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Sept. 19, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
51:37
1997 Am I Dead Inside? - Listener Conversation

Trembling before the resurrection of the self.

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Time Text
Hello. Hi, how's it going?
Oh, good, thank you.
How are you? Not too bad, not too bad.
So, what can I do for you?
Yeah, it's this thing with emotional emptiness and dissociation and stuff.
Right, so just give me the background on...
Where it's at and what's going down?
Well, I guess it's been bad for a few years now, and it started when I started becoming really...
when I was self-attacking a lot, and I was really self-conscious about...
So, do you mind if I add hoinol to the call?
Whatever you like. I was self-attacking a lot and I started to dissociate because I was so self-conscious the whole time.
Sorry, when you say the whole time, what time frame do you mean?
Oh, like, basically it was, my anxiety was around, like, the sound of my voice.
And it was even, like, when I was thinking, like, on my own.
So it wasn't, it was, like, all the time, basically.
So the sound of your voice, like, even in your head, kind of?
Even in my head, so, like, yeah, I was, like, self-attacking constantly.
Right. And so, go on.
Yeah, so that went on.
Basically it was just always there.
It was kind of like being in an impossible situation in my head.
I was doing more and more self-destructive things.
I guess I was kind of nihilistic and stuff.
Yeah.
And what does that mean?
How did that look? Well, like doing drugs and stuff.
Right, right, okay. And also, I was forcing myself into social situations as a way of confronting this in myself.
Right. But I was like...
I wasn't being sympathetic towards myself at all.
You know in CBT they have exposure therapy?
Yes. So I was kind of just doing it that way, but without any sympathy, I guess, for myself.
Right, right.
And was this a sort of sudden start to this?
Did it come about slowly?
Was there any sort of inciting incident?
Yeah, it was when this guy, he like verbally attacked me.
And what was the situation?
I was with a friend and he had a friend come over from America and Yeah, I was just at my friend's house and he was there, and basically I didn't expect him,
this other guy, to be there, and I... Yeah, I... Well, I didn't like the guy, and I remember I was kind of passive-aggressive, showing that I didn't like him, and then the tension built over a couple of days, and then he Sorry, why were you in contact with this guy for a couple of days?
Well, this was when I didn't really have any self-knowledge, or very little self-knowledge, and I thought that I could trust my friend.
And, well, it was like I thought that he would go away if I stayed there, kind of thing.
I'm sorry, you're going to have to be clear.
I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
So just step me through it.
So are you staying in the same place as this guy or what?
Yeah, I was planning on visiting my friend and he had like a free house.
His parents weren't there or anything.
And on my way there, after traveling for like an hour or something, he tells me that he has this other friend there.
And you didn't know this other friend was coming, right?
No, I didn't. And I got there and I was willing to see if I liked him or not, but I didn't.
And for some reason I decided to stay.
Okay, so let's start with that.
Let's start with that, right? Because in this kind of situation, prevention is always better than cure, right?
Right. So what do you think was going on with your friend that this was happening?
I mean, that's kind of weird, right? I mean, if you're going to go visit a friend, and then he says, not ahead of time, that this other person's going to be there, I mean, that's a bit odd, right?
Yeah. And does your friend know that you don't like this other guy?
Well, I'm not friends with him anymore.
Sorry, the friend you were staying with, or the other guy?
What's that say? The friend you were staying with, or the other guy?
I don't know either of them anymore.
Okay, but did your friend who invited you know that you didn't get along with this other guy?
I guess I didn't say it explicitly at the time.
I said it like, I don't think your friend likes me.
Because I didn't want to...
I guess I didn't want to say, I don't like your friend...
Right. But your understanding was that it was going to be you and this guy, and then he invited someone else to stay at the same time, right?
Right, right. Right, right.
And so, what's the story of that?
I mean, why do you think that occurred?
Because, I mean, it's odd.
I mean, it's nothing wrong with it fundamentally, but it's, you know, if I'm inviting someone to come and stay with me, and we're expecting to sort of spend time together...
If somebody else is coming that the other person doesn't know, at the very least I would call and say, hey, you know, this person wants to come or that kind of stuff, right?
Right, right. Okay, so why do you think that didn't happen?
I can...
Well, it's like, I think it's because I didn't have boundaries back then.
Like he knew he could do that?
It was easier for him, right? So this other guy wanted to come and stay, and he felt maybe that it was easier to just say, oh, I'm sure this friend of mine will be fine with it or whatever, rather than make a decision himself and set boundaries up.
Right, right. And in a way, he was kind of right, because he didn't say, well, wait a minute, what the hell are you doing, right?
Right, yeah. He knew I'd respond like that.
Right, so he took the path of least resistance, so to speak, right?
Yeah. Okay, yeah.
And sadly, that's all too often how people make these kinds of decisions, right?
Right. I mean, they just, you know, who's going to be the least upset about what I'm doing?
