analyze your first dreams.
First impressions are everything.
If you... This is to anyone, whoever listens to this.
Whatever your first dreams are, spend a fucking week sitting and thinking about them.
Right. Especially if you remember them decades later.
I did a dream... With a guy on a call-in show.
It was like 30 years ago, his dream.
First dreams are essential.
I'm listening to Isabella's dreams because she talks in her sleep.
I'm listening to her dreams because she can't tell me what she's dreaming.
She's still too young.
Oh, wow.
But I am absolutely hungry to find out what she's dreaming about.
Wow.
Because this is the basis...
This is the foundation, right?
These dreams are the foundation of her entire worldview.
You can't think about your early dreams too much or too often or too deeply.
They are the foundation of your worldview because they are the distillation of your sense perception into a philosophy of life.
Hmm. They cut to the essence of everything that a child observes.
And children observe everything.
Children see to the bone marrow of your very core.
They are undistracted by manipulation, particularly when they're very young, which is why I really wanted to find out how old you were when you had this dream.
Children see the world as it is.
That is why they have to be so controlled.
All the time. That's why they have to be so punished.
Because they hold up a non-funhouse mirror to who we really are.
They hold up a true reflection of the world around them.
Which is why they have to be so carefully controlled and managed because they shatter the delusions of adults.
They shatter the false self of culture.
They shatter and break apart The stagnant, crystal-thin bullshit that society rests on.
This is why everybody handles children like they're incredibly aggressive.
Because children by their very nature are incredibly aggressive to lies.
Because they don't believe them.
They're not born believing them.
They have to be traumatized into believing them.
Children are bombs that must be disarmed.
By false philosophies.
And false people.
They are deadly.
Which is why people get so angry at children and yell at children and hit children and scream at children.
Because children unravel the thin twisted fabric of the false self in a way that is pure agony.
In the house of its disintegration, it lashes out at the children thinking that the children are doing it harm.
But the harm was done long before the children came along.
The children are just pointing out the walking wounded of the world.
The children just switched the lights on to see the cockroaches of false selves.
So what you saw in that moment was something very true in that dream.
But what was more important was what happened when you woke up.
And just remind me, what happened when you were awoken from that dream?
Well, I... I just remember I was...
Like I said, I was pacing back and forth, saying, too much money, too much money.
And... I think my dad just shook me awake and...
Took me back to bed.
And that's...
Were your parents wealthy at the time?
No. They were just sort of middle class.
Well, come on.
To me, that was pretty wealthy.
Oh, well...
Eating my own fucking toenails, so...
I mean, that's pretty wealthy to me.
From that, yeah. Did they have a car?
Oh, they had a car.
Yeah, they had a car. I mean, we lived in a house, in like a suburb.
Yeah, so they had money.
They did, yeah.
Right. Right, so I mean, to 99.999% of the world's population, that's like heaven, right?
I mean, I don't mean did they have $10 million stuffed in the mattress.
I mean, were they well up?
I mean, and I guess you're saying that they were comfortable in the middle class, right?
Not hanging on by their nails, but comfortable in the middle class.
That's right, yeah.
Was there anything, was this anywhere near your birthday, or were you too young to remember that?
Or was it anywhere near Christmas?
What was the landscape, what was the season of the landscape you were looking at?
I'm trying to recall.
You know, it's very hard for me.
I feel like Because I had, when I had these night terrors, they just kind of happened for, I think, I seem to remember them happening during winter, but, which...
Yeah, I mean, the theory would be that it would be sometime after presents were around.
Right, right.
I mean, to me, there's nothing more depressing than big presents in an unhappy family.
Or in a lonely family.
Big gifts in a lonely family is just awful.
Because it's such a contrast, right?
Yeah. You know, there's an old Jim Carrey routine where he talks about how he grew up really poor.
There were times when his family was really poor.
And he used to say to his dad, Dad, is there any chance we're living below the poverty line?
He's like, nope. Now get in the dumpster, son.
We're rich as long as we have each other.
But there's real truth in that.
You are rich as long as you have intimacy and closeness and love, real love, in your relationships.
