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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:05:48
Surviving the Terror of Rejection: A Freedomain Radio Listener Conversation
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Time Text
Hello, hello! Hi, how are you?
I am very well, how are you doing?
Doing very well, very well.
So, I guess I just wanted to start off with, I guess, where the email left off with rejection.
Yes, yeah. Do you want to read the thing that you sent?
Yes, I think that would be best.
I think this is what I said after canceling the subscription.
So I said, I'm so sorry.
I just realized that I haven't been feeling the feeling of rejection by other people, even though they've been doing it repeatedly.
At this point, I've seen so many signs of people.
Not responding to my most cherished thoughts or emails, that for me, not to feel rejection just seems ridiculous.
I haven't been rejecting bad people because I wasn't able to in the past for survival reasons.
I repress the feelings of rejection, so I've been rejecting good people instead by not calling good friends in the past and also Now not continuing the subscription, which has brought me so much happiness.
Rejecting good people is like recreating the abuse that I'm criticizing other people for doing now, which should not continue.
This was provoked by losing the philosopher king status, which made me feel rejected by you, who I highly respect, which I don't think I could have felt in any other way.
Now it seems so clear that I shouldn't have felt it before.
It's interesting that it took I'm losing the status for me to feel rejection.
This is a breakthrough because I think I can definitely afford continuing subscription, continuing IFS therapy two times a month instead, and moving in the summer.
If I stop spending time with bad people, I can also spend more time studying for the new job too, which I have begun to do because I realized that they were corrupt.
Sometimes I feel like I create scenarios that may not be completely supported.
Do you think I have a good understanding of what has been occurring?
Maybe also with why I haven't been feeling like posting on the FDR boards.
Does that mean the fear of rejection comes from repeatedly being rejected and having to normalize it?
That was the email. Yeah, I mean, look, first off, I mean, I don't care about the The subscription.
I really just want to start off saying about that.
I mean, that's not what this call is about, so don't resubscribe or anything like that.
I want to make sure that's real clear.
I want you to feel that there's some sort of fiduciary motive in the conversation, but I think rejection is a very...
Sorry? I did resubscribe.
Oh, well, thank you, I guess.
But if you don't like the conversation, feel free to un-resubscribe.
But I think that the topic of rejection is really important.
Obviously, it's really important.
For you, you're certainly not alone in feeling rejected in the pursuit of virtue.
The idea that virtue...
Produces loneliness is as old as time.
And it's not a myth.
I mean, it's real.
It does. But I think what struck me most was that you talked a lot in your communication about rejection, but nothing about your childhood.
Right. Which, for somebody who's listened to this show for a while, is it an enormous shock that I might be interested in that connection?
No, it can't be. I tried to kind of allude to it, like saying for past survival purposes, so that, I mean, I have analyzed it in some depth, or a lot of depth, I think.
Probably not as fully as I, you know, there's a lot of depth that can always be obtained by going back into thinking about your past and re-experiencing.
Yeah, it's pretty, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty abstract.
And again, you don't have to talk about anything you're not comfortable with, but I was wondering what you thought about in terms of the sensitivity you might have for rejection and your own history.
So I feel like I was rejected by my mom repeatedly as a kid.
Sometimes when we were in the car driving somewhere, I think one time we got into an argument, I can't remember what, it's like probably when I was about four, and she threatened to leave me on the side of the road.
And that was a very painful experience that I still remember vividly throughout my childhood, even before FDR. A lot of the traumas remained with me.
But I think that was one instance.
But probably the worst was probably when my mom said that because I did something wrong, she was going to either leave me alone and, like, Kill herself, like jump off the bridge.
Something crazy.
And she would say it one time and then like the next day it would be like it was all normal.
Like she had never said it and I never heard it.
And then recently I told my mom that I was gay and I think I said, you know, I contemplated suicide and she was like, you know, I want to, you know, die as well or something like that.
Oh, she made it about her?
Yes, everything. Oh, that's tasty.
And then whenever I try to make anything about my feelings and how I felt in the past, it's always...
Then she throws it back on me like, I'm the narcissist.
I'm only thinking about myself when I'm showing and expressing feelings.
Those are my main feelings of rejection, just continuously being Anything that's true or honest is always rejected.
And I just learned throughout childhood just to lie.
Either lie outright or just say, I don't know.
I was using my defense to act like being rejected.
And just anytime I asserted my feelings or thoughts being rejected, I just started to just lie and just come up with something that I knew my mom wouldn't see as Negative or threatening or do what you want to essentially obey.
Can you give me... I'm trying to understand the lying thing.
Sorry, just so it's not implicit, I really am incredibly sorry.
I'm sorry for a number of things.
Obviously that your mom threatened to leave you by the side of the robe when you're four, which is a death sentence.
I'm sorry that this escalation occurred at regular intervals.
I'm sorry that she threatened to kill herself if you didn't obey her.
That's monstrous. And last but not least, I'm sorry that you live in a world where you even have to come out as gay.
Like, I'm sorry, I don't have to come out as straight, right?
I mean, or white or male or bald or whatever, right?
I mean, I'm sorry that we live in this still so superstitious world where that's something that even needs to happen, if that makes any sense.
Yes. Yes.
Definitely. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
Maybe we'll get there soon.
