Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Jan. 29, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:41:22

5386 Sympathy for Immorality?!? Freedomain Call In Show

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	All right, so I'm all ears.
	How did it go?
	What's happening?
	Well, first I wanted to say thank you for making the time again to speak to me today.
	Since our call I've been trying to, as you say, judge myself according to ethics and morality and not according to the abusive language of my parents and that voice in my head.
	I've been feeling a lot more confident and
	Inspired and more in touch with reality since our conversation, and I want to thank you for that.
	Oh, my pleasure.
	Glad to help.
	I did listen to your podcast last night, and I wanted to say that it's obviously up to you, but I did want to let you know that even though it was personal, I do feel comfortable with you sharing that call if you feel like it would help others.
	I like to think that if it would help others, I'm comfortable with opening myself up to that as well.
	So, I just wanted to let you know.
	Oh, that's very kind.
	Maybe it'll go out to donors or something like that.
	But, yeah, I appreciate that.
	That's very generous of you.
	So, yeah, do you want to get me up to speed on how things are going now?
	Yeah.
	So, I guess I'll start kind of with my husband.
	So, during this process, I was kind of telling you the last call that
	It's been opening up certain things for the both of us, unlocking some memories of his.
	He was comfortable with me sharing that.
	He realized that during when he was a baby, while changing our girls, our twin girls, he realized that he was molested by his mom as a baby.
	And so for him, this was a deep pain that he had been carrying along with him his entire life.
	I don't even remember it until now.
	The situation that we're in, being with our girls, really kind of opened him up to that and kind of is letting him heal from that.
	And I'm not saying that I have some deep-rooted thing necessarily.
	That's going to be like a light switch, of course.
	I mean, my husband has been into philosophy for years now, so it's not like, you know, it was an easy fix for him.
	It's an easy thing now.
	But I guess I am very curious.
	And interested to talk to you and maybe more so and go in depth with my childhood and kind of see if there is something that I'm missing.
	I know that there's certain things that I have blocks on.
	Um, so that's kind of what I was curious and interested in if you are.
	It's your, it's your call.
	I mean, wherever you want to take it is fine with me.
	If you want to tell me about your childhood, we can see if we can pull apart some threads and find some patterns.
	I'm sure.
	Okay.
	Um,
	Where should I start?
	Should I just start at the beginning, or?
	I can't, I mean, you know, that's the thing.
	I can't tell you where to start with your childhood.
	Whatever comes to mind first, whatever you think would be the most helpful, I'm certainly happy to hear.
	Okay.
	Well, I guess I'll start with the fact that, again, I'm one of three daughters to my parents, just to kind of summarize where they are.
	My oldest sister was 10 years older than me, but she's dead now.
	Five years ago.
	Wow, that's quite a beginning to the... Yeah, I thought I just... Yeah, yeah, gosh, what happened?
	Um, so she married an abusive man, um, who was an alcoholic.
	Um, and we found out after the fact that he was abusive throughout the relationship and he, he shot her and killed her.
	My gosh.
	My gosh.
	That's, that's appalling.
	I'm, I'm so sorry.
	How, how awful.
	And this was five years ago?
	This was six years ago now.
	Six years ago, okay.
	Wow, what was this guy like?
	You said you didn't know he was abusive, but he was abusing alcohol and, you know, people who abuse themselves will abuse others.
	I mean, that's sort of the way that addiction goes.
	I mean, what was this guy like beforehand?
	Um, so I was, like I said, there was a huge age difference when they got married.
	I was in like ninth grade, I think, when they got married.
	Um, he wasn't, he, he always striked me as odd, kind of a little bit aggressive, kind of just very eccentric, but my sister was also very eccentric.
	She was very, um, at least outwardly strong willed and angry.
	I'm not sure what you mean by eccentric.
	Um, he had maybe just, um, not in touch with reality.
	Like he, he had, he had an obsession with guns.
	He, um, was really obsessed with like German culture for some reason.
	Um, I think just cause his ancestry was German, but he would just talk about it a lot.
	He had like, like, um, what's it called?
	Like, um, like those packs of like food, like powdered packs, like in,
	Like a bunker person almost, but he didn't have the means to be a bunker person.
	He was just kind of insane.
	He reminded me a lot of my dad.
	I kind of always thought he was like my dad when they were together.
	Me and my sister were never ever close.
	She kind of always treated me like I was her annoying little sister and didn't really want to be around me.
	But I do remember there were times I asked her, like, why do you like him?
	Like, he's really strange.
	She'd give me her reasons for why.
	I remember a couple times asking, is he abusive to you?
	She would say no.
	But to be honest, I wasn't as curious enough as I should have been.
	Let's say, right when I graduated, so four years later, her husband and my father got into a physical altercation.
	Cops were called.
	Her husband was arrested.
	My sister and her husband cut us off.
	For a period of time, there wasn't really a conversation involved, but I just remember thinking like, um, you know, I'm glad she got out, but I don't know why she's not talking to me.
	Like, I've always kind of tried to talk to her, but, you know, if this is what she needed to break free, then, you know, okay, then she's, she did it, I guess.
	It's kind of the most of the thought that I put into it at the time.
	Um,
	So, sorry, they were married, he was arrested.
	Did he go to jail?
	Is that why they broke up?
	What happened?
	Oh, no, they were together.
	So, he went to jail one night because my dad and her husband got in a physical altercation.
	My dad called the cops.
	Her husband went to jail for a night.
	It was just a domestic thing that was kind of waved off.
	I'm sorry, just because you said that she got out and I'm not sure what that means.
	In my perspective, at the time when I was in high school, I thought she got out of our family dynamic.
	Oh, okay.
	Sorry.
	I thought she got out of marriage.
	That's what I was with her husband.
	Okay.
	So, sorry.
	So, she got out of a family dynamic, but I'm not sure what that means.
	At the time, I thought, you know, she's out of, you know, my parents' grasp.
	Like, she didn't want to talk to us anymore.
	And my parents didn't really seem like they cared.
	They didn't really put any effort in to try to find her either.
	Um, kind of seemed unbothered by it.
	Sorry, trying to find her?
	Was she, was she missing?
	No, they just, they didn't try to, um, reach out to her.
	They didn't try to, um, kind of like I was telling you with me, how, how my parents have been trying to communicate with me regularly since I cut them off last year.
	They didn't try to do that with my sister.
	They kind of just let it be.
	Um,
	They didn't, in my opinion, when I would talk, try to talk to them about it, they didn't seem very bothered.
	They just didn't seem very bothered.
	The fact that she had cut herself off from them.
	I never really thought my dad, like my sister, um, actually when the day we found out that she died, my dad literally said the words, what else could go wrong this year?
	And then he said, what else could go wrong this year?
	And he didn't even cry.
	It's tough for him.
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, he didn't say anything else.
	At the funeral, it seemed like it was more of a social gathering for him than like a dad memorial.
	It was just very, very odd.
	But fast forward a few years, my sister, we went into like a depressive episode of some sort.
	She was an alcoholic too at this point.
	She asked me,
	You know, can I come live with you?
	Me and my husband are not doing well.
	Um, I need somewhere to go.
	I was still living at my parents' house at the time.
	And I said, you know, well, let me talk to my parents.
	Uh, my mom told me no.
	Um, and it was just, I was like a middleman, like back and forth.
	Um,
	But then my sister decided to, she was suicidal at this point, she decided to call the cops on herself, get herself involuntarily, Baker acted.
	And then at that point, my mom kind of was like, well, okay, I guess she'll have to come stay with us.
	So she came and stayed with us for about six months.
	She got on psychiatric medication at this time, kind of tamped all that down.
	Was emotional about it at this time.
	I tried to ask her again, like how, what's with, is he abusive to you?
	Like she would, I'm sorry if you could just remember to stay off the names just so I don't have to edit it afterwards.
	I'd appreciate that.
	Just her husband.
	Yeah.
	Good.
	Yeah.
	Um, and he kept telling me no.
	Um, again, at this time I had, this is such a parallel of events.
	Um, at this time I had had my.
	Brush with suicidality.
	So, I was on antidepressants at this point as well.
	I just got on antidepressants as well, kind of at the same time.
	I was in nursing school at the time too.
	I met my now husband shortly after that.
	So, I just wasn't as curious with her as I should have been at this point.
	And then fast forward six months later, her and her husband tried to work it out and we found they were
	You know, at their own house.
	I'm sorry.
	So when your sister was living with you and your parents, her husband wasn't there, right?
	No, they were separated for that time.
	Um, and then towards the end of the six months, they were starting to talk again, hang out, um, spend some time together.
	And then they spent the night at their house or she spent the night at their house.
	And then the next day we found out, actually found out from the news first before we found out.
	from the police that they were dead.
	Um, he, he killed her.
	He shot her in the head and then he killed himself.
	So it was a murder suicide.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	Um, there's a lot there, but, um, and my other sister, she's five years older than me.
	Um, she has been probably the last 15 years or so has been off and on lithium.
	She's been diagnosed bipolar.
	Um, I know for a fact she's been raped by multiple men in her adulthood.
	Um, I'm pretty positive.
	I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty positive when she was young.
	Um, my parents had this, um, weird older friend, well, their age in his forties, um, hanging around.
	And I feel, and I, I feel like he was a predator.
	Um, my, my mom would let this man take my sister out to baseball games alone.