And that person then gets the short end of the stick, right?
Right, right. So you felt, if I understand this rightly, and correct me if I'm wrong in this, as in everything, but you felt it's like an impossible situation, right?
Yeah, yeah. But you could have just left, right?
I could have, yeah. You could have said, look, I mean, I'm not getting along with this fellow.
I thought it was just going to be us.
I mean, we've been, everybody's been in these situations.
I hope you don't feel too, like, singled out, right?
Like, I mean, you know, I remember once asking a girl out for what I thought was a date and she brought a guy along.
Right. So, I mean, that's just, yeah, what do you do, right?
Well, you just get through it and go home, right?
Right. But in this situation, you had sort of arranged to spend a couple of days with this guy.
And so that became progressively more awkward as...
And what was it you didn't like about the other guy?
Um... I just, uh...
I just didn't like him.
Um... Come on!
I'm working a little harder than that. He was kind of...
He was like... He was a walking contradiction, I guess.
Like, he was a gay Christian.
And I found that, like, strange.
Like, um...
Uh...
But yeah, I just found him kind of mean, I guess.
Now, does your friend know that you're an atheist?
I assume you are. Yeah, and...
So he invites an atheist and a Christian to hang together for...
No, I mean, again, that may not be the end of the world, right?
It certainly would be something you'd want to talk about ahead of time.
It's not like you can't have any fun ever with a Christian.
Of course you can, right? But it's something you'd want to talk about ahead of time with the person.
And this is where my friend was a bit slimy because, like, I didn't know that my friend was, like, a theist.
Like, he kept it really quiet.
Do you mean the friend who invited the Christian?
Yeah. Okay. And it's weird because, like, before then, I'd, you know, like, bashed Christianity, like, loads.
And, like, he would just sit there not defending Christianity.
So, like, not defending his beliefs at all.
Well, he got you back, didn't he?
Yes. I mean, there's a whole lot of passive aggression going along here, right?
So, if he's religious or spiritual or agnostic or whatever, right?
No, he's a theist, you said, right?
Yeah, yeah. Right, so you understand.
So he gets the difficult Christian and you guys together because he's upset with you about bashing religion, so to speak, right?
Right, right. I mean, does that make sense?
Yes. I'm not saying it's conscious.
He's not like sitting there with little dead figurines saying, aha, you know, theist will, Trump, atheist will make uncomfortable.
But this is likely an unconscious motivation.
Right, right. I've seen that.
Because it's very hard for us to be conscious when everyone around us is unconscious.
I think this is really important. We so often think that we're acting in isolation of our environment.
You know, like, well, I have a commitment to be conscious, and I have a commitment to be honest in my relationships.
But in this situation, I just wasn't.
That must be because I am failing my commitments.
I am this, that, and the other, right?
Right. But the reality is, it's really hard to speak English when everyone else is speaking Mandarin, right?
Mm-hmm. And it's really hard to speak the language of consciousness if other people are acting in a really unconscious manner.
I see. Because when people are acting in an unconscious manner, it's truly unconscious.
I mean, they're still responsible for it being unconscious, right?
I mean, because they've made whatever decisions they've made to avoid self-knowledge, and therefore they're responsible for that.
But when somebody's acting really unconsciously, the stakes are very high when it comes to confrontation.
Because they will have the ultimate defense, so to speak, which is the wide-eyed protestations of innocence, followed by the you're projecting school of projection, right?
Right. So if you'd have said, look, I mean, what's going on?
Why are you bunking me with an abrasive Christian, right?
I'm an atheist, you know that, right?
Oh, I didn't think you were the kind of atheist who would just bash on all Christians, or you just hated all Christians.
I mean, what, you're never supposed to ever speak to another Christian?
You get all that kind of stuff. Right, right.
Because, yeah, he was very much about, like, accepting everyone and all that.
He wanted to be friends with everyone, it seemed.
Right, right. And, I mean, that's fine as long as you recognize that's a vice.
It's a vice to want to be friends with everyone because not everyone is worthy of friendship, right?
Right, right. When we look about that in terms of when women want to sleep with everyone, we have particular names for them that aren't often the most complimentary, and the same thing is true.
The same thing is true when it comes to friendship, though, of course.
STDs are just socialism-transmitted diseases.
But anyway. But of course, if you were to say to the person, look, you must have been upset.
I mean, the only way I can understand is why you'd bunk me with an obnoxious Christian is because you're upset with bear marks.
No, I'm not upset about your religious views at all.
I mean, if you want to be an atheist, you're an atheist.
If my friend wants to be a Christian, you're a Christian.
I don't see why there would be any...
Like, they just have that wide-eyed thing, and then you're kind of stuck, right?
Because you're either going to keep pushing on and say, no, no, no, listen, come on, let's be smarter about this.
Let's put our heads together and figure out how we got into this situation.