For our kids. Yeah, I mean, you know, anarchist is the new gay, right?
I mean, kind of have to hide it.
Anyplace atheist is the new gay.
But I'm sorry that we all have these restrictions, but, you know, we do have to live in the world as it is, not the world we want to live in.
We can aim for it. So I'm sorry for all of that stuff.
I have a couple of questions, but I don't want to interfere with what it is that you want to talk about.
So you can keep chatting, and I'll keep listening intently, or I can ask some questions or something else.
I think if you could start asking questions, and maybe there are some other questions I wanted to, but I think maybe starting with How that would reproduce itself.
I guess to clarify what I was talking about with lying, just being straight.
If my mom asked me something really personal, I would always...
Wait, sorry. Can you not use the phrase, just being straight?
Because that really confuses me.
Sorry. Direct, honest, something.
I just don't want to mix up my...
Overlaps here. Being attracted to the opposite sex whenever my mom asked me.
So I would lie about that.
So I wouldn't tell her that I was attracted to a man.
Right. So you'd be like, oh, she's hot.
Yeah, she's totally, yeah, I like girls and I just want to turn them into boys.
No, wait, that's not what I mean. Almost.
Actually, she only brought it up two or three times when I was 16, 17, and it was always a one-time thing.
It wasn't like a continuous talking.
I actually never talked about anything.
I'm surprised she never found out or thought to ask me more about it because we actually never talked about sex or anything sexual in nature.
Well, the key would be did it impact her, I would imagine, right?
Right. Yeah. It doesn't impact her, right?
I mean, I guess you weren't dating a whole lot through your teens, right?
Never. Right.
So, I mean, if you care about your child and they're not dating in their teens, then you would sit down and try and sort that out.
But if you don't particularly care about your child and it doesn't have any negative impact on you, then...
Right? And she's a single mom, so...
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Since I was...
I think they got divorced when I was three or four.
Actually, she might have said two. Two, three, or four.
I always thought I was four when I was younger, but it could have been two.
Hmm. Do you remember what you were fighting about when you were four?
So long ago. But I mean, I was...
Just while you think about it, I mean, it's pretty freaking weird to have a fight with a four-year-old.
You know, like, I mean...
You know, I have a four-year-old daughter.
It's weird to think of...
I mean, you have so much power as a parent.
You know, it's like Mike Tyson in his prime saying, you know what, I got into a fight with a four-year-old.
A fist fight with a four-year-old.
You'd sort of look at Mike Tyson and say, okay, I know you're nuts.
I know you were that fucking nuts, right?
Like that you would talk about getting into a fist fight with a four-year-old when you're Mike Tyson.
And parents have so much power.
It's just weird to think of them getting into a fight with a kid.
Kid's got nowhere to go.
Kid's got no economic independence.
He's got no legal independence.
He can't even pull his own pants down sometimes, right?
So it's just weird to get into a fight.
I don't know if I'm explaining anything with any use, but I just sort of want to denormalize.
Because, oh, I got into a fight with my kids or whatever.
What? I mean...
What? I mean, they're children, you're the parents.
Do you fight?
I mean, it's just weird. You know what it probably was?
It was probably I raised my voice.
That's usually something that she doesn't like.
She used to curse at me a lot whenever she got angry.
And any time I would respond back with any kind of...
Outrage or, you know, yelling or...
And what do you mean, Chris? No.
I don't know. I guess I kind of block that.
I don't know. Like, curse words.
Like, fuck, shit.
But she wouldn't say it like that.
She would be more passionate.
Yeah. Okay.
More, like, emotionally charged.
So it was like an intense...
For me, I need her to be happy in order to continue any kind of getting through situation, I guess.
A lot of my childhood was getting through.
Right. Getting through right.
And the idea that you would be...
The idea that you would be left by the side of the road.
Yeah, she was like, get out.
Did she like stop the car?
Was it like a real... Yeah, she started to slow down.
It's pretty psycho, right?
Yeah. Like if you don't obey, if you don't do what I say, if you don't whatever.
I don't even know what the word is.
Submit. It's probably the best word.
Then I'm going to leave you by the side of the road and you're four.
Yeah. And this was something that you perceived, of course, at the time, I would assume, tell me if I'm wrong, as a pretty genuine threat.
Yes. And of course, as a kid, you can't exactly be rolling those dice, right?
Yeah. Not at all.
I mean, you can't say, I'm going to call her bluff, because what if you end up on the side of the road?
Yeah. I would never call bluff.
No, or what if you get home and she's so angry that she just beats the crap out of you, right?
I would never let it get that far.
I mean, I would never...
No, of course not.
Yeah. I mean, any genes which would compel a child to do that would be genes that would be pretty quickly weeded out of the population, right?
I mean, they don't tend to last very long, right?
Even up to, like, when I was in 11th grade, I still never...
Like, when my mom, like, pushed me into the corner, I still didn't get up and defend myself or, you know, do anything.
And I was, like, working out.
I wasn't... I didn't have huge muscles, but I was...
I could have if I wanted to, and it's just...
Even at that point, I just...
But, I mean, what are you going to do, right?
I mean, let's say she cops.
Let's say she kicks you out, right?
I mean, you're in grade 11, for Christ's sake, right?
