Dec. 14, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:25:50
5333 MOTHER WANTED ME TO DIE Call In
I believe I have a lot of problems, but I had to condense most of that down to two large issues I have in life, one of which is isolation, I suppose. I've been very isolated in my life, especially after dropping out of high school in 2017. And it's gotten really painful, and I've also been very much attached to reading fiction. So it sort of started when I was 12 years old, and I'm 25 now.And only recently, it really has started to lose its charm and its grip and influence on me. But very often, I would find myself awake at night and do nothing but read until I couldn't stay awake anymore. More, and basically I'd be drowning myself in it, in fantasy and fiction, and I guess I wanted to postpone reality because it sort of always sort of ran faster than my heart could beat...Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!Get my new series on the Truth About the French Revolution, access to the audiobook for my new book 'Peaceful Parenting,' StefBOT-AI, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
I've been pacing a whole and yeah, I've been very nervous and excited.
Well, that's a good place to be.
That's a good place to be.
That's where the progress is, I think, in life.
So, all right Sid, do you want to read what you sent me?
Do you want to just chat about it?
What's your pleasure?
Yeah, I've been reconsidering what I am rethinking.
I believe I have a lot of problems, but I had to condense most of that down to two large issues I have in life, one of which is isolation, I suppose.
I've been very isolated in my life, especially after dropping out of high school in 2017.
It's gotten really painful.
I've also been very much attached to reading fiction, so it sort of started when I was 12 years old, and I'm 25 now.
And only recently it really has started to lose its charm and its grip and influence on me.
But very often I would find myself awake at night and do nothing but read until I couldn't stay awake anymore, and basically I'd be drowning myself in it, in fantasy and fiction.
I guess I wanted to postpone reality because it always sort of ran faster than my heart could beat, I suppose.
And I tried detaching from this habit in the past, but doing that was always very painful, and I could never manage more than six months without it.
And sometimes I'd be reading 14 hours a day for weeks, and I wasted many years on this.
I believe this reading habit had a precursor which it metastasized from.
I was also a very sleep-deprived child and teenager because I wanted to maximize the amount of time being in my fantasies.
I would create worlds and characters in my head and let it all play out.
Oftentimes it was the only thing for me to look forward to.
I had this space in my head.
that made everything soft.
An intentional wordplay.
Sorry, but what do you mean?
You had this space in your head that made everything soft?
I'm not sure what that means.
Because my family life was kind of empty and agonizing, and I feel like by retreating into my fantasies, I could have this synthesis between communication and intimacy, which I never really had with my family.
I feel like
I gave up on trying to reach my family members around the age of eight, and I realized that I couldn't really interact with them much without feeling agony and sadness.
And I guess, you know, giving up on interacting with my family that early is kind of part of a logical sequence, you know, in which, I guess, after that I just gave up on myself.
I suppose I silenced myself as well, so I feel like I forgot who I am over time.
And with the silence came isolation.
And I think this history of isolation really reared its ugly face when I turned 11.
My family moved away to a different town when I turned 11, and I guess I'll call it the indifferent town, because I told my mother shortly prior to us moving that I'll kill myself if we move away.
And so we did move away, and we ended up in two different homeless shelters for about half a year.
Wait, what?
You moved and you ended up in homeless shelters?
How did that come about?
I guess we sort of wanted to cheat the endless waiting queue of finding an apartment in a huge populated city.
That's kind of a trick.
Oh, so if you go to the homeless shelter, then you get earned a fast track for government housing?
Is that right?
Exactly.
Despite German laws being kind of differentiated and nuanced, you can do these.
There's kind of these loopholes that you can play around with.
But yeah, my family moving did me such an incalculable amount of inner harm.
You know, I remember sitting at the desk in a tiny room of that homeless shelter, and I counted five pills, various pills, various stuff that I had to, that I supposedly needed every morning.
And one of those pills... What were these pills?
Yeah.
One of them was a quite high dose for my body weight of ADD medication.
And I had to take this useless iron supplement due to anemia, and I needed B12, probably malnutrition because I didn't eat enough meat.
And being B12 deficient isn't exactly easy nowadays, because they stuff that in everything.
And I needed a vitamin D supplement as well.
I don't remember the fifth one.
But yeah, before taking these ADD drugs, my grades in school plummeted, and I kind of
I suppose it was a mystery to all the adults around me.
I guess they didn't have the empathy and curiosity to ask what was destroying my cognition so much.
But yeah, I had to find new friends.
I couldn't imagine a life without friends, not yet anyway.
And it was quite difficult under all of that medication.
It took me some time to find friends, like about one to two years.
But something fundamental happened to my friendships at that point, and the way I related to people would change permanently.
My old friends from my hometown, they were very bright and kind of bubbly and optimistic and playful, creative.
You know, we were kids kind of like me back then.
But the world sort of turned bleak after we moved.
There was a lack of play, a lack of exploration, and a lack of adventure and friends that I eventually could make.
My new friends were often rather recluse and shy, and their temperament was a bit subdued, and they seemed to be very in-drawn.
I think I turned into someone who was very much similar to that.
It was kind of the opposite of the friendships I had before being abducted by my family.
I remember that as I turned older, especially during puberty, I'd often think that normal people were boring, and I was bullied a lot shortly after moving.
Another thing I noticed is that...
After my family moved, I became incredibly tense physically, and I always felt very stressed.
And I had to go to this neurofeedback thing to relearn how to relax my body, you know, with electrodes attached to my scalp and everything.
It wasn't really helpful, but yeah, I think ultimately my friendships started to grow another mutation.
I noticed very quickly that some of my friends were troubled, and especially now I feel that they were the neglected children like me, and my entire attention was tuned towards the problems of the people around me, and my friends in particular.
I would always want to talk about their problems and lend an ear to them, and I would spend this massive amount of empathetic and cognitive resource
To the point that it exhausted me, and I would often try raising my friend's motivation, you know, to find her dreams, her ambition.
I wanted to shake them awake, and I feel like I was trying to get my old friends back, and it's like my heart was left behind at my old hometown, and it sounds weird.
After I moved away, nothing really seemed more alive than something dying, because I think I'm attracted to people who feel hopeless.
And the sad thing is that whenever my friends started to spend time with other people, I'd become jealous and sad, because I had this feeling that something was wrong with
And, you know, without me, maybe they would have been better off.
And sometimes I got paranoid.
And what if they hate me?
And what if they talk about me behind my back?
Do they even need me?
And is it okay if I disappear?
And I would withdraw.
Because I think I wanted them to come to me and somehow signal to me that I was appreciated or accepted.
Maybe I even withdrew once they started to show signs of self-sufficiency, but I'm not too sure.
After dropping out of high school and everyone that was functional, I guess psychologically more independent, they fell away from my life.
I only had two people remaining, and everyone I knew at that point, either online or locally,
had this kind of hopelessness to them, and a pessimism to some degree, either about their lives in general, or about our relationships, and their parents, or orientation, job, and career.
And I was always so focused on trying to help my friends solve problems they treated as unsolvable.
And over time, I grew tired of everything.
So it started to feel like I was thinking for them, instead of
them thinking for themselves, and so I'm very alone now.
I was journaling the other day, and it came to me that there may be some subconscious, some irrational logic in this.
Because if I solve people's problems that I think are unsolvable, maybe I have a chance or a hope of solving my own issues as well.
But I feel like this all put me in a therapeutic role that is very inappropriate for a friendship, especially for young people, because one party falls short
of the standards I wanted to convince them of, and the other party would be this lonely sage, exposing their weakness just constantly.
It reminds me of my earlier childhood, because I always felt small and insignificant, and I think maybe I unintentionally put these same feelings of smallness on others.
Because with my constant involvement in their inner lives, I might have been undermining their ability of them finding their anger and sadness naturally, so that they could break out after depression or their hopelessness.
I know six years ago, I didn't really know that you couldn't help people who didn't want to be helped, and it hurt me so much to have so many people around me, or at least multiple people around me, who felt so hopeless or who didn't have the ambition I wished everyone to have, or I tried maintaining within myself, which I failed at, honestly.
I think my role of being this cool, wise guy came with some kind of inhumane standard of omnipotence.
As a child, I had to be inhuman as well, because I had to be functional with half of my functions cut off.
It's not entirely clear to me what the exact origin is.
Half of your functions cut off?
I was neglected and clearly malnourished.
I didn't sleep much.
I wanted to spend more time with my brother and my family in general, but my father left me and there wasn't really anyone to spend
to speak to and to fall back on.
There was a lack of comfort.
I had quite a dark family life, dark as in lonely and isolated.
When I look at my key memories, they're sort of applicable to most of the issues I have.
It all seems to be tightly intertwined, and I guess that's typical, because otherwise these survival mechanisms would be too easy to unravel.
But yeah, that's one of the big issues I wanted to speak with you about.
I don't think it's that healthy to be this lonely, and it really harmed me physically.
I feel like I lost a lot of vigor and vitality because of this, partly due to my previous inaction.
I guess that's kind of a feedback loop.
But yeah, I guess I'm asking you to help me in understanding these dynamics.
Sorry, which dynamics in particular do you mean?
The way I would engage with other people, the relationships I would have to my friends, and the way I would withdraw after that, and how it all, I believe, came from my childhood.
went on to live and probably to be, I don't know, they fell away from my life.
So there's a reason for why this happened, I suppose.
There's a reason for my loneliness.
A lot of this isolation is kind of self-inflicted, too.
I'm never sure when you've finished your thought.
I'm about to say something, and then you start again, so I don't want to interrupt.
Oh, I'm sorry.
If you have more to say, I don't know when you've finished your thought.
And that's just, you know, probably just not used to some of the back and forth, right?
I'm not used to this.
No, so you have a lot, obviously, you have a lot to say, and your language skills are fantastic, of course.
I assume that's partly intelligence and partly just 14 hours a day of reading.
But yeah, I don't know when you're finished your thoughts, which is, and again, I don't want to interrupt, you have a lot to say, so.
I'm finished.
I think I'm finished with this one, I believe.
There's another problem I have, but I don't know if I want to, I talked so much that I don't really want to throw that.
It's good to, I think it's okay to separate that, to maybe once we're done speaking about this one, or I don't know.
Well, they could be related.
What's the other problem?
The other problem is that
I'm totally directionless.
I'm kind of letting things decay around me, and I'm unemployed.
When you say things like, I'm kind of letting things decay around me, that probably is a vivid experience for you, but I don't know what it means.
I don't know if that means you're letting black mold grow in your apartment.
I don't know if that means that you're not exercising.
If that means you're not maintaining relationships.
Like, if you could just give me a little bit less language and a little bit more empiricism, that would be really helpful.
Because your inner experience isn't working for you, so if you communicate to me your inner experience, which isn't working for you, you're telling me what doesn't work.
But if you give me the facts, then I can look at things a bit more objectively, if that makes sense?
Right.
So I'm unemployed.
I'm maintaining myself physically and
I'm trying to, and it's going really well.
My diet is good.
I'm getting much stronger physically.
I'm kind of recovering from my teenage years and childhood.
I don't have many friendships.
I have one friend that I'm growing tired of locally, one local friend, and one from my old hometown that's been in my life since I was three years old.
But that's really all.
I don't have any romantic… not many romantic experiences.
It's been seven years since I've been with… I guess it's my old high school.
The one from high school kind of collapsed immediately.
And I don't really… I don't know… I don't know… But you say it kind of collapsed immediately.
I don't know what that means.
I mean, that's your own internal experience.
Yes.
But I don't know what that means, because if you communicate your own internal experience rather than the facts, it becomes a monologue, if that makes sense.