And let's not pretend that it's just purely accidental or that I'm somehow overreacting.
Let's really put our heads together and figure out what happened here.
No, nothing's happening.
I mean, so I got one friend, I got two friends.
Maybe they don't see eye to eye on everything, but so what, right?
I mean, we can be tolerant of each other.
Like, you end up with that situation, right?
Right. Where you simply cannot have an honest conversation because the person is too defended, right?
Uh-huh. And then what?
Then you're caught, right?
Because then what happens is you're like a fly in slowly creeping amber because what happens then...
Is you can say, well, look, if we can't have an honest conversation about this, and I find this Christian guy pretty intolerable, and I'm sure he finds me pretty intolerable too, so it's fine.
But if you don't have the sense that God gave a goose to recognize that this is not a good idea to put these personality types and these belief systems together day after day, then you really don't know much about me.
You don't know much about how to be a consistent and good friend.
And since we can't have an honest conversation about this, I'm just going to hit the road.
Then what happens? You know, aggressiveness.
Well, if you're going to be like that.
Yeah, look, I mean, yeah, then you become the guy who is so intolerant of others, right?
Right. That, you know, apparently he's too high and mighty to even be in the same room as a pretty nice Christian guy.
You know, he's that ideological, he's that intolerant of others, and then you get all this stuff spread about you to everyone, right?
Right. It's a trap!
Right? So, it may be that you acted very sensibly, given the situation.
I mean, that's a possibility, right?
Right, right. You don't sound convinced.
Yeah, I guess I have a...
saying it that way.
Well, no, look, let's look...
I mean, let's go back. Let's revisit, right?
This is what you do, right?
When you fumble a pass, or you think you fumbled a pass, you go back and you revisit.
You say, hmm... Okay, so what would you have done differently if you could do it again?
And would you accept the consequences of doing it differently?
Well, I guess I would have had to have probably ended that friendship if I were to have acted differently.
Well, no, not necessarily.
You see, you've got to give yourself lots of flexibility in these areas, right?
Right. So you could say, oh boy, my old war wound is coming back, so I need to go home and have lots of sit-spots or something, right?
I mean, there's lots of things.
Oh, you know, I have X, Y, and Z to do, and X, Y, and Z can't, right?
I mean, you could have made your excuses, as they say, right?
Mm-hmm. That's a possibility, right?
Mm-hmm. But I guess at the time I wouldn't have been able to rationalize that to myself because I never really, like, lied to my friend.
You never lied to your friend?
Yeah, not like that.
I wouldn't have said, oh, I need to go for such and such reasons.
No, I'm just, but it's a possibility, right?
Right, right. Because we don't owe people honesty if they're not being honest to us, right?
Right. Right, right.
Well, I guess that's something else. Honesty is not a commitment to...
I mean, I genuinely believe that virtue is not something that we make in the abstract.
It's not just something that we...
I'm going to be virtuous regardless of the behavior of others, right?
Because virtue is a relationship with others.
And as I've argued before, right, to take an example...
If I say, you ship me 500 bucks, I'm going to ship you an iPad.
But don't worry, I'll ship you the iPad first.
And I never ship you the iPad.
Are you obligated to ship me the 500 dollars?
No, no. Of course not.
Because I'm not dealing honestly with you and therefore, since I'm breaking contract with you, you can break contract with me.
Right. So if the friend is not being honest with you, I don't see any need to be honest with the friend.
And that doesn't mean you sort of, now you can scam him with impunity and steal his cat and piss on his gondolias.
But the reality is that you don't owe people more than the virtue they provide to you.
In business, in life as a whole, right?
Right. I guess I was kind of deluded about him.
Well, let's get to the delusions in a sec.
If you were to go back, do you feel that you could have had an honest conversation with the fellow about the situation?
I guess I would have wanted to have got out of there.
Like, I would have said something like...
Oh, they're not answering my question.
Do you feel like, if you look back in hindsight, do you feel that there's any way that you could have had an honest conversation with the fellow about what was going on?
Oh, no. No.
Okay, so this is – so first of all, then you've got to give yourself a get-out-of-jail-free card for not being honest and open with the person, right?
Because all you did at the beginning of the conversation was blame yourself, right?
You said, well, you know, I was being passive-aggressive.
I, you know, whatever, right? You had this sort of – I had the impression that you felt you weren't acting with integrity, right?
Right. Well, if it's impossible to have an honest conversation, there's no sin in not having an honest conversation, right?
Right. Right. Free domain radio.
We deal with the real.
Right? And if the reality is that you can't, then you're not...
It's not negative to not do something that is impossible.
Does that make sense? Right.
Right. Okay. Are you really getting this?
I don't want you to say right, right if you disagree.
Well, it's like there's a part of me that doesn't believe that...
It wants to experience that.
Even though it's like a part of me knows...