Yeah. I mean, I didn't physically stand up to my own violent mother until she was out of the house.
Now, for me, that was like 15, but that's because of a variety of circumstances.
But if you were still living there and she's paying the bills, I mean, cops generally believe the parents, right?
Yeah, that's true. I want to point out this is not any kind of – you didn't miss any opportunity.
You didn't fail to act in some strong fashion.
I mean, it sounds like a pretty impossible – I mean, an impossible situation.
Yes. Right.
Right. When you were a child, did you perceive your mom as different from – The norm always involves your mom.
You can't help that, right? Because there's just so much exposure.
But did you ever look at her like, well, she's a little off-center, to say the least?
The problem was that I had a lot of other single moms around me.
Yeah, I know that one.
Like most of my friends, I had single parents.
So maybe I was a...
I don't know. It's going to be interesting.
The friends that I chose had a similar situation as I did.
Sorry to interrupt, but it's not just the friends you chose.
I mean, isn't it sort of the socioeconomic environment?
My mom didn't have money, right?
She actually did have...
I mean, I feel like we were in the middle class, so she did choose high-quality public education school systems, so she would research to make sure she was living in an area which had a decent public education.
Oh, so it wasn't just single moms around, right?
No, no, no.
I would say it wasn't just single parents around.
I was just saying that most of my close friends had single parents.
So no, it wasn't just single parents around.
So it wasn't in the inner city.
It was most of the time in the suburbs of Atlanta.
And even before, when I was living in Charleston, it was It was suburban life.
It wasn't inner city.
I've never seen crime.
I've gotten robbed once.
Other than that, there has never been a threat to my body.
Well, excluding taxation, I agree with you.
In the conventional sense.
Did your mom ever get remarried?
She did not. She actually told me that she tried to Not date as much.
She did get engaged once.
I think she decided to break it off because he was in the military.
I don't know if that's because he would be flying around.
He wouldn't be close by. He was a nice guy in the sense that even though he was joining the military.
But yeah, he was...
At the time, you know, I didn't really think so much about it.
Come on. Come on.
The question of whether he's a nice guy or not is fundamental about whether he's in the military.
What is it fundamental to?
My mom. Yeah, he wanted to marry your mom.
Yeah. Right?
Yeah. I just don't want to do that.
Right. Yeah.
That's true. Okay, so let's go back to the car.
You're four. Your mom's slowing down, basically saying, submit or die.
I don't mean to put it that bluntly, and I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth.
No, that's what I thought.
No, that was my... I was pretty cognizant of what was occurring as a kid.
Sure. Well, I mean, we pretty much focused on the parental attachment.
That's our lifeline, right? Okay, so your mom is all about, like, submit or die.
And what did that do to you as a human being, as a young soul, so to speak?
Made me feel worthless.
That, you know, she would just toss me out like trash.
I mean, that's what I'm thinking now.
But at the time, I didn't even think about it that abstractly.
I was just focused on the feeling of her not wanting me.
Not being wanted. I mean, rejected, right?
I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, right?
Not to beg the question, but that's rejection, right?
Exactly. To be rejected, we do have to have the capacity of acceptance, right?
I don't feel rejected by dead people, right?
Because they don't have the capacity to accept me, right?
I don't feel rejected by termites or...
Truly insane people or whatever, right?
Because they don't have the capacity to accept or reject, right?
Yes. Do you think that your mother had the capacity to accept?
Sorry, that's way too abstract.
I apologize for that. Let me be a little bit more clear.
To reject is basically to say, in a power relationship, to reject is to say...
I can't negotiate with you and so what I'm going to have to do is bully you until you submit to me because I cannot negotiate.
I cannot bend my will to accommodate someone else.
I don't know the first fucking clue about win-win negotiations and I'm not willing to learn.
And so to reject someone...
In a relationship which is a power relationship and where voluntarism is not a choice, right?
I mean, you get rejected by someone you're applying to a job for or some guy you want to ask out or whatever.
It's like, okay, fine. Lots of other fish in the sea, so to speak.
But in a power relationship and an exclusive relationship like the parent-child, rejection is not the correct word if acceptance is possible.
Does that make sense? Yes.
So do you think...
That your mother was capable of accepting you as your own individual with your own thoughts and desires that would sometimes conflict with hers, but you deserved the respect of a human being in her life, in the world, that she brought into the world.
Was she capable of that, do you think?
I mean, no. She was not capable of...
Even into...
I just... Like two or three years ago, I told her how I felt in that situation and she even remembered her saying to me that, you know, get out of the car.
And I told her how it made me feel like I was going to die.
And she was just...
Still, she just minimized or just completely overlooked my feelings.
So I don't think it would be possible.
I just finished reading this book called The Science of Evil.
I'm not trying to label your mom or anything, but it's just that empathy centers are very complex.
It's like 10 centers of the brain that all coordinate to produce empathy.
Lots of people don't have it.
Lots of people don't have it.
You know, if a blind guy looks at my painting and says, I don't like it, what do I think?
You don't care.
You don't...
He's looking at it, but he's not going to be able to reject it.
He's deluded, right? Because he's rejecting something that he can't process.
Which isn't rejecting, right?
Yeah, so if somebody lacks empathy...
They can't reject you because there's no you for them.