	I think, in my sister's point of view, this was the first man that ever showed her attention and affection, and I think something had happened to her because she became very hyper-sexualized in middle school.
	I heard some gossip from one of my cousins once that she tried to have sex with him.
	He played it off, denied it.
	I don't know if that was true or not, but
	Since then, she's just been with abusive men.
	Not physically abusive, but mostly felons that she's dated.
	They've had drug issues, verbal abuse.
	She's still single now.
	She's mid-30s.
	Where would you even go to meet felons?
	I mean, I don't mean to make light of it, but I'm just genuinely curious.
	Like, if some woman wants to date a felon, where does she even go to meet these people?
	Or is it just part of the substance abuse world?
	Or does she have substance abuse issues?
	She doesn't have substance abuse issues.
	Well, actually, she did have a dipping problem for a lot of years.
	I don't know what that is.
	Dipping is...
	It's like tobacco, like the, those packs that you stick in your mouth.
	It's some, it's kind of, um, well, it's kind of redneck-y.
	Um, I, I don't, I don't know what else to call it, but it's like, I just wasn't sure what the term meant.
	Yeah, chewing tobacco.
	Um, but anyway, so she would meet these felons.
	Um, she, she'd go to line dancing bars, really.
	That was her thing.
	Um, she had this fantasy about line, like about being a country girl, even though we lived in the suburbs.
	Um, no, I'm not sure where that came from, but she, yeah, most of these men she's met from line dancing bars and just friends in circles from there.
	Um, most of them have had drug issues, um, alcohol issues, um, verbally.
	Abuses.
	I think every boyfriend she's ever had has cheated on her.
	Her last boyfriend, when we used to talk, we don't talk anymore, gave her a sexual STD.
	So yeah, just kind of during this process, because since I cut my parents off last year, I've been trying to bring that sister into this.
	Me and my husband, both, we've tried to set her up with a life coach that we know.
	It just didn't, of course, it didn't go well.
	She took the side of my parents.
	And I want to say earlier this year, almost a year now, actually, probably February or so, March, I kind of told her, if you want to have a relationship with me, these are the things that I require.
	I have higher standards now.
	If you don't want to, you know, let me know if you want to be a part of this.
	And of course she took offense to that and cut me off.
	She took the side of my parents.
	She's very dependent financially.
	Emotionally at my parents, she's mid-30s, still lives at the house with them.
	She kind of works part-time.
	It's hard for her stress.
	When she's under high stress, she just becomes... she goes into episodes.
	She goes into like three to six month long manic depressive episodes, just given her background.
	So that's kind of where my sisters are.
	Well, I'm sorry to hear that.
	And it is always a, it's always a curious thing to me just how people with, I don't know, mental health challenges or however you'd want to phrase it.
	I mean, I was always sort of limited in my ability to be nutty because I had to get up and go to work.
	You know, it's one of these things where I'm always sort of fascinated by the finances of dysfunctional people.
	And I guess the answer there is that she, she lives off your parents, right?
	And I guess occasional work and so on.
	Yeah, I think that there's a great sanity thing about running out of money and, you know, the degree to which maybe this kind of behavior is self-indulgent.
	And again, I'm not trying to say it's all fake or anything like that, but, you know, if you give
	If you give crazy people a million dollars to be sane for a week, could they do it?
	You know, I think a lot of them could.
	Obviously not psychotics or schizophrenics and so on, but I think a lot of people can pull it together to some degree if they have the right incentives.
	But as long as, you know, for pretty women and for people living with their parents or, you know, maybe you win the lottery or whatever it is, they just can, they don't have to kind of whip themselves into shape, so to speak, because they can get by without that.
	Yeah, my mom, kind of how I told you, she always enabled my dad.
	She's definitely always enabled us, for sure, and kind of took the, I guess, I'm not going to say she took it all, but ultimately it was our choice as adults too, but she kind of deflated us in a way, made us kind of dependent on her.
	I think she likes being, she complains about it in the moment, but I think she likes
	I think it's a slightly bit more of a female thing, which is to...
	Not allow consequences for bad behavior to accrue, right?
	So, I mean, there's a sort of standard thing of the woman doesn't want to let the kid ride the bicycle, you know, too fast.
	And the dad's like, you know, if they fall off, they'll learn that.
	So there's a certain amount of, I think, because I think as moms deal with this, you know, like you can't say to a six month old baby, well, if you tumble down the stairs, you'll learn your lesson, right?
	You have to really shield
	Infants and toddlers from the consequences of their behavior, but there's usually a bit of a shift that's supposed to happen, I think, as the kids get older, where maybe the dads step in a little bit more and say, well, you know, they'll, they'll learn from consequences.
	Right.
	And so maybe that just went way too far, I guess, in, in your family.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Um, whenever my dad would have an episode, um,
	Depressive episode where he, he had to be, um, Baker acted or when my sister would, the one that would be Baker acted, she would always, you know, apply for FMLA and take like a month or two off work.
	And, um, in her mind, take care of, take care of us or take care of them while they are remedicated and dissociate back into just like a sedated date again.
	Um, that was kind of.
	You know, always the cycle with my parents' relationship, and then definitely she tried to do that with us as well.
	Right, right, right.
	Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, even the government stuff and all of that, where you can just sort of get money for these dysfunctions.
	I understand, you know, like the sort of the sympathy behind it, but boy, is it ever easy to use that as an excuse to not have to improve.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Definitely.
	I don't know, I guess I just wanted to start with what happened to my sisters to give you a little better understanding of where I'm coming from.
	Well, okay, so that's your sisters in adulthood, but what about you as a child?
	Yes.
	So, the first memory I've ever had, or the first memory I could think of,
	I'm pretty positive I was four, and I was in pre-k four.
	I remember the teacher's class that I was in.
	Specifically, I had this friend.
	I remember we would talk a lot about running away together from our families.
	I remember I had this little pink toy suitcase that every so often I'd be upset at home and pack up, and I'd have a night of clothes in it.
	And two pieces of gum for my friend and me.
	And whenever I'd get upset, I'd pack that bag and I'd act like I was going to run away.
	And that's the first thing I can really remember.
	The first memory I have, and I had to have been four then.
	I guess the second memory I have before kind of chunks go missing, I think I was five.
	We used to have a timeshare at the beach.
	Um, this predator friend of my parents, I was telling you about, um, me and him and my dad were in the pool.
	Um, he thought it was funny to just continuously like push my head under the water as I would try to come up and gasp for air.
	I couldn't breathe.
	He just kept pushing down.
	Um, took me a while to get the sense to like swim backwards.
	Um, as I did, I w I remember I was like in, you know, choking, inhaling water.
	I was crying.
	I remember thinking that the first time.
	I remember that was the first time, but not the last time, thinking, like, I'm gonna die.
	And as I got out of the water, they were both just, like, laughing at me.
	Ran to my mom, crying.
	She acted like it wasn't a big deal.
	After that, there's kind of, like, chunks missing.
	But other than that, I don't know why.
	I don't know what stopped.
	I feel like around the time
	I was probably looking at pictures in like the yearbook.
	I probably was like third, fourth grade.
	I kind of just stopped doing that.
	I started dressing more feminine.
	I wasn't like feminine, but it was, um, I wasn't dressing like a boy anymore.
	I didn't, I don't think I identified with a boy at that point as a boy at that point.
	Um, all the pictures, all the pictures that I looked at me when I was a kid, they were, I was just either making a stank face.
	Like I was unhappy or I was just very sad.
	Um, I just can't remember the timeline of that.
	Um, elementary school.
	Okay.
	Elementary school.
	My, um, um, I was telling you, my mom made me do a million of activities.
	Um, my time wasn't my own.
	I had, um, had to have straight A's in school.
	She enrolled me in karate.
	I had that three, two, three nights a week, Saturday mornings.
	I was in piano.
	I had that two nights a week.
	Um, she threw out, you know,
	Different seasons.
	She had me in different sports.
	She had me, um, I had flute at one point.
	Like I, I just, I didn't get a choice in any of these things.
	She just made me do them.
	She enrolled me in all of them.
	Um, I always had something to do.
	I always had this pressure on me if I wasn't doing well enough.
	Um, from my mom, there was the yelling, there was the screaming, the, well, you're not good enough, the intense pressure.
	And I was able to relax, um, all the while.
	From my dad.
	He was a perverted man.
	He was, I'm kind of crossing over, but he was always screaming at me every day.
	He screamed at me every day.
	Him and my mom screamed.
	Rats.
	There wasn't many physical issues, physical altercations when I was young.
	A couple pushing me up against the wall.
	Putting a fist to me, threatening to hit me, threatening to hurt me if I didn't eat my oatmeal or like if I whatever it was just a random thing.
	So where he was a pervert, he would just he was very obsessed with like sex.
	He would walk around naked.
	He would just have like really scandalous movies playing on the TV.
	He would like
	Listen to porn on his phone or on, um, I guess not at that point.
	He didn't have we didn't have phones So, uh, but on his computer in the room and it would just be like audible my mom all the while You know turn that off and nag nag nag, but it was just a really Uncomfortable stressful environment.
	I don't feel like my dad sexually assaulted me um I don't feel like that's accurate.
	Um
	I just remember thinking, you know, very small age, like, why is my dad not like other dads?
	You know, I went to a Christian school.