And there's nothing sadder and, I think, emptier in a way than big gifts in a lonely, isolated family, isolated family members.
I mean, this is why people, just to go macro for a sec, this is why people, I think, believe this bullshit about stimulus package.
Hey, we're all depressed and anxious.
Let's have the government spend a lot of money.
Because that's what our parents did when everybody was unhappy.
Just buy stuff.
Just spend money and everyone will feel better.
I just got another bike.
If I lost one, I just had to learn to ride it on my own.
Too much money.
Too much money.
The question is, for your young self, too much money compared to what?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Too much money compared to what?
An excess of money compared to what deficiency?
What was missing that the money highlighted?
I mean, it was... it was...
It was a wasteland.
I feel like I'm...
Maybe I'm not focusing.
But... When you ask me what's missing in comparison to gift or wealth or just...
It was...
What I wanted was...
Just...
Just some sort of...
Genuine, sincere...
I wanted love. I wanted...
My mom, she could never provide that.
She was...
She was just inebriated.
Inebriated? What I mean is she was just...
Emotionally, I mean, she's always been anxious and she's always been...
She's just very depressive, and I guess the idea...
I'm sorry, just the idea of me trying to think I could have actually obtained that seems just ridiculous.
I... Like, there was just...
there's just no way no way what there was Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
There's...
I feel like I want to say there was no way she could have actually loved me, but that...
I feel like that's...
That's...
That's not true.
She...
Because to say if she...
I feel really silly trying to think about this out loud here on this call with you.
No, I understand.
I understand. Go on. I just feel like to say that there was no way I could have obtained that intimacy, that love, that's just letting her off the hook.
And that's just saying...
But it's true.
It may have been true in a way by the time you came along.
Right. Right, so to give you a brief metaphor, right, so let's say that Isabella becomes a long-distance runner.
She loves to do marathons, right?
Now, by the time she's running marathons, I'll be in my 50s.
Now, people in 50s, they run marathons.
They don't run them very quickly, but they, you know, people run marathons into their 70s.
Now, if I don't train, then it's true that I won't be able to run a marathon with her, right?
Mm-hmm. But that doesn't mean that it's impossible.
It just means because I haven't done the work to prepare, I'm not able to.
But that's very different from it being impossible.
Now, it's impossible for me to run a marathon with her after I'm dead.
That is impossible.
Or when I'm 100 and in my deathbed, right?
Hopefully older, right? So when you say, it's not possible for her to love me, or it wasn't possible for her to love me, As an adult, you may appreciate that that's true, though she's still morally responsible for it, right? Yes.
But as a child, as a child, you would have taken that very personally.
Right?
Because it means something about us if our mothers do not love us.
Right?
Yeah. Yeah.
So what did it mean about you that your mother did not love you?
It meant I didn't matter to her.
It meant I was...
I'm trying to say something that's coming...
That I really feel.
I'm just trying to feel this.
Yeah, but you're squeezing an empty toothpaste tube here, right?
You're trying to feel something. You can't try to feel something, right?
Yeah. Right, right.
You can't. I mean, this is you working the bellows, trying to...
I'll have feelings.
I will be passionate, and there will be a breakthrough.
No. There won't.
Put that aside. We're just talking.
Well, I just would have...
I would have felt invisible and just worthless and...
No, no, I'm not talking about theoretical.
I would have maybe perhaps, right?
Right. And I also asked you what it meant about you and you talked about your mom didn't have any interest in you.
That's not about you.
you.
That's about your mom.
So what did it mean about you as an individual in your experience that you felt unloved by your mother?
Wow, I'm just drawing a huge blank.
That's good. Because if you weren't drawing a huge blank, this conversation would make no sense.
I'll give you an example, right?
I'm not a therapist, so I can talk about myself.
Right? So, for me, what it meant to not be loved by my mother, I could please my mother if I performed well enough.
I could make her laugh, I could make her smile, you know...
It meant that for me, that, you know, if you've been to the airport, there are those walkways where, you know, if you've got your luggage, you stand on these walkways and they go, they just move you along, right?
