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Aug. 16, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:56:34

How NOT to Protect Your Kids! Freedomain Call In

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	All right.
	So, gosh, what's Demutter, what is going on with your mother?
	My gosh, what a tale.
	Yes.
	It's crazy.
	She's really crazy.
	It's intense.
	Do you want to tell me the tale from the beginning, or what works best for you?
	So I've been thinking about this when you ask people where to start.
	I was kind of thinking I could start like 10 years ago.
	So in the timeline here, because that's when around the time I discovered FDR and just changed my life so much for the better.
	And like that was just a big turning point.
	And that's also like basically last time I saw her.
	Right.
	So because what was going on 10 years ago, I was Miserable.
	I had actually been in therapy for years at that point, but it wasn't helping.
	I was in this terrible marriage.
	We were only married for about a year and a half, so it wasn't a long marriage, but it was a miserable one while it lasted.
	Let's see.
	So my father had died just a few years previous and my mother was getting remarried and she wanted me to be a bridesmaid, but she never asked me.
	She just sort of was like, you're going to be a bridesmaid.
	And I, for some reason, this, this was the thing that I got really hung up on and I didn't want to do it.
	Right.
	I was just complaining, like literally everybody who would listen to me, I would just complain, Oh, I have to do this thing.
	And I don't want to, I can't believe she's making me do this.
	And finally, I was talking to a guy who listened to your show and he was like, well, don't do it.
	I have a radical thought, if you don't want to do it.
	It was truly radical for me at the time.
	It was my first big red pill moment, right, where I was just like, wait, what?
	I don't have to do this?
	Right, right.
	And I didn't, and he sent me real-time relationships, and I very quickly read through RTR, On Truth, and UPB.
	And then I finished all three of those and I was like, wait, this guy has all these podcasts too?
	This is great!
	Does it never end?
	Does he ever stop talking?
	And the answer is, well, eventually I'll be dead, but not before then.
	Well, yeah, so I got really into philosophy and, you know, when it was sort of like I was embracing personal responsibility, it was like, oh, I have a choice whether I need to be with this guy I was married to.
	I was like, oh, thank God.
	No, thank you.
	I don't want to be in that relationship anymore.
	Then I met my now husband on the old FDR boards.
	It really has been an incredible relationship.
	I didn't know love could Be like this and grow and change.
	It was just beautiful.
	So there are all these really beautiful things in my life.
	I have two amazing children, and they're really incredible.
	And I'm a stay-at-home mom.
	It was just what I wanted to be my whole life.
	And when I was a kid, I was a teenager, and I was telling my mom I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom because I saw that having two working parents did not work very well.
	And she's like, Well, you can't rely on a man to support you, you know, that sort of thing.
	Right.
	But you can rely on the government apparently, that's totally fine.
	So, right.
	So I made all these beautiful changes and, and yet there was still a part of me that still craved this relationship and this like validation or something from my mom.
	And like, after all this time.
	I don't know.
	I felt like maybe I'd changed because I'd changed so much.
	Maybe I'd be able to talk to her.
	Maybe she would have learned that I could cut her off and that maybe she would be on company behavior with me or something.
	She would be on the what behavior?
	Company behavior.
	It's a different kind of behavior that you have Oh, when you're with company, like when other people are over?
	When you're with company, yeah.
	When other people are over, we're nice to each other.
	Got it, got it, okay.
	Sorry, I hope I'm making sense.
	No, no, it makes sense.
	I understand.
	Yeah, so that was ten years ago to now, you know, and so, like I said in my letter, there was a few other things motivating me, I think.
	One was money, of course.
	My mom is very wealthy and it's kind of like, I think there's been some things you've said in the past podcasts where you're like, if someone gave you a million dollars, would you do this thing?
	And it's like, my parents were kind of offering me that in some ways.
	And it's like, well, anyway.
	Um...
	Uh...
	Now, do you feel a little jazzed in the combo here?
	Yeah, I'm a little hyped up.
	You sound a tiny bit breathless.
	I totally understand that.
	And you are throwing a lot of giggle balls into this bowling alley.
	I know.
	Sorry about that.
	I get that.
	I'm a little giddy.
	No, that's totally fine.
	I really appreciate that.
	I mean, it's serious stuff that we're talking about.
	And do you want to talk, I mean, it's 10 years ago and I'm glad to get that snapshot.
	I'm completely thrilled that you met your husband off the FDR boards.
	They are fantastic.
	How to type people into existence.
	Yeah, but your childhood.
	I mean that's there's got to be a lot going on.
	I mean the mom sounds like just wild with regards to selfishness and all of that.
	So was that pretty evident from the beginning of your life?
	Yes, so I had a my ACE score is is a five.
	So that is emotional Emotional abuse and emotional neglect, for sure.
	There was also physical neglect, which is really shocking because my parents were very wealthy, so it's weird that there was often no food in the house and I didn't have clean clothes.
	And clothes that fit me properly, you know, things like that.
	There was physical neglect, because my parents just sort of expected us.
	I was the second youngest of four, and they just kind of expected me to know how to do things.
	was taking my driver's test when I was 16.
	No one ever took me driving because it was sort of a very clear expectation.
	It was never spoken, but it was very clear.
	You never ask mom anything, right?
	You never ask her to take you a ride to a friend's house, anything like that.
	So I could never ask her to take me driving because that was just completely not in our family culture.
	But Even asking my dad was hard, too, because it stressed him out so much.
	It was such a burden to him.
	So no one ever taught me how to drive.
	My dad took me to the driver's test and I failed because I'd barely been behind the wheel.
	And it was this source of great shame for me at the time that I had failed it.
	But no one taught me how to do it.
	So there was emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect.
	There was also mental illness in the household.
	And the substance abuse in the household is... I'm the only one of My siblings who would say that's true, because my mom is an alcoholic.
	She doesn't think she is, and no one else seems to think she is, but she gets blackout drunk and says the most cruel things.
	You can imagine, and then claims not to remember any of it.
	How did they get their money?
	This may be a total prejudice of mine, but generally people end up with a lot of money because they have some level of competence somewhere, and it's kind of unusual to have that level of public competence and then be that crazy at home.
	It could happen, but is it inherited money, or is it just like somebody had a magic touch with business?