Because I don't know what to add to that, I don't know how to evaluate that, because I don't know what actually happened.
Did it end because she moved away?
Did it end because one of you cheated?
Did it end because you got bored?
Did you have a big fight?
Like, I don't know, when you say like it just kind of collapsed immediately, I don't know what that means, because that's very much an internal
analogy for an experience rather than the facts that would unite us in conversation.
Yes, yes.
And none of this is criticism, you understand?
This is not a bad thing, I'm just pointing it out.
Yeah, it may be a little bit unoptimal because I'm trying to have a conversation with you.
Well, no, to be fair, and again, none of this is a criticism in any way, shape or form.
But you're not trying to have a conversation with me as yet.
We'll get there.
But as yet, you're not trying to have a conversation with me.
Do you know why?
Maybe it's a defense?
No, no, no.
I'm not asking you for the causality.
Do you know why as yet?
And again, no criticism at all.
Nothing negative.
I'm just, you know, pointing out the facts.
Do you know why you're not having a conversation with me as yet?
No, I don't.
The reason is that you're giving me a bunch of really vivid internal experience and analysis and thoughts and judgments and possible connections and evaluations and so on, right?
But you haven't asked me if it makes any sense to me.
Oh yeah.
And you also haven't asked me what information I'm looking for.
Yes.
And again, no criticism, again, because I know that you're probably quite prone to self-criticism, so I'm not, I have no problem with anything you're doing, no problem whatsoever, I think it's perfectly fine.
But you're dumping a huge amount of highly complex stuff, some of which is, I get the occasional scrap of fact, like you moved town, that you're on these five medications, but it's this stream of internal thoughts and judgments and experiences and flavors and so on.
Oh yeah.
And you haven't said, are you following?
Does this make sense?
What information would you like to have?
So normally when people, when I say to people, you know, do you want to read the email you sent me or do you want to tell me more about the issue?
Yes.
I don't usually expect a sort of 25 minute, I won't say a ramble because it's not rambling like it's very important and I get all of that and I appreciate that, but you had a monologue
Without asking whether it made sense to me or whether it was information that was helpful to me in helping you solve your problem.
That's true.
And it sort of burnt up in a way, you know, we usually have two hours, so you've burnt up almost a quarter of that time without asking me if the information is helpful.
Yes.
And again, no problem, but so as yet, a conversation is when
You're exchanging information, not having a monologue.
Now, when I interrupted you a couple of times to say, what does this mean or what does that mean, it didn't seem to say to you that there were parts of your monologue that I didn't understand and couldn't follow.
You just went back to the monologue, if that makes sense.
Yes, that makes sense, and I remember and I follow.
Okay, so again, no problems, no issues.
This is the stuff that we're trying to work on, and I wanted to make sure... I was just curious to see if at some point you'd say, is this helpful to you, or does this make sense, or are you following, or what else do you need to know, or... But no, just... It makes a lot of sense.
Straight on, right?
Straight marching on with the syllables.
And of course, you read books, and what are books?
Books are a monologue of the author to you.
That's very true.
You don't get to interrupt the author and say,
Hey, I'm sorry, this part doesn't make any sense, like, I'm reading Oliver Twist with my daughter, and, you know, part of us, you know, we sort of make jokes about interrupting Charles Dickens to say, dude, look, I get it, I know you're paid by the word, but seriously, you don't need, you know, you don't need a paragraph that goes on for two pages, right?
So, with authors, they're just having a monologue at you, you're on the receiving end, and...
So, you're not used to interrogatory or sort of a back and forth thing.
So, that's fine.
So, I guess one of the questions I have, you said you wasted a lot of years reading.
I hate to even think that anyone imagines that they're wasting time reading.
I get that you can.
So, what kind of books were you reading as a whole?
Like Christopher Paolini and Brenton Sanderson, John Gwynne, hero stories, fantasy, fiction, like Inheritance Cycle, if you've ever heard of this one, and sometimes I'll just even go through and browse the internet sections for fine fiction.
And read all kinds of stuff.
Because I was very focused on characters.
It feels like I wanted to get closer to the characters.
I was very character-focused.
See, I don't know what that means.
I just wanted to feel.
I feel like
I feel like I don't know how to say this.
I was about to give you another internal experience thing.
Good, good, okay, good.
Good catch, good catch.
Yes.
Okay.
It's very difficult to switch the mood.
So I asked you what types of books you read and you gave me a bunch of authors and then you vaguely mentioned that it's sort of fantasy and hero show.
So you wrote, is it sort of medieval fantasy stories that you're reading?
Yes, yes.
And I assume there's somewhat of a limited number of books in that genre.
Is that all of what you've read, or were there other types of stories that you read?
Yeah, I've been reading a lot of fan fiction.
So I remember
I remember I found this… Maybe you're familiar with these Japanese comics, these mangos.
I found one at the age of seven at a storefront, and I was kind of…
I guess enraptured by this, because it was totally new to me.
It would kind of follow me around in my memories for years until I had my first, I suppose, one of these iPhones with which you could connect to the internet.
I would just download the app and browse for fan fiction related to this particular Japanese comic work.
And I would just read everything I could get my hands on, and I did this with various, sometimes anime-related works, and I needed to feel things.
I feel like it was the only way for me to experience emotion.
Without hurting.
Sorry, the only way to experience emotions without hurting?
I'm not sure what you mean.
Hurting is an emotion.
That's true.
I don't know how to explain this.
Maybe a different angle.
I mean, I could... No, listen, if you don't know how to explain it, that's fine.
Yes.
I mean, it's funny, you know, I don't know how to explain it, and then you start going on to try and explain it, and I'm like, we're probably not going to get any play useful, right?
I don't know which way we should go, but let's go this way.
It's like, no, no, just sit in not knowing, right?
That's okay.
That's fine.
Okay.
All right.
So, it's not like, and that's one of the reasons why I had some curiosity about
The types of books that you read or the types of stuff that you read, for me it's kind of hard to sit there and say, well, you know, I've worked my way through the classics, you know, Dickens and Dostoevsky and like all of the Jane Austen and all of that sort of good meaty literature stuff.
It's hard for me to think that somebody's wasted time doing that, but is it your experience that the books were escapism and avoidance and in a sense, it sounds to me, and I don't want to tell you your experience, it sounds almost like they're vampiric.
Like they're giving you something that's a substitute for life that displaces or replaces life?
Very much so.
Very much so.
I think.
Right.
Yes.
No, sorry, go ahead.
You were going to say?
So, it started in childhood.
So, I think it was a replacement for what I needed as a child.
Intimacy or
No, not a replacement, it was a substitute.
Or a drug, in a sense, right?
Yes, yes.
So, I still don't know your family structure.
You mentioned that your dad left you, which I thought was interesting, he probably didn't leave you, but rather your mother.
And you mentioned a sibling, a younger brother I think it was.
But I don't know, like, you know, we've been talking for over half an hour and I don't know anything really other than a couple of hints about your actual circumstances.
How wealthy was your family?
How long were your parents together?
What happened to their relationship?
You know, the empirical facts that we can share.
My parents were never together.
And they also never married.
I have an older brother.
He's my half-brother.
He's nine years older than me.
He has a different father.
Half of my family is from Iran, the other half is from the northern area of the Caucasus.
They came to Germany.
I never really spent much time with my father.
My mother told me that when she had me in the hospital, my father wasn't there, and I had to be left in an incubator for three months because I was… Three months?! !
I'm a premature child, so I was born at week 25, so I was very tiny.
Very good question.
I asked my mother why that happened, but she didn't really give me much of a useful answer.
I mean, I had some issues with malnutrition, so maybe she was stressed.
Maybe my mother was stressed or she didn't eat enough food.
support the family alone.
It might have been stress-related.
And what was your mother's circumstance meeting these men?
Or what was her job?
It's all, to me, kind of vague.
Like, how did she end up in this hospital?
And where did she meet your dad?
What happened to him?
I don't really understand that.
My mother met my father at some political
meet up.
And that's all.
She never really gave me too many details regarding the circumstances of the meeting.
And do you know much about your mother's early life?
Oh yeah, it was horrible.
Her early life, she was imprisoned.
I don't know when exactly, but it was during the
you know, Iranian Revolution, and prison back then was horrible.
She saw people and friends die in front of her, and there was a lot of arguing between her mother and her father.
She told me that she would often
So her parents were arguing a lot, and sometimes it would get a bit violent, and she would often go to her siblings and try to hide them, try to tuck them away in the adjacent rooms, just to protect them and keep them safe.
So I guess she was sort of a mediator between
Her father and her mother sort of managed the situation, and it has caused her a lot of stress.
That's all I know about her early childhood.
Her very early years sounded a bit better because she could sort of live out her childhood with her siblings, but later it got worse and worse over time, and she had to work two jobs to support the family.
Because my grandpa wasn't working, and I don't know much about my grandma.
But it all sounded very, very stressful, kind of like a war of attrition.
A war?
Sorry, what was the word?
Yeah, it sounded like a mental war.
Just in general, the atmosphere was very hostile.
I mean, that's kind of my interpretation, because she hasn't told me much.
Who were the participants in the mental war?
Grandma, grandpa, her father.
Was it a mental war between them or a mental war between your mother and your grandparents?
Between them.
Between my grandparents.
They were arguing a lot.
And what does your mother do for money?
She works in a hospital right now.
And did she have any medical training or knowledge or experience?
When she had you or was that prior to her gaining this knowledge or experience?
I'm sorry, she's not really medically trained, although she did work at a pharmacy for a while, but that was way after I was born.
She didn't have much experience.
What was your question again?
Whether or not she was medically trained before I was born?
Well, if she's not medically trained at all, then it's sort of a moot point, which is fine.
Yeah.
And do you know whether or not...
You had any sort of touch contact or anything like that in the incubator you were in for three months?
Yeah, that was a big one.
That hurt.
That hurt a lot, knowing that.
Not much.
Not much.
Because I think now the sort of the belief or knowledge is that if babies don't receive some touch, you know, it can give them some challenges.
Well, yeah, there's that.
So you must have received some, right?
But I don't know how
how well understood all of that was.
I guess the hospital staff, yeah true, the hospital staff probably had to touch me occasionally out of necessity because I was intubated.
And I think my mother, she told me that she held me occasionally.
I don't know what that means, but I didn't ask her about how often or how long.
And I also didn't ask her what she did during the time I was at the hospital.
I don't have much info on this one.
Right, okay.
And do you know what happened with regards to your mother after you were born?
I mean, three months seems like, again, I'm no doctor, but that seems like a crushing amount of time to be in
In the neck.
Did she have postpartum depression?
Was she around?
Did she go back to work?
Do you have any idea what happened during the time that you were in this incubator?
No, no, I don't.
I don't know.
I don't know what happened.
Right, okay.
I can tell you what my first memory was, if that should be relevant, right?
Sure.
So the very first clear memory I had was, I think I must have been three years old, and I remember waking up feeling scared.
And I woke up from a nightmare.
I still remember that nightmare very clearly.
And in that dream, I was murdered by my mother.
So we were at the top of a staircase, and she was carrying me.
I was in the wheeled baby carriage.
I was inside one, and she was carrying it down the stairs.
And as we reached the basement,
I saw a couple, there was a skeleton in that dark corner staring at me, and it sort of jumped me, and I feel like, it felt like I was electrocuted, and suddenly I saw my mother's face, and then she grabbed me, and that's where it stopped.
And yeah, that's my first memory.
I'm sorry about that.
When you got out of the incubator, I guess you went home with your mother, but your father had almost nothing to do with you guys, is that right?
I saw him occasionally.
I suppose once a year for
I think I saw him once when I was four years old.