	I saw what I thought was, you know, good relationships between fathers and their daughters, and I was just really confused, and I didn't understand why my dad wasn't normal like that, why he would be hospitalized for times on end, and when he wasn't, he was either angry or he was depressed, and I just didn't understand.
	Very young age, I stopped calling him by dad.
	I started calling him by his name.
	Probably elementary school.
	I started calling him just by his name to his face and to other people.
	Let's see, I think that's elementary school that I can remember.
	I wasn't very interested in boys, elementary or middle school.
	I remember my friends, they were very, like, crushes and things.
	And I wasn't interested in girls either.
	I was just like, I don't get it.
	I don't like that.
	Like, not with my, you know, this is what a relationship is, like, with my parents.
	Like, I don't want that.
	I'm not interested in that.
	I also didn't have time to think about that because I was always doing something.
	My, you know, veiled threats, random times throughout the years.
	High school, I guess, where I'll start there.
	I remember just kind of being upset with my mom, telling her like, you know, I don't want to do any of this anymore.
	She finally let me quit all these things.
	My time became my own at this point, but I didn't really know what to do with it.
	I kind of just did stuff to make me feel better.
	I started dating probably 10th grade.
	I started, you know, being in random activities that started random activities to take up my time.
	Different coping mechanisms that weren't sustainable.
	I started dissociating into those.
	Probably high school was more of the time where, in high school and right after high school, was more of the time where my dad was physically violent with me, where he's tried to kill me.
	He didn't want me to take the car one time.
	I think I was like 17.
	I was driving.
	He did something with the brakes on my car.
	So when I Went to drive the car.
	I was with my friend.
	Um, I was coming up to a red light driving and the brakes weren't working um, and I remember I was panicking and I just kept pumping the brakes and then Somehow it just suddenly stopped peeled off on the side of the road.
	My car was smoking.
	It was like um, just There was like a fire under the hood um called my mom to come pick me up found out that that my dad fucked with the fuck with the
	I don't know exactly what he did, but he clipped some sort of cord because he didn't want me to.
	Sorry, how did you find that out?
	He told my mom, apparently.
	He told my mom that that's what he did.
	And my mom told me that.
	I certainly don't mean to doubt the dangers of your father, but it's your mom.
	I mean, I can't imagine she's the most reliable witness in these kinds of things.
	That's true.
	Yeah, I guess, I guess, um, just given other issues that we've had, I just kind of believed, believed it.
	Um, he's throwing my head into the wall, made a hole into the wall.
	I had a concussion from that.
	Um, he's tried to choke me out.
	He's punched me in the face.
	He's, um, so just given all of that information, like I figured, I just figured it was correct, but I guess I don't know for sure with the car.
	Right.
	Again, I'm not trying to doubt the danger of your dad, but it would be something.
	I mean, whatever your mom says, I guess is somewhat suspect.
	But again, I mean, your dad's dangerous, and as you say, he gave you a concussion.
	Yeah, he's a very dangerous fella, so I certainly sympathize with all of that, but I was just curious because, I mean, it could be just something wrong with the car, but that was sort of my question about where you would find that out from, like if he confessed to you or something like that, but if you say he confessed to your mom and then she says, okay.
	So, I'm sorry, we got to your, I think, mid-teens?
	Okay, now, with regards to the screaming, you said sort of daily screaming and so on, what happened with physical violence?
	I mean, you say, of course, that your father was physically violent.
	Did he use it as a rage thing, rage infliction, or did he use it as a, quote, discipline tool, or how was the physical violence between your mom and your dad and you, how did that play out?
	Yeah.
	Um, my dad, he, it was more of a rage thing.
	Um, he, he would, um, something would piss him off and then he would react.
	Um, so sometime, you know, I would see him hit my older, my older sister.
	Sometimes my middle sister was a little bit more timid.
	She'd kind of run away and hide, but me, but, um, my older sister and me, we would kind of give it back to him.
	So we, it would be, um, just a random thing he would do, um, hit us or something or push us or,
	Something along those lines, he didn't really take a disciplinary role.
	I mean, he spanked me a couple times, maybe with a belt.
	My mom, though, would take the disciplinary role.
	She spanked me probably every day in my elementary years.
	She would use objects, shoes, paddles.
	I remember she broke a wooden paddle, like a thick beach ball wooden paddle, over my ass once.
	Even in adulthood, she'd make jokes about
	Do you need, you know, oh, I had to spank you every day.
	I would ask you, do you need to start the day with a spanking so you would act right?
	Um, she's pulled off the side of the road before with friends.
	I've had friends in the car.
	She's pulled off on the side of the road because I talked back to her to spank me on the side of the road.
	Um, it was kind of just an everyday, at least it's kind of a blur, but like, it felt like an everyday kind of thing.
	Um, she told me I needed it to act right.
	That's what she would say.
	Um,
	But, so that's kind of where the disciplinary side came from.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And were there any rules that were ever consistently enforced or was it just sort of rage reaction stuff?
	Mostly rage reaction stuff.
	Um, I think I liked to piss her off too.
	Um, I would say things cause I would point out the contradictions and what she would say and what she would do.
	And she really hated that.
	Um, the, um,
	I'm sorry, can you ask the question one more time?
	Well, I mean, were there any rules that were ever consistently enforced, just sort of rage reaction stuff?
	Like, was there any way, I guess, of navigating the violence so that you had any sense of predictability?
	Oh, okay.
	No, there really wasn't.
	I mean, I think if I like, I think maybe if I
	Didn't talk back to her as much.
	Maybe I wouldn't have gotten, I wouldn't have, um, had the brunt of her force as much, but I don't think as a kid, I don't think I cared as a kid.
	I think it just really bothered me.
	Like, I remember thinking like it really bothered me that she would be where she wouldn't protect me from my father.
	And I would always kind of call her out on that.
	Um, and no, I don't, I don't, there wasn't really any predictability to it.
	It kind of just seemed like if she was stressed, it would happen more.
	She worked, of course.
	She had a caffeine addiction.
	She was always hyper-stressed.
	She did all the child-rearing herself, essentially.
	My parents were married, but my mom was definitely like a single mom.
	My dad didn't help out other than him working when he could.
	If he wasn't psychiatrically having issues, he would work.
	But other than that, he didn't do anything with us.
	Didn't prepare.
	He didn't even know what grade I was in most of the time.
	He'd call me by the wrong name most of the time.
	So, no, I guess there was no predictability really in that.
	Right, right.
	And I suppose the finances kind of came and went, right?
	If your dad's working sometimes, not working sometimes.
	Yeah.
	I mean, we were upper middle class, I'd say.
	I remember my mom would always be stressed out about money, especially because my dad would work here and there.
	Sometimes he wouldn't.
	But I went to a private school.
	It was expensive.
	We had a nice-ish house.
	I never... I don't know.
	I know my mom was very stressed about it.
	She always put herself in debt, different ways, doing different things, refinancing the house.
	But yeah, I mean, we never really went without anything.
	Um, my mom was a big minute whenever like my dad would, um, do something, which was practically on a regular basis.
	My mom would kind of, um, if she started to feel sympathetic or not sympathetic, she started to wanting to manipulate me, essentially, she would just buy us gifts.
	Um, that's kind of the way she would try to get me to sympathize with her.
	Um, when I told you she actually left here, um, the other day, I found like she left gifts.
	Um, for my girls.
	So, um, it's just kind of the old trick that she's always had to get, to get me to empathize with her.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And then what happened after school?
	Um, what kind of, after I graduated or what?
	Yeah.
	After you graduated high school, what happened then?
	Um, after I graduated, I started doing some, um, community college stuff.
	I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
	Partying, drinking, having boyfriends.
	I always had a boyfriend.
	It was very easy for me to get a boyfriend.
	I didn't really have to try hard.
	Then I ended up going into nursing school.
	I had the stress of that.
	It was just a five-day-a-week ruling program.
	I had the stress of that.
	I had a breakup at the same time.
	I was living at my parents' house at that time.
	That's when all these intolerable feelings started coming out, and I went into a depressive episode, I guess you could say.
	That's when I went through my suicidal episode.
	I keep wanting to say episode, but I just had suicidal thoughts and intentions.
	I had a plan.
	I had a plan to kill myself.
	Um, once I had the means though, in the moment, I kind of, I don't, I don't really know what it was.
	I don't know.
	Um, I grew up a Christian, so I don't, I, at the time I thought it was my faith, but I don't, it was just something inside me that was just really telling me, no, this is not, this is not right.
	This is not, you know, this is not what you need to do.
	This is not, it's not the answer.
	Um, and so I decided to, okay, well, if I,
	I got to get better.
	I have to feel better.
	My coping mechanisms aren't working, so I have to do something to feel better.
	So I went on psychiatric medication.
	I went on Zoloft.
	I was on that for like five years.
	I started to feel better.
	Kind of started pushing all these feelings down.
	At that time, my mom took, you know, during my issue, my mom took off that time off of work and took care of me.
	At that point, I thought she was taking care of me.
	I became very sympathetic to her during that for some reason.
	It was the first time I ever felt like she was there for me.
	It was the first time I ever thought that she cared about me.
	And then on top of that, maybe a month or so of me being on the meds, it started to feel a bit better.
	She was walking across the street on her way to work.
	She's also a nurse, worked at a busy hospital.
	She got hit by a car crossing the street.
	She was hospitalized for a few months.