That sentence was not even remotely understandable to an English-speaking person, so please give it another shot.
I'm sorry. No, no problem.
Okay. A part of me doubts me when I say that.
So you think that you could have had an honest conversation with this fellow?
Uh... I mean, you've known the friendship, right?
I mean, you'd be the one to know.
I would suspect not, but you would be the one to know.
I mean, did this guy regularly have honest conversations about things that were difficult?
Did he strive for self-knowledge?
Had he been to therapy? Had he worked on himself?
I mean, had he done these things?
I don't know. I mean, you don't just walk up to your average friend and say, listen, I'm running a 28-mile marathon tomorrow.
Do you want to join me? Right?
I mean, that would be cruel. And if you say, listen, you know, my 300-pound friend can't join me on a marathon, are you being prejudicial or jumping to conclusions or being hasty?
No, you're just stating a fact.
My chain-smoking friend cannot climb Mount Everest with me.
Not gonna happen. Right?
This is not being prejudicial, it's just accepting reality.
And people who haven't worked on themselves are not going to be able to run the marathon called self-knowledge and bring that all into play in the present.
So, had he been to therapy?
No. Did he read anything about psychology?
No. Had you had conversations about self-knowledge?
Had he confronted difficult or painful issues in his life?
Had he dealt with his childhood?
Had he dealt with his past? Yes or no?
No. That means no honesty in the conversation.
Plain, simple fact.
I guess I'm concerned then about this part of me that seems to guilt me or something into thinking that it was possible.
Well, first of all, you are saying that it's a part of you.
And again, you jump to conclusions.
We don't know that. It may have been him that needed that.
And you simply complied. It may not be a part of you.
Look, you're having an honest conversation with me, so the fact that you didn't have an honest conversation with him is not entirely your doing.
Right. Does that make sense?
You said that the part is him.
I'm sorry? You said something about me assuming that this part is me.
Yes. What did you say after that?
I'm not sure if I quite understood.
Well, I can't remember exactly, but it probably was something along the lines that it probably was him who desperately did not want you to have an honest conversation with him, or even attempt.
Because, how am I going to put this?
Okay, everyone thinks they can run a marathon.
Right? Everyone thinks that they can run the marathon called being honest, being good.
I mean, you go up to just about everyone and say, do you strive for honesty and truth and goodness in your relationships?
Of course they're going to say yes. Right.
Of course they are. I mean, who's going to say, no, I'm a scumbag who attempts to manipulate the kidneys out of children.
No, people don't say that, right?
So, he believes that he can run a marathon.
Right? If somebody says, I could run a marathon, and somebody genuinely believes at some level, at the surface level, that they can run a marathon, but in fact they can't even run 100 yards, what's the most frightening thing that can happen to them?
Someone who can run a marathon comes along and says, hey, let's run a marathon together, Mr.
Marathon Man. Do you see what I mean?
Right. Does that make sense?
So people who have not done the work to achieve self-knowledge, who don't know that they haven't done the work and have no particular plans to do it, they believe that they're honest and good and all of these kinds of fun things, right? Right.
But the fact is that they're not.
Any more than you can run a marathon without training.
Truth takes training. I mean, I don't think it's naturally and innately true that that's always the case, but it certainly is true in our culture, right?
And it's even more true in other cultures, right?
So, if you try and sit down and have an honest conversation with this fellow, you're basically saying, so, Mr.
Guy who says he can run a marathon, let's run a marathon.
Right. Well, he's not going to be happy about that.
And the guy who's handing you a counterfeit bill doesn't want you to put it in the counterfeit detection machine, right?
Right. And so, when you don't have an honest conversation with someone, the first place that I would look, maybe not the last, but certainly the first place that I would look is to say, well, what would it cost the other person if I did?
Right. How would the other person fare if I did?
Well, pretty badly.
Mm-hmm. Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah. But that's what I mean when I say...
Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say I'm beginning to see why I didn't...
Right....do that.
Because it's dangerous. It's dangerous.
Right. Right?
Because, you know, people can come up with all kinds of slander.
They can, I don't know, put stuff on the web.
They can talk about it with all your friends.
And, you know, you can trigger defenses that make people kind of nutty, right?
Right, yeah. Does that make sense?
Yeah. So, you know, caution is important, right?
Right. You see, like before, yeah, I wasn't seeing myself as being cautious.
I was just seeing myself as being, like, masochistic and, you know, stuff like that.
Right. Now, maybe, I mean...
People who are liars are very good at spotting lies.
People who are false are very good at spotting falsehoods.
And so if you'd made up the, my war wound is acting up, I can tell a typhoon is coming because the way my groin is aching, he may have seen through that.
In which case, it would have been a very tricky situation indeed, right?
Right. So maybe what you did was kind of like the right thing.
Ah, interesting. Never considered that.
Well, that's important, right?
That's important. And there's a reason why you didn't, which is that, again, that's costly to the other person.