I remember he went outside with me to visit a couple of playgrounds around the city, so I was always looking forward to visiting the local playgrounds with him and play with him, and we played some soccer.
So he was in the neighborhood, right?
He was close.
He was close.
We never knew where he went.
So my mother was very enraged, actually.
She was very, very, very terribly angry at him.
Because he was never around.
Or never, as in, he wasn't really a father to me.
Were you the product of a one night stand or a short relationship?
Probably a very short relationship.
Right.
And I assume, of course, that your mother has never taken responsibility for choosing the wrong guy to be the father of her children.
Uh, responsibility would mean, um, what would that mean?
Well, instead of getting mad at your dad, she would say, um, I'm so sorry that I chose, uh, the wrong guy to have children with.
She never apologized?
No, but, uh, even taking responsibility.
I really don't know what it means to take responsibility for such a mistake.
I know it's a horrible mistake, but I don't know what it would look like.
Restitution or remediation.
Restitution is a long way.
You can take responsibility for things without apologizing for them.
I mean, I take responsibility for everything I say in this call-in show.
That doesn't mean that I'm apologizing.
I'm just responsible for what I say.
I'm responsible for what I do.
It means not blaming other people for what happens in your life when you become an adult.
I talked to her about the choice she made and she said that it was a stupid choice and that she did a mistake.
Okay, but if she did a mistake, and I'm trying to sort of square that with she's really angry at your dad,
She was very angry at him.
I don't know what she's feeling now.
And how did you know she was very angry?
What would she say or do?
I asked her a couple years ago about this show, so she said to me that she was very angry, but I also experienced her as a very, very profoundly angry person when I was a child.
Okay, so this is where our conversation needs to get a little bit more efficient.
So I asked for the empirical evidence, right?
So I said, and again, it's not a criticism, I'm just sort of pointing it out.
So I said, how did you know she was angry?
And then you say, well I talked to her about it and I experienced her as a profoundly angry person.
I'm like, okay, I get all of that!
But what did she do or say, empirically, outside of your head, that gave you the experience or impression that she was very angry?
Multiple things.
And those are my key memories, by the way.
So, I remember my mother one day coming home from work, and my room was kind of untidy.
Actually, it was a mess.
Because I would be playing alone in my room, and I'd be at peace.
I am going to come right over there with a pair of pliers, and I'm going to get this information out of you without
Time-wasting story time.
All right, because now I've heard about it was your core experiences, it was a big history, how messy your room was.
How does that answer my question?
She went crazy.
Okay, so let's get to that.
Okay, let's just go straight to the facts, right?
I don't need a prologue, right?
So, tell me about the things she did that gave you the thought that she was very angry.
She took my entire room apart, breaking everything while screaming profanities at me.
Things like, go die, eat shit and disappear.
Oh my gosh, that's appalling.
At the top of her lungs.
That's appalling.
Like she was demonic.
Yes.
And how old were you?
Five to six years old.
Well, this of course, if she's saying to you, go die, that's why you're having dreams of her murdering you, right?
Exactly.
Yes.
Yes.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
But a murderer's mother is not a great place to start.
Um, so, so all I could do was cry and my brother watched it happen and he didn't do anything and then walked out.
And, um, I actually, I forgot, um, how to speak my mother tongue and all I can remember are fanaties.
That's all I can remember and freely recall.
So I guess it kind of traumatized me.
Right.
And of course, well, I shouldn't say of course, maybe she did.
Did she ever say, gosh, you know, that was really out of control.
I'm so sorry.
She didn't apologize, but she did admit that it was not good behavior, or it was wrong of her, that she wronged me.
But every time I talk to my mother about these things, I really have to pull that out of her nose.
She never really went up to me by herself, by her own choice, to apologize for these things.
Were you guys living in Europe at this point?
Oh yeah, I was born in Germany.
Okay, got it.
And did she date at all in Germany?
No, no.
That's a lie.
She met someone when I was five.
She told me that she met someone at the bus station or in the bus, and they've been sort of together ever since, even today still, and their relationship is very
It's not a good relationship.
The guy, he's a hoarder.
He's kind of dysfunctional.
Wait, are you kidding me?
I'm not.
I'm not.
Do you know why this is kind of jaw-dropping?
I don't know.
Well, it is kind of jaw-dropping because...
She screams at you to eat shit and die because your room is messy and then she ends up in a multi-decade relationship with a hoarder.
Yes, he's a hoarder and sometimes... Kind of ironic in a way, right?
Because hoarders are just about the messiest people known to man.
Oh, I see that.
I see that now.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, how dare you have a messy room?
I'm holding out for the hoarder!
My God.
I see that.
I never noticed that.
That's mad!
That's amazing.
Thank you.
Well, and of course, a woman or man screaming at a kid about a messy room, it's like, you ought to have more discipline and keep your room clean.
It's like, well, shouldn't you have more discipline and not scream that you want your children to die?
That's very true.
I mean, how can you expect a child to have more discipline over his environment than you have over your own temper?
Yep.
That's very true.
Okay, so she's, I mean, with all sympathy to her childhood, she's monstrous and horrible.
It shows in their relationship, too, because I can't really stand being... Well, listen, I assume that your mother's relationship with the Hoarder is horrible.
I don't care.
I want to sort of focus back on you.
Good, understood.
I mean, I assume she's paying all the price for being murderously abusive towards her children.
And honestly, the amount of misery that she's going through is irrelevant to me.
And, you know, if you scream at your children that you want them to die, I don't care what happens to your heart and happiness afterwards.
In fact, I kind of hope it's bad.
I have the same thoughts sometimes.
Sometimes I have very bad, evil thoughts towards her.
Why would they be evil or bad?
Not evil.
Justified, even.
Oh yeah, no.
My mother is in misery.
I mean, she lives and she sleeps with a knife under her bed.
She's paranoid and terrified of everything.
And it's like, yeah, well, maybe don't abuse children and you'll end up with a happier life.
But if you abuse children, it's like, why would I care about her happiness?
Right?
She didn't care about mine.
And it's not like I don't inflict these things.
I'm not going over there and pretending to be some shadowy figure who
Ghosts past her house in the middle of, past her apartment door in the middle of the night.
I'm not going to torture her, but the fact that she is tortured.
I mean, it's, it's sort of pointless for me to have any opinion about it.
It is what it is.
It's inevitable that it's going to happen.
People who torture children are themselves tortured as they age.
And me having an opinion about it, oh, it's good.
It's bad.
It should happen.
It should, it doesn't matter.
It's like me, like if someone's a chain smoker.
My opinion about whether they should or shouldn't get lung cancer is completely irrelevant.
Because I can't change my mother's torture, right?
The only person who can change my mother being tortured is her.
She'd have to take ownership, make apologies, restitution.
That would give her some ease, right?
That would give her some comfort.
I can't make her do that.
I can't relieve her inner torture because
It's not under my control, it's not under my power, it doesn't come from me, and therefore I have no authority over it.
I wanted to relieve the inner torture of my friends, I think.
That's how I think, that's how the relationships sort of... No, no, no.
You didn't want to relieve the inner torture of your friends any more than you wanted your fiction books to give you courage.
You were doing these things to avoid your own inner torture,
And to pretend that you had a kind of authority because you felt helpless.
Right.
Well, I think that's right.
I don't want to tell you your own life, but that to me would fit.
If it doesn't fit, obviously, I will obviously withdraw that, but it would seem to me that would be the case.
Because if you were very good at healing people's inner torment and torture, I mean, maybe you would have fixed your mom, or certainly you wouldn't be in your mid-twenties and be in the situation you're in, right?
Yeah.
Do you want to know about my brother?
I have a couple memories regarding my brother and other people who didn't treat me... I don't know if that's relevant, but they... Prior to receiving information, I have no idea whether I want to receive it or not, right?
Would you like to learn about X?
I don't know!
I couldn't possibly tell you, but if you want to tell me, I'm happy to hear.
So I remember my cousin as a very terrible person to me.
He's two years, three years older than me, and I think I met him when I was five, six years old.
So my family would meet up with his family, and I would spend a lot of time in his room with him together.
And during nighttime, he would tell me scary stories, horror stories.
And the later it got, the more terrible it got, because he would try to scare me and try to terrify me, and sometimes I would be sort of paralyzed in fear.
He had a cassette player, and sometimes he would play horror stories all the while, and making weird noises and pretending to have a seizure.
And sometimes he would do that… God.
Yeah.
So is this just to be… I mean, in this layer of hell, there's nothing but demons.
Yeah, sometimes he would do that at 3 a.m.
in the middle of the night, and it would get worse over time.
A year later, he started to just beat me up regularly.
He was very strong very early, and every time I would be at his place, he would just wrestle
Wrestle me, like, throw me around the apartment like a ragdoll.
And he would play really, he would play music really loudly.
Um, well, just, just, um, just wrestling me trying to, I guess, um.
Well, it's not really wrestling if you don't want to, it's just assault, isn't it?
Yes.
I was, I was kind of lifeless by then.
I didn't really see a point in defending myself.
I was very weak.
And, um.
Sorry, you were very weak.
How old were you?
Yeah, I was very weak.
Eight.
I would be five, six years old.
Seven.
Or he was… He was eight?
He was…
Eight, eight years old, nine years old, and I'm, I'm like, I'm two years, three years younger.
So I might've been off.
I might've been off.
I'm sorry.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say you were weak.
I don't quite follow that.
I was physically very weak.
No, I understand what you mean.
I just don't understand how you would define yourself as a couple of years younger than a psychotic bully.
I don't know what that would mean to say weak.
Oh, that's true.
I mean,
Did you think if you'd worked out, you'd have been fine?
I mean, what are you talking about?
You're five years old.
I don't understand.
Isn't it like calling yourself, well, I was really short, because the guy who's a couple years older was taller than me.
And it's like, what the hell does that mean?
What do you mean short?
Shorter, yeah, but that's because of the age.
Weaker, yeah, because of the age.
It's not weak.
Again, unless I'm missing something.
I just couldn't do anything.
Well, of course you couldn't do anything!
You're five!
I don't know, I was totally defenseless.
Of course you were totally defenseless, but I don't know how you translate that in your head to weak.
I don't know either.
Okay, well tell me this.
What would it have meant to be strong in this evaluation, right?
So you evaluate yourself as weak at the age of five for being tossed around by a kid a couple of years older, who's a total psycho by the way.
Compared to weak, compared to what?
What would strong have meant?
What would that have looked like where you'd say, I was strong?
Being able to defend myself.
Okay.
Oh my God, these abstractions are driving me crazy!
Sorry.
What would it mean?
What would it look like?
I don't know what being able to defend myself looks like.
What physical actions would you have taken that would have given you the inner experience of being strong?
I wanted to stop him from beating me up.
Again, that's an abstraction.
I don't know what that means.
Practical terms.
Physical, empirical, practical terms.
What would it have meant to be strong?
What would you have done?
Fight back?
That's all very abstract.
What does that mean?
Does that mean you would punch him?
Oh.
Oh.
I guess so, yes.
Yes, sometimes I wanted to punch him.
Okay, so let's play that out, right?
Because if you're going to condemn yourself as weak, we need to figure out whether you're right or not, or whether you're insulting yourself, whether you're slandering yourself, right?
Yes.
Okay, so you got an eight-year-old kid, you're five, he's a total psycho, and he's very violent, and he's doing so under the full protection of the family, right?
My mother wasn't there, my uncle was in the next, either, they were both in a different room, adjacent room, or they were out, so we were alone.
Actually, most of the time we were just alone in the apartment.
No, sorry, sorry, doesn't matter.
Under the protection of the family.