They can't see you any more than a blind man can see a painting.
Or if I say, I like carrots, I don't like Brussels sprouts.
I say that in front of the Brussels sprouts, but I don't think I've hurt their feelings.
Because Brussels sprouts don't have feelings to me.
Well, they don't have feelings, not just to me.
They don't have feelings, right? At least not emotional feelings that can be hurt by me not liking them, right?
And it's important to know when we are Brussels sprouts to people.
That's a good way of putting it.
Yeah, when they just, well, I don't like Brussels sprouts.
I don't have empathy for the feelings of Brussels sprouts because Brussels sprouts in my world don't have feelings.
Yeah, I remember you saying this before.
Like, it wasn't really me that she was rejecting.
It was...
She just didn't like the feelings that it provoked in her, so she just, you know, did whatever to get rid of them or to relieve her anxiety.
And it has nothing to do with...
There's lots of things that people do that feel like rejection that aren't rejection.
Right? So, I mean...
If a bird shits on my knee, I will wipe the shit off my knee, right?
It doesn't mean I'm rejecting the bird and feel strongly about the bird or whatever, right?
I should really get rid of that, right?
That's not really a rejection.
I may be sort of mildly annoyed, but I'm not going to get angry at the bird, right?
So there's things that people can do That are not, you know, a rejection of them, right?
So I may be sitting there reading a book in the park and some guys come by to play touch football and maybe they're kind of loud.
I may be a little annoyed, but it's a park, right?
I mean, it's not like I have a monopoly on the sound levels or anything.
And so I may move away.
But does that mean I'm rejecting them as human beings and so on?
No, they're just doing things that don't coincide with my wishes.
So I'm going to change my behavior to...
Deal with that negative stimuli for me.
But it's just negative stimuli for me.
It's not like they're objectively doing something wrong by playing such football in a park, right?
I wonder if I did know that as a kid.
I'm sure you may have.
But go on. Wait, you said I didn't or did?
Sorry. No, you did. Sorry.
I would be convinced you did.
I mean, trust me, my daughter can do an impression on me so accurately.
Yeah. But no, why do you think that you did?
No, I think I did, no.
I mean, I feel like I knew that she was just, she didn't know how, she couldn't, or she didn't feel like she wanted to be a good parent, or figure out what a good parent was, or she just wanted to assume that she was a good parent, regardless of what her actions were, so she didn't have to live up to Any model of what she's seen before, she just felt like she could do it because, you know, she's her.
So I think in a real sense that I did know that.
So I guess if that's not where the rejection, if the feeling of rejection isn't coming from my mom, because I know that she's not capable of empathy, then where would the...
But no, there's another layer though.
Sorry to interrupt. And this is important as well.
Which is, if you as a child are, quote, we just used the word, right?
Rejected by your mom.
And you don't care that you're rejected by your mom, what happens?
Right? You just ignore what she says?
Yeah, what happens then?
You get in trouble.
You can't just ignore it.
You will face some kind of punishment.
Yeah, it escalates, right?
Yeah, it escalates. It escalates until you can convincingly care about your mother's rejection.
Uh-oh. Does that make sense?
Yes, it makes complete sense.
So when I was, I don't know, gosh, maybe five or six years old, so middle of the night, I was always a light sleeper as a kid, fucking stressful household, right?
And I remember my mother was sitting, I guess, in the living room.
I was in my bedroom. I don't know what time it was, one or two o'clock in the morning.
And my mother just suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs, I hate these fucking kids.
Wow. And I remember making a face like, oh, that's bad.
Like, I have to sort of, oh my goodness, that's a bad thing to hear or whatever.
But fundamentally, it didn't move me.
I wasn't shocked.
I mean, of course she felt that.
Mom always had these fantasies that she'd be with Jacqueline Bisset on the red carpet if it wasn't for her.
My brother and I, you know, that there was this huge Tennessee Williams thwarted life of glamour and power and prestige and money and beauty and all that.
But because of the kids, this was all taken from her.
It was all this nonsense, right?
And so I kind of got that it was a bad thing to say at one level, but fundamentally it didn't move me.
Like it wasn't like, oh my God, my world fell apart and from that moment on I was never the same.
Right. Of course.
I mean, given how she acted, I mean, of course she hated us.
At least, you know, a lot of the time.
Not always, but a lot of the time.
We're all trapped in there face to face.
Nobody liked anyone, frankly.
And it's like the Sartre play, no exit, hell is other people, right?
And so, and again, I'm really trying to make sure I separate my experience from yours, but...
You have to pretend that her rejection means something, even if it doesn't.
And you have to pretend convincingly enough that you have to kind of half end up convincing yourself, right?
I mean, the best way to act is to...
That's exactly how I feel.
And so that's what takes hold, because you have to convincingly Portray it, and if you portray it convincingly enough, you know, like I've done scenes in theater class, I've done scenes in actual stage where, you know, I work myself into tears and I end up actually crying.
Like I've convinced myself enough that the emotion takes over.
And I can see my daughter doing this sometimes too if she's upset about something.
I can see her working herself into tears.
I mean, it's not like she's not faking them.
She really does end up crying.
And so... Something that isn't vivid for us is not a spontaneous emotional reaction.