	Well, they're both physicians, so doctors.
	So my mom, my mom's Her story is that she came from a very poor household, and it was comparatively poor.
	My dad did come from money, so he has a lot of inherited money.
	He's passed away now, but he had inherited money.
	My mom came up from nothing in some ways, though I do wonder about her story because I think her dad Her dad was German, like first generation German here in the United States.
	And I guess he was very miserly with money.
	And I think they had more than he kept them in, you know, sort of poverty or something, you know, something like that.
	But anyway, I question a lot of the things my mother says.
	But she became a doctor at a time when there weren't that many female doctors, you know?
	Like a strong, independent woman.
	Applying to medical schools, one of the admissions officers there said, well, we only take, you know, two women.
	If we don't find two that are good enough, we only find one.
	We won't take any, you know, that sort of thing.
	So, you know, she worked really hard and that was her Every day when she got home from work.
	When I was 10, my dad essentially retired and he became like a stay-at-home dad, though he would never say that title and he sort of hated that title and would never actually use it.
	But he was and our lives really did become less chaotic when he was home all the time.
	Sorry, how old was he when he retired?
	Did he retire for age reasons or were there other reasons?
	Well, I'm trying to remember how old he was.
	He was an older dad.
	He had me when he was 43, and then he also had a younger child to meet as well, so he was an older dad.
	Yeah, but then he was only in his 50s when he retired.
	Yes, so it was essentially that my They both had contracts with hospitals that were expiring at the same time.
	So mom kind of was freaking out that they would both not be employed anymore.
	So she went out and found this job where we had to move to get this job.
	It was a much higher paying job.
	More stress, of course.
	More hours.
	She had to be on call.
	It was sort of this story in the family.
	Oh, Dad's going to find work eventually.
	But he never did.
	He had research that he did.
	We didn't get paid for it, but it was sort of a A passion project of his that he was semi-famous for, I mean, in the medical world, not really that famous, but he thought if he lived he might win the Nobel Prize eventually.
	Anyway, so he was kind of doing some work, but not being paid for it, and he got money from property.
	Still don't know why he retired, though.
	Well, we did have four kids, and we had a younger brother who was five.
	This is one of the things that my mom brought up in this conversation we had on the plane.
	She was like, well, none of the other kids have, you know, what about, oh, sorry, I'm sorry to say that.
	Okay, I'll remove that.
	Yeah, no problem.
	I can get rid of that.
	Go ahead.
	Sorry about that.
	She said, what about your younger brother?
	He doesn't have any, and like, you know, it was a red herrings that wanted to be like, Well, we're not talking about my brother.
	We're talking about me and my experience.
	He had a nanny until he was five years old, and she was very dedicated.
	She loved him, and they had a really strong connection.
	But anyway, having four kids, it was so chaotic before Dad retired.
	I think he saw that Uh, you know, working with all the kids, it was just not, it wasn't working, you know.
	But Mom refused to see that because she continued to feel resentment about this, that he had stopped working.
	To this day, she feels resentful about it.
	And I actually brought it up when we talked about this.
	I was like, Mom, it was actually really helpful for us as kids that he wasn't working, that we could call somebody if we were sick at school, you know?
	And I don't think that had ever occurred to her until I mentioned it on the plane.
	But thinking about anyone but herself, it's...
	Does that make sense?
	Still doesn't, I'm trying to sort of figure out.
	So he would retire in his mid-50s and of course I'm sure he became like a sort of functional doctor in his 30s.
	So in 20 years did he not like, I mean how did he speak about his work?
	Did he not like being a doctor?
	I don't think he did.
	I don't think he liked it.
	I don't really think he liked working in general.
	I think he preferred to be a man of Leisure, which wasn't good for my brothers, I don't think, seeing a man being so passive in his life.
	Well, hang on, but he was still working.
	I mean, you said he was, I'm not trying to catch you out, I just want to make sure I understand, so he was still working to some degree, right?
	I mean, he was doing his research.
	He was writing papers.
	He wasn't really doing any active research, so he wasn't, you know, like in labs or anything like that, but he was keeping up with the medical research on his topic that was his baby, you know, and was continuing to write papers, but of course this is like behind closed doors, like we didn't really see his work.
	He didn't have to, he wasn't getting paid for it, he wasn't getting up in the morning and, you know, going to work, anything like that.
	So, help me understand, and it's interesting what you said, and of course it's your family, I'm not going to disagree with you about your family, but when you said it was not good for my brothers, So, you know, the argument could be made, well, he didn't have to work, he didn't like the job, so he did stay-at-home parenting.
	And obviously, you know, I'm a stay-at-home dad, right?
	So I'm trying to think if he's...
	If he's not enjoying his work, and he doesn't need to work, and he's doing stuff that he enjoys, and he's parenting, why is that bad for your brothers?
	You said passive, and I'd like to know more about that, but I don't see passive coming out of just the choices he's made so far.
	It seems kind of active to walk away from something you don't like and do something more rewarding.
	Hmm.
	I mean that is a good point.
	Just, I mean, so he was definitely passive in other ways in his life,
	so maybe I'm universalizing that. So he...
	Because 90% of the time with my mom, because my mom, of course, is this volatile sort of tyrant of the house, right?
	Where she gets her way, she is very easily upset, right?
	Very reactive.
	And dad, on the other hand, was 90% of the time, he was conflict avoidant.
	So he would do anything in his power, including lying and conspiring with the kids to lie to my mother, to keep her from getting upset.
	We can't upset mom, you know, kids be quiet.
	She just got home from work.
	She's stressed, you know, that sort of thing, like very tense.
	That was 90% of the time.
	The other 10%, he would blow up.
	He wasn't as reactive as mom, where it wasn't like a daily thing where he could just blow up anytime.
	It was like, over time, getting bullied and degraded by mom, you know, verbally.
	He eventually would just snap, and it would be more explosive than mom's tempers, where he would throw things and get just physically violent.
	Of course, that stopped when he got older, and he had strokes, and he was very ill at the end of his life, so that did not continue into his old age.
	But, um, so that was the sort of behavior and passivity that he was acting under where he would just be really... I mean, it wasn't, again, you're right, it's not passive.