They're like horizontal escalators.
Have you ever seen this? Yes, yeah.
Okay, so what it meant for me was that I was on a fucking walkway that was going backwards at about Mach 12.
In terms of maintaining people's interest, in terms of maintaining people's affection.
Right. So I, to keep my mother's attention, I felt like I just had to just fucking sprint all the time to prevent her from losing her temper, to keep her happy, to keep her pacified, to keep her sane when she would go off her fucking rocker.
Or, to put it another way, I felt that when I was in my mother's arms, I was on a greased hole to nowhere.
A greased hole to nowhere.
And I had to constantly scrabble, like a spider being washed down a fucking drain.
I had to constantly scrabble to stay up, to stay from falling into that void.
So for me, relationships...
We're work, and I had to own everything, which is why the transition we talked about at the beginning, where I recognized it was a lot about me, and it was so huge.
So that's what it meant for me to not be loved.
I mean, there's a lot more, but I just want to sort of give you an example.
That was my experience. That's what happened to me.
That's the effect that it had to me.
I'm not talking about my mom.
I'm talking about my experience.
So what did it mean to you?
That your mother did not love you.
Or what did it mean about you?
What conclusions did you draw?
The conclusions I drew was that I come minus 100.
And I have to work like hell to catch up.
Like I'm hired into some job.
I don't even speak the language.
So I have to pretend and learn like crazy the language at night.
Like, nobody else has to because they're all native speakers, but I've got to constantly work like crazy just to catch up with everybody else.
I come minus 100, and I have to make up for that in all of my relationships.
Right. I understand, and I really am so sorry that you had to...
Come into the world that way.
I appreciate that.
But for you? Well, what's coming up for me is that I... I'm feeling that I couldn't Thinking this out, I couldn't...
I had to learn how to manipulate.
I had to...
If I was going to survive, if I was going to get any attention, I needed to...
I needed to...
I needed to pay more attention to whatever got me more attention.
If that was making jokes, if that was making drawings, if that was...
And I just want to say something that...
I did...
I sent that book to you and And something that has come out of therapy, and I'm just tying this back to what I think I had to learn, was that I just had to give things to people.
I gave things to Flo. I made her drawings.
I give things to people.
It's just kind of how I...
No, but it's not what you give, it's what you withhold that's the problem.
It's not what you give, it's what you withhold that is the problem.
Thank you.
Amen.
I didn't want a book on food from you.
Right.
Giving a guy who just lost a bunch of weight a diet book might be considered somewhat provocative by some.
I'm just saying. I'm so sorry.
It could be taken the wrong way.
That's all I'm saying. I... I could explain now?
No, no. It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Okay. Okay. Right?
So, giving people things, right?
And withholding yourself.
Isn't that what you're talking about in your two-year-old dream?
Too much money.
Not enough love.
What was that?
Because you gave me stuff.
Which cost you money, but you didn't give me of yourself to fulfill your commitment or to withdraw it, which is what I asked for.
And you had to be mirroring your parents during that, right?
Your parents sent me the book, right?
You had to be mirroring what was occurring for you as a child.
You had to be. Yeah.
So you're saying to me, Steph, I need for you to get my experience as a child because I can't get it.
And I need you to reflect it back to me because I can't see it.
And I tried to do it with this woman when I was telling you about it, but you didn't get it, so I'm going to do it this way.
Now we'll get it. Giving stuff, withholding the self.
Right? Right, yeah.
You're right. Too much money, not enough soul.
or no soul, or anti-soul, probably.
I say this with no criticism.
No criticism. But just pointing out that I get it.
Right. Right.
Right. That you provided me things.
You provided me everything but yourself, so to speak.
Yes. And you provided me things as a way of buying me.
Yes. That's your childhood experience, right?
Yes. Yes.
Now, I can complain, but you couldn't as a child.
Right, right.
And what would have happened if you had complained as a child and said, Mommy and Daddy, I don't want this stuff.
I want you.
Well, what little attention I already had would have been withdrawn.
It would have been...
I would have been attacked. I would have been...
Things would have been worse off.