If we have to portray it to ourselves or to others convincingly enough for long enough, it takes root within us, right?
Even though we kind of know it's not true.
It's true. That's a good point.
I was just trying to figure out how to connect that.
Sorry to interrupt. Because you were saying, like, wow, that is how I feel.
That's always good to hear, but how does that fit with your experience?
That fits perfectly.
I was always trying to figure out why I always...
Well, I knew I needed to portray myself in certain ways to be accepted or to at least continue or not get punishment or to move up in some sense of the feeling.
Trying to... I don't know, I guess being gay, it kind of...
I don't know if that helped or if that...
Like, I was caught in a seat, able to lie to other people.
Sure. So, maybe that helped me separate, even partially, you know, knowing that I'm lying about, you know, loving my mom or saying it and not meaning it or...
Saying it and pretending to mean it.
No, I get it. I mean, you live a life, and the difference is, of course, that you can sort of say that you love your mom, and that may not be how you feel deep down, although it obviously has an effect to keep saying it.
But you can say you're straight over and over, and it doesn't matter, right?
I mean, that's not going to change who you're...
I mean, there's no way you can fake yourself into being straight, right?
Yeah, exactly.
But still, of course, you had to try and blend, right?
Right. So the question is the unblending.
Yeah, the gay thing is another issue.
You can certainly talk about it if you want a 46-year-old straight guy's opinion on that.
It's a chat about it, but the thing with your mom, I think, is really important.
The thing with your mom is really important.
There's a terrible thing that happens to the integrity of a child who has to conform to severely dysfunctional behavior.
I mean, narcissistic self-involvement, lack of empathy, whatever it is.
I don't know. I'm no expert.
But there's something really difficult that happens to a child, which is that you have to pretend that the person means something to you even though you don't mean something to the person.
Yeah, I feel like that's what I do a lot.
Right. Right.
And the only way to make it through a childhood with somebody who lacks significant amounts of empathy is to pretend...
So well that you forget that you're pretending.
It doesn't create any real feelings of attachment or love.
I remember when I was in boarding school when I was six, I would lie in bed and just sometimes if I was upset, a good cry usually makes you feel better and I remember I'd sit there I'm curled up in a ball under my blankets in a big corridor with all the other boys and everyone was usually asleep at this point and I'd sort of cry to myself by imagining that my mom was coming and was going to take good care of me and so on and I would say, Bubby, Bubby, and I would sort of make myself cry and I'd feel better afterwards.
Of course, if my mom had actually shown up in the doorway, I'd be like, oh, shit.
Right? Like, oh, that's not good.
Right? So there would be this like fantasy life.
Right? But it didn't have anything to do.
You have to manufacture so much when you lack those basic empathetic and loving relationships.
You have to manufacture obedience based out of fear and contempt.
You have to hide your contempt, of course, when you realize, if you do, that your parents are pretty much retarded, right?
I mean, just like big, dangerous children themselves.
And All of this is really crippling.
It's not permanently crippling.
It's good that you did what you did.
I mean, there was no choice.
There was no option whatsoever.
You can't openly defy people without empathy.
I mean, they'll just fuck you up one way or another.
I mean, they're just really dangerous to be around.
Do you not have any siblings?
Is that right? I do not.
I'm only a child. So just me and my mom.
Right. I mean, that's even more...
Even more toxic, right?
So it's just...
Anyway, I'm incredibly sorry for this all around.
So you end up having to fake a whole bunch just to get through.
And I mentioned this in the show before, but it's like that scene in the Gulag Apikalago where Solzhenitsyn is describing everybody is applauding some party dignitary who gave a speech and there are a bunch of KGB agents around and they all applaud until their hands bleed.
Because nobody wants to be the first to stop applauding.
Because then you're going to be yanked off to some concentration camp, right?
You're the one who's applauding.
Why were you the first one to stop applauding?
So they keep going.
So they keep going and cheering.
I mean, what an insane situation to be in, right?
You've got to cheer something that you contempt yourself.
You've got to praise something that you're terrified of.
You've got to show conformity out of enthusiasm that's entirely based upon punishment.
And so, the real rejection, and it's a necessary rejection, the real rejection is of your own genuine experience of being a child in that household.
So, what was your genuine experience of being a child in that household?
Care. Complete. Always afraid of any time my mom.
My mom would always just come into the door or into the room, barge in.
She always wanted the door open.
You know, why is this door closed?
She would barge in any time.
Doesn't matter. No knocking.
So just completely afraid.
I don't know if some trash hasn't gotten taken out.
There's some crumbs on the counter.
My mom was always a stickler about Having one of the cleanest houses in the world, any breadcrumbs on the counter was almost a long time of just anguish and emotional turmoil.
So I was afraid.
A lot of my childhood was being afraid.
Is she a chatterbox?
She... We talked, but she would talk about anything that she felt, and I would chime in.
And we would ask each other questions, and she tried to engage me in some things that she felt was important.
And then as I got older, we did start talking about politics.
I started, I essentially came into politics, essentially watching CNN newsroom, not newsroom, it wasn't called that, a crossfire at the time.
And I love debates, so I watched that show continuously until I became a Democrat.
Then I saw Ron Paul in 2008 and essentially came into the movement through him running.