	I don't, I keep using that term, but it was an active thing where we would, he would lie to mom all the time, you know, and, and get me to lie and like, not, don't, don't tell her this, you know, kind of thing.
	She shouldn't know.
	And, um, does that make sense?
	Yeah, that totally makes sense.
	No, because honestly, I was just thinking when you said that, obviously I don't make it more about me, but I was just thinking, gee, if I'd had a son and I sort of quit the corporate world and did something I enjoyed more, and although I guess it's not exactly, it's not passive really being a philosopher, it's quite an active life in a way.
	But no, I was just wondering if I'd had a son rather than a daughter, if that would have changed.
	But anyway, I mean, let's make it about you.
	So, I think that's interesting.
	Your mom can't be reasoned with, right?
	Right.
	That's correct.
	So, for your father to say, you know, be quiet and don't upset mom, that makes sense, because she can't be reasoned with, right?
	But my question is, what was the source of her power?
	Right?
	Why did she have so much power?
	That's a really good question.
	Bullies have to have something, right?
	And she has it over me, like, still, you know?
	Like, I went to see her.
	Oh, we'll get to that.
	Yeah.
	Oh, that's on the list, trust me.
	Yeah.
	That is on the list.
	So, but why, with your, let's talk about with your father.
	So why did he, why did she have so much power?
	So, I did a lot of investigation, and it was after he died, so I couldn't really talk to him about it.
	But in terms of his childhood, he had a mother who was very volatile.
	She was a very serious alcoholic.
	This is what my father told me about her.
	He said, she was a wonderfully sweet woman, just such a perfectly lovely woman, until five o'clock every day when she had her drink.
	And then she turned into this monster.
	And then was a monster, you know, until she woke up the next day, kind of thing.
	But of course, my uncle, his brother, has a different story.
	He was, oh, I don't look and call her a perfectly sweet, lovely woman, you know, kind of thing.
	But anyways, my uncle has a different story about that.
	But dad had this, I think he believed that women were just like this, that they were crazy, you know?
	And he He had a first wife that he essentially knocked up when he was in college.
	I took him to his 50th high school reunion, and they had this little game to see who had the youngest child and who had the oldest child.
	Dad won both, so he was kind of proud of himself with that one.
	One of the reasons, maybe, that they got divorced was that she was too sane for him.
	It was boring to him, how she wasn't volatile and stuff.
	And I went through, before I left, so when I married my husband and, you know, de-food, essentially.
	Sorry, first husband.
	Sorry, my second husband.
	My second husband.
	Okay, sorry, just wanted to check.
	Go ahead.
	My philosopher king husband.
	Right.
	Yes.
	So I, before I did that, I, before I left, uh, that state, I went cross country to get away from my mother.
	Um, I went through dad, how dad took a lot of photos and he had lots of archives of like letters and things.
	And I went, I went through all his stuff, you know, without my mother's permission, she was out of town.
	So I just kind of had at it and to scan things.
	Anyway, I found this letter that he wrote to her.
	The summer, I think it was like three months after they'd been married for three months, and he wrote this letter begging her to be nicer to him, basically.
	Like that her cruelty and her sometimes even hatred is what he said.
	Sometimes it seems you even hate me, you know, this hatred that you spew at me.
	I can't stand it and it's going to ruin our relationship.
	That's what he said in this letter that he saved from all for all these years.
	And, sorry, when was this, in the course of their marriage?
	This was three months after they were married.
	Good Lord.
	So he knew all about her cruelty from, I mean, we would assume before marriage, but certainly very early, right?
	Before you guys came along.
	Oh yeah.
	Yeah, I think she hid it from him until they were married, I think.
	No.
	No.
	Sorry.
	Sorry.
	I mean, that's on the level of your dad.
	She was perfectly lovely until five o'clock.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Yes, you're right.
	Because there would be signs, right?
	There are always signs.
	There are signs in past relationships.
	There are signs in her relationship to her family.
	There are always disagreements and so on.
	And somebody who masks disagreements is manipulative, right?
	So let's say that she didn't fight with him.
	But you can't have normal disagreements with a crazy person.
	Either they are totally subservient, like they're either at your feet or at your throat, right?
	They're either totally subservient or totally dominant.
	So even if she didn't have any fights with him at all, that would be a sign of dysfunction.
	But, given that his first wife was, as you say, too nice, too normal, too boring, then he must have been drawn to the volatility of your mom.
	Because he's like, wow, she's fiery, she's emphatic, she lives life to the max, and she's not like my other bland, not insane wife, so for sure he knew all of this stuff before getting in.
	Right.
	Well, what happened in their story of very shortly after that, she got pregnant.
	After the letter?
	I think so.
	The timeline is a little confusing.
	She might have even already been been pregnant.
	So they had their first child.
	It must have it was 80.
	Sorry, we don't need to we don't need to say the exact date.
	But it was I think it was a year after they They were married.
	So it must have been around that time that he wrote that letter that they got pregnant.
	Right.
	But the baby did not live.
	She had a genetic issue where he only lived eight days.
	And then mom was very, very sad after that.
	Dad said that she cried every day for a year after she lost that baby.
	That's not true.
	No, that's not true.
	Tell me more!
	I hate to be an annoyingly blunt guy, but this is all just manipulative sentimentality.
	Oh, she was so sad about the baby who died because she cares so much for her children, you see.
	She's just all about the children, and the mothering, and the love, and it broke her heart.
	And that's why, you see, after she lost a child, she treasured her remaining children so much more.
	Except that's the complete opposite of what happened, right?
	Yes.
	So, she did not... I mean, if you don't care about your live children, it's pretty hard to argue that you care so much about your dead children.
	Am I wrong?
	I mean, you know the situation, but logically to me, if someone, you know, abuses their actual children, it's hard to say, but they were just so heartbroken and it was so terrible and so awful because of the child who died.
	And of course the child who died is terribly, terribly, terribly sad.
	But that saying, she has the capacity to love and bond and treasure the children who died, Unfortunately, not the children who actually lived that she was supposed to parent.
	Right.
	Don't believe it for a moment.
	She also just seems to love babies a lot more than she loves, like, once they actually get to learn how to talk and, you know, talk back or whatever.
	Of course she does!
	I mean, all cruel people have less problem with babies than they do with adults, or children who can talk back, because the babies don't challenge them.