	A lot of surgeries.
	She can walk now, but she definitely has some issues.
	That made her a very sympathetic person to me in my mind at the time.
	I felt like I needed to take care of her.
	Same time, my mom's incident triggered a catatonic episode in my dad.
	He started literally starving himself.
	Well, I guess he lost his caregiver, right?
	And then it was required of him that he would take care of someone else, and maybe that was a bit overwhelming.
	Yeah.
	He just couldn't talk.
	He'd just stare.
	He'd just stare at you.
	I tried to take him to the doctor a couple times.
	I remember the doctor saying he looks like a cancer patient, like his eyes
	To death in her old age, and that's how she died.
	My dad was doing that.
	And so I'm trying to take care of my mom in the hospital, in rehab.
	I'm trying to take care of my dad.
	I had to end up bringing him to a psych ward because he couldn't even keep down food.
	So I was simultaneously taking care of the two of them, trying to scrounge together what cash I could to pay the bills.
	I was just newly on antidepressants at the time, too, so this was a stressful time.
	Eventually, my mom got better.
	My dad, quote, got better.
	I became very sympathetic to my mom's situation after that.
	Literally a month or two later, I met my now-husband.
	At the time, I just didn't understand what he saw in me.
	And, um, you know, I went back to nursing school, finished nursing school.
	Um, let's see, finished nursing school.
	Um, me and my boyfriend at the time lived together, moved in together.
	Um, then we got engaged, started planning this wedding, had a big wedding planned.
	Um, uh, my husband was always watching your shows into philosophy.
	I think slowly over time, he was always trying to kind of bring me into
	He had his own issues, too.
	At the time, I felt like he was being hypocritical, but I understand he was who he was at that point.
	We were planning this wedding.
	All these intolerable feelings were coming up towards my parents.
	I started
	Same one my husband was seeing, and he was helping talk some sense into me.
	And I thank him for that.
	And I had seen him probably for like a year off now, I want to say, coming up to this wedding.
	And so I thought this wedding, I was having this picture like, oh, it's going to be this wonderful event.
	And it's going to be this magical time where my friends and family are going to come together.
	I'm going to get married.
	It's going to be great.
	And then I just was realizing the more stress was coming on, coming closer and closer to this wedding.
	Me and my husband were like, this is not the case.
	This is horrible.
	This is stressful.
	So we decided to call it quits on the wedding.
	We eloped.
	At the same time, I had been preparing for months.
	At this point, I had been preparing a confrontation with my mom.
	I had wrote a 10-page paper for my mom.
	Um, you know, invited her over to my apartment at the time, um, had this, read the paper to her.
	Um, I felt at that point, you know, like I really stood up for myself.
	I felt really proud of myself at that point.
	Um, you were talking about the last conversation about having hype music.
	I've been listening to that recording of me just kind of going off on her as hype music, um, lately.
	Um, but.
	So she, um, of course it went horribly.
	She denied everything.
	Um, it didn't go well.
	So at that point I decided to cut her and my dad out of my life.
	Um, that's, that was about a year and a half ago.
	You know, haven't talked to them since, except what I kind of filled you in last time.
	She's been trying to communicate with me, trying to get me to sympathize with her, try and blanket apologies, you know, not going anywhere.
	Um, and then we're kind of where we are at, where she showed up at my door the other day.
	So I probably skipped over a lot of things, but that's like the summary of it.
	And when she puts forward these sort of blanket apologies about what happened to you as a child, what they did to you, as a child and I guess as a young woman, what sort of communication is going on there?
	What is the sort of stuff that she's saying?
	Just like, oh, I'm sorry if I hurt you.
	Like not having any empathy for me at all.
	Like just the plainest day, obvious, like how can you not even like, if you, if you, in your quote unquote, you say you care about me, you can't even fake for a minute that you like actually are listening to what I'm saying.
	And I'm showing any curiosity about what I'm saying.
	Like you're just kind of just, Oh, I'll say this thing and you should just accept me now.
	I remember at one point she said, well, you have to accept me for how I am.
	And, and that wasn't that.
	I'm not sure why.
	I'm not sure why.
	I mean, as a kid, they sure didn't accept you for who you were.
	They could have beat you and yelled, screamed at you and wanted you to change all the time.
	So I don't know why on earth would I have to accept people for who they are.
	I mean, and that's the kind of poisonous thinking that may have contributed to the death of your sister, right?
	Which is, you know, I mean, her husband, well, you have to accept me for who I am!
	It's like, well, kind of a dangerous lunatic, a murder-suicide guy, so... So, she says, I'm sorry if you are upset by anything I did, is that right?
	Yeah, kind of, just a bunch of things like that, yeah.
	Right, so that's a way of saying, well,
	Um, anyone who would find offense in my behavior is incomprehensible, but if you're one of those incomprehensible crazy people, I guess I'm sorry.
	It would be kind of like if I go to Japan and I don't know some local custom, and I don't do something or I do something that's against the local custom.
	I don't take off my hat when passing in front of a shrine or something like that, right?
	I mean, I would apologize, but I wouldn't feel like I was a bad person.
	I'd be like, oh, I'm really sorry that I didn't know this ritual.
	I mean, I'm not going to get mad at myself for not knowing a particular ritual or thing, and so on, right?
	So it's kind of like saying, well, there's nothing objectively wrong with what I did, but if you are so crazy and hypersensitive that you just happen to be offended by it, I guess I'm sorry for that.
	Is it sort of like that?
	Right, right.
	And so, yeah, of course there's no ownership, and I assume, of course, that there's no, you know, I'm going to therapy, I'm, you know, whatever, I'm reading all these books, anger management, I'm reading about child abuse and its effects, and is there anything to do with anything?
	I mean, I almost kind of know the answer, but I just wanted to double-check, is there anything that goes on like that?
	With my mom, you're asking?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Is your mom taking any steps to try and figure out what happened, like therapy or reading or something like that?
	No.
	In my first confrontation with her in my paper, I wrote all of those things.
	At that point, I wasn't quite sure if I wanted her in my life or not.
	I kind of knew how the conversation would go, but I kind of wanted to give her that opportunity.
	So I said, you know, if you wish to be in my life, I require you to go to therapy.
	I require you to be curious about me.
	These things, of course, weren't going to happen.
	Um, she made zero attempt at all at any of those.
	Um, I told her actually also told her if she wanted to be in my life, she needed to leave.
	My dad, um, didn't want to do that.
	Um, so even though she financially is capable of taking care of herself, um, she didn't want to do that.
	Um, and so she wrote me a letter back.
	That was kind of nasty, just, um, putting the blame on me and just again, emphasizing how I'm the problem, how I was the difficult one.
	Um, and that kind of just set me off.
	I wrote like another like 10, 15 page paper, just like going off on her this time.
	Like the first one I was being, you know, sticking it to her and being matter of fact, but not as cruel.
	The second one, I was just kind of just letting my anger go at her.
	Um, and I felt even, I just felt like that paper was a banger and like, just, you know, I, I, this entire experience, I saved my papers.
	I saved her paper.
	I recorded the verbal conversation with her just because I knew as time would pass,
	You know, I would probably not be as in touch with reality as time would go on, and that's obviously the case, considering what we had talked about last time, and so I've been listening to that, and just kind of like, yeah, you know, like, like, I am the hero, like, in my own story, and I just, um, you know, been trying, again, been trying to identify with, with, um, ethics and morality, and
	reality, instead of those intrusive thoughts.
	I'm just kind of speaking truth to that.
	Like you said, that's the cure.
	How are you feeling about things now?
	When I feel good, I feel like I'm on top of the world.
	It's great.
	I feel very hopeful.
	But like, of course I've just like, it's like highs, highs, lows, lows.
	And I think that also has to do, like, I've just been very sensitive to, to that.
	Like it's been coming up because of the lack of sleep with, you know, newborn twins.
	Um, and I, you know, my life coach previously told me that like, I have a lot, a lot of tears that I have to cry.
	I've been like always trying to figure out like how to put that off, like my entire life, just how can I put that off?
	And now, like, I just am very vulnerable, especially considering, like, the lack of sleep and the situation I'm in now.
	And so, you know, I struggle with, like, good, like, good crying.
	Like, I'm crying, like, okay, this is the crying to do to heal.
	And then sometimes it's, like, all the intrusive thoughts are in my head, and I'm just, like, I'm just, like, hopelessly crying.
	And it's, like, it's
	Pretty, it's pretty good most days, but like when I'm alone, like when my husband goes to work and I'm just really alone for like, he works, he's also a nurse.
	He works 12 hour shifts and he has to sleep when he comes back.
	So when I'm alone for those extended periods of time and just really underslept, it's like, I think that that's just when I'm the most vulnerable.
	And that's when it's really hard for myself to like, to not feel sympathetic to my mom and I not really as much to my dad, but to my mom,
	And to not let those intrusive thoughts in, that's where I'm at.
	So, what's the case that defends your mom?
	And I'm not saying this cynically or in order to tear it down, but what is the case that you make to yourself that gives you sympathy for your mom?
	I mean, I'd really like to hear that.
	And again, with all openness, and maybe it's a good case, but what is that case?
	Intellectually, there really honestly is none.
	I don't have a desire to call my mom up.
	I don't have a desire to have a relationship with her, even in my lowest lows.
	It's just sometimes I feel sympathetic with her.