So I guess, talking about politics sometimes, I'm a very healthy food advocate, so we talk about healthy living, So, I mean, I engaged in some sort of way with her, but it was nothing intimate, nothing emotional, nothing about any of my private lives.
She never, you know, inquired about having a girlfriend, except for a couple of times, maybe in eighth grade, I did try to date someone.
Oh, do single mothers hang on like grim death so often to the single sons, right?
Oh, I'm so sorry.
I'm a little concerned about getting lonely as I age, so you just sit right here by Mama until the end of time.
She didn't do it as much as I feel like other parents do it.
My mom actually had a lot of time alone, which was nice.
I was isolated, but not nice in that way.
But it was better than being continuously bombarded with her thoughts.
I had my own thoughts. It wasn't continuous amounts of questions.
I know a lot of people have to go through that, just continuously invoking into your actual private space, which is your ability to think for yourself.
That was never done.
I could just say, I don't know, or I mean, if you didn't care what your thoughts are, that doesn't necessarily speak of emotional maturity, right?
Yeah, that's true.
Okay, so the terror you said that you felt for most if not all of your childhood, what emotion - sorry to sound so annoying - what emotion comes with fear?
The three: fight, flight, or freeze.
Yeah, I mean, the freeze and the flight are kind of two sides of the fear mechanism, right?
Yeah, because I couldn't fight anyway.
Yeah, you can find it.
The bottom line comes with fear.
And you can see this if you ever watch those shows where they...
There's, I think, a pretty famous YouTube video where some guy pretends, like he puts a screwdriver in a light socket and pretends that he's getting electric shock.
Right. And his friend is really startled and afraid that he's getting electric shock.
and what always happens right after that?
You're relieved?
No. Maybe.
That's right. So if somebody pretends that you've given them an electric shock and it turns out that they're fine, what's the emotion you feel after?
Oh, like, what was the point of that?
What's, um...
I'm trying to think of what it's called.
Oh, you know the word emotion.
I think it's... Unnecessary?
What's the emotion? Exasperation?
Like what was the point of that?
Yeah, but you know what the point of that is, right?
It's to make you feel scared. So when somebody wants to make you feel scared, what do you feel towards that person?
Anger. Yes.
Well, that's what I should be feeling.
Well, I would argue that it's not what you should be.
That's what you are. Yeah.
I did write about repressed anger, but I only felt it once.
When was that? I think I was listening to a podcast, but it was more about domination.
It was more about Like arguing with people and it was less about my mom.
It's probably more like protecting.
Right. So a mom who threatens you with abandonment, a mom who doesn't show much empathy, a mom who scares you, who bullies you, who threatens suicide and so on, who you can't get away from.
Do you think there's some anger there?
Yes. Yes.
A lot. A lot.
Because people who scare us, the emotional purpose of fear is to avoid danger.
Anger is the fight mechanism.
Anytime we feel fear, I believe, we also feel anger to a proportional degree.
It's just that if you're in the freeze mechanism, you can't show it because you're frozen, right?
Right. And children don't have the fight and they don't have the flight.
All they have is the freeze.
And in the freeze, you can't show anger.
In the compliance, you can't show anger.
Anger is the opposite of compliance to injustice, right?
Anger is fighting injustice.
And so... The emotion that always accompanies fear, which is anger, is inexpressible in an environment where subjugation is necessary.
The slave is frightened of the whip, but he cannot get angry at the whipmaster.
Why?
Because that means the whipping is going to be hotter.
Yeah, I'm actually remembering all the times I was angry at her.
And like calling her a bitch in my mind over and over again.
And she swears at you, which is an unholy thing to do to a child.
I mean, it's just evil.
It's an evil thing to do to a child.
And I bet that you were never allowed to mirror even the slightest of her negative behaviors back at her.
Never, ever, ever.
If even like a sliver of anger came out of my mouth, out of my thoughts, not out of my thoughts, out of my mouth, everything had to be kept in my mind and very abstract and emotionalist because I couldn't experience it.
Look, the easiest way to have something, it's interesting that when you listen to this back, you'll notice that your thoughts and your words and your mouth were kind of mixed up, right?
But that makes sense. Because the best way to not have something come out of your mouth is to not experience it in your heart, right?
Anger is very dangerous to people who are being controlled.
Anger is the right of the master, not of the slave.
And if the slave ever gets angry, the master escalates immediately and intensely.
And so the necessary rejection of your own anger was an essential survival mechanism in this particular instance or environment, right?
And that is something that's really important to remember.
That is important to remember.
Because that's probably the biggest thing.
Pressing.
Yeah.
And it's...
I do feel myself oppressing it many times.
So how do I deal with the...
How do I, I guess, express the anger in a healthy, non-projecting way?
Yeah.
Ah, well.
Saying, how do I just become a gymnast?
Well, you practice, right?
I mean, there's no secret sauce, right?
There's no, I'm going to give you the secret word that turns you into an expert sauce or whatever, right?
I mean, therapy, of course, is a fantastic way to work on these feelings, notice your dreams, and what happens is when we get At least I think.
What happened when I first started to get really angry about my history was that I self-attacked.
The anger slid towards self-attack, which is why I'm always really emphatic with people that this was a necessary survival strategy because you start to get really angry and then you're like, oh man, I was such a coward.