Right. When the boat's low in the water, you just don't rock it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And you learn to get by in one movie with a reasonably nice person a year.
I see.
It's funny.
Everybody thinks that I'm the parent in some of these relationships.
more often than not I'm the child that was funny but I don't want to laugh I It is kind of funny, right?
I mean, it is kind of funny, right?
Just as when we're children, we are most often for our parents, their parents, not children.
Yes. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Alright, so, you were telling me, you were showing me what your experience was like as a child, and you were showing me how your parents treated you.
Yes. That is some slippery shit, and I will say that it's very hard to see.
You have no defective eyesight.
This is very hard to see.
So I offer my deepest sympathies for that.
When stuff is present and people are absent, that is really hard to see.
Especially when there's this normalcy, right?
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And nobody else, of course, sees it.
This is what my friend was complaining about.
He said, nobody saw it.
Nobody could see there was anything wrong.
Now, I mean, he saw it not because he was smarter than you or anything like that.
He just, his father was a drinker.
High-functioning alcoholic, as they're called.
Which means an asshole with resources.
Yeah, so that's hard stuff.
That's hard stuff to see. It's like trying to look for a shadow behind an eclipse.
That's hard, hard stuff to see.
Yeah. Now, you saw when you were two, right?
This is beautiful but terrifyingly empty.
And there's too much money and not enough people.
Or, as your dream said, no people.
Yeah, exactly.
This is empty.
It's pretty and it's empty.
Yeah, lost in the land of the pretty ghosts.
I think a lot of kids go through that.
I remember another friend of mine I had when I was in my 20s.
I met her when I did a tour of Montreal and Quebec City and Ottawa with a friend of mine.
And we stayed in touch for a couple of years.
And, I mean, my God.
The presents she got.
I mean, I hate it after Christmas.
I hate it after birthdays.
Because everybody would say, Hey, Steph, what did you get?
Right? Yeah.
I hated those questions.
Because I couldn't make up stuff.
I just, I couldn't. I couldn't do that.
And it would be too ridiculous. And I just have to say, nothing.
Nothing. I bought myself a book with the money I've made since I was working since I was 11.
I got nothing. Or I remember one year my mom it's sad and it's funny now so many years later.
She gave me a glove. Like, not two.
Just one. Which hand do you want to be warm?
Right? God.
And But this friend of mine, she would, oh man, she got, oh, we got, you know, we got front row tickets to Les Miserables and I got a scooter, like a motorized scooter back when that was a big deal.
We got video games, you know, my parents rented a lodge for us to go skiing next to me.
She lived in a pretty ritzy house.
And that just went on and on.
Diamond heels from my dog, you know, just lots of stuff.
And And yet I remember being at her house once, and her mother, her mother was trying to make something in the blender.
And the blender top was loose, and some stuff spattered, and then the blender stopped.
And her mother sobbed because of that.
Because of this little nothing.
A few spatters and a blender that stopped suddenly.
I remember so vividly she was leaning over.
I could barely see her face because she had that rich lady hair, you know, hanging down heavily colored.
Her knuckles were white on the blender.
And she was really trying not to sob.
But they had lots of stuff, you see.
They had all of the medals of existence.
I know a lot of people like that.
I met a lot of people like that in the business world.
All shine and no substance.
it's like if you ever see the movie American Psycho his beauty regimen him in his 3,000 sit-ups, his perfect exterior.
Because the inside doesn't matter.
Yeah, I've been...
I've listened to your review and I've been meaning to watch the movie, but I think I've been pretty apprehensive.
Yeah, I mean, you can skip.
I mean, I skip over the violent stuff because, I mean, I don't really care about it.
And it's, you know, that's not material to me.
What's material to me is the stuff in between, the lead up.
Right. Right.
That's all the effect. It's like a nutritionist doesn't care about a heart attack, but the 20 years that leads up to it, right?
Yeah. Anyway, I mean, so I don't have any particularly profound thing to say other than to just To point out that if you got it when you were two, it's still in there somewhere.
And if you could remember that you got it that vividly, then I think the reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated.
But it's worth examining this absence.