	She got all the love for free.
	Well, yeah, babies are just... it's a drug, right?
	The babies will... I mean, you know, you're a mother, right?
	They bond and attach to you.
	You don't have to earn it.
	Right?
	You know, I mean, you treat them decently and they'll light up when you come in the room and then you think that that's everything that you deserve and then what happens?
	That's a setup for turning on the kids when they get older.
	Right?
	I mean, the parents get mad at children because babies bond with them and give them all this dopamine, so they feel like they're loved.
	The parents feel like they're loved.
	And then, at some point, the kids are like, eh, something's wrong with you up there.
	You know, something's not right here.
	And they begin to be skeptical and withdraw.
	I mean, my daughter's in her mid-teens, right?
	She'll be 16 this year.
	And she knows, like down to the last atomic detail, every one of my flaws and foibles.
	Like, absolutely, she could go on for, you know, a certain amount of time.
	I guess we won't get into exactly how long, but let's just say it's not totally, totally short.
	But no, she knows all of my foibles, and she knows all of my pettiness, and all of my weakness.
	Every single detail.
	Every single detail.
	You can't avoid it, particularly if you're a stay-at-home parent, because there's nothing to hide.
	No, I mean, we love each other, and I know her foibles.
	I also know which ones I'm more responsible for, and also which ones she's more responsible for.
	But, you know, knowing absolutely everything about the people in your life is the job of children.
	And so, when the kids get a little older, they're like, hmm, yeah, something's not quite right about all of this.
	Something is not working.
	And then, the parents react, the mothers often, react with this enrage, like, no, no, no, you're supposed to be a love-me-dopamine-delivery-mechanism, and you're not doing your job!
	It's really quite unpleasant.
	There was a story about me as a baby that I was so attached to mom that when she tried to go to this workout class once a week, and the second she left the house, I would start screaming and begging for mom, and I would wait by the back door.
	And it went on so much, it just drove dad crazy.
	He like, forbid her from going to this workout class again.
	And she loved this story.
	She loved it.
	You know, dad was like, oh, it was awful.
	But mom just, she just ate it up.
	She thought it was the best, right?
	Now, but you know, that's not healthy.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's an, I'm no expert, right?
	But my understanding is that that's an insecure attachment.
	Like you're not trusting she's coming back.
	You're not trusting that things are going to work out, that you're just very anxious.
	So I'm not sure that's, I'm not sure that's like she was so attached.
	It's like, you know, I mean, if you have a husband who like, puts a GPS tracker on your car and checks your cell phone and all of that.
	That's not love.
	That's kind of stalking.
	Sorry, I'm laughing because we, my husband and I, we have that on our phones.
	We can stalk each other whenever we want.
	No, I get that, but it's not out of emotional need, right?
	Yeah, no, of course.
	I was like, I wonder if he's almost home.
	I can put dinner on the table.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, yeah, I mean, that story is interesting, but I do not think that it is healthy.
	My first memory, when I look back, is of anxiety.
	That's my very first memory.
	I'm anxious, you know?
	Very fearful.
	And, you know, as a child, I was, mom always, oh, you're too sensitive, you know?
	That was the story about me, that I was just, I was just way too sensitive.
	Go on.
	Well, let's see.
	Why would she say that?
	Oh, because she hurt you and you were upset?
	Or I had needs.
	Oh no!
	Needs?
	How selfish can you be?
	I know!
	Well, as I grew up and into my teenage years, I tried to be as needless as possible.
	You know, I didn't even ask to to learn how to drive because I just knew that it would stress them out and well it's like well I'll just figure it out I guess when I get there and lo and behold it didn't work yeah it was that was harder yeah to actually practice to learn how to drive um so
	So, what about the needs thing?
	She would say, you are, you are what?
	You are too needy, you are too sensitive, you're too... So yeah, so brutal people, right?
	They harm you, right?
	And then when you get upset, they say you're oversensitive, right?
	That's, right?
	Everything, everything to do with impossible people is putting you in an impossible situation.
	So, if you have needs, that's bad, right?
	But if you don't need your mother, that's also bad, right?
	If you don't care about her, you don't give her what she wants, you don't do the things that are right by her.
	So to have needs and to not have needs is bad.
	To want things from your mother is bad, to complain about not getting them is bad.
	So what would happen if you just didn't interact with her?
	If you stayed in your room or you just said, okay, I'm not going to have any needs, then what?
	What would happen then?
	Well, that was essentially the norm.
	So from 10 on, when she got home from work, she went straight back to her room.
	When I was age 10 on, that is.
	She would go straight back to her room after she got home from work, sometimes like 17-hour days, you know, like really crazy doctor hours.
	Um and dad would like bring her her meals in bed and and enable that and like I would not see her like hardly ever um and I would try to avoid her as much as possible.
	Um I did see the only time I ever really saw her and had any positive interaction we would have a family vacation every year for two weeks and usually like a European vacation you know something very bougie and uh you know it was through nice trips and mom was like On the company behavior, right?
	She was really happy on these trips.
	That was the other reason I sort of deluded myself into taking this trip with her.
	I thought maybe she would just be really happy on the trip.
	But anyway, because that's how it was.
	I could actually sort of talk to her.
	I mean, not really talk to her, but now that I think about it, we talked about the things we were seeing and No, we didn't even talk then.
	We just barely talked ever.
	My memory from before I was 10 is really hazy.
	I was five when my younger brother was born, so I got to be the baby.
	There's lots of benefits to being the baby in the family.
	So I got all the benefits until I was five, and then I think it was actually sort of beneficial for me to stop getting the baby benefits and grow up.
	Whereas my younger brother was the baby until he was a grown man.
	He's 30-something years old now, but he's Yeah, I mean, a dysfunctional family just doesn't allow people to grow.
	It doesn't allow roles to change.
	It doesn't allow things to shift around.
	People are just assigned.
	It's like the army, right?
	The army's just one big dysfunctional family, so you have your rank.
	Although, I guess, at least with the army, you have the chance to improve or the chance to grow.
	But yeah, dysfunctional families, nobody can change their positions because there's no living in the moment, right?
	There's only living in stereotypes and habits and there's no sort of actual connection or conversations in the moment.