No, it doesn't matter, under the protection, because
They are putting you in the same room and having you sleep over in the same room with a total psycho.
Yes.
Right?
So under the protection means your uncle and your mother, they're all pushing you into interacting with the psycho, which means they either don't know that he's a psycho, which means they're psychos, or they don't care that he's a psycho, in which case he's under their protection.
So he's under their protection no matter what.
Whether they're in the room or not.
It's true.
And you knew that, which is why you didn't go to them and say, hey, psycho kid here is terrifying me and beating me up and throwing me across the room, right?
So you knew that he was under their protection.
Okay, so let's play it out.
He comes to be aggressive towards you, he comes to assault you, and he's three years older than you, and you punch him.
Is that what you've thought of, right?
No, I just tried to hide.
No, no, no, we're talking about fighting back, right?
Okay.
So you would punch him if you were going to fight back, right?
Yes.
Okay.
So then what happens, right?
I assume he was taller than you and bigger than you and all of that, right?
Oh yes.
Okay.
And he had no sense of empathy or self-restraint and he was a violent kid.
So you punch him, right?
With your little five-year-old fists, right?
Which means you barely hurt him at all, right?
And what happens then?
He would, um... It would get worse, so he would... Yeah, he would escalate, right?
Yes, yes.
No, but then what you would do is you'd try and poke him in the eye, or you'd bite down hard on him and you'd cause him some real pain, or you'd kick him in the balls, or something like that, right?
Again, in the fantasy of fighting back, right?
That happened once.
Okay, and how did it go?
He cried.
I guess I hit him somewhere where it kind of hurt.
I'm not sure what exactly happened, but he just stopped and started crying, and then he hugged me, and then he told me that I did a good job.
And how old were you at this point?
I'm not sure.
Seven.
Okay, so what are we talking about seven?
We're talking about five, right?
Yeah.
It's kind of a blur.
I don't know.
It happened.
You know, what happens if you punch a psycho when he's way stronger than you?
It escalates.
It always escalates.
Well, I guess except when you were seven, right?
Now, after you were seven and you hit him and he cried and said you did a good job, did he continue to bully you after that?
Yes.
Okay, so it didn't solve the problem, right?
Yeah, it also got worse.
It got worse.
Okay.
So eventually it just faded away.
He stopped beating me up regularly, but it would get sexual.
What now?
I'm guessing he just abused me sexually.
Like it got worse.
You're guessing?
What do you mean you're guessing?
He did.
I'm not guessing.
Okay, so what did he do?
Hold on to his pants.
No.
Show me... I had to, like, eventually I had to pleasure him orally.
Oh gosh, I'm so sorry.
This just appeared in this... I mean, again, in this layer of hell there's nothing but demons.
It's true.
There are no good people in this entire universe.
There are no good people.
Yeah.
And how old were you when this oral rape occurred, or started to occur?
Eight years old or nine years old.
Right.
And it didn't happen too often, like three times, but I didn't really show much resistance.
It wasn't even weird to me at that point.
Again, you're focusing on your failures as you perceive them rather than his evil and all of the adults around you, their evil.
He told me that it was just something that it's okay to do.
Well, I assume the guy who beat you up for years didn't have a huge amount of moral credibility with you.
No.
No, he didn't.
Right, so I'm trying to sort of figure out, like, you're focusing on your weaknesses rather than the evils you were subjected to.
In other words, you're self-critical rather than angry at vicious abusers.
That's very true.
I don't feel much anger.
Well, that's because you counted on yourself, right?
Yes.
This is why I sort of paused on you.
I was weak, right?
Yeah.
I mean, usually... Kind of like I'm hostile.
Well, no, you're judging yourself negatively in order to avoid judging abusers negatively.
Yes.
In other words, it's, you know, the classic victim blaming thing, right?
I was weak and that's why it happened.
Nope!
That's not why it happened.
It happened because they're sick.
It happened because your mother and your uncle and all of the adults all allowed it to happen and made it happen and colluded to have it occur.
Yes.
Because there was no point going to your uncle, there was no point going to your mother.
I mean, why would you go to protection from someone who's already wished you dead?
It's true.
I remember being very, very angry when I was 18, but I didn't know who to direct my anger to.
I was just very angry.
Right.
So your mother's not responsible for who she lets ejaculate into her, but you're responsible for being brutalized, terrorized, and orally raped, or forced into oral rape as a child, as a five-year-old, or a seven-year-old, or an eight-year-old.
Yes.
And I didn't really have anyone to fall back to.
I tried to spend time with my brother, my half-brother, who is
Much older than me, nine years older than me.
But I could never spend much time with him.
He didn't want to spend time with me.
He would spend time in front of the computer a lot, and I would go into his room.
I remember him dragging me out of his room because he didn't want me to watch him play.
I would have wounds on my back a couple days later.
Because he dragged me out of... Oh, like bruises on your back, you mean?
Again, what did you say?
Did you mean, you said wounds, do you mean bruises or cuts or what?
Bruises, bruises from the carpet.
Right.
And I also remember, I was watching TV once, I believe I was four years old, and I was watching a show that I think it caught my attention because
There was a character, I believe it was a bird or an eagle, and I sort of fell in love with that character.
And my brother shut off the TV and he said I wasn't allowed to watch, because my mother said so.
And I just went to my room and just burying... I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, you said you went to your mother's room and did what?
No, I went to my own room, and I closed the door, and I just went to bed, and I just told to myself that I wish the bird to come to my life so I could be his friend, because I felt so lonely.
It hurt so much.
You're not even allowed an innocent little pleasure like enjoying a show with a bird you like, right?
Everything has to be taken away, everything has to be crushed, everything has to be rejected, all bonds have to be broken, and you must forever be isolated, right?
So you can be exploited!
Yes.
And I also remember, I think it was my seventh or sixth birthday,
And my brother called me to his room, and he told me to close my eyes and extend my hand towards him, and he just spat on my hand.
And I didn't feel much at that time, but, I mean, it's just something that stuck to me.
It just hurts.
And he was also making fun of me a lot, like making mean remarks about my interests.
And I think when I was in third grade, he tried to show me algebra, and I didn't really understand that.
And he told me I'm stupid, and he made fun of me not being able to understand anything.
And as I entered school, he told me school is horrible instead of being supportive.
Well, you, I get it, you were the designated punching bag for everybody's fucked up neurosis, right?
Yes.
So, I don't want to speak to your experience, because I don't want to tell you your experiences.
My experience when I was bullied by older kids, and it didn't happen more than, I don't know, half a handful of times, but when I was bullied by older kids, I realized
That the only way to solve this, because they said, you know, if you ever go to the police, you know, we'll just, we'll just kill you or we'll put you in the hospital or something like that, right?
And so I remember thinking sort of very clearly that the only way that I was going to stop these bullies would be to either put them in the hospital or put them in the morgue.
Okay.
And I didn't want to do that.
Because they weren't worth that in my life.
Because, and again, I'm not saying that you at five, this happened to me when I was, I don't know, 11 or 12, right?
But you can find ways to do these things.
I don't recommend it, in fact it's, you know, wrong, because after the fact it's not self-defense, it's utterly immoral.
But I just remember looking at these kids saying, okay, well I either put them in the hospital for a long time, or I put them in the morgue, because they've already told me that if I go to the police,
Then they're going to put me in the hospital or put me in the ground.
And I, you know, I was like, no, that's, I don't want to do that.
I don't want that on my mind.
I don't want that on my reputation.
I don't want that on my history.
And because I just, I knew for sure, of course, no, no matter that I had received death threats as a kid or severe injury threats, um, it didn't, it wouldn't matter.
Right.
I would still be considered the bad kid.
Right.
Yeah.
It's true.
So, um, I didn't do that.
I didn't do that.
And I'm glad I didn't.
To me, that was wise and strong.
To refrain from being drawn into a brutal circle of injury and violence, and possibly death, it seems to me kind of wise.
And yet you call yourself weak.
Yes.
That's true.
I mean, let's put it this way.
Let me ask you this question, right?
So your cousin who was beating you up and who was raping you or forcing you to perform oral sex and so on, if he had gotten hit by a car and killed, how would you have felt?
My first thought was that
I'd feel sad.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yes, and the thought that followed was, I wouldn't feel anything.
But I'm guessing the first thought is kind of the intuition.
I guess that's true, right?
I'd probably be sad.
I'm sorry, so this guy who beat you up.
harmed you, who terrified you at night and caused you to lose sleep and have nightmares, and who brutalized you physically and then molested you and so on.
If this guy was wiped out in a car crash, you wouldn't feel any relief that the torment and torture was over.
I don't think so.
I mean, I want to just spend time with him because
I just wanted to spend time with him.
I just wanted to spend time with someone I could play with.
Oh, so even though there was a torment of the molestation, psychological, physical brutality, he was at least someone you could play with from time to time, right?
Yes.
I mean, I had friends at school, too.
Wait, so help me understand.
I'm going back to the cousin thing here, right?
Listen, I'm not saying what you should or shouldn't feel, I just generally want to sort of understand it.
So if an accident occurred that had nothing to do with you, that took this brutalizer and molester out of your life, you would feel sad because you wouldn't be able to play with him.
I mean, you did have other kids you could play with, right?
Yes, yes, through school, class.
Yeah, I think I would feel sad.
Once I turned 12, 13 years old, I actually started to resent him for what he did to me.
And now I'm hoping that I'll never get to see him again.
But I actually saw him six months ago, just randomly in the street, and I shook his hand and we hugged.
And afterwards, I was like, shouldn't I be angry at him?
But I'm not.
Or I am now, but six months ago, when I saw him on the street, I wasn't.
Right, okay.
Okay, I obviously accept the way that you feel.
I'm obviously not going to tell you what you should or shouldn't feel, because this is your genuine experience, that you have some affection for him and some positive experiences of your childhood with him, and you don't feel particularly angry at him.
Is that right?
Not anymore, no.
No, and I didn't really… Well, you went through, I think, you felt some resentment at the age of 12 or 13.
Yes.
But it's kind of come and gone, is that right?
Yes, exactly.
And what do you do for a living at the moment?
I'm unemployed.
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were unemployed.
And when was the last time you had a job?
July.
This year.
Okay.
And what do you do for work?
I think it was just a temporary contract.
I never really managed to hold down a job for more than a year.
I did a lot of delivery jobs and just unskilled labor.
And I was part of an apprenticeship program for three months, but they didn't really... Well, we had to cancel the contract, I suppose.
They told me that I wasn't the right guy for them.
Okay, so sorry, so since your mid-twenties, right?
So since late teens to now, how often or what percentage of time have you had a job?
Let me think.
Like 35-40%.
Wow!
And what do you live on when you're not working?
On my savings.
Well, how are you able to have menial jobs and not work 60% of the time?
So, my mother did save up some money.
My mother did save up some money for me in case I ever wanted to maybe do a driver's license, or I ended up spending all of that, which was... How much was that?
Uh, 6,000 euros.
Okay, so your mother gave you 6,000 euros she'd saved up and you used that rather than have a job, right?
Yes.
Okay, I'm not judging.
I just want to make sure I understand.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I'm living at my mother's.
I still live with my, um, mother and my older half-brother.
Wait, what?
Yeah, I still live with him.
You still live with your mother?
I tried to.
Yes, I did try to move out.
What do you mean, try to?
I don't understand what this is, try to.
So when my uncle died in a motorcycle crash.
Oh, ironically, yes.
Okay, yeah.
We had a photo album of my uncle's childhood back in their home country, and various couple photo albums, a lot of photo albums.
And my cousin wanted to take a look at them, so we took these photo albums to his place, and my mother was very angry at that.