This is a howling vacuum of absence.
This is...
I mean, if I were you, this is what I would talk in general about.
There is a lot of...
I don't know what it is.
There's something in this that is unpalatable to you.
There's something in this constellation that is...
It's unpalatable for you.
You can't look at it directly.
You can't turn the light on somewhere here.
I don't know what it is.
My guess is that you had to, that your parents were heavily invested or your family was heavily invested in the appearance thing.
You know, we're a good family.
We provide. We love our kids.
You know, we do things together.
You know, that there's an appearance thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Is that the way off?
No, no, no. That's very...
I can't see anyone's face.
I have to go out of breath and shit like that.
But okay, so look, if there's an appearance thing, then clearly we're, you know...
We're poking at the big helium balloon, right?
And that's a scary thing to do.
Because it goes off with a bang, right?
Right. But there is something that is unspeakable for you in this.
There's something that is so hard to look at for you, or that's the wrong way of putting it, because that puts the onus on you.
There's something that, if you had seen it as a child, would have been so It's catastrophic to your parents that it has become catastrophic for you.
Because we internalize. Whatever's going on for our parents, we internalize.
We have to, we have to, we have to.
For better or for worse.
Whatever is going on for our parents, we internalize.
And if something is catastrophic for our parents, you know, like to take an example, right?
So Christian parents...
Genuine doubt about the existence of God in children.
Genuine doubt about original sin.
How could this work logically?
Genuine doubt about the morality of a God who kills everyone, including babies, for the sins of people he disagrees with.
Genuine doubt about the insanity, genuine doubt about the sanity of the whole fairy tale.
That is unthinkable and unspeakable for, you know...
Christian parents, particularly fundamentalist Christian parents, it is just not going to happen.
So you have to internalize that.
That's how the virus of faith gets continued.
So I think it's really important to look at what was unthinkable for your parents.
Because what was unthinkable for your parents has become unthinkable to you.
And the appearance thing is big.
Look, my mom was... I thought about this the other day because I was with Isabella.
We were walking around the mall and she wanted to go up on the ledge around the fountain in the mall and run around it.
And it's hard, you know?
It's hard as a parent to make those decisions, right?
Because she held my hand and then she wanted to run without holding my hand.
And I completely, totally remember when I was six, my mom came to visit me at boarding school.
I was running around a fountain in front of a big, I think it was a big museum or maybe it was a train station, some big building.
I was running around the fountain and I fell in the fountain with my school uniform on and all that, right?
I thought I was going to get the living shit beaten out of me.
And she just laughed and she helped me dry and it was fine.
Because I didn't understand at that point.
The difference between what went on inside the house and what went on when people could see.
Right. I didn't understand the difference.
I was really confused.
I tell you, that was the beginning of me getting really pissed off.
Because it was then that I got that my mom could control her behavior if she wanted to.
She just didn't want to when we were at home, and there were no witnesses.
You know, I ask people, and they go, oh, my parents, my dad beat me or whatever.
It's like, well, did he beat you in public?
No, well, then he could control his behavior.
So the public and the private is where a lot of this stuff goes on in terms of what's unthinkable to us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What was unthinkable to me was that my mom could control her behavior, that there was nothing moral about what she was doing, and that she was just a bully who vented on children.
I mean, that was unthinkable to me.
I mean, unthinkable.
But that's when I first began to get it.
But that was the hardest thing.
And of course, everybody on the planet says, well, you did the best you could.
It's not easy raising two children, two sons, a single mom, and blah, blah, blah, right?
Like, all that just happened to her.
Like, she just lost the lottery and got kids and no husband and blah, blah, blah, right?
So everyone will say this.
So this is a big reinforcement thing that goes on with this kind of stuff.
So I would examine, again, it's just my idiot advice, but I would examine what is going on for you that is unthinkable, which means what was going on for your parents that was unthinkable.
And the key to that, I think often, is in the difference between public and private behavior.
Right, right.
I mean, public behavior shows what they're capable of.
Private behavior shows you what they're capable of, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I'm just...