Right. But if somebody...
And, you know, it's a tough call.
Look, when people blather onto me about how great they are at running marathons, and I've been training in marathons for 30 years, and I know that they can't run a marathon...
You know, because they're chain-smoking or whatever.
Right. Part of me wants to say, alright, Sonny, let's lace up and see how you do.
Part of me wants to expose that crap, right?
Yeah. But part of me is like, you know, I could spend the rest of my life doing this and what would it really achieve?
Right. Does that make sense?
Yeah. It's not going to make anybody suddenly want to be Truthful or whatever, right?
You know, what happens to people when you expose their false self is it destabilizes them and it's dangerous.
And I'm even willing to do that if that's instructive to other people.
But unfortunately there's a ripple effect where it gets other people's false selves and other people's false selves and it snowballs, right?
Right. Because it's too early.
It's too early to expose these people.
People aren't ready.
Right, right. Does that make sense?
Right. I mean, you see this on the message board, right?
Trolls come in and people have a really hard time seeing them.
Hmm. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah, I did talk about trolls last night, actually.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's worth being a little bit cautious.
Right. I mean, when you're outnumbered, you don't do a frontal charge, right?
You're an insurgent.
Right, right. That's the thing.
I've fallen into the trap of, like, dismissing my fear as paranoia.
No, no, no, no. Don't do that.
Don't do that. Don't do that.
Don't do that. Don't do that. Because that's a way, look, that's a way of disarming you, right?
If you're going to survive a war, you better be cautious, right?
If there are bullets with them, I mean, think of those poor bastards in the First World War, right?
The Gallipoli guys, right?
I mean, they know. They know that they're walking into a hail of bullets and their likelihood of surviving is not one in a thousand.
Right? Well, they should damn well feel fear.
Right? And they should damn well want to run away and hide and all that kind of stuff, right?
You know, it'd be kind of crazy not to feel that.
I have, like, a bit of an issue at the moment because, like, I want to get, like, proper closure on my family.
But, like, I also have, like, this deep fear as well.
Well, sorry, listen, I don't think I can do both in one co-op.
Right, sorry. Let's just deal with the friend thing and maybe we can talk about that another time.
But let's just try and stay on...
On the one that's sort of really front and center for you at the moment.
Okay, okay. If that's all right.
Yeah. But I mean, these are probably not unrelated, as I'm sure you're aware.
But in terms of feeling sort of numb, well, look, if you dismiss your fear, then, you know, we think, like, I don't know if you've ever lived in a house where there's these fuse boxes.
Right, in the basement.
Right, yeah. Yeah, so we like to think that we can selectively switch bits on and off, right?
Yeah. But I don't think that's true.
I don't think that's true.
I think that there's only one big fucking switch.
All right. So, you know, you can't just turn off the study lights.
You can't just turn off the main floor right by the kitchen and nowhere else lights, right?
So if you're going to throw off a big switch called fear, all the switches go off.
Right. If fear or anger or whatever it is that's uncomfortable for people, if that is switched off, everything goes off.
Right. And so if you're looking as to why you can't feel, well, it's because you've said to your feelings, I don't believe you.
You are not helpful to me.
Right? And what are your feelings going to do?
What are they going to do when you say that to a friend, right?
Friends trying to give you advice, you're like, you're wrong.
You're inconvenient to me. I don't believe you.
You have negative motives and, you know, you caution me to, you say I should be cautious, but I'm just going to call you a coward.
Is your friend going to want to continue to give you advice?
No. When you don't listen, when you aren't curious, when you don't RTR with your self, with your feelings, with your passions, how interested are your passions going to be in informing you?
Right. I have this fear that I won't be able to earn the trust back of my unconscious.
That's good. That's good, because you're feeling fear.
That's a feeling, right?
Right. Listen, this is my big piece of advice to you, and it's a big piece of advice to everyone.
I hope you'll let other people listen to this, but always be on a first date with yourself.
This is the trick, right?
Don't be on a 20-year marriage day with yourself where you just kind of, you know, the cliche is you just kind of brush past each other on your way to doing other things and so on, right?
Right. But always be on a first date with yourself.
You know, in your first date with some woman...
You are really listening.
You know, there's some woman you've wanted to go out with for a long time.
She's finally said yes. You dress to the nines.
You pick her up. You're all kinds of courteous.
You know, if something, if your balls itch, you don't scratch them.
Maybe with a fork while she's looking at a painting or something.
But then not too much, because then you yelp.
Like, anyway, we can get into that story another time.
But... But you're on a first date.
You're really listening to her.
You're really interested in everything she has to say.
You're asking lots of questions.
That's how we are with ourselves when we are at our most productive.
Always be on a first date with yourself.
Take your fear out to a nice restaurant.
Take your fear out to a nice restaurant.
Really listen to it. Look it in the eye.