She was terribly angry because we didn't tell her about this.
And she was angry, she locked the door of my room.
Because we didn't tell her about this and because she didn't trust my cousin.
About what?
About me and my half-brother giving my cousin these photo albums without her consent.
Okay.
Just wasn't sure.
Okay.
Always assume I don't know what you're talking about.
Yes.
Yeah.
So she was very angry.
I got back home and the door to my room was locked, and I didn't like that.
I called my friend and asked him if I could move in with him.
And so I did for a couple months, and I found a job almost immediately, even though it was some unskilled labor job.
Then I got the next best job, which was a delivery job, and eventually I moved back in to where my mother lives.
Wait, sorry, why did you move back in?
I just felt... I'm not too sure.
I was getting very depressed.
I was getting very... I was losing my ambition and my motivation.
You were losing your ambition and motivation paying your own bills, so you thought the solution would be to move in and have your mother pay your bills.
I didn't pay my own bills because I was living... Well, I did pay... I did contribute to some degree.
I did pay some rent to my friend's mother.
The mother wasn't.
Okay, so, man, like, let's not, I don't want to waste our time splitting atoms here, okay?
Mm-hmm, okay.
Like, I wasn't paying all of my own bills, I was paying some, I don't care.
Like, this, these details are irrelevant.
Okay.
Alright, this is just stalling, right?
So, you moved out, or your mother kicked you out, you got, you were living with your friend and his mother, you had your own job, you were paying some of your own bills,
And then you thought that you would increase your motivation by moving back in with your mother?
And not paying any bills at all?
Like, that's not even a good cover story.
And, you know, we're both intelligent men.
Uh, the idea that you would try and sell that as a cover story, it's kind of an insult to us both, if you don't mind me saying so.
You don't increase your ambition by moving back in with mom and letting her pay your bills, right?
I'm guessing, yeah, well.
Okay, so let's put that one aside, and so why did you move back in with mom?
Does she live with the hoarder or no?
No, she doesn't.
Okay.
She keeps tight boundaries between them.
Okay, so why did you move back, and sorry, how old were you at this point?
Twenty, twenty-one.
So you were twenty-one, and how long were you living in this other place?
Five months.
Five months.
Okay, so you're starting a life.
It's not a particularly great life because instead of living on your own or with roommates, you're living at your friend's mom's place, right?
But it's something.
It's more independence than you would have with your mom, right?
So you're getting your life going, right?
You got a job, you're paying some bills, you know.
21 years old, that's not outlandish, right?
I mean, we used to go hunting at the age of 12, right?
You know, nine years later, you're paying a couple of your own bills and not living with mommy.
And so why, why would you, why would you, I mean, wouldn't the next step be to get your own place or someplace with roommates and without a mom around?
So what, what got you back into your mom's place?
I'm not exactly sure.
I think I was having doubts.
I was, I was being doubtful about, about my, about my ability to, to, to really, um,
I really didn't know where to go from that point onwards.
What do you mean you were somewhere?
I don't understand.
You were somewhere.
You were staying at your friend's mom's place and paying some of your own bills and you had a job, so you're getting your life going.
So what do you mean you didn't know where to go?
You already were somewhere.
I don't know.
I mean I did it out of comfort.
I don't know what that means.
What are the thoughts behind that?
I'm not sure what that means.
So I moved back in with my mother and I managed to save more money.
I didn't have to pay any bills so I could just save more money.
For what?
What were you saving the money for?
It's four years later and you're still at home.
What were you saving the money for?
I don't know.
Oh, come on, man.
Don't go rubber bones on me now, right?
You had some thought.
I've got to get back home and live with my abuser who said she wants me to die and hates me, but I'm going to save some money.
Okay, I can understand that.
For what?
I always wanted to have my own place, house, my own apartment.
No, you didn't!
That's nonsense.
Come on, man, you're 25 years old.
If you'd wanted to have your own place, what would have happened by now?
Well, maybe I would have finished an apprenticeship.
Well, I don't know what would have happened, but you'd have your own place, right?
Yes.
You'd have done just whatever it took to get your own place.
Maybe that means you've got to work two jobs.
Maybe that means you've got to work a job and go to school.
Maybe you've got to stay in the apprenticeship program.
But if you wanted your own place, you'd have your own place.
Like if I'm sitting by the pool, and I'm saying, my god, it's incredibly hot, I'm desperate for a swim, and I don't get in the water, what's weird about that?
I mean, I gave up.
I gave up then.
Well, what's weird about it is empirically I say I want to get in the water, but I'm not getting in the water.
Which means I don't really want to get in the water, or I want to not get in the water more than I get in the water, right?
And you are an intelligent, young, capable man, you can have and hold a job, and you can pay your bills.
And you've chosen not to do that, so you're sitting at home having your bills paid for by the woman who said she wanted you dead when you were a kid.
Exactly.
Why?
Why?
Have you saved up money?
I didn't save... No, I ended up spending it all.
And what did you spend it on?
I bought...
I started to produce music at the age of 18.
So I bought a bunch of software, which ended up being quite expensive.
And I bought a new computer.
And I bought video editing software.
How does the video editing software… First of all, there's freeware for all that stuff except the computer.
Okay.
So you spend a couple of grand, maybe a couple of thousand euros on software and hardware.
What's the video stuff for?
Again?
What's the video editing for?
I used to record video game footage and synchronize it to music and add effects to that to make it look cool, I suppose.
And did you monetize that?
No, I never monetized anything.
I never monetized anything because I wasn't happy with the results.
I thought I needed to get better because I was comparing myself to the works of others.
But I prematurely stopped that, and I've never kept up with it since.
My mother showed me
She was friends with someone who created his own startup company.
His own what?
Startup company.
So they were producers.
They were making music for, I guess, short movies.
They were making music for short movie projects and advertisements.
And they gave me a job, and that was back at my friend's place when I lived with him.
They gave me a job for music production on one of their short trailers, and I did a submission.
So I submitted my music to them, and they said it was beautiful, but it's not the right
It wasn't what they were looking for, because it was too calm and too... Okay, so you sent some music in, and they didn't like it, so you just did it again, right?
You tried it a different way, or listened to their feedback... No, I didn't.
Why not?
Did they not want to do it?
I mean, they were telling me... The odds that the first time you do something in a new field, the odds that it's good, or right, or perfect, is zero.
That's true.
So, you got paid to do music.
They said, this is not the right kind.
So, of course, you go back and do it again, right?
I didn't.
Well, why not?
Did they not accept that?
They said, no, we're gonna go with someone else?
They ended up doing it themselves, because they were on a tight schedule.
Okay, but did you say to them, I'll do it again?
No.
Why not?
I wanted to quit.
Why did you want to quit?
Because the first time you did something in a new field, it wasn't perfect?
Yes, exactly.
What are you talking about?
I was disappointed in myself.
I wanted a perfect result.
I wanted them to give me good feedback.
I wanted to just succeed on the project and to contribute and help.
Oh, you wanted to be lazy, like you wanted to get a great output without actually doing a lot of work.
I guess that's true, yes.
Right, I mean, the odds that... You know, that's like me playing golf, and while I didn't get a hole in one, so I'm quitting.
Yes, that's true.
That's it.
Okay, so you got your dream job, and you quit.
Yes.
All right.
And then what did you say?
Well, I could be doing music, but instead I'm going to move furniture or whatever you were doing that was manual, like deliver packages or something like that, right?
Yes.
Okay.
So that was a couple of years ago, right?
So you said, well, I'm going to move back home to save money.
You didn't save your money anyway, right?
Yep.
So why are you still home?
Or why are you still in your abuser's house?
I mean, I've been asking myself that question, whether or not I even want to move out.
Sometimes I want to move out, and sometimes I want to break out.
Okay, let's go with this scenario, right?
So let's say tomorrow you're at the park, you meet some really great girl, right?
And whatever, you just fall into conversation, or she chats with you.
And you're 25 years old.
You say you eat well, you're exercising, so, you know, you're attractive, and all that.
And then she dates you a couple of times, and then she says, oh, I'd really like to see where you live, and you say, well, I live with my mother, and she says, oh, okay, 25, maybe that's, you know, whatever, but let me come over and at least I get to meet your mom, right?
No, I don't want her to meet my mother.
No, then you bring her over.
Oh, you would say, I don't want you to meet my mother?
Well, yeah.
That's where she's gonna... That'll probably raise suspicions.
Well, you'll say, I don't want you to meet your mother, and she'll say, okay, let's do this, right?
So I'll be the girl, right?
You say, I don't want you to meet my mother, and you'd say, well, why not?
And what would you say?
She hasn't been good to me, and maybe you shouldn't be around her.
Wait, so she's really toxic to be around?
Is that what you're saying?
Yes, and I guess I'm also... I also want to say that she's not a good influence under people I love.
Sorry, sorry, I don't understand this.
You say your mother is toxic to be around, but you're still around her.
Yeah, well, yes, that's true.
I don't really interact, I don't really want to interact with her much.
No, no, no, if you don't want to interact with her, you wouldn't live with her.
That's easy, right?
Okay.
So she's toxic to be around, and you don't want to interact with her, but you take her money.
Well, yes, that's true.
What do you think the quality woman is going to do at that point?
Leave.
Nothing.
Yeah, thanks, Buttman.
Sorry.
I can't unravel this whatever eatable shit's going on here.
It's too deep for my head, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so this is costing you, right?
It's true.
And you're choosing that?
I am.
I am.
So what do you want me to do?
What advice do you want from me?
I don't understand.
I mean, if you're sorrowful about your childhood, for which I have bottomless sympathy.
I mean, your childhood was appalling and awful and terrible.
And a massive sympathy for that, right?
Absolutely massive sympathy for that.
But if you're still living with your abuser, when you could move out anytime, I'm not sure what advice I can give you.
Whenever I think of breaking out, I feel kind of scared.
I feel very hesitant.
Do I even want to take a full-time job?
It feels like I don't.
Okay.
I don't even know what kind of... Well, look at the human race, kid!
Yeah.
Who wants to take a full-time job in their twenties?
Nobody!
I don't understand!
Well, I guess I'm expecting myself to be very ambitious and to have... Sorry, to be very what?
Dreaming.
Ambitious.
You're expecting yourself to be very ambitious, but I don't know... What does that mean?
I'm not playing dumb here.
I genuinely don't know what that sentence means.
I don't know.
I think I've just been waiting for a spark to...
To ignite within me and kind of spurn.
I don't know, I guess I'm just waiting and wasting time.
Because in reality I didn't really want to move.
Why don't you want to move out?
I don't know.
Yes you do.
Does your mother want you to move out?
Yes, she does.
And how long has she wanted you to move out for?
Five years?
Four?
Three years?
Three years, I think.
And how often does she bring this up, that you should move out?
What she brings up particularly often, multiple times a week, is that I should get a job.
I should do something.
Do something.
Are you doing something?
Are you producing music?
How's your music going?
How are you feeling?
Is what you're doing mostly reading fan fiction and anime?
Well, no.
I did stop recently, like a week ago.
I stopped completely.
I've been reading... Oh, you said you were getting diminishing returns, right?
Like it wasn't as exciting to you anymore?
Yeah, it started to lose its charm.
It's starting to feel very disgusting, actually.
I'm starting to hate it.
And what do you hate about it?
I'm 25 now, and I'm still doing this.
It feels kind of like I'm still living my childhood.
But the truth is, I really do want to keep producing music, and I want to get better at this.
How many hours a week do you spend producing music, given that you're unemployed?
fluctuates, and I would take long breaks of multiple months, but sometimes I would do nothing else but write melodies.