That gives me something very helpful that I can focus on, and I really appreciate that guidance.
I'm just...
There's a particular...
And I know the call's gone on for a while now, so I don't want to delve into...
But I have a particular memory that I've returned to of...
I think it ties into this idea sometimes of whether or not my soul or just this idea that my soul is dead, that this memory of me feeling like I was truly broken.
It was just a situation where I attempted to punish myself before my parents were given the chance.
I thought that would have been Some sort of pledge of allegiance.
Sorry, it's very abstract to me.
Can you just give me something more specific?
Sorry, I'll just sum it up.
I was probably seven or eight years old, and I was just having a bath on my own.
And I closed the shower door...
A little too quickly, and it was a glass door.
And the entire door shattered, and all this glass rained down on me in the bathtub, and I was just naked.
I was just so terrified of being spanked and punished that I just...
I made this huge noise, so I made sure I stood up in the bathtub and I started to just spank myself so that when my parents came...
Oh, God.
Go on. I just...
I thought I could...
I thought I could avoid...
I thought if I did it to myself, then it'd be okay.
Right.
Yeah.
And I've, I've talked about that in calls before, right?
You'd rather do it to yourself than risk having it done to you.
Yeah, yeah.
And who were you afraid was going to spank you?
Your mom or your dad or both?
Mostly my dad.
My God. Do you remember what was happening before that?
Just before my bath?
All I remember was that my...
I guess I don't.
I just remember...
I just remember across the hall, my mother was playing with my sister in her bedroom, but I don't remember what happened before my bath.
Because, I mean, it takes a lot of force to break those glass doors.
And you were seven, you said?
I was very, yeah, I was very young.
I mean, I was, I think I was around seven.
Now, I would talk about that with your therapist, because that doesn't sound right to me.
Again, what do I know, right?
But it doesn't sound right to me that a seven-year-old is just going to close the door a little too quickly, and it's going to shatter and break.
I mean, I mean, can you imagine if a manufacturer of glass doors had them regularly shattered, raining down glass on children who closed them?
Like, they'd get this shit suit out of them.
It'd be all over the newspapers if they were built that fragile.
They're built strong.
Yeah. Yeah, well, that's...
I never even thought about it.
I know. This is the unthinkables, right?
So maybe you were angry.
Maybe you put your whole force into it.
Maybe somebody else was there.
I'm just saying, maybe it did, but that's just...
I mean, I've got...
Here, we've got a glass door in front of the shower, and those things are strong.
I mean, they have to be, because glass raining down on you when you're naked gets people killed.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, seriously, this is like, they have to make those things really strong.
Right, right. Maybe there was a crack in it, or maybe, I mean, I don't know, but the way that you're saying it to me, like I closed it a little too hard, and it shattered and glass rained down on me, no way.
That, I tell you, I don't know what happened, but that for sure did not happen.
That is not what happened.
Hmm. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Seriously, that would be all over the news.
I mean, they tell you if one crazy guy in Indiana puts a razor blade in a fucking chocolate bar, you hear about it for 20 years later, right?
I mean, if people manufactured glass doors that children just closed a little too hard and they rained broken glass down on their kids, I mean, you'd never hear the end of it.
You're right. You're right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You're right. Yeah, that's a very, very important thing to focus on.
But yeah, as far as the self-punishment goes, you know, I mean, the chilling thing about that story, I mean, there's so many chilling things about that story, but the chilling thing about that story is that you were genuinely hurt And terrified, or you had the potential to be genuinely hurt and terrified, and you didn't want your parents to comfort you and to reassure you.
You wanted to punish yourself because you were terrified of your parents.
Yeah. I mean, Izzy does things where she'll push something over and it makes a big bang.
The other day she pulled on a chair and it fell over and made a big bang on the floor.
First thing she does is come running to me for comfort and help.
Because she's scared. Because something just happened.
And it doesn't matter if I've told her three times, you know, be careful, don't pull on that chair or whatever.
If she pulls it and falls down, she comes running to me because she's scared and she wants comfort and reassurance.
If someone starts up a lawnmower when we're out walking, anything loud happens, suddenly she'll come to me.