	We spoke.
	I didn't realize she left the gifts before she came by and knocked on my door.
	I didn't find out that she left the gifts until after we got off of our call.
	And then for some reason, I just felt... I realized in the moment, I felt sadness for her.
	She feels sad that
	Her daughter and her grandkids aren't in her life.
	And I immediately was like, well, I don't, like, I don't want to call her.
	Like, I don't intellectually, she doesn't like, you know.
	Okay.
	Sorry.
	This is, uh, I mean, I appreciate all of this information, but first of all, I mean, the gifts are just bribery, right?
	We're aware of that.
	Right.
	Um, but no, what's the case, right?
	What's the case for sympathy for you?
	I mean, it's certainly been my experience and this is not obviously a universal thing, but in my experience, if,
	If you have thoughts, like, really make the case.
	Make the steel man case, right?
	Because if you just fight those thoughts, they don't tend to be resolved.
	Right?
	So, I mean, I could make a case for my mom around, you know, obviously she was brutalized in the war, and she saw the entire world blow up, and her mother was killed, and Lord knows what happened.
	I mean, there was a lot of sexual assaults against all females from the invading Russians, and I'm sure she got caught up in that.
	So, I mean, there's a huge case that I could make for sympathy for my mother, right?
	And I think it can be quite helpful to make that case, like put your entire mental muscles behind that case and get to the core of where that argument is within you.
	Okay, I understand where you're coming from.
	So, my mom, her mom... Okay, so my mom was raped.
	I actually don't know the extent, but she was sexually assaulted, I think, repeatedly by her father as a child.
	Her father was a wicked, angry man as well.
	He would, according to my mom, he would beat the boys.
	There were seven of them, seven siblings, and I think she was the oldest daughter, so I think she kind of took the brunt of that sexual assault.
	This isn't something that my mom ever shared with me.
	This is something I kind of found out.
	Um, and then I confronted with her when I had that conversation.
	I asked her, I said, did your dad sexually assault you?
	She said, yes.
	So she admitted to it.
	Um, but, um, yeah, her dad, her dad was an angry, violent person, a lot like my dad.
	Um, but he sexually assaulted her.
	Um,
	Her mom enabled it.
	Um, she, so, so yeah, I guess like, you know, uh, I'll feel sympathy for her cause I know that, you know, she didn't have it easy and that she is this way because of her childhood.
	Um, so I think that's probably the case, I guess, of why I sympathize with her sometimes.
	Yeah.
	I mean, with, without a doubt, I mean, she's somebody with that kind of personality structure almost certainly went through some pretty deep violations and abuses as a child.
	Ah, but she is who she is because of her childhood.
	That's the sentence, right?
	Well, then why aren't you the same way?
	Why aren't you who you are?
	Because, like, why aren't you a terrible, violent, abusive, whatever, mom married to a violent, abusive guy?
	Why aren't you the way you are because of your childhood?
	I'm just different than her.
	Well, that's why you're different, because I'm different.
	That's called the tautology, right?
	I mean, that doesn't add a huge amount of knowledge to the situation, right?
	Why aren't you the way you are because of your childhood?
	Because, of course, if somebody looks back on your childhood and says, well, what's she going to be like as a mom, right?
	It wouldn't be what you're doing, right?
	Or you'd look at your parents' marriage, you'd look at your sister's, you'd look at all of that, and then you'd say, with regards to you, well, what kind of man is she going to marry?
	And it wouldn't be the guy you married, right?
	Why is there such a difference between you and others in your family?
	Because I have a few, maybe, answers.
	Because my mom
	You know, she let her pain corrupt her and make her an evil person, and I've always tried my best anyway to, you know, I've hurt myself.
	I don't think I've really hurt others.
	I mean, I have, I'm sure, but I've mostly just... But you haven't consciously been cruel to others.
	I mean, there's the natural sort of rub and chafing of life as a whole, where occasionally we'll upset people and so on, but that's different from, you know, beating children in the back seat of a car, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Was there a fork in the road?
	Where you decided to go one direction, not the other.
	Was there a fork in the road that you remember?
	Maybe it was around your suicidality in your early twenties, but was there a fork in the road where you said, I'm not going to live like this or I'm going to start to take... I mean, I remember for me, it was when I was reading Nathaniel Brandon's The Psychology of Self-Esteem and it's sort of friendliness towards your emotions.
	And I was like, I was disappointed by something and
	And I was like, okay, let's not just... I just waved that away.
	I was like, I don't want to feel disappointed.
	What good does that do, right?
	And I was like, no, no, let's let the emotion be.
	Let's let the emotion inform me.
	Let me have the emotion.
	And that was sort of the beginning of the journey to just getting in touch with my emotions and not viewing them as dangerous or an enemy.
	Because, you know, when you see people acting out in crazy ways, it's pretty easy to feel that
	Emotions are the enemy that they just make people insane.
	And you know, you got to be like all spark and no kirk kind of thing, right?
	So, I mean, I'm not trying to say yours has to be like mine.
	Of course, it's different for everyone, but was there a fork in the road where you remember like, I'm not doing this.
	I'm not, I'm not going down this road.
	Um, for me, I think, you know, it was thanks to my husband.
	Um, like when he made the case to like,
	Have him talk to the life coach that we were talking to, the both of us, but separately.
	Um, and just kind of introducing philosophy to me.
	Cause he, you know, he had started listening to your shows like a bit, I think not very long before we started dating and I'm just trying to have those conversations with me bit by bit.
	And, um, but yeah, I think like once we decided that we were going to get married and we were like, okay, kids are obvious.
	The next step, because we want to have kids.
	We want to bring kids into this world.
	We can't do this to them.
	That would have happened to us.
	So I think that was definitely that fork in the road moment where I consciously was like, okay, I need to be different.
	I have to do something different.
	But yeah, I would say it was definitely thanks to my husband.
	Was there something he said that you remember, or was it sort of a slow progression?
	Like, was there something that really landed, or was it just erosion of avoidance or dissociation?
	It was a slow thing, I think.
	My life coach would say that I had a wall thick as ice, or an ice wall, like around, I don't know if he said around my heart or something, or my soul or something, and it just kind of slowly melted over time.
	Not all the way, obviously, because it's still been struggling with some things now, but I think it was a slow progression, yeah.
	Why do you think that you had someone like your husband, I guess your then boyfriend or whatever, in your life?
	Because I remember at the beginning, like a little while ago, you said you didn't understand what he was attracted to in you.
	So, why do you think you were able to even have someone?
	I mean, your sisters weren't able to do that, your mother wasn't able to do that.
	Why do you think that you were able to have someone like your husband in your life at all?
	Because there was a side of me that he saw that he felt.
	My brain is so tired trying to connect the words.
	I'm sorry.
	Okay, so he kind of taught me that love is an involuntary response to virtue, and so he saw the virtuous sides of me.
	That's what he would say, and recently I'm starting to really feel like that is true.
	It's been hard for me to really accept that, but that is what it is.
	Okay, and what were the virtuous—I'm not obviously saying they weren't there, but I'm just curious—what were the virtuous sides that you think he saw at the beginning?
	I think he saw that I had—I mean, it's kind of what you said on your podcast, but I forget the words that you used exactly here.
	I over-empathize with other people.
	It was to my detriment, of course, but he saw that even though I went through what I had gone through, I decided to not hurt other people in that same way.
	I wanted to be different.
	I wanted to not go down the same path that my sisters had and that my parents had.
	I think that's what those virtues were.
	I didn't know how at the time, how to go about it, but I just knew I wanted to be different.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And how difficult was it to respond to the kind of information or perspectives or argument that your, I guess, then boyfriend, later husband, was putting forward?
	Was it tough for you two?
	Was there a lot of rebellion?
	Was there a lot of pushback?
	Or was it relatively easy?
	It was difficult, I'd say.
	I think he was very unsure of how to go about it because I had these walls up and he was going through his own issues at the same time.
	He had drug issues.
	We both smoked a lot of marijuana at the time.
	Um, we would both party and like drink a lot like so I think like there was a part of me that was like Hard to see what he was saying and kind of like it's it felt a little hypocritical to me at the time um I kind of just wanted to be happy with him at first.
	I was like, well, can you just be happy like, you know, we'll just do it like
	Um, and so when he was trying to introduce these things to me, it just felt, it was language I've never heard, um, concepts I've never heard anyone talk about.
	So it felt strange.
	I think I would always, always use the word like autistic.
	Like it just felt a little too particular.
	I don't, I don't know.
	It was, it was definitely, I had, it was definitely a struggle.
	It was a rebellion for sure for him.
	I know it was, it's been hard.
	Um, but he's more severe and he's helped me with that.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So do you have, I mean we've sort of explored a little bit of the differences, do you have any sort of idea as to what might have been different between your parents, your sisters, and you?
	Was it just you happened to meet the guy?
	But that's also to say, I mean obviously your husband's a great guy, listens to this show, one of a kind, fantastic beyond words.
	But do you think that your mother, father, sisters like never met any gentle or nice people or curious people or reasonable people in their life?
	No, they definitely had to have at points.
	I mean, all three of us, I'm not going to say, oh, this is the answer, but like all three of us had gone to a Christian private school.
	Um, my sisters didn't really, I don't know.
	They, I don't, my oldest sister, it's hard to say cause she was 10 years older than me.
	I can't really say.