I think I did, in the past six years, I wrote about probably a couple thousand melodies, most of which are about 30 seconds or to one minute long.
And what is the purpose of these melodies?
I never knew.
I would feel anxious and restless whenever I stopped doing it.
No, no, I don't mean what's the purpose of you emotionally, I mean what's the purpose of these in the world?
So you've got thousands of thirty-second to one-minute melodies sitting on your hard drive.
What's the value of that to the world?
I'm a writer because I've written a couple of thousand sentence fragments that are sitting on my hard drive.
I'm not too sure.
I think I just want to make things that are beautiful.
And maybe I want approval to... Okay, so you make things that are beautiful.
I want to make things that are beautiful.
So why would you not put them out into the world so other people can appreciate the beauty?
I did.
Okay, so you have put them out.
Okay, and how's that been going?
So, the piano melodies aren't as well received.
People barely pay attention to this, but I do have some ambient works.
I'm guessing, are you familiar with the genre ambient?
I think so, yeah.
So I did receive incredible feedback for this, and there are a couple people, there's one Russian, or two Russian guys who have listened to my
One of them had 1,400 individual plays within like a year or half a year.
And do you get paid for these plays?
No.
And how long have you been composing music for?
Probably in total 500 hours.
No, no.
Since what age?
Eighteen.
Okay, so in seven years you've done 500 hours?
Actually, that's wrong.
Probably more like 2,000 hours, 1,500 hours.
I'm not too sure.
So, 200 hours a year?
Yes.
I would be spending most of my time just reading.
So that's five work weeks a year.
Forty hours, right?
Two hundred.
Yeah.
That's five.
Every year, you do five weeks full-time of music.
Yeah.
I could be very...
Yeah, I didn't do as much as I should have.
Well, I don't know about this or that or the other, but this is not much, right?
It's not much.
So, it's barely a hobby.
But what it is, it's a pretend.
I pretend I'm doing something.
It's an excuse.
Well, you see, the reason I can't get a full-time job is I'm working on my music.
The reason I can't, I have to buy a computer so I can work on my music.
Yeah, and I started drawing as well, but I've never really committed to that.
Yeah, so you don't want to just look at the stark reality of your life, so you create this hand puppet called music that makes you feel like you're doing something.
That's true.
Right.
But it's not a real thing, because if you've been working at it for seven years and never made a penny, and you work at it five weeks a year, when you're 60% unemployed,
It's not a real thing.
It's just, well, it's an excuse.
You can say to your mom, Hey, I'm not doing nothing.
I'm working on my music.
And you can say to yourself, well, I'm not doing nothing.
I'm working on my music.
Yeah.
Right.
It's a, it's a pretend.
It is.
It is.
And it doesn't, it doesn't really feel like it's my passion.
I remember.
No, it's not your passion.
It's your excuse.
Yes.
And you know, and then you finally got a chance to do it and you just didn't.
Right.
Cause it wasn't the right, the first thing wasn't right.
And of course, look, you don't have any entrepreneurs.
I guess you have that one guy, your mom knows who's got a startup, but of course you don't just hand over a finished product in an artistic endeavor.
Right.
So if somebody says I need music for a movie, they needed music for some sort of visual thing.
Right.
So then you say, okay.
Um, you do a very rough draft, which takes you an hour or two.
And then you send it over to them, right?
And you say, is this in the area that you're looking for?
And they say, no, no, this is too languid, this is too slow, or whatever, right?
And then you send over another draft, right?
Saying, okay, I pumped it up a little, right?
I did submit two drafts, and yeah, but they told me that it's too quiet and too slow, too not dynamic enough.
Right, okay, so did they say that on the first draft?
The second one, because the first draft… What did they say on the first draft?
Needs more work.
Spend more time on it, and let's see where it goes.
Right.
So, when I was in theatre school, I wrote – sounds kind of odd – I wrote a puppet play.
It was an adaptation of a Greek myth to these, like, giant life-size puppets that were really kind of cool and wild.
The guy didn't like the first draft, so I just went back and scrapped it and started again, and he didn't like the second draft, so I went back and scrapped it and started again, and eventually he got a draft that he liked.
I mean, I'm a pretty good writer.
I was obviously quite inexperienced back then, but you just keep doing it until you find a way to get it right.
Or at least satisfy the person, right?
But this is not how I treated my music, especially the melody making.
It's not how I treated it at all.
I just scrapped project after project, which is probably why.
Sorry, what do you mean you scrapped?
I'm not sure what we're talking about.
The movie that you were making the music for, what do you mean you scrapped project after project?
What's that to do with?
Well, I treat everything in the same manner.
I don't really spend time on it.
I just end it prematurely.
I just... Yeah, because it's the pretense of getting something done, and an excuse.
I'm working on my music, right?
It's an excuse for your mother, it's an excuse for yourself, and so on, right?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Alright.
So... I think it is.
There's some...
With the music, it's a bit of a particular thing, because I remember my mother forced me to play instruments as a kid, and I never really wanted to practice.
But I remember when I was four or five years old, I was at my mother's friend's house,
And they had a piano I remember playing, and the father of her friend told me I was playing very beautifully.
But the thing is, I don't know if it's a lie when I'm saying that I'm a musical person, because I always have these melodies in my head, and I don't know how to express that otherwise.
Yeah, I don't know what to say about that, other than, if you wanna mature, you have to get paid, right?
I mean, you have to get paid, right?
Is that true?
Yeah, you have to find a way to get paid.
Okay, yeah.
I mean, otherwise it's a hobby, and there's nothing wrong with hobbies!
Nothing wrong with hobbies.
Right?
But you have to find a way to get paid, right?
I suppose I don't really want to face any inconvenience.
I don't want to do it.
I don't want to have a full-time job.
Compared to what?
The inconvenience of being lonely, single forever, stuck in mom's house like an old plant that's unwatered?
Rotting away at a corner, nothing in your life, no future?
What do you mean, inconvenient?
Isn't your life kind of inconvenient at the moment in terms of having a future?
That's very true.
What do you mean inconvenient?
I don't understand!
Is it inconvenient to have a job?
Yes!
Yes it is!
And... Compared to what?
Okay, where's your life in 10 years, if nothing changes?
Death.
What do you mean?
Just... I really don't know.
Just darkness.
Maybe I would be still living in...
in this apartment.
Well, but you'd have another couple of thousand melodies on your hard drive, right?
Do you have a girlfriend?
Oh no, I never had... well, I had one after high school, or during... I dropped out of high school.
Okay, so where's your compassion for your future self?
Right?
If your future self, let's say ten years from now, right, your future self
I don't know.
Choose a job that doesn't seem like a dead-end job.
Anything that'll take me, or anyone.
I mean, I guess I would... I'm guessing this would be the next step for me, I'm guessing.
Just to find something that... I don't even know what to do, really.
What does it matter what your feelings are about what you want to do?
I'm a little confused about that.
I think this is probably the legacy of growing up without a dad, that you think your feelings are supposed to pull you through life?
Well, you said, I wait for that spark!
But that's a woman's approach to life, that your feelings are supposed to pull you through life like some water skier.
What do men do?
We do what we have to do.
Women can do what they feel like doing!
I'm not talking all women, right?
But women can do what they feel like doing because men are doing what they have to do.
I mean, let me ask you this.
Is discipline more associated with men or women?
Men.
Right.
And it's nothing wrong with men, nothing wrong with women, it's just the way things generally have shaken out, right?
So, you're waiting for you to want to do something.
Yeah.
Which, as a man, I don't understand.
I didn't want to work three jobs in high school.
I didn't want to work during my university years.
I don't want to do taxes.
I don't want to edit shows.
I don't, like, there's tons of stuff I don't want to do.
That's a negative feedback loop for me, on my end, because the more I wait, the less feeling I have.
As I'm waiting for my feelings to arise.
Well, yeah, all you're doing is growing a pudgy muscle called inertia.
Yes.
So, you think that you have to want to do something in order to get something done.
Yeah.
And that's because your mother has shielded you from necessity.
Now, being shielded from necessity is often more of a feminine trait.
So, your mother has shielded you from necessity, and therefore she shielded you from masculinity, and I'm no doctor, obviously, I have no idea, but I'm pretty positive in my heart, without having any certainty in the science, that necessity gives you testosterone.
Yep.
And if you live in this kind of eunuch life of being paid for
By a woman who abused you, if you're taking mommy's money, is it not kind of hard to grow into adult masculinity?
That's very true.
Yes, it is hard, or kind of impossible.
Well, and again, with all sympathy, genuine sympathy for your childhood, you're not a kid, you're like seven years past childhood, and you're giving yourself the permission and the preciousness, right?
It's the entitlement.
Well, I shouldn't do things I don't want to do.
I shouldn't have to do things I don't want to do, right?
I shouldn't have to rewrite the music.
I shouldn't have to take a job I'm not passionate about.
I shouldn't have to really work to market my music, right?
I shouldn't have to do things I don't want to do.
Isn't that the general... Are we down at the heart of where the issues are?
I mean, that's... that's how I... It seems like it.
It really does.
All right.
And you even... Sometimes... To the time you're wasting on...
I don't care what people read, but it's garbage relative to you having no life.
Because instead of reading, I don't know, about computer programming, or about business, or about marketing, or taking courses online, or something that would give you some kind of skill set so you wouldn't have to be a human forklift for money, it's a giant waste of time relative to developing some skills, right?
Yes.
So, even that, you didn't say, man, I gotta put this stuff away because it's bad for me.
Now, you're like, why did you stop?
Well, I felt disgusted by it.
Again, letting your feelings, rather than your willpower, determine your future.
But feelings are about the past, they're not about the future.
Willpower is about the future, feelings are about the past.
And so, you can't have a future if you're basing your worldview on satisfying your feelings.
That's true.
Where's your dad now?
Do you have any contact with him at all?
I did speak to him.
The last time I saw him was at age five.
Well, not the last time, but there was a huge gap, basically.
Age five to age... I think I was...
22.
I saw him in 2018.
Okay, so the answer is no.
You don't really have any contact with your dad if it's been five years.
No, not at all.
Okay, no contact with your dad.
Okay.
Do you have any other masculine influences in your life that you consider positive?
No.
And what are your views on religion?
I do pray at a rosary.
I prayed a rosary, or I tried to.
I don't think it's much of a surprise at that point, but I had massive issues with pornography consumption as well, and I would relapse, and then I'd feel ashamed, and just go back to my old habits, and then stop praying the rosary, of course.
Okay, so you're a Christian, right?
Yes.
So, does God say, do what you feel like?
No.
What does God say about willpower, discipline, effort, and success?
I'm not sure.
I'm not exactly too familiar with the Christian religion, to be honest.
Okay, but you're a Christian, so does God say, do what you feel like, and you don't need any discipline?
He does not.
No, he doesn't.
He says that the road to virtue is high, hard, thorny, difficult, and painful.
Yes.
And that Satan will offer you the hard road or the easy road?
The easy road, of course.
Right.
And have you been taking the easy road?
I've been taking the easy road.
And where does the easy road lead?
Hell?
Death?
Well, it leads to nowhere and nothing.
Self erasure?
Yeah, it leads to nowhere and nothing, right?
Because Satan will offer you relief in the moment.
Hey, you don't have to deal with the anxiety of trying to do a third draft of the music.
You don't have to deal with the anxiety of going out to get a job.
You can just sit there and diddle with music and watch porn and read anime and everything's great, right?
And that's how you lose your soul, right?
I'm not saying you have, but that's the process by which, right?
Yeah, self-erasure.
That's very true.
Well, yeah, it's a kind of self-erasure.
A man is determined by what he wills, right?
I wanted a worldwide conversation on philosophy, right?