	So, it's all not how it is now, but it's all how it evolved.
	involved. So as far as discipline went, how did that go?
	It was more of a... So okay, so no corporal punishment, like we were not...
	Dad felt very strongly about that, though I have even video.
	when I went through all my dad's archives, I digitized all the home movies. There's even a
	video of my mother trying to spank my younger brother.
	There's a video of me talking about spanking and stuff. So there's a video of me spanking my
	The story is that we were never spanked, but I have...
	younger brother.
	It's just a sketchy memory.
	I don't fully believe that, you know what I mean?
	That we were never spanked, but I don't have strong memories of it.
	So it was mostly like we were just kind of with my siblings.
	I had four siblings, or three siblings, and a half-sister too, but we didn't grow up with her.
	It was kind of laissez-faire.
	There weren't really rules.
	I mean, there were unspoken rules, of course, but my parents were just very absent.
	It was like Lord of the Flies with my siblings.
	My parents weren't physically abusive.
	My older siblings were, not my younger sibling.
	My two older siblings were physically abusive with me.
	And what do you mean by that?
	Hitting, scratching, Indian burns.
	Do you know what an Indian burn is?
	I think we used to call them, just when you rotate your hand opposite ways, we used to call them Chinese burns, and it really messes up your skin.
	It's really painful, but yes it is older brother enjoyed giving me indian burns, um, and uh
	Though there was a lot of fights I was usually stuck in the middle between fights between my older brother and my older sister.
	I really idolized them and looked up to them so much.
	I loved them both.
	I was very attached to both.
	I won't use the word love, but I was extremely attached to both of them.
	They would get in these huge fights and I'd have to pick a side.
	you know, and yeah, there wasn't really a lot, like the only discipline was just being yelled at, you know.
	It was just yelling, with my parents, that is.
	And just... Oh, I don't understand you kids!
	Oh, you know, that kind of... And how often would these sibling conflicts occur?
	Daily.
	Oh gosh.
	It was bad.
	It was really bad.
	Wow.
	Now, why do you think there was so much rage and violence and so on?
	And I used to think this is more because, you know, there's this story in society, well, you know, the older sibling just resents the younger sibling because it's taking attention away from the parents.
	It's almost like this inevitability that is talked about with regards to sibling conflicts.
	And it's not true.
	It's absolutely, completely, and totally false.
	And I can say this with total certainty, because I know a lot of families with multiple siblings, many siblings.
	I know a family with three brothers, four brothers, and they're all peaceful parents, and the siblings get along really, really well.
	They encourage each other, they support each other, they're friendly with each other, they would never dream of attacking each other or hitting each other.
	So this, you know, the inevitability of sibling conflict It turns out, hey, it's just another piece of propaganda put out by abusive parents, like, oh, we had to manage you guys.
	Your siblings fight, you know, they fight, and we just tried to do our best to manage it.
	It's like, but it's not true.
	It's like the myth of the, you know, the contentious relationship, you know, relationships are work, and there's gonna be conflict, and you gotta work it out, and you gotta manage things, and if you're not being challenged, you're not growing, it's like, no, no, I have a job.
	I don't need to.
	I don't want a relationship that is a part-time career of anxiety and aggression management.
	Like, that's no fun.
	Well, you know this from, I guess, the two marriages, right?
	I mean, you're supposed to be a team getting along in life, not, you know, can you take this punch to the gut?
	You know, this sort of who's afraid of a genuine wolf nonsense.
	So why do you think there was so much aggression and violence from your older brothers?
	So, older brother and older sister.
	Sorry, older brother, older siblings, yeah.
	Yeah, older siblings.
	So, I mean, my older siblings, so being one of the younger, I actually didn't receive as much Direct abuse, as they did.
	They were more directly, verbally abused by both my parents, but particularly my mom towards my older sister, my dad towards my older brother.
	My mom sort of doted on the boys in this creepy, gross way.
	Been there, yeah.
	Yeah.
	But she was very hard on my older sister in terms of just, you know, when I was in fourth grade, I had a science fair project.
	It was a group project.
	So we all took turns going to each other's houses.
	We only went to my house once because... Oh, everybody knows the crazy house in school.
	Everybody knows the house.
	I think let's do it somewhere else.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, the one day we did do it, mom is like screaming at my sister to find them like, find us like a, we needed a pair of scissors and like, or something.
	And mom was just like, she called her like a bitch, like in front of My friends, you know?
	Hey, weren't you talking about Company Mom?
	Yeah, I know.
	It's not true.
	Okay, so she wants to make sure that the kids don't stick around, right?
	So she wants to make sure that the kids don't want to come over.
	Okay.
	Right.
	So my older siblings had it, and they had more moms.
	So mom did take some time off of her work as a doctor.
	My dad's sister, my aunt, who I actually am close with to this now.
	I wasn't then, but I am now.
	I'm close with her.
	She's a stay-at-home mom.
	Also, we have a lot in common.
	There were things that I didn't like about my aunt growing up because I thought they were against my mom.
	But I'm realizing now that she was just on our side, on the kids' side.
	So she made this comment, like, oh, well, are you going to have to go back to work?
	To my mom.
	My mom was like, well, of course.
	I spent all these years in medical school, residency.
	Of course I'm going to work again.
	But she took some years off when My older siblings were young.
	I'm such a snoop.
	I found her journal from the 80s, close to when I was born, and I read it.
	I stole it, actually.
	I stole her journal, and I have it, and I reference it occasionally.
	Anyway, she was debating on even homeschooling my older sister, which I was really shocked by, to read that in her journal, that she thought about homeschooling.
	She taught my older sister how to read from, I guess she was reading at three years old or something ridiculous, and she taught her how to play the piano.
	She was a very active mom with my older sister.
	Now my older brother, There's been... I heard a theory of schizophrenia that it was created with refrigerator moms, like the kind of moms... Oh, sorry.
	I thought you meant... Sorry.
	You continue, I just misunderstood, I thought there was a theory as to why your brother in particular, but yeah, the refrigerator moms, yeah, I've heard of that, so go ahead.
	Well, my brother had a lot, has and had a lot of issues, and I even saw a schizophrenia diagnosis for him at one point.