	But my other sister, she kind of chose to just, um, you know, hang out with kids that maybe some of the rougher kids, some of the kids that she, I don't know, she just, she didn't do the same things that like I wanted to do.
	Like I kind of, I had some father figures in my life at the time that I thought were, were good.
	Um, and they were definitely better than my father, but they were not good enough for like philosophical standards.
	But like at the time, like,
	I thought I had some male influences in my life that were good.
	I had some really good friends.
	I have a really good friend now that I've kept since I was a kid.
	And she's a very curious person.
	I think for me, I consciously... I didn't want to be home.
	So even when I had that free time when I was in middle school, high school, I was able to do certain things.
	I decided to use that time to not be home.
	I used boyfriends.
	So I
	Their house and I didn't have to be at my house.
	I would always kind of make it a priority to just not be around my family as much as possible.
	It's not really what my sisters did.
	I wanted to go to nursing school so I could take care of myself and I wouldn't be dependent on my parents financially like my other sister was.
	So yeah, I think that that's kind of like at least consciously the things that I did.
	I chose to do differently when I was young.
	Right, okay.
	So, I mean, you took responsibility for your own mental health, you recognized the trauma, and you started to, I think, do the important stuff to help process that.
	Is that a fair way to put it?
	Okay.
	Right.
	So, given that you took ownership, self-responsibility, and that you didn't act out, even as a child, and you made not just different choices, but completely opposing choices,
	Then, it seems to me, with regards to your mother, I mean, the challenging thing that happens with our parents is by the time we meet them, they don't usually have much functional free will.
	I mean, if they're really dysfunctional, right?
	They don't have much functional free will because if you act badly for long enough, you can't choose to act well.
	I mean, for me, it's always been kind of confusing, like, well, just take responsibility and apologize, you know?
	Just take responsibility and apologize.
	But because for me that's not the end of the world right?
	I mean it's not a super fun process or anything like that but you know it's an okay process.
	Just take responsibility and apologize.
	But that's different for me because I don't have a bad conscience.
	I'm absolutely not a perfect person by any means but I don't have a really bad conscience and so for me to take ownership
	And apologize is not that huge a deal.
	But it seems to me that what's kind of incomprehensible about these people, the double downers, like they just double down, like no matter what happens they just escalate and double down, or avoid, or like there's no functional free will.
	They're like NPCs of avoidance and they don't seem to have any capacity to choose anything different.
	And that, of course, can give us some sympathy.
	Well, gee, if they don't seem to have the ability
	To change their mind or apologize or take responsibility, you know, they're clearly so broken that, you know what I mean, like that sort of sympathy thing.
	But, you know, that's sort of like saying to your grandfather who's been smoking for 40 years, come and join me on a run.
	And it's like, no, he can't join you on a run, he's been smoking for 40 years, like you can't do that.
	But, at one point, right, like every smoker starts off by trying a cigarette, which is a choice.
	And then having another cigarette, which is a choice, and having another, like every smoker starts off with a bunch of choices, and then after decades of those choices, they don't have other choices.
	They can't do running, they can't be healthy, they, whatever, like their lungs can't be healthy.
	And so when we look at them when they're older and we say, gosh, you know, they're just these
	People who don't seem to have any choice and all they do is react, and we have some sympathy for that, but that's because we forget or we weren't around for the times when they had choices.
	Like, I remember talking to someone who was cruel to me as a child, and this person said, you know, like, every day I woke up, I wanted to be nicer, and it was like a really... they really knew that it was bad, they really wanted to do better, they promised themselves, but they just indulged.
	In this sort of cruelty or coldness or hostility or whatever, right?
	Manipulation.
	So, looking at your mother now, I mean, does she have any particular choice to take responsibility?
	I mean, I wouldn't put any money on it.
	I mean, who knows, in the magical ether of free will, whether there's something that's... but I wouldn't put any money on it whatsoever.
	I wouldn't put, like, one penny.
	I wouldn't put one satoshi on your mom.
	Developing free will, a conscience, moral responsibility, empathy, like any of these things, right?
	That is like asking a guy who's been smoking for 40 years to run a marathon.
	So, looking at how different you are comes back to usually a...
	A choice, a fork in the road.
	And every person I know, and this is not any kind of infinite sampling of course, but every person I know who's taken a bad path had a choice at some point.
	Had a choice, had an attack of conscience, had, you know, a choice at some point.
	I mean even my mom!
	I know my mom regretted beating me up and stuff like that because, you know, she'd come into my room and hold my hand and sniff and like afterwards and so.
	I pretend to sleep because I just didn't want to talk about it, but I know my mom felt bad about it.
	I know my dad had had his attacks of conscience.
	So, when you see her now, she's kind of like a machine.
	And you look and you say, well, gee, maybe she never really had any choice and maybe she's just was victimized and so on.
	But she was brutalized.
	And of course, we can all have sympathy for that, for sure.
	Absolutely.
	But my sympathy ends when people harm others.
	My sympathy for people being harmed is virtually bottomless.
	My sympathy for those who harm others, and in particular, children?
	That's not something that I feel, to any particular degree.
	That's not something that I experience.
	In fact, I mean, because you have to.
	Because if we have sympathy for them being harmed, then we have anger towards those who harmed them, right?
	I mean, that's the flip side of sympathy is anger, right?
	Like real sympathy for, you know, what happened to your mother as a child with her father, great sympathy for that.
	Which means I have to be angry at her father who violated her in such a horrendous and evil manner.
	Okay, so if I have sympathy for people who are harmed, I'm going to have anger at the people who harmed them.
	And so, given that your mother harmed you, and your father harmed you, I would have anger towards them.
	Because otherwise, what's the point of sympathy, right?
	Sympathy means I'm very sorry that you were hurt, which means that you're angry at the people who hurt, right?
	Which is why, you know, if somebody is harmed by some natural phenomenon, you know, I don't know, something falls on them when they're hiking, or some tree branch or something, we have sympathy, but we don't have anger at the tree, because the tree didn't choose to harm them, it's just sort of bad luck.
	So, the sympathy for people who are harmed has to have, as its clear line and demarcation, anger at the people who harmed them.
	And the anger at the people who harmed them is that they had some choice in the matter.
	They had some choice in the matter, like the tree branch that falls on you when you're hiking doesn't have any choice, it's just physics and biology and there's no free will, there's no morality involved in that.
	So, the question is, of course, did your parents have any free will when they were harming you?
	Now, if they didn't have any free will when they were harming you, then it would be sort of like
	A mother who accidentally smacks a kid because she has her first epileptic seizure.
	Like, we don't blame the mom.
	It's like, well, that's really unfortunate.
	There was no warning.
	It's not a moral thing.
	Or Tourette's.
	You know, the people who swear with Tourette's.
	That's not a moral choice to be verbally harsh or abusive.
	So, did they have free will when they were harming you?
	And I guess that's the end of my speech at the beginning of the question, which is, do you think that they had free will and moral responsibility when they were harming you?
	They made the choice repeatedly.
	And what makes you think that?
	Well, for one, that I would tell them, why are you treating me this way?
	Why aren't you treating me differently?
	And then they would
	the choice to double down and do it anyway.
	They could have at least had a little bit of humility and apologized, started to attempt to make changes, but they didn't.
	They chose not to.
	They just kept choosing to do it again.
	Yes, but how do you know it was a choice?
	Because they have free will.
	How do you know they had free will?
	Because they had free will.
	Again, that's a bit of a circular argument, right?
	I'm not sure.
	Well, when they harmed you, when they would yell at you, right?
	Did they yell at you with the goal of changing your behaviour?
	Or did they at least say that?
	Yeah, they said that.
	So give me an example of what either one of your parents would say with regards to getting you to change your behavior based upon their punishment or yelling.
	I guess I've started bringing this up earlier, so I'll go with that one.
	I remember in the mornings I wouldn't want to eat my oatmeal, and so my dad would yell at me that I need to eat my oatmeal.
	And if I don't, then...
	Just, you need to eat it, or I'm angry, essentially.
	So, sorry, go ahead.
	I spent money on this, you can't waste it, you need to eat it, kind of thing.
	Right, okay, got it, got it.
	Now, your father's practice would indicate that he believed that the application of negative stimuli could change your behavior.
	I mean, if I yell at you, that's negative stimuli.
	If I say you're ungrateful, you didn't... Sorry, I don't want to imitate your father.
	It's gross.
	But you know, like, I paid good money for this, and how dare you waste it, and you think I made a money... So he would provide rational, at least to him, he would provide arguments, let's say arguments and negative stimuli in order to get you to eat your oatmeal, right?
	Sorry, I didn't quite catch that.
	Yes, that's right.
	So, he accepted that there was free will in you, right?
	He accepted that you have free will, because he didn't say to himself, well, there's no chance to change her behavior because she doesn't have free will.
	Right, I mean, if he was yelling at, I don't know, if he had a doll propped up at the table and was yelling at the doll that the doll was mean and selfish because it didn't eat, the doll didn't eat the porridge, right, then that would be crazy, right?
	Because the doll is an inanimate object that has no free will and can't change its mind.
	Like, that would be the indication of a severe break with reality, right?
	So he's applying reason, at least his, let's say, he's applying arguments and negative stimuli in order to get you to change your behavior, which means he accepts that you have free will as a child, right?
	So he accepts the existence of free will in children, right?