I never said any of this stuff when I was a kid.
God! Right?
That's just another way of diffusing your anger, turning it against yourself, right?
I've done that before. Yeah, I did that when I first started listening to your podcast.
What the hell's wrong with me? Why do I have such difficulty being assertive?
What the hell's wrong with me? God, I'm so broken.
But no, it's all necessary survival strategies on a non-voluntary and extremely dangerous at times environment, right?
I mean, if your mom had carried through on her threat to kill herself, well, that's...
Quite a lot of complications for young you, right?
Yeah, lots of complications.
It makes things a lot harder.
Right. So, there was...
It was very smart to not be angry.
It was essential. It was wise.
It was good. Right?
And if you wanted to stay in these kinds of relationships your whole life, then there wouldn't be any point changing this, right?
But you don't, right? No, I do not.
Definitely do not ever again.
Yeah. Never again.
I mean, for God. You didn't choose that, but you can choose now, right?
Yes, exactly. So I think the first thing to recognize is that your anger was tamped down, right?
In the same way that if you had grown up in North Korea, you would have a bit of trouble talking openly in public about your political views.
Is that because you were a coward?
No, it's because you're alive.
Right. If you hadn't done that, you wouldn't be alive if you'd grown up in a dictatorship.
That's true. You can only do it in some extent in the United States, I guess.
I think that's really...
It's not even a matter of forgiving yourself for your compliance.
You have to praise yourself for your compliance.
Great fucking job, little me.
Like, holy shit.
Great job, little me.
And the other thing to remember is that you have an inner mom now, but your inner mom is there to protect you from the outer mom.
She's not the same as your outer mom.
No part of herself is an enemy to ourselves.
Right? So you had to internalize your mom's personality in order to Manipulate her into letting you live, right?
Exactly. And so, your inner mom may come charging at you, and you may be tempted to respond to your inner mom like you would your outer mom.
You bitch or whatever, right?
But no, your inner mom is not a bitch.
Your inner mom is totally there to help you.
And she's rushing at you, yelling at you, which she'll do sometimes, because she's there to prevent your real mom doing that.
I actually never even thought of that inter-mom, like my mom's personality, how it may have internalized itself.
Oh, yeah, that's definitely happened.
I mean, I'd love to one day fund, you know, if the donations keep rolling in.
I'll do this one day where I had a fund on, like, so you're going to get the mom or the dad to get a brain scan while they're chatting about certain topics, and then I'm going to do a role play with the kid playing the mom and dad.
I bet your exact same brain center is going to light up.
Personalities are infectious, particularly for children.
I tried not to become...
I mean, I was cognizant of trying not to become like our mom.
Narcissistic. Is it possible that I tried not to do that?
Or is you saying that it's almost an impossibility to...
To not be like your mom? No, I said your mom didn't say you.
Right, right, right. That's true.
Your inner mom was there to protect you from your outer mom, right?
And so, no, I mean, God, don't think you're doomed to be like your mom.
I mean, the fact that we're even having this conversation, you know, that's another form of self-attack, right?
It's just despair or whatever, right?
No, you're not at all doomed to be like your mom.
I mean, you're listening to shows, you're doing self-knowledge work, I assume, obviously not jumping down my throat for suggesting therapy and, you know, I think your level of self-awareness is extremely high and you should take great pride in that.
Your level of sensitivity to yourself, right?
So there's been a ton of times in this conversation, you'll listen to it when you hear back, tons of times in this conversation where I've said something pretty difficult and you're like, bam, I felt that or I didn't or whatever, right?
So you really are a The erobic night of self-empathy.
And through that self-empathy, which you've rescued through this horrible journey through your childhood, I mean, that's incredible.
I mean, what an incredible feat.
I mean, it's like throwing a whole bunch of dinner plates off a tall building in a windstorm and on a table in a perfect, you know, let's have a dinner party.
It's incredible what you've done.
And that self-respect, that self-praise is important.
Now, you say, well, look, I am going to self-protect, which is I can't be around people like my mom because that is going to cause me to regress, right?
I mean, obviously, right?
I mean, somebody who's working on PTSD coming out of war doesn't sit through a whole bunch of war films, right?
And that's not a good idea.
So it doesn't go back to war, right?
Right, right. So not being around people like your mom, I think, is kind of important for a while.
And your unconscious will get, oh, we're doing something different.
Okay, we don't have to protect ourselves against these kinds of people anymore, at least not as intensely, and therefore we can start to explore other ways of being.
Things like getting angry, things like being assertive, things like being curious about other people without fear of being sucked into their narcissistic whatever.
So there's things that you can do that are different.
I have found myself doing different things, especially when my friends do or my friend did something really, I thought, not caring.
It was something I really care really deeply about, which was the gun control debate.
And I got pretty angry at the fact that my friend laughed and kind of put me down in a way that my ideas were just something to laugh at.
So this is the first time I really got angry at someone just dismissing my argument in just a clear fashion.
So I have felt myself become more angry.
And I tried not to. I mean, I haven't even felt the need to self-attack.
I have been doing IFS therapy, so I've tried to work through some issues in the past.
But the connection really helped with thinking about making myself or starting to believe the lie.