	I don't know, so anyway, but I'd read, I'd read That the refrigerator moms, like the mom who sets the kid up in the playpen or something and goes and does all of her activities and doesn't interact much with that child, it can create schizophrenia.
	And it was disproven or people thought Oh, there's so many battles about this.
	Look, obviously we wouldn't want to blame mothers for something that was biological.
	Right?
	I mean, that would be like blaming moms for like, I don't know, epilepsy or something like that.
	Or the people who said that it was stress that caused stomach ulcers when it was in fact a bacteria that could be treated with antibacterials.
	Now, maybe stress is related or whatever, but yeah, we don't want to.
	I mean, it's horribly unjust.
	To blame people for that, which is biological.
	But, on the other hand, refrigerator moms don't want to get blamed if they have something to do with it.
	So, you know, in mental health, there's this constant tug of, well, we want to be fair and we certainly don't want to blame moms for something that is genetic.
	And that, of course, is totally right.
	Of course we don't.
	That would be monstrous, right?
	But at the same time, we have to understand that Parenting has something to do with mental health.
	It has to!
	Maybe not a hundred percent, but it has something to do with it.
	And we know that because dysfunctional parents are always saying that the reason they're dysfunctional was that they had hard childhoods.
	So the parents can't say, well my parenting had nothing to do with it, when they so often blame their own bad parenting when they were children as to why they made bad... I had it hard growing up and I'm, you know, my father beat me and so...
	Yeah, it's good if anything is tough.
	I mean, is there genetic susceptibility?
	In my view, yes, of course, and I think there's been some work done on that.
	But genetics doesn't mean manifestation, right?
	It's like people have a genetic susceptibility to damage from cigarettes, right?
	Because some people, you know, smoke and are fine.
	Some people have, I assume it's a genetic susceptibility to damage from cigarettes.
	And some people don't, but that susceptibility to damage isn't activated.
	If you don't smoke, and I remember this from the Bomb in the Brain series that some kids with particular genes for aggression, if they're physically abused, like a hundred percent of them become incredibly physically aggressive, but they still have to be physically abused.
	So, yeah, I don't know the answer.
	Of course, it's schizophrenia.
	I do know that there's some, I think it's a northern European country, maybe Denmark, that they have a sort of group and psychotherapy.
	approach to schizophrenia that they claim has really good outcomes, but then of course, there's also a lot of scams, right?
	I mean, I'm not saying this place is a scam, but just in the world where people are desperate, you know, like, we can cure autism or whatever they say, right?
	And so, yeah, it's a very complicated topic, but it doesn't really have any bearing on peaceful parenting, right?
	Because you should be a peaceful parent, right?
	Not just because maybe your kids have a susceptibility to mental illness, but because it's immoral to harm children.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, yeah, I've seen the articles back and forth on the refrigerator mom theory, and of course, again, if it's purely biological and genetic, then it would be monstrous to blame the moms.
	On the other hand, you can be a crappy mom with an entirely biologically created schizophrenic child, right?
	I mean, your mom sounds like a pretty bad mom, regardless of the genetics of whatever might happen with her kids and mental illness, right?
	Right.
	Yes.
	Well, and I don't know...
	I've only heard the schizophrenia thing once about my brother, that that was like a diagnosis that someone put on him at some point.
	Sorry, and you heard about this, you didn't read the actual medical report or the diagnosis?
	No.
	And I'm even trying to remember what the source was in my memory, like how I have this.
	But I mean, asking my mom later, I'm trying to remember exactly when I asked my mom too, she was saying, no, it's not schizophrenia.
	Then a few years ago, he was showing this like paranoid behaviour and when he went off his meds, So the story with my brother, they put him on Ritalin at a very young age.
	And then when I was probably like eight years old when this was, he was actually hospitalized for something called, we called, this is what I called it, you know, mad attacks is what we would call them, which sounds a lot like what my parents had too, but.
	Oh, where he would just like have a tantrum and lose control, so to speak, of his temper.
	Yes, and I think it happened at school or something like that.
	I don't know.
	I was so young, I don't know all the circumstances.
	I'm really curious, but I don't know.
	Now, why are you curious?
	Well, I just want to know what happened.
	Well, I know.
	That's just another way of saying curious.
	Why are you curious?
	I want to know what happened.
	Synonym for curious.
	Why are you curious?
	Are you curious because you're concerned about your own children if there's genetic issues involved?
	No, that didn't even occur to me.
	No, no, and I'm perfectly sure that it's not.
	For whatever that's worth, as a guy who doesn't have any training or expertise in these areas, I don't want to put a fear in your head.
	I mean, I'm sure your kids are great.
	And, of course, both my parents' mental health issues, like you wouldn't believe, and both institutionalized and so on.
	My daughter is fantastic and great and, you know, so that to me, that's environment, right?
	I mean, I think my family have high octane brains, which means they go really fast and they crash really spectacularly.
	Like you're going, you know, 180 on the Autobahn, you know, you get either from A to B really quickly or you're just a flaming smudge in the eye of eternity or something, right?
	So yeah, so why are you curious?
	Why do you want to know?
	Well, I think I mentioned in my letter about feeling gaslit.
	This was something that I didn't understand.
	I was so young, and it was not talked about in the family.
	It was something we just didn't talk about.
	I wanted to know what happened.
	I wanted the truth.
	I'm also a writer, and I've written some essays about my childhood.
	When you write creative nonfiction, you have to get all the details correct, if you want To be published, and sometimes I... I'm sorry, how on earth are you going to get the details correct?
	I mean, going over source material... I mean, isn't your mom kind of a liar?
	Yeah, she is.
	I mean, my dad was, too.
	He lied.
	Yeah, well, I want to get back to your dad, so I've got a little note here.
	We'll get back to your dad, but I'm trying to sort of figure out how are you going to get to the truth?
	When everybody has an incentive to lie.
	It's a different story.
	Well, and everybody has an incentive, because you can't get the truth from people with a guilty conscience.
	You just can't.
	Because the reason they have a guilty conscience is because they lie to themselves and others.
	Right?
	So, I mean, my mother blames her violence and her dysfunction on the doctors who injected her with various ailments.
	Now, I can't possibly get the truth from her.
	I mean, I personally believe that the truth would be fatal.