	So why can't he have that as well?
	Well, no, I mean, so he knows that human beings possess the capacity for free will.
	Right, because he wanted to change your mind and change your behavior by bringing you arguments and yelling or whatever, right?
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	Now, did your... and your mother, of course, by leaving you gifts... Now, these aren't gifts.
	The reason I call them bribes is you already told your mother what a gift would be.
	You already told your mother what a gift would be.
	And you did that in the letter you wrote to her, where you said, well, the present that you could give to me, the gift you could give to me, would be what?
	Yeah, going to therapy, self-knowledge, self-ownership, responsibility, whatever, I go to therapy.
	So you already told her the gift that you want, right?
	I mean, if my wife wants, I don't know, XYZ for breakfast, sorry, for Christmas, she wants some particular gift for Christmas and she's told me repeatedly, and I buy her a vacuum cleaner, I mean, do I then get to say, you know, how come you're so ungrateful at the gift I gave you, right?
	So, I mean, that comes from a meme I saw some months ago about this woman.
	Hey, I saw this guy lining up to buy his wife a vacuum cleaner for Christmas.
	It feels strange to be standing next to someone who only has days left to live.
	It's kind of funny.
	So, you already told her what you wanted, and she gave you something you didn't want, but she's saying that positive stimuli is important.
	Right?
	I'm going to give you gifts because positive stimuli is important, right?
	And I don't know if your parents applied any positive, like reward-based, because they gave you the negative stimuli like the attacks and the violence and so on, cutting the brakes or whatever he did, right?
	So they gave you the negative stimuli and mountains of it.
	Did they ever provide positive stimuli like rewards or benefits or cuddles or praise or anything like that?
	Um, not my dad, but my mom, my mom would like when I was young, she would want to cuddle.
	Um, she, I don't really remember there being a specific reason for it.
	Just sometimes she would want to, um, she would always buy me gifts.
	I think if she was feeling guilty for something, she'd just buy me stuff.
	Um, maybe it was something I wanted, maybe it wasn't, but, but yeah, I guess that was the positive.
	But that was for her, right?
	So, was there ever anything like, you know, get an A and you can get a present, or if you do... like, was there any... I'm not saying there should or shouldn't have been, I'm just curious if there was any positive incentives that your parents... like, when my mom would read my writing, if she liked a particular passage, she'd give me good praise for it and so on, so there was some positive... I'm not saying she was... I think she was being honest about it, but there was positive stuff as well as the negative.
	I mean, she would tell me she was proud of me, I guess, when I would accomplish certain things, or when I would work hard on something that I felt good about, or something I did want to do.
	I did choir at a young age, so when I would do a performance or something, she would provide that positive feedback.
	Okay, got it.
	Okay, so your parents, at least your mother, operated on positive and negative feedback in order to get you to change your behavior?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so they accept free will, and they accept that arguments and positive and negative incentives are what you do to get people to change their minds, right?
	Right, so, and of course they debated with you, they didn't debate with the furniture, they didn't debate with the car, they didn't debate with gravity, right?
	They only debated with other human beings or only ever tried to change the minds of other human beings.
	So they recognized that, I mean this is real foundational philosophical and it sounds very abstract but to me it's very deep psychologically, that your parents completely and totally accepted free will
	And that the way to change someone's behavior is arguments and positive and negative incentives.
	Okay.
	Now, you and I also have some positive and negative incentives, right?
	I mean, I don't want to speak for you, let me just speak for myself.
	So, I have positive and negative incentives.
	So when it came to talking about some of the more controversial things I talked about, one of the positive incentives was I really felt and still feel that it was important for the world to hear the truth about sort of controversial matters.
	So that was the positive incentive, that I would feel a certain amount of, not happiness exactly, but I would feel content with my integrity if I talked about important things that needed to be said.
	The negative stimuli was of course thinking about how would I feel if things went very badly in the world and I had to withheld essential topics.
	I would feel bad.
	Now, saying essential topics doesn't mean that the world isn't going to go bad.
	That's not up to me.
	But as far as my conscience goes, there was negative stimuli which was concerned about regret, or guilt, or shame, or cowardice, or something like concerned about something negative that would occur to me.
	And then there was also, you know, the relative contentment that comes from reasonable amounts of courage and some pride in taking on difficult topics and so on.
	So, I had my arguments, of course, and I also had my conscience to satisfy and my integrity to serve.
	So, I had positive incentives of serving integrity and negative incentives to avoid a bad conscience, if that makes sense?
	Yes.
	So, in that,
	You, I almost hate to say this, you and your parents and I and every other person who's not completely insane, are following kind of the same pattern.
	We have our arguments, we have our positive incentives, we have our negative incentives or our disincentives, and we follow that.
	So your parents accepted that human beings have free will.
	Because you can't say children have free will but adults don't.
	That would make no sense at all.
	That's like saying children are tall but adults are short.
	That wouldn't make any sense.
	And also, of course, your father and your mother accepted that they have free will because they didn't say to you, don't take this personally, this is just my determinism acting out.
	They made the choice to make those arguments and apply those incentives and disincentives and so on.
	So, your parents fully accepted free will, and I don't know what the positive incentives are, or the disincentives are, for bad people.
	That's sort of at the foggy edge of my knowledge, and maybe I'll try and figure it out one day, but I assume it has something to do with they're happy if they control people, and they're unhappy if they're disobeyed.
	Because it's about control and bullying and they can't master themselves, so they try to control other people.
	Like, they don't have any self-control, so they end up trying to control other people.
	And I assume that they get a thrill of happiness and relief from negative emotions and so on, if they control someone.
	If they successfully get you to eat your oatmeal, then there's a positive experience.
	And if they don't, then there's a very negative experience.
	So, that's why they... I assume that's why they're doing what they're doing.
	Now, for you and I, the positive incentive is integrity or virtue or things like that, and the negative incentive is, or the disincentive is, bad conscience and regrets and all these kinds of things.
	But for your parents, I would assume it's something like, I want you to do what I want you to do so I feel better, and if you don't do what I want you to do, I'll feel worse.
	So, I'm going to just put pressure on you until you give me what I want and
	Make me feel better.
	It's probably something like that.
	So, for you and I, I think, the incentive structure is around self-control and virtue.
	And for your parents, probably the incentive structure is around dominance and avoidance of a feeling of helplessness if they can't get other people to do what they want.
	And that's very opposite, right?
	Self-control versus control of others.
	Virtue versus bullying.
	Integrity versus subjugation.
	These are two very opposite things.
	And so, your parents were operating in a free will environment, but they had chosen entirely different incentive structures.
	And they had chosen those.
	And the other thing that I would say, I assume that your parents, maybe your dad was, but it doesn't sound like your mom was, your parents weren't so crazy that they would abuse you in front of security guards, policemen, teachers, clergy, priests, authority figures of any kind, that they were able to, or fully able to restrain their aggressive impulses in the presence of external authority figures, is that right?
	My mom for sure, my dad.
	He would in front of other people, but not authority figures.
	He would keep it in check for authority figures, yeah.
	Okay, so whenever he would suffer negative consequences, he was able to keep his temper in check, right?
	Okay.
	So that's good to know.
	That means he wasn't crazy.
	Yeah.
	That make sense?
	Wasn't crazy at all?
	Those crazy people will do all of that stuff, regardless of who's around, right?
	He had more choice in the matter than he would like to let us think.
	What?
	Not more choice?
	He had total choice.
	Yeah, he had total choice.
	I mean, it's kind of, to me, it's always kind of funny to see real bullies be sort of groveling, submissive people to external authority.
	I mean, I remember when my mom called the cops on me, and she was screaming at me for defying her, and then the cops said something she didn't like, and she was all kinds of, oh yes, officer, I think you're too, like, you know, just, blech!
	It was gross, right?
	It was gross to see.
	But almost inevitable, right?
	So yeah, my mother had the perfect ability to, and of course, when she was interested in some guy, she'd be all sweetness and light and accommodation and, you know, all this kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah, my mom harmed by her childhood?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	But harmed by your childhood should... I mean, there's no reason it makes you cruel.
	In fact, there's every reason to believe or that you could imagine or anticipate that somebody being harmed by their childhood would be much more gentle and kind and accommodating because you know exactly how much it hurts, right?
	Like, a guy who's been tortured doesn't mean he becomes a torturer.
	A guy who's been tortured could very easily, and a lot of them do, become some internationally renowned spokesperson for Let's Never Torture People.
	I mean, Solzhenitsyn was tortured in the gulags under Stalin, but he didn't become a torturer.
	He became somebody who wrote the Gulag Archipelago and helped people understand the nature of the brutality and the torture that he was going through.
	So the harm done to people as children in no way shape or form takes away their free will or programs them to become evil.
	And there's no answer as to why you and your mother are different.
	There's no answer.
	Because if there was an answer there wouldn't be free will.
	Otherwise it's just dominoes.
	I mean there's an answer as to why a tree limb falls in the forest, right?
	I mean, there's an answer to that.
	There's no free will involved.
	But the moment there's free will, there's no answer.
	Because we're all like, why were they the way they were?
	Why?
	Why?
	Why am I so different, right?
	There's no answer to that.
	There's no answer and there never will be.
	It's a choice.
	Now, of course, we there
	They wanting to control us, programs us to want the answer as to why they are the way they are.