Right. Because I'm not sure if I fully was aware of the fact that It may have been possible that there's still some things that I'm lying to myself about.
That's not what you said.
No, that's not what I said.
That's not what you said, no. The necessary conformity to a dangerous environment, the most efficient thing is to falsify it to the point where you believe it.
Lying is a voluntary action, right?
Right, so like if somebody comes to my house and says, where's your wife?
I want to shoot her. I'm not going to tell the guy the truth, right?
I'm not lying to him because we're not in a situation where there's a voluntary interaction.
I never thought about it that way.
Wait, so... You're surviving, for God's sakes, right?
So wait, how is...
I've never thought of lying as being defined in that way.
Could you, like, go into more depth?
Well... The law recognizes this completely, right?
So if I walk into a grocery store with you with a gun to your ribs and say, steal that candy bar, you steal the candy bar, and we get caught, who goes to jail?
The person that steals the candy bar, the person that listened to...
Not the person that lied.
No, I put a gun to your ribs and say...
Go steal that candy bar.
I'm going to walk into the grocery store with you.
You steal that candy bar or I'm going to shoot you.
Right? And then you go and steal the candy bar and then they apprehend us outside and they find that I had a gun pressed to your ribs the whole time.
Who goes to jail? Yeah, the person that had the gun to you.
Yeah. Because you didn't steal something.
You didn't have a choice who had gun to your ribs.
It's not stealing. Of course, of course.
And if somebody's going to threaten, you know, tell me the truth about where your wife is, I'm going to go kill her or whatever.
I'm not going to tell the guy the truth.
I'm going to lie. But it's not lying, right?
Any more than what you did with the guy with the gun to your ribs is stealing.
Oh, it's not lying.
It's not lying, is it? No.
If I voluntarily go give a bunch of money to people who are doing great wrong in the world, then I'm subsidizing evil.
If I'm paying my taxes so that I don't get gang raped in jail, that's just not...
It's not the same thing. There's no morality involved where there's force.
Right. So you can't call it lying to yourself because you're fucking threatened with being left by the side of the road when you're four.
Sorry. But yeah, I mean, am I at you?
I'm just... I understand.
Yeah, I understand. This is where self-attackers can creep in, right?
Yeah, definitely.
I made my mom Mother's Day cards.
Does that mean I was confused about my relationship?
No, of course not. Wait, recently?
Or do you mean as a kid? Recently?
God, no. No, God, I don't know if we were in the dead.
I'm a kid, right?
We would make her breakfast on her birthday.
Why? Because you're fucked if you don't, right?
Right. If you have to lie, it's not lying.
I mean, you just can't use the same word, right?
Right. Because, I mean, I know it's hard to use a different word, dissembling or whatever, but you can't use the same word to describe somebody who voluntarily tells a falsehood for material advantage and somebody who lies because they've got a gun to their head.
I mean, it's not the same moral category, right?
I mean, not even close. That's a good idea.
Yeah, separating that's really important.
That's good.
So if I feel the need to start, or if my mom, because she does become nice, I don't know You know, she tries to act like she's changed.
I guess continuously being honest, I haven't talked to her in a while.
Yeah, look, as far as managing your relationship with your mom goes, I will defer to your therapist with all due humility.
I mean, that's a big and complex question.
I mean, I don't even know how old you are.
I don't know what your circumstances in life is.
So I'll leave that to your therapist if you don't mind.
I think that being honest with people is a good thing, and I think that some relationships are strengthened through honesty, and some relationships are strengthened through honesty, but that should not deter us in our goal of honesty.
I don't know if you have or haven't, but I would ask your therapist for his or her assessment of your mother's capacity for change.
Character logic disorders, The real basic ones, like lacking empathy and stuff.
As far as I know, completely incurable.
As far as I know, right?
Certainly incurable by you.
Oh yeah, definitely not trying to cure.
Right, right. So, I mean, I would focus on trying to assess her capacity for change.
And I would assess it as an idiot on the internet as low.
And if not, I mean, the change comes because she's going to be working at it real hard.
It's not going to come about because, you know, the seasons turn and the moon waxes.
Yeah. I feel like she's working on her career, not on self-knowledge.
Right. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, human personality is incredibly inert, even at the best of, you know, under the greatest effort to change it sometimes feels like pushing the entire planet uphill.
But, so, you know, working on change, change isn't going to happen.
You just decide whether, you know, she's somebody you want to spend a lot of time with or not.
But I would definitely work on that with your therapist because that, you know, takes a lot of detailed knowledge that I don't have and we don't have time together.
Understandable. Well, I guess I've taken up good enough time and it was very helpful.
Was it useful?
Very useful, yes. Sort of a helpful chat.
Yes. Definitely the lying thing.
That's literally the biggest part.
Not using the same moral standards.
Yes, certainly. We can't have the same moral standards for kids as we do for adults.
And my forgiveness is always...
There's not even anything to forgive with kids.
I mean, most of them are just trying to survive their environment.
I hope that was helpful.
I'll send you a copy, of course. You can have a listen if you thought it might be helpful.
I think it would be, but for other people to listen to, you can let me know if that's all right.
But have a listen.
Let me know what you think.
That sounds perfect.
I appreciate all your help, sir.
You're very welcome.
Thank you for taking the time to chat.
I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
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