	The purpose of a bad conscience is to have you correct course.
	If you haven't corrected course for like 60 years or whatever, there's no course correction that's possible and you're in, like you're committed.
	I mean, the doubling down is all that's left.
	Tripling down, quadrupling down.
	And that's what my mother did every time I talked to her about things.
	She just doubled, quadrupled, escalated.
	And your older siblings, your older brother and sister, have they ever taken ownership and apologized for the violence they visited upon helpless children?
	Now, they themselves, as children, in a bad environment, I get all of that, but there's still some responsibility.
	Sorry, to whom?
	Your older brother and sister who were violent towards their younger siblings, and modelled that violence with each other, too.
	Have they ever apologised for that, you said?
	Well, taken ownership, apologised, made some kind of restitution, anything like that?
	My brother, no.
	He's even, his memory of it is very hazy.
	He has issues with memory.
	What?
	Yeah.
	No, no.
	Hang on.
	Sorry, did he receive some sort of brain injury and a diagnosis of brain problems?
	No.
	He's really smart.
	He's like genius.
	Okay, so why on earth would you believe him when he says he can't remember things?
	Have you never seen someone on a witness stand?
	I don't recall.
	I plead the fifth.
	I don't have any memory of that.
	I don't remember this.
	I don't remember that.
	I don't remember the other.
	Hmm.
	Well... I, uh... I mean, it's what he says.
	Okay, but why would you believe him?
	And I'm not, you know, I'm not saying he's a liar.
	I don't know the guy.
	But... If people have problems with their memories as a whole, they tend to be homeless, non-functional in society, in care homes.
	I assume none of that applies to him.
	I mean, not too far off.
	He wasn't never homeless because he's lived off my parents, but he's never had a job.
	He's older than me and pushing 40s.
	He's never had a job?
	I think maybe he had a job for like a week once.
	No, no, I mean functionally he's never had a job.
	I'm not going down to granular levels of specificity here.
	Ah, interesting.
	Okay, and is this the one where the schizophrenia thing is floating around?
	Yes.
	He's genius level smart.
	I never had my IQ tested as a kid, but his was.
	I can't remember what the number was, but it was very high.
	He was proud of it.
	He's now not actually in a graduate program.
	He's taking classes to get into the graduate program for physics.
	He's Um, but there was many years where, you know, he just basically did nothing.
	He just did nothing all day.
	What do you mean?
	It means people got to do something.
	I don't know what he's doing.
	He, he had a house.
	My parents bought him a house.
	Um, you know, with strings, of course, they, they owned some bed and, and, um, anyway, there's strings I'm involved with.
	I own property with my mom too.
	It's a whole thing.
	Um, anyway.
	Oh, you still own property with your mom?
	Well, technically I do, but last summer she sold the property that I owned the most of.
	There's some LLCs that I'm a 2% owner at this point, but the one that I owned 50% of, she sold last year.
	And she gave you the money?
	She gave me half.
	She gave me my percentage of ownership.
	So I understand that.
	I want to make sure I don't get too many threads open here at once.
	Let's get back to your brother.
	So why did he do nothing throughout his 20s and 30s?
	Um, I don't know.
	I don't really know.
	Well, you do.
	You do.
	I do.
	Everybody tries this.
	Because he could, you know, I mean, he was being enabled to, he, so the story with it, so he He was institutionalized when he was in grade school, essentially for these mad attacks.
	And then when he was in high school, he dropped out of high school.
	He just stopped going and he wouldn't even leave his room.
	And eventually the school sort of called and was like, well, he's missed enough days where, you know, we're going to, you guys are going to get in trouble with the law here unless you do something about it.
	So they had dad, I mean, they didn't have to do this, but this is what they did.
	Dad called The police on him, basically, and the police came, took him out of his room, and took him to an institution for, I don't know exactly how long he was in there, but not super long.
	Like a month, maybe.
	Right.
	And then, so he dropped out of high school, got his GED, they bought him a house, and he like semi went to college, and he did graduate from college, but it took him a long time.
	And was he, I guess, was he put on a bunch of psych meds?
	Mm-hmm.
	He was on those since he was a kid.
	He's been on Ritalin since he was very young.
	So he's been drugged his whole life.
	Right.
	He went, he got into like a lot of, I don't know what kind of drugs he was doing, but I know he did drugs.
	Oh, like recreational drugs?
	Mm-hmm.
	Okay, well that explains it, yeah.
	Yeah, I know he did, like, you know, both my brothers are very into weed.
	I don't really know.
	I think there was other drugs too.
	I just don't know, you know.
	So his memory works well enough that he can graduate from university.
	His memory works well enough that he's trying to get into grad school or working towards grad school.
	So his memory works well.
	Just, you know, any wrongs that he did are mysteriously absent.
	Oh, he drinks.
	He drinks.
	He's an alcoholic too.
	He drinks so much.
	He was having like, after a night of heavy drinking, he had like nerve damage in his hand or something.
	And like, it's bad.
	He's really sad.
	And it's wild to me that if he's having tantrums or, you said, rage attacks, it's wild to me, and this is just sort of part of the sick aspect of the society we live in, that people aren't like, well, he's got to have learned this rage from somewhere.
	Let's go talk to the parents.
	Let's go talk to the other siblings.
	Let's go find out.
	And then maybe we can get some people some anger management counseling or some family counseling.
	Nope!
	Drug him up!
	I know, it's so horrible.
	My parents were the ones having the mad attacks on a regular basis, like a regular basis.
	They never were forced to go.
	And I guess when he was in this institution, when he was in grade school, like he was beaten by a child there, like would beat him every night or something.
	It was something really horrible.
	And it's, it's really sad.
	And I mean, that's, I just, part of why I wanted to know more, like, I just, how could this happen?
	Why do you want to know more?
	That's supposed to go back to that question.
	I'm not, I'm not, it's not critical.
	Like why on earth?
	I'm genuinely curious.
	Why do you want to know more?
	What's the purpose?
	I want to know how it happened, why it happened, you know?
	Why, with your brother?
	Yeah.
	And like, what the circumstances were, you know?
	So you're looking for determinism?
	No, I'm not a determinist.
	Well, it's a little bit here because you're looking for the environmental factors that caused your brother's behavior.
	And it was my parents.