Say, I really want to know what you have to say.
You may not agree with it at all, but you're certainly free to not agree with me about everything.
But I open my ears, I open my heart, I open my arms to everything that you have to say to me because I think you're hot.
Fear is sexy.
But you know what I mean? Be on a first date with yourself.
Take your inhibitions, take your fears, take your anxieties, take your anger out for a first date and do what everyone should do in a first date.
Ask questions, shut up and listen.
Right. I guess...
But you're treating your...
like some old bad married couple, you know?
Ah, I've heard all this before.
Ah, who cares? Ah, same old song and dance.
Ah, right, right? No, no, no.
That's not going to work. I mean, it's not going to be productive.
Right. What do you do, though, if, like, you're really defensive to yourself?
Right. I'll try and be curious with myself.
If you haven't listened, then it's going to take a while to warm up.
It's like if you show up for your first date 45 minutes late, the girl's going to be pissed, right?
Right. And you're going to have to be extra nice, and you're going to have to be extra conciliatory, and you're going to have to be hugely apologetic, and you're going to have to win her over or warm her up again, right?
Right. So if you have been harsh with yourself or dismissed yourself or been down on yourself or attacked yourself or whatever, look, I understand these are parental voices or teacher voices or priest voices or whatever, but, you know, just to simplify that aspect of the conversation...
If you have been rude to yourself, then you need to woo yourself back because, you know, your parts are going to be suspicious.
Right. Right.
And so, be patient and be warm, right?
I mean, if you show up 45 minutes late for a date and your date isn't jumping up to see you, do you get to say, well, forget it then.
If this isn't going to work, this isn't going to work.
I don't think so. I mean, you can.
You can say whatever you want. I just...
That doesn't seem like the right thing to say.
I guess it's like, I don't feel...
Maybe this is the issue.
Like the self-attack, that felt like it wasn't me doing it.
I felt like a victim of that.
So I have a hard time apologizing.
Sorry, but that's being curious.
And you certainly don't apologize without meaning it.
That's going to come across as really fake.
But the self-attack, right?
You need to be curious about that.
You need to ask questions about that.
And also be assertive.
How is the self-attacking working out for us?
Is it making us better?
Is it making us happier? Is it solving anything?
No. So you have the right to ask that voice to lighten up, to lessen up, so that you can actually listen.
Stop yelling so I can hear you.
Be assertive, and that's good training for assertiveness in the world.
I would say as a whole, but yeah, I mean, you know, if you show up for the first date and you're 45 minutes late and your date is ragging on you, you know, you can take it a little bit, but then after 10 minutes, it's like, hey, you know, this is unreasonable now.
I'm really sorry that I was late.
Here's what happened. I didn't have any ill intent.
There was bad traffic. I got a flat tire.
I was attacked by a pterodactyl.
I mean, I'm sorry, but if we're going to continue this date, which I'd like to, We either need to, like, we need to find a way to just move past this and actually have a productive conversation.
I just can't have you sit there ragging on me, right?
Right. Okay.
You know, there's no fundamental differentiation between assertiveness with the self and assertiveness with others.
And in fact, I would say that one is a precondition of the other, right?
You can't be assertive with others if you aren't assertive with yourself.
And if you permit bad behavior with yourself, from yourself, in terms of self-attacking, you'll forever be helpless with others, right?
It is with the self that we gain assertiveness.
And from there, it's much easier to be assertive outside ourselves.
Right. I definitely need to work on that.
Well, yeah, I mean, or you could say, I need to relax and listen to that more.
Right. Work sounds like...
Yeah, I have a habit of doing that as well.
And again, that comes from just another voice, which is like, it's almost like now I must punish myself for being, quote, lazy, right?
But it is not lazy to succumb to self-criticism.
I mean, that is not lazy.
That's almost inevitable when you come from certain kinds of histories.
Right. And in terms of like...
I was listening, I just wanted to ask something.
You were talking last night about people's souls dying.
And then I started panicking, worrying that my soul has died.
Well, but I was talking about people who have done great evil in the world and people who cannot...
Who cannot achieve restitution with those they have wronged.
Right. I think you're in that category.
Right. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I guess maybe a part of me believes that I am evil or something.
And that's a part to have a conversation with, but you PB that motherfucker, right?
Right. Which is, don't just accept that as a label.
Say, okay, By which definition of morality am I termed evil?
And by which definition of morality, I mean, have you strangled a homeless guy?
Not recently. Have you strangled a homeless guy?
No. No?
Have you raped a cabbage in full view?
No. Okay, then you're fine.
Those are the only two things that UPP doesn't allow.
But, you know, I mean, just, you know, hey, if you're going to, you know, otherwise it's just verbal abuse.
You can't call someone evil without a good reason, without a just and fair reason.
And so, you know, just say, I simply will not accept this label without justification.