	Because the moment we start searching around for the answer as to why they are the way they are, we are taking away their free will.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	I mean, lots of people went through the war and didn't become my mom.
	My mom became my mom, not because of the war, but because of her choice.
	Now, did the war make that choice kind of more difficult?
	Yes, absolutely.
	But it also made it easier, because she knew how much suffering hurt for children, so the fact that she chose to re-inflict it, it's her choice.
	It's her free will.
	But of course, you look and you say, when your mother doesn't have control over you, and now she needs something from you.
	So she's playing a different game now.
	Right?
	Because in the past, when she had power over you,
	I mean, she was kind of a vicious bully, right?
	But now that she needs something from you that she cannot enforce through violence or abuse, now she's changed her game, right?
	She's not screaming at you, right?
	She's making pseudo-apologies.
	She's bringing you gifts, right?
	Yeah, I miss you.
	I love you.
	Yeah, yeah, she's love-bombing you.
	Of course, yeah.
	I mean, you've seen this a million times in movies, right?
	Where the bad guy has the gun, and he's pouring contempt on the good guy, right?
	And then the good guy grabs the gun from the bad guy, and what does the bad guy do?
	He changes his tune completely.
	Hey man, you know, I didn't mean to, it was a misunderstanding, let's work together, like, whatever it is, right?
	He'll just switch it up, because he doesn't have the power anymore.
	But you and I both know, deep down I believe, and tell me if I'm wrong, I mean, I remember, like, when I was free of my mom, my mom changed, right?
	But I thought, jeez, if I ended up a paraplegic under my mom's care, it would be right back to square one.
	Like, she's only nicer because she can't bully.
	Right?
	I mean, the kid who's picking on the smaller kid
	And being all kinds of aggressive because the kid's half his size.
	When some other kid twice his size starts picking on him, he's not the same guy, right?
	He's totally different, right?
	So... Sorry, go ahead.
	My mom was hit by the car and is now, like, physically needs help.
	That's when my mom became sweet because she realized she needed... she needed help.
	She needed something from me for her... her, like, survival or whatever.
	Well, come on, and you know as a young attractive woman, right, particularly from your single life, you know that guys can pretend to be all kinds of sweetness and affection until they get the sex they want in which and then they'll just ghost you, right?
	That they're all kinds of nice and oh, you know, just so lovely and having such a great time and then if they get into your pants they might just despawn, they might just vaporize, right?
	Because they got what they wanted, right?
	I mean, a con man who calls you up and is all kinds of happy, hey, how you doing?
	And, you know, just wanted to check in with you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And if you say to him, listen, I've been recording all of our conversations and I've turned it over to the police and they're going to come and arrest you today, he's going to change his demeanor completely, right?
	He's going to scream abuse at you and whatever it is, right?
	So, your mother is, and your mother of course knows, as all mothers do, that you have a deep, deep hunger for her to be nice.
	And so she's just pushing that button.
	So before she could push the compliance button through aggression.
	Now she's just pushing the pity button through niceness.
	But nothing has changed.
	Other than she knows what you most desperately need.
	And she's just pushing those buttons to get what she wants.
	She's still bullying you.
	Because it's still all about her needs.
	Because you told her exactly what you need and she won't do it, right?
	I mean, you told her, I need you to go to therapy, I need you to take responsibility, I need you to... I need a real apology, and she won't do it, right?
	So, she's still bullying you, she's just... She's bullying you with sugar instead of screaming.
	A bribe is another form of bullying.
	And abusive people do this all the time.
	All the time.
	I mean, it's sort of a well-known phenomenon about the honeymoon period after violence in a relationship, right?
	The man beats up his girlfriend or his wife, and then she threatens to leave or go to the cops.
	He's super sorry.
	He becomes really nice.
	He buys her flowers.
	And this goes on for a while.
	And who knows?
	Could be days, weeks, could even be months.
	And then it happens again, right?
	So, the only reason he's being nice to her is so she won't leave and call the cops.
	It's part of the abuse, is the being nice.
	And now, of course, I'm not saying every instance of being nice is abusive, I'm just saying that in this particular pattern, nothing has changed from when she was screaming at you, as far as I can tell, because she's still pushing your buttons, manipulating you.
	Now, she's doing the reward mechanism, but it's a reward mechanism based on
	The need that she implanted in you, which is for her to be remotely nice or pretend to be thoughtful or something like that.
	She kind of baked that need into you by being cruel and cold and nasty and abusive when you were a kid.
	So you have a deep hunger for a nice mother and she's like, oh okay, well now that I've built this huge deep hunger for a nice mother, I can play this card now that I'm old.
	You know, if you know someone who's a heroin addict, and you dangle heroin in front of them, it's kind of abusive, right?
	Especially if you're the one who turned them into a heroin addict.
	And say, no, no, no, I'm giving that person what they want.
	It's like, no, you created an addiction, and now you're controlling them by dangling that addiction, right?
	And, you know, you grew up without a loving mother, so you have a deep ache and need in your heart for a loving mother, and she's like, mmm, I can play that.
	Piano all up and down the keyboard.
	I mean, the way that we know if people are being nice to us is if they ask us what we want and they work their best to try and provide it.
	I mean, obviously, what you want is perfectly reasonable and moral and right and just.
	But yeah, that's how we know if people are nice.
	And she's not doing that.
	She's just throwing a bunch of fog around.
	She's giving you gifts.
	She's showing up uninvited.
	She's not respecting your boundaries, she's not respecting your requests.
	It's just another form of bullying.
	In my opinion, I don't want to tell you your experience, but that's how it looks to me.
	What do you think?
	Definitely, that's exactly what it is.
	And again, in my experience, once people have a certain amount of manipulation under their belt, they have no other tool.
	Like there's nothing else they can do.
	You know, some cabbie who's 75 years old is not going to become an astrophysicist, and people who've spent decades manipulating others, particularly helpless children, under their care, custody and control, there's a tipping point where people no longer have other options.
	And if your mom has spent decades bullying and manipulating, then I would assume at this point in her life, like, there is no other option, there is no other choice.
	Sorry, you were going to say something and I just talked over you, sorry about that.
	Oh no, it was just, I was just saying that is exactly what she's doing and it's been making me just really, really angry.
	But I think that's, you know, the healthy anger that I need to feel, so.
	Right, right.
	And is your dad in the picture at all?
	I mean, obviously in the sort of shadowy background of your mom's actions, but is there anything going on there that's anything particular?
	Um, he's tried to call me a couple times, like literally maybe like once right around the time I cut him off.
	Oh, actually, no, he's done a couple other things.
	He's tried to reach out to my husband's parents, like he just kind of showed up at their business, um, and just kind of like, can you believe what now my daughter's doing?
	Like the past is in the past, like kind of thing.
	He did like a couple things like that, but it's been a long time since I've heard, like that was more in the beginning.
	Oh, yes, the past is in the past.
	That's a nice tautology too, right?
	Unless the abusive behavior is still continuing in the present.
	The other thing, of course, too, is that if your parents say the past is in your past, then I'm sure when you were a kid they never referenced any of your own past behavior.
	Everything was just fresh and new.
	They never said you always or you never.
	They never referenced anything in the past when you were a kid.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	Of course, they would say, well, you always or you never, or I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, or whatever.
	So, abusive parents are always bringing up things about prior behavior on the part of their child, but then when the child brings up the parent's prior behavior, they're like, hey man, the past is in the past, it shouldn't have any effect on today, leave it behind, move on, right?
	It's like, they never did that when they had the power.
	So hopefully we've got some clarity with regards to that.
	Is there anything else that we could touch on today?
	No, honestly, I think you've given me a lot to chew on, especially with the last call.
	Like I said then in the beginning, I have been feeling a lot more hopeful and I've been feeling more like the hero of my own story.
	So I appreciate your words and your kindness.
	Oh, you're absolutely welcome, and I'm obviously incredibly sorry about what happened to your sister.
	I hope that there's not any part of you that feels that's on you in any way, because that's on your parents, and it's of course mostly on the guy who killed her, and to some degree on her for choosing to be with and stay with and return back to that fellow, but I'm incredibly sorry.
	And if you look, of course, at both of your sisters,
	This is why I gave you that speech.
	I mean, even though I didn't know all these details, I think that's why I gave you that speech about your own heroism, and where you've gotten to.
	I mean, look at your whole family, and your sisters, and obviously your parents, and I assume that there's a bunch of messes in the extended family as well.
	And, man, where you've gotten to.
	I mean, it's testament to your own virtue, to your husband's integrity, hopefully a little bit to the power of philosophy, but it really is.
	What a hero's journey that is, and how incredibly lucky your daughters are that you made these choices and had this journey.
	It really is.
	I'm staggered with admiration for what you've done.
	And it really is a testament to what you're doing in your work, too, because, like I said before, what really triggered the curiosity in my husband into philosophy was Freedom, Maine, so we really appreciate it.
	Well, freedom is the domain thing.
	Freedom is domain thing.
	So, okay.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	I hope that you have a wonderful Happy New Year.
	I hope that you get a chance to get some rest because, you know, I mean, those early days with one kid was exciting enough.
	With two, I can't even process.
	So, I hope that you get some rest and I really do appreciate your time today.
	Thank you.
	You as well.
	All right.
	Thanks, sister.
	Take care.
	You too.
	Bye-bye.
	Bye-bye.

▲