So what did I have to do?
I had to will it into existence.
There was no demand for it.
Nobody would have been invested in this, right?
I mean, I've been to investors to get money for businesses, and if I went and said,
Yeah, there's this new weird thing called podcasting.
It's super expensive.
Nobody knows about it.
I'm going to use it to provoke the most difficult and unpleasant and censorious conversations the world has ever seen, and I'm going to tell people all the things that are going to make their life incredibly difficult.
What would an investor say to me?
You've got to be kidding me!
Yeah.
That's insane.
So?
Just will it into existence.
Now, if I was a hedonist, if I wanted to do not what was right, but what was pleasurable, I would not have been cancelled, I would not have been attacked, I wouldn't have had various mainstream media publications coming after me, guns blazing, right?
If I had said, like, you're talking to me, why?
Because I did what was hard.
I did what was right and true, rather than what was easy and comfortable.
But how do I... I'm sorry?
I mean, I'm attacking my own... I'm guessing with my choices I'm attacking or destroying my own willpower, then.
I mean, attacking and destroying is a very active verb for not doing much of anything!
Yeah.
Now, the question is...
And look, please understand, I'm not saying, me good, you lazy, at all.
I'm not saying that at all.
I had necessity, but you didn't.
So, I'm not comparing us, or trying to make you feel less, or anything like that.
But that's what I was thinking of myself.
Yeah, I don't want you to experience that.
The real question is, why are you taking the easy road?
Why are you taking the soft road of self-disintegration?
Why?
I really want to know.
I really want to know.
I really do want to know, because I could never answer that question.
Oh yeah, no, I can tell you that.
I mean, you won't like it, of course, of course, if it was an easy answer, right?
And that's what I was sort of listening for at the beginning of this, when you were giving me your 25-minute monologue on your feelings about your life as a whole.
I was like, okay, what's the level of insight here, right?
And you're a smart guy, and you have lots of insight, so I'm not sort of criticizing anything to do with that.
It seems like I have insight, but I don't have insight on the essential core issues
The ones that I would probably acquire through will or virtue.
So then the question is, what is willpower and discipline?
I mean, you can't just make it up, you can't just write.
What is willpower and discipline?
I've heard someone say that discipline is doing what you hate as if it were something you love doing.
That's kind of psycho in my view.
You can't do something you hate as if…
As if you love it.
I mean, can you imagine the ugliest woman in the world trying to have sex with the ugliest woman in the world as if she's the most beautiful woman in the world?
That's kind of psycho.
Right?
So I'm guessing there's some alignment here?
There has to be some alignment between what you do and what you feel and what you think your passions are and what you think your talents are?
No, no.
That's all alignment and passions.
That's all feeling shit.
Oh, okay.
Yep.
It's waiting for the alignment of the planets to release me from my torpitude.
It's like, no, no.
That's nothing to do with that.
Nothing to do with that.
Yep.
Okay.
So it's not like I forgot who I am, I just didn't have a father figure?
I'm sorry, what's that to do with?
Because I was saying twice, once in the beginning and once later on, that I forgot who I am, but maybe the more precise way of expressing that would be, well, I just didn't grow up with a father figure and I didn't... No, no, don't give me dominoes, brother.
Okay.
I am the way I am because of things beyond my control.
No.
There's lots of people who grew up without a father figure who are very successful.
That's very true.
I mean, Elon Musk had a terrible father.
Yeah.
So why did I end up making these choices?
I don't know.
Why am I taking the easy road?
Okay, good.
Because we went through a whole bunch of fog there where you weren't asking me.
Are you asking me for the answer?
I mean, I can't really imagine finding it out myself.
I mean, is it okay if you just give me the answer?
Yes, fine with me.
I'll tell about myself.
So, one of the main reasons I started this philosophy show is I was really angry about the prevalence of lies and child abuse.
I was angry about it.
And a lot of discipline has to do with anger.
You're not angry with yourself.
You might self-attack or whatever, like, oh, I'm such a bad blah blah blah, but that's not, right?
You're not angry at yourself, your circumstances, your childhood.
That's why I was asking you the question about the cousin who brutalized you and molested you and forced you to perform oral sex on him.
And you're like, well, I'd be sad if he got hurt and died.
Yeah.
Holy shit.
It seems like I lost my anger.
Because I did move on.
No, no, no, no.
Stop theorizing.
Please, God, man, stop theorizing.
Your theories are terrible in this area.
You have to resist this.
Be open, be curious, okay?
Because you're going to look for theoretical answers.
Okay.
If you were angry at your mother for brutalizing you, your mother hit you, I assume?
Uh, she slapped me a couple times.
Okay.
But she was terrifying.
And she chose a bad father and she raged at your father, right?
In front of you.
She trashed your room.
She called you shit and wished you would die, right?
Right?
Now, if you were angry at her, how would your life change?
I would probably want to get out as quickly as possible.
So what's keeping you in your mother's house, in your abuser's house, taking your abuser's money, is a lack of anger.
Yeah.
I did tell my friends... I did give a couple of my friends the same advice.
Are you going to give me Wanderer stuff excuses here, rather than process your anger?
Okay.
Were you ever allowed to get angry as a child?
No.
Of course not.
No.
And the reason that people try to detach you from your anger is so they can continue to exploit you.
And your mother feels superior to you, although she broke you of your anger, she broke you of your will when you were younger, and now she says, well, I can't believe you don't have will and strength and discipline!
I mean, that's like me breaking someone's arms and then mocking them for not being able to catch a ball.
What does a healthy scenario look like?
Because usually it doesn't really take anger for a chance to... Again, what the fuck are you doing, man?
Why are you jumping into solutions and scenarios?
I'm trying to give you the biggest answer about your life.
Ah yes, but what does it look like if it's different?
All abstract, all intellectual, all nonsense.
You're trying to jump away from what's going on inside you.
Which, again, I sympathize with and I understand.
What do you feel when I say that a lack of healthy anger is, in my amateur outside view, the root of your paralysis?
Sadness.
What do you feel when I say that?
Sadness and maybe a little bit of frustration.
Okay, tell me more.
Well, the first thing I felt was sadness because
I don't want to live like this, I guess.
I just feel sad.
I didn't want things to be like this.
All right, go on.
I just feel ashamed, too.
to have survived this all just to end up like this.
It feels like I'm doing the same things others did to me.
Okay, that's another analytical intellectual judgment.
What do you feel?
Let me ask you this, let me ask you this, let me ask you this.
You're at the park, you're just walking past the park and you see a woman shaking her five-year-old saying, you're a piece of shit, I wish you were dead.
What do you feel?
I'll be horribly, horribly angry.
Okay, there we go!
Would you feel sad and melancholy and self-pitying and...
What would you feel?
I'd be horribly angry for probably at least a couple hours, and then I would feel sad for the child.
Okay.
So why is it appropriate to feel anger at the child of a stranger you see being abused in the way that you were, but not angry about being abused yourself?
I don't really understand the question.
Why does it feel appropriate for a child... You would be angry if you saw a stranger being abused.
A child you didn't even know.
You would feel, I assume, rage at seeing a child being shaken and told she's a piece of shit and should die.
At five, you would feel very angry at that.
Probably rage, right?
I would.
A lot of rage.
A lot of anger.
So why is it the case for a stranger you would feel that, but not for your own experiences as a child?
Why is a child, a stranger's child, so much more worthy of righteous anger than you are?
Let me try it again.
You get older.
You have a daughter.
Your daughter is five.
You get a babysitter because you want to go out with your wife.
Right?
And the babysitter... You come home and the babysitter is shaking your little five-year-old, saying that she's a piece of shit and she wants her dead.
Oh, man.
I don't know what I would do.
Would you feel some rage?
Yes, yes, very much so.
Would you want to separate your child from her abusive babysitter?
Immediately.
Would you pull the babysitter off your child?
Yes.
So why are you living at home?
Why are you not pulling the abuser who told you you were a piece of shit and she wished you were dead and has never apologized for it or made amends or restitution and continues to insult you?
Why are you not pulling yourself off this abuser in the way that you would pull the abuser off your child if it happened to your child?
I don't know.
Yes, you do know!
Why is everyone so much more worthy of protection but you?
I don't know.
What would have happened, this is why I was asking about your cousin when you were five, what would have happened if you had stood up and fought back as a child surrounded by these violent psychos?
The abuse would get worse.
You would risk what?
What would you risk by fighting death?
Yeah, you would risk being killed.
Yeah.
Right.
So what is anger for you?
What does anger equate to?
I mean, in this case, life, right?
No.
Anger equates to death.
Because getting angry as a kid meant what?
You'd be killed.
Or you'd fear that, right?
So what is anger?
Anger is death!
The only way to survive is to never get angry!
Anger is death.
Anger is suicide, in a way.
But everyone else was angry.
Of course.
Of course.
And every family structure full of violent psychos needs to create a victim.
Needs to create a victim.
And you were that victim.
You were the youngest, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, so you're the victim.
You're the one who's never allowed to get angry so that other people can vent their rage on you.
You can be their poison container.
You're the person who is chosen, groomed, promoted and forced into the role of victim so that everyone else can shit on you.
Yep.
And if you're a kid, and listen, every family that's really violent and dysfunctional has that person.
Every family.
Everything.
Mine did.
You've heard this a million times on the show.
Everyone, and it's usually those people who are calling in because they survive.
Because it's far better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.
It's far better to suffer evil than to do evil.
So it's the identified victims
In psychology, they call them the identified patients.
Oh, this person's the problem in the family, when in fact, they're usually the least problematic in the family.
They're just promoted as the problem person by everyone else who wants to abuse them.
I tell you, man, let me ask you this.
Let's say that somebody violently abused, terrified, mentally and physically tortured, and then molested your daughter, and then that person died in a
Car crash, what would you feel?
You'd be like, good!
I hope it hurt.
I hope it fucking hurts.
I hope they lingered on the hellscape of infinite pain for days, if not weeks.
Yeah.
Right?
But it happened to you, and you're like, well I'd feel sad if the person who abused me died or got hurt.
Something in me changed seven days ago, or when I contacted you.
I started getting thoughts such as, um, I hope my mother dies, or my brother dies.
Right, now obviously, listen, I mean, just to be clear, like, having the anger, having the rage, never means you act on it, right?
You're aware of that, right?
Of course not.
You don't act on it, right?
But you need to know what it is.
Because the purpose of the anger is to get you away from the dysfunction.
If you act on it, or are aggressive, or abusive, or violent towards people, then it wraps you into the dysfunction.
Why am I losing my anger?
Like, so easily.
I mean, I was programmed that way.
No, no, no, come on, don't go rubber bones and play dumb with me.
I just told you.
What did I just say?
Yes.
You were forced to.
Your anger was stolen from you, and you were threatened with death for being angry, so that you could continue to be the place where everyone could vent their own rage on.
Yes.
Right.
So, you didn't lose it!
You know, if I get my arm bitten off by a shark, I don't come back and say, damn, I misplaced my arm somewhere!
What the hell happened to my arm?
Let me go back in, I must have left it somewhere out there.
No, I had a predator, ripped it off.
Sorry, go ahead.
Sorry for interrupting you.
The anger has to go somewhere, so... Okay, that's another... I'm theorizing again.
Yeah, please don't try and explain things, you need to feel things.
It's true.
I did just feel some anger.
Sadness, but also frustration.
Anger.
Yeah, so, sadness and self-pity is often how females experience anger.
Right or wrong, right?
Okay.
And I mostly feel sad.
The masculine anger is fight or flight.
Now you can't fight, there's no point fighting.
Right?
So what's left?
Please and appease?
I'm sorry, what was that?