That is abusive. If you want to talk to me and say that there's things that I can do that's better, fantastic, I'm all ears.
But don't you dare use those four-letter words with me without good cause, or you're just an asshole.
Right. See, I worry about calling these parts of me an asshole.
No, no, no. I said if, right?
If you can't justify it and you continue to verbally abuse me, then, yeah, you're being an asshole.
You can say that to yourself. Oh, right.
Because I always get scared that they're gonna, like, get revenge on me.
Well, they already are, right?
What you got to lose? Yeah.
But no, no. Look, the standards are, right?
So prior to knowledge, prior to you standing up for yourself with these parts and all that, then they're in a state of nature.
They're just doing whatever they can get away with, whatever history has programmed to do, whatever the momentum of prior trauma has enabled them to continue doing.
And so, you know, when you put your hand up and you engage in a productive and positive way with these parts and you say, hey, you know, don't just call me names.
Give me standards. Give me something that's helpful.
Right? Right.
And it appeals to their greed, right?
So the part of you that's calling yourself evil, you know, it's not much fun to sit there and be a moralizing, jerky part of some other person, right?
Don't you want to get out there and enjoy the world and have more fun?
That part does as well, right?
Right. The thing is that, like, this part does talk about things that I've done in the past.
And, okay, that's fine.
Then you say to that part, do you want to do this roleplay now?
You don't have to tell me anything in specific, right?
Yeah. He's real enough some litany of bad things you've done, right?
Right. And so I would say to this part, well, weren't you there?
Too? Yeah, but you didn't listen.
You're not a part of me that just came in like a demon like 10 minutes ago, right?
You were there too when I was doing these things.
He said, yeah, but you didn't listen.
Well, were you clear?
Did you talk to me? Or did you just attack me?
Did you attempt to reason me compassionately and productively out of making these negative decisions?
You wouldn't listen.
You see, you're blaming me again.
I wasn't asking you whether I was listening.
I was asking how did you approach the problem of communicating to me that I was doing bad things.
Did you do your very best, your very best to communicate to me in a way that I would listen?
Or had the best chance of listening?
Or did you attack and call me names?
Or were you silent and are now castigating me afterwards?
And I'm saying this because I want your wisdom.
If you see me doing evil, I want your wisdom.
I want to avoid doing evil things.
But clearly the way that you've been communicating with me, if you have been, and I don't remember specifically, but if you have been communicating to me or you have a desire to help me avoid doing evil, clearly that hasn't been working, right?
And to just blame me Is to take no responsibility for yourself and your decisions or anything like that.
And surely that's not good, right?
It's not good to take no responsibility for your style of communicating with me.
Right. I'm not saying I'm the best listener in the world, and I've got to work a hell of a lot harder to listen to you, and I've got to work a hell of a lot harder to open up the channels of communication with you.
And I will take that on.
I'm not blaming you entirely.
But if all you do is say, well, I did the very best I could, you don't listen, and now you're fully responsible...
For every bad thing that you've done and I had nothing to do with any of these bad things, I don't think that's the kind of responsibility that you want me to emulate, right?
If you want me to behave better, you need to show me that better behavior.
And just blaming me and attacking me and taking no responsibility for yourself, that is not the kind of behavior that you want me to be emulating, as I learned from your example, right?
Right. So lead me by example, and let's make a commitment.
I will work to really listen hard, but you've got to stop yelling, and you've got to take responsibility for failing to help us avoid the evil that we've done in the past.
And I have to take responsibility for that too, but you were there, and you had a knowledge of something that I didn't have, or I don't remember having, you know, of the bad things that were going to happen.
You claim to have had this knowledge.
Because you can't blame me. If you didn't know that these things were going to be evil that we did, then you can't blame me for not knowing either, right?
Obviously, you had to. In order to blame me, you had to have had some kind of foreknowledge of what we were going to do and how to avoid it, right?
Because if you knew it was going to be evil but there was no way to avoid it, you can't blame me, right?
If you didn't know and there was no way to avoid it, you can't blame me because you can't ask me to have more knowledge than you, right?
I'm not omniscient or anything like that.
So you had to have known that these things were going to be bad and you had to have known that it was avoidable.
But whatever you did, did not allow us to avoid these bad things.
And that's not what we want in the future.
We want to work together in the future to help us avoid these bad things, right?
Which means I've got to listen more and you have to find a way to communicate to me ahead of time in a way that is working, in a way that is helpful.
In a way that helps us to avoid these things which you find shameful and wrong.
Right. His defense was, now you're putting it all on me.
And I can understand that, but that's why it's so hard for you to take any responsibility because it comes as a crushing weight on you, right?
Right. Right. Whereas I'm saying, let's work together.
I need to listen more. We need to have more regular conversations.
But you've got to stop castigating me for stuff that you were unable to prevent.
And if you blame me 100% and you 0%, I can't respect you.