I never want that to change.
I mean, if she ever broke glass and whatever, I mean, my God, I would...
Who cares about the shower door?
I'm terrified that my child is hurt.
I could care less about the shower door.
I want to make sure that she's okay.
I want to make sure that she's not too frightened.
I want to make sure she's not physically hurt.
When we were flying...
Yeah, we were flying to California for Libertopia.
I had a hot coffee on the tray.
She kicked it and it went on my leg and my groin.
Pretty damn hot coffee, right?
I only cared that she didn't burn herself.
I'll survive, right?
But it was frustrating and painful.
But, I mean, she's a 22-month-old kid on a plane for five hours.
I mean, she did magnificently.
So... That is, again, this is stuff to talk about with your therapist, but that is some fucked up stuff.
I'm telling you, man, that is some crazy ass shit that you were worried about punishment and not looking to your parents for comfort in a moment of great fear and anxiety.
And that you were spanking yourself after the glass broke and fell on you.
That is some seriously crazy shit.
Not you, not you crazy, family crazy.
I mean, you're just like water, trying to adapt to whatever container you're in.
I mean, that's what kids can do, right?
But... Yeah.
But if you get how crazy that is, then I think you're on the way to understanding why it's so hard for you to be honest and why it's so hard for you to be straight and how so completely that's not your fault.
That your parents were a source of fear in a situation where you were already terrified is completely messed up.
I'm going to go.
And that's what you saw when you were...
Because replacing the glass will cost money, right?
Yeah. Expensive.
It's a hassle. It's a problem.
It has to be cleaned up.
So your fear was that your parents...
We're going to be angry about stuff that was broken and not about you.
Too much money.
Too much with the money, right?
Not enough with me.
Wow.
Too much with the stuff and not enough with the self.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Too much with the material and not enough of what matters.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And this is your history, right?
I mean, this is stuff that I know, right?
That you're into looks, not character, right?
Yeah. Right?
Yeah, yeah. The stuff, not the soul, right?
Yeah, yeah. The tits, ass, and cheekbones and hair are not the spirit of the person, right?
Exactly, yeah.
Exactly. Exactly. And so you continue to rob yourself of love by chasing after these vapid and superficial things, which is following the rules of your parents and not the possibility of your future.
Right? You see, you're still punishing yourself by denying yourself love, by focusing on these things that don't have anything to do with love, and in fact are usually markers for the exact opposite of love.
Which is still Instead of breaking the glass door, you're just breaking your heart, right?
punishing yourself that way yeah that makes a lot of sense I mean, yeah.
But you don't have to.
I mean, you don't have to. You don't have to.
You don't have to. You can say, fuck you to all that.
Break the cycle.
Get off the wheel. Yeah, I'm kicking like a donkey here.
Yeah, leave the ghost behind.
Climb to the light. Well, I don't really...
I don't know how I could ask anything more of you.
I mean, this has been just...
I can't even think of a word.
I'm just feeling so grateful.
Thank you. Well, A, you're welcome, and B, I'm sorry, because it shouldn't have taken two calls for this.
I apologize for that.
It shouldn't have needed reminding by your actions that we hadn't gotten to something real, so I'm very sorry for that.
And that wasn't your fault.
That was my fault. I mean, I should know better.
And I apologize for that.
And that was entirely my responsibility and my fault.
So thank you for continuing to annoy me until we...
No, I really do. I genuinely do appreciate that because that obviously was undone last time.
We didn't do enough.
And I really, really appreciate you talking tonight.
Wow. Well, yeah.
I mean, okay.
Sorry, I'm just really at a loss for words.
Thank you so much.
And, wow, I don't know.
I'm going to sleep well tonight.
You sound better, and I'm very glad to hear that.
And listen, if you get a chance, you can shoot me an email or post maybe on the donator section, but I certainly would like to know how it goes with the therapist.
But I would definitely, this is the stuff that I would focus on if I were you.
Yeah, thank you. I will definitely.
Yes, I'm going to.
All right, man. Take care. Have a great night, and well, well done.
Okay. All right.
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