If there's no fight and flight response, there's maybe... No, no, no!
That's not what I said!
Anger is fight or flight.
There's no fight!
There's no point to fighting, so what's left?
Escaping.
Yeah.
You're staying with your mother so you don't have to deal with your anger.
That makes sense.
And your mother doesn't want you to deal with your anger because she wants to continue to do whatever the hell she's doing.
Yeah, she wants to keep me in the family structure.
She wants to keep you in... She doesn't want you talking about the abuse.
She wants to keep you in the family structure.
Maybe she's lonely.
Maybe she wants you around.
Maybe she wants to feel superior to you, quote, failing in life.
Whatever, right?
I don't care.
It doesn't matter.
I mean, she is a feminist.
Oh, she's a feminist?
Oh, yeah.
She has a statue of Lenin in her room.
Oh, she's a communist?
Oh, yeah.
My father is... I'm sure Germany is very happy to import this.
Oh yeah.
Very much so.
Especially East Germany.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, so she's a devotee of a murderous regime.
Yes.
I did call her out on that and she got angry.
So why are you calling her out on it?
It disgusted me.
I asked her why she didn't have a statue of Lenin in her room.
It disgusted me.
I don't understand how she can have sympathy with death.
You don't understand how your mother could have sympathy with evil ideas?
Come on, man.
What are you talking about?
I mean, it makes sense considering what she did to me.
It makes sense.
I just don't know how that originated, but how would I be able to know?
She will never tell me, she will never be honest about it.
Oh yeah, those facts don't exist.
They functionally don't exist, because you'll never get the truth.
Yeah.
You'll never get the truth.
Never.
It's like asking my mom, me asking my mom, hey what happened to you in the war?
I'll never know.
I'll never be able to trust anything she says, because it's all self-serving.
But the thing is, she doesn't owe me the truth either.
Or does she?
She doesn't owe you the truth?
You don't think parents owe honesty to their children?
Yes.
I mean, strangers don't owe you food, but when you're a kid, your parents owe you food!
Yes.
I mean, I'm an adult now, and... Well, hang on.
If your mother doesn't owe you the truth, then why does she owe you rent money?
Because she's paying for your rent, right?
Yeah.
Well, she doesn't.
She doesn't owe me rent money.
No, but you're taking it.
Yeah, I'm taking it.
Yeah, because if your mother wasn't your mother, she'd be charging you rent, right?
True.
So you're saying, I have a special relationship with my mother, where she totally owes me thousands and thousands of euros, and she gave me six thousand euros, but she doesn't owe me the truth!
No, that's just a way, because if your mother owes you the truth and then she lies to you, then you would get angry, right?
So this is just, well, you're taking your mother's obligation away so you don't get angry when she fails to fulfill her obligations.
Of course she owes you the truth.
Parents owe their children the truth, of course, right?
People who claim to love you, people who claim to care about you, people who claim to have a relationship with you, owe you the truth.
Of course.
You can't love someone and then continually lie to them, that's destructive.
You can't claim to have a positive relationship with someone and then delude them about reality.
That's cratering their truth-processing brain parts, right?
So, of course she owes you the truth.
You just want to take away that obligation from her so that you don't have to be angry when she doesn't fulfill it.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
You know what I just remembered?
I mean, it's another memory, I don't know.
I'm guessing we've been spending a lot of time speaking, but I remember my father visiting me when I was five or six years old, and I told him, please don't leave.
I want you to stay.
He started to cry, and as soon as he started to cry, I told him, okay, leave.
You can leave.
And then he stopped crying immediately, and I didn't want him to cry.
So your father also has a defense called emotional manipulation, feels, female, blah, blah, blah, right?
Yes, but it feels like I was taking away his... I was excusing... Yeah, that's true, but... It feels like there was some sort of transfer of emotion.
It feels like I took away his responsibility as a father by... No, he could take you.
No, he just- Yeah.
That's all he did was play you.
He left you in the tender care and mercies of one of the worst verbal abusers I've ever heard of, and I've been doing this for a long time.
Your mother's one of the worst verbal abusers.
Well, of course, communism is verbal abuse, so we wouldn't be too shocked at that, as is a lot of feminism, right?
So, yeah, your mother's one of the worst verbal abusers, and rather than take responsibility and keep you safe, your dad played you by pretending to cry.
Okay.
He didn't want to stand up for you.
And so he just pretended to cry so that you wouldn't make him fight the mother of his child for custody or whatever it was, right?
He didn't want to fight her because she was scary and he was scared of her and she was verbally abusive and dangerous, so he didn't want to fight her.
So when you asked him to basically protect you as a child, he's like, okay, fine, don't.
Okay, I'm fine.
I was cowardly, obviously.
And really sad and tragic.
Yeah, I never really felt angry at him either.
Right.
Because you couldn't.
Yeah.
You weren't allowed.
Because you're the identified victim in the family.
You're the person who has to take everybody else's shit and never fight back.
And that's why when you said you were weak, I'm like, oh my god, man.
That's like calling Oliver Twist agoraphobic because he won't leave Fagin's house when he's locked in!
He's just got this weird fear of the outside, man.
I guess he's just agoraphobic.
He's locked in!
There are bars on the window!
I guess people unjustly imprisoned just don't like getting vitamin D out of it.
They seem to avoid sunlight.
It's weird.
Don't they know?
That's blaming the victim, right?
So yeah, you were horribly mistreated, it wasn't your fault, and the people who did it are evil.
And I live with them.
Well, you're not allowed to get angry, so you can't have any boundaries.
And there could, of course, be a part of you that's waiting for an apology, that's hanging around waiting for things to get better, waiting for things to turn around.
Because it's easier, right?
Accepting that
I mean, listen man, certainly by the time you've hit a quarter century, anyone who's not apologized will never apologize.
And listen man, I'm 57 years old, and in the first quarter century, how many of the people who never apologized to me for what happened as a child, how many of those people have ever apologized?
And there were dozens and dozens and dozens of them, who either abused me or knew about it and did nothing.
How many of those people, and I've been public with it, they can't claim to not know if they want to know, right?
I've been very public about it, and I was a top intellectual in the world for quite a number of years, so it's not like they would never have heard or couldn't have known or anything like that.
So of the dozens and dozens, probably between 50 and 100 people over the course of my childhood knew about the abuse, or were directly abusing me.
How many of those people
Have ever apologized in the 40 years since.
40 years?
Well, I guess zero then.
Zero.
No one apologizes.
40 years, well then zero, like that's causal.
But yeah, it's been 40 years since I was 17, right?
Yeah.
And it's in fact 42 years, because I kicked my mom out when I was 15, right?
So, it's been 42 years.
And who has ever apologized?
No one.
So you're waiting.
I call it waiting for a Roman chariot.
Like you're standing around in Rome and you're waiting for a Roman chariot.
I'm not going to take a bus.
I'm not going to take an Uber.
I'm waiting for a Roman chariot.
Is the authentic Roman chariot ever coming in 21st century Rome?
No.
No.
Waiting for apologies from abusers and enablers is waiting for the Roman chariot.
I'm not walking.
Are you kidding me?
A chariot is way cooler.
I'm not taking a bus or a train or a plane.
I'm waiting for this cool chariot.
Never coming.
And if somebody points out to you that it's never coming and you're like, no, that's not true.
It'll come.
Then you just, your goal is not to get anywhere, but to wait.
The Roman chariot.
It's just an excuse.
They'll never admit they were wrong.
They'll never apologize.
They'll never make restitution.
They'll never take responsibility.
Ever.
Ever.
Ever.
It won't happen.
It's a Roman chariot.
It's a square circle.
It's the sun and the moon switching places.
It's a werewolf.
It's nothing.
It's a fantasy.
It's magic.
It ain't real.
People don't regrow a conscience after they've abused children or watched it or enabled it or ignored it.
People don't regrow a conscience any more than a man regrows a limb he's lost.
I'm just waiting for that arm to grow back!
Nope.
You're around people who will never apologize, will never take responsibility, will never take ownership, will never make restitution.
We'll never be kind.
We'll never have a conscience.
It's far too late.
And it probably was too late before you were even born.
And maybe you were born premature because you wanted to get out of that womb as quickly as humanly possible.
I had that thought as well.
I mean, of course that's nonsense medically, but it's interesting psychologically, right?
Yeah.
I remember my mother told me I was trying to rip off these disintubating cables, the life support.
Right, so maybe that's time to do it again.
Because it's a life support, right?
Your mother, like, this is the incubator, right?
You're back at the incubator, right?
You're on life support, but you're isolated.
Your mother's paying your rent, your bills, and you're alone, right?
Time to rip off the feeding tubes, right?
Can you get to talk therapy?
Is there anyone you could talk to?
Or would you look into that?
Do you have any money?
Do you need money?
If I can pay for a couple of sessions, I'm happy to help out.
Just don't spend it on computers and bullshit.
But can you get to a talk therapist?
Can you get to someone who can help you with this stuff?
Or would you be willing to do that?
Or look into it?
You would be willing to help?
That's incredible.
Of course!
I mean, if I were to look diligently, I would most likely find something.
I don't know where to find something, because my suggestion would be to get an older male therapist.
I'm not sure, you know, that old line from Fight Club, with a generation of men raised by women, I'm not sure another woman is the solution to our challenges.
I do not want a woman as a therapist.
Yeah, don't get a woke guy in my humble opinion.
But I've got a whole thing on, I think it's a podcast, 1929, How to Find a Great Therapist.
So listen, look into therapy.
If you need money, just contact me.
I'll find a way to get it to you to pay for some therapy.
But that would be my suggestion about the next thing to do.
Because I think get in touch with your anger under the... if that's the right thing, right?
I don't know.
It's just my obviously amateur guess.
But I would say that there's a talk therapy thing.
If you just
yank off the feeding tubes without a substitute or without a support system.
I think that could be tough and could lead to a sort of fall back or a relapse.
So, in my opinion, I wouldn't, you know, I can't tell you what to do, obviously, but if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't just yank out of the place.
I would, you know, get into a really good talk therapy situation first.
Sounds good.
Yes.
All right.
All right.
Will you keep me posted about how it's going?
Uh, email, via email then?
Yeah, same place you emailed.
Call them at freedomain.com, it's fine.
Yeah, sure, I'm thinking, maybe, what's the interval here?
So, I'll let you know once I've found… If you can't afford a therapist, or you can't get any state subsidies or anything like that, if you need money for therapy, then just shoot me an email and we'll sort it out.
I just, you're going to get therapy.
If you want to get therapy, money won't be a barrier.
Like, I'll at least help you get you started on that.
And then once you get started, hopefully you can, you know, get a job and go from there.
But I'll certainly, I'll, what do they call it?
Probably the priming fluid, right?
I'll get you started and I'm sure you can take it from there.
But yeah, don't, don't think of money as a barrier to therapy.
Just, and you've got time, right?
Because you're not working.
So that would be my strong suggestion and I'll do what I can to, to make that happen.
But it has to be up to you to find the therapist and set it up.
But if you can't afford it, then just let me know.
I will let you know, but I'm also thinking that I could use that as motivation to just get a job.
However you want to play it is fine with me, but I don't want finances to be a barrier to you getting happy.
So if it is, then good.
It's very kind of you.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate the call, I really do and I wish you the very best and you can have a great life.
I'm really glad that we talked and the future could be wholly different from the past and it sounds like you've got some enthusiasm for getting on that journey and I massively applaud you for that and I also applaud you for making it through like really an unbelievably terrible childhood.
I mean the fact that you are where you are and not
I don't know, in prison or something like that, is a testament to your strength and will and goodness, and I think you should take great pride in that.