Because that's not reasonable.
Right. Because if you were the only one who had knowledge and the capacity to avert these disasters, But you had zero percent capacity to achieve your goal of helping us to avoid these disasters.
Then you can't blame me for listening to someone for whom it was impossible to tell me in any effective way.
That's like blaming me for not hearing somebody who's shouting in a space suit on the dark side of the moon.
I see. So, yes, I need to listen more.
Yes, I need to consult you.
So when we're making decisions like, should we go partying?
Should we go take drugs? Should we do this?
What should we do in this situation with this friend and this Christian gay guy or whatever?
I need to ask you.
You need to not yell at me.
Like, let's make that commitment.
Obviously, you don't want to spend the rest of your life locked up in my head yelling and castigating and casting asshole thunderbolts like an Old Testament jerkazoid, right?
That's not the role that you want for the rest of your life, right?
Right. That's no fun.
That is no fun. That's like being trapped in the Old Testament with no way out.
You don't want to be Thor with a hemorrhoid having to sit on a cactus.
That's not going to be any fun for you until the end of time.
So, you know, get off the high horse, get off the Sermon on the Mount, get off the flaming thunderbolts that are designed to blow up my ego every single time you think that I've done something wrong.
Let's have a conversation and let's be smart about how we can build a life where we can both be free.
Where I'm not flying blind and you're not blaming me for every crash landing that happens.
Right. Does that sound like more fun than the way we've been doing it?
I guess I've had a hard time seeing this part as a part of me.
It has very much felt like, you know, like God or something.
Sure. Absolutely.
And there is, I have no doubt, if we were to trace it back, we would find the genesis or the infection of this particular part.
But it is a part now.
And, you know, if someone breaks my leg, the fracture in my bone is mine forever.
Right. Right?
The responsibility for it is somebody else's.
But what I have to work with is now mine forever.
And it's not going anywhere.
These voices can't be undone.
You cannot unring that bell.
Right. And so, yeah, you can apologize.
I would apologize to the voice for not listening more, for flying blind, for being so frightened of...
I mean, it's the funny thing about this voice, right?
Is that you're frightened of its criticism, but then the moment you tried to balance the criticism, it became very frightened of your criticism and said, now you're just trying to blame me entirely.
Do you see the parallel? Right.
The sensitivity to criticism...
Or to correction or to negotiation.
The hypersensitivity to it is something that you both share.
That's what you have in common. And if you can both lower that or find a way to deal with that anxiety and still keep in the conversation, you're both going to be way better off.
Right. Did you have a similar part?
Yeah. How long did it take for you to change?
Are you assuming it's all done?
Yeah. Yeah, I guess.
Look, it's a continual process.
It's a continual process for sure.
Right. Yeah, it's a continual process.
So it's something I still need to work on.
It's something I think everybody needs to work on.
You know, when do you stop training to be an athlete?
Well, never. Never.
Right? I mean, Michael Jordan shoots hoops five, six hours a day.
Or did, I guess it's an old metaphor, but Tiger Woods is still out there hitting balls a couple hours a day.
Right. Right.
So you don't stop, you know, because when you stop, you start backsliding.
It's like anything that's...
I guess...
When you stop exercising, well, if you do stop exercising, you will start to lose the benefits of exercise.
It's a, you know, the self-knowledge is a continual process.
It doesn't sort of, yeah, I reach equilibrium.
Now I can float in a lotus position down the sea of ambrosia until the end of time.
It doesn't work like that. At least I don't think it does.
I mean, it's all just my opinions, but...
Right. I guess, how long do it take before you notice a significant improvement?
Oh, the improvements come pretty quickly.
They're not very consistent at the beginning, but they certainly come quickly.
And there are more improvements early on than there are later on, which is true of anything you do.
You plateau, and then you have to find other approaches and so on.
I see. But no, you can expect, I mean, you can expect significant relief after your first conversation, where you stand your ground, and that will continue.
And then there'll be times where you forget about it, you haven't done it, you get lazy, like everyone.
And then you realize that that has negative effects, so you get back to doing it more regularly and so on.
But the benefits will accrue very quickly.
I mean, I'm not saying you're going to feel a million times better, but that little role play that we had, that it gives you some sense of how to move forward in this kind of conversation with yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. I got a sense that this part was slightly relieved at the possibility of having a different kind of role or a less crazy and aggressive kind of role in the future.
You know, that kind of stuff can happen very quickly.
Right, right.
Yeah, I'll definitely listen back to this.
Oh, yeah, I know. And, you know, we haven't used any names or anything, so if it's something you would feel comfortable sharing, I would appreciate that.
But take a listen and let me know what you think.
Right, right. Absolutely.
I'll give it a go ahead now.
Okay, I will send you a copy, and thanks again.
I'm sorry it took a little while for us to hook up, but I'm glad that we did.
That's cool. Thank you very much.
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