	I know it was the parenting.
	No, it's not the parents.
	No?
	No.
	Did you have mad attacks at school?
	No.
	Same environment?
	Mmm.
	Same chaos?
	Same neglect?
	Same parents?
	So if you're gonna say, I need an environmental answer for my siblings, you don't get one.
	Because you were part of that environment.
	Now, I know everyone's... and environment, you know, I mean, you can look up the studies, right?
	And I think that there are cases of extreme neglect and abuse where this changes.
	But environment, over the long run, doesn't have as much influence as people think.
	Now, how old was your brother, if you remember, like when he was getting these rage attacks or whatever, right?
	It would have to have been around ten, somewhere around there.
	So ten years old, and he's very intelligent, right?
	Yes, very.
	At the age of ten, is it physically possible to restrain your temper?
	Like, obviously, if you're three months old, you can't stop crying, right?
	This is not the time for that!
	Self-control is a stoicism you don't read from Marcus Aurelius for your baby, right?
	They physically can't... If you have epilepsy, then you physically cannot stop the seizure.
	You can't just will it away, right?
	So when you're ten years old, right?
	You and I remember what it's like to be ten.
	When you're ten years old, is it possible for you to restrain your temper?
	Yes.
	Yes it is.
	And we know that, because if you were to say to your brother, I'll give you a giant bag of candy, or I'll give you a thousand dollars, if you don't have, if you don't lose your temper today at school, he would be able to achieve that, right?
	Right, but if his eyes had been physically removed for some reason, he wouldn't have the choice to see, but he would have had an incentive He could respond to an incentive with his temper, right?
	I think so.
	I assume so.
	Right.
	I mean, and the way that we would know that is, were there times where he did restrain his temper?
	In other words, if he was in a movie or at a party?
	I mean, you know, things chafed at us all the time in life, right?
	So did he Have no control over his temper.
	I mean, that was kind of the story in the household, but I mean, I don't, I guess not.
	Well, I think he has some control.
	If you said he was two, you know, obviously, right?
	We would give him more of a break.
	But he has the chance to control his temper.
	I mean, I'm sure you can remember when you were a kid that there were times when you were angry and you were able to restrain your temper.
	Yes.
	Now, of course, I'm not blaming him, you know, like he was an adult or something like that.
	So he was in a challenging environment, but so were you and so was I, right?
	And there is a choice, right?
	So do you know, I guess, did you ever see any of these rage Yes.
	Yes.
	And so what would happen?
	Well, he, I guess he would break his pencil a lot.
	Like that was the, he'd like to break things, you know, and, uh, um, that's just, you know, sorry, side note.
	I don't know if I mentioned this yet, but my dad also, when he got really angry, he would throw things, you know, glassware.
	Yes.
	So, you know, not unlike dad.
	So he would break, you know, his pencil or something.
	And there was one time I had, I found this pencil at the, Like school store or something, which was like rubbery, like you could bend it in half and it didn't actually break.
	And I was like, look, I got this for you.
	It can help you.
	Yeah, if you could stay off the names.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	No, that's fine.
	Oh, I'm so sorry.
	Go ahead.
	I was like, here, take this.
	It'll help you.
	And he went into one of these mad attacks.
	And his face got really red, he started hyperventilating, and I was so young, it's hard to... But you were trying to help him.
	Right, I was trying to help, yeah.
	It's like, this is a pencil that doesn't break!
	You keep breaking these pencils, this will help!
	And he went into the mad attack, where he basically had a tantrum.
	He looked very much out of control.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And how much older is he than you?
	Two and a half years.
	Right, okay.
	And now, I'm sure as a child, you... Now, I mean, we can say it's a boy-girl thing, but, you know, this is pre-puberty, right?
	So it's not like he's bathing in a sea of testosterone, right?
	But I'm sure there were times when you got angry and frustrated as a child, and you were able to manage it to some degree or in some way, right?
	Yeah, yes.
	I would have fainting spells sometimes as a child.
	There was one time I got so distraught and that was out of my control.
	One time my older siblings played this trick on me.
	And when I discovered the betrayal, I was so distraught.
	I remember the whole world kind of blurring, and I blacked out from just the betrayal.
	And that was out of my control, I think.
	I mean, but maybe not.
	I was five at the time when that happened.
	No, at five, I mean, at five, I think that's pretty hard, right?
	So, again, I'm no expert, this is just my gut instinct, but I think it's tough to say my brother got institutionalized because he broke pencils.
	I know, that sounds crazy, right?
	That's part of the reason why I'm like, what was happening that he was put in this institution?
	Right, I know, but I don't know, you see, that's part of it, I just don't know.
	Well, and you won't, right?
	I mean, the records are long gone, the teachers are probably long dead, and the principals, and your mother won't tell the truth, right?
	My dad's dead.
	Your dad's dead, and you probably don't find paperwork.
	But I think that children get institutionalized because they pose an imminent danger to themselves or others.
	Not pencils.
	Right, right.
	So that must mean that your brother, if that's the case, right, then he either attacked himself in a physically dangerous manner or attacked someone else in a physically significantly dangerous manner.
	Which that checks.
	I know he was having fights, like, so they're getting beaten up, like, I don't, you know, he might have been... I saw him actually somewhat recently, first time in a long time, and He was talking about getting into a fight in, like, middle school or something and, like, going after a bully and being like, I'm gonna see you after school, you know, at the black hole.
	Yeah, I mean, if it was a bully, what we do know is that he was violent towards his younger siblings, right?
	Yes.
	So, you know, the idea that it's just some external bully and, like, they always will paint themselves, right?
	So, they paint themselves as the victims and I was just protecting myself from a bully and so on, right?
	But, you know, for me it's kind of hard to see someone who's as a victim when they're victimizing their little brothers and sisters or whatever, right?
	That's a little tough to follow, right?
	So he might have been a bully, he might have been violent.
	Yes.
	That checks, actually.
	Now you mention it.
	So, in which case, then he did some significant wrong and harm.
	Now, of course, we can say, but he had it rough at home.
	And he did!
	He absolutely did.
	But What I try to figure out, and this is absent, you know, you can read Robert Whitaker's Mad in America book, I don't know if you've read that, but probably it's quite important because, you know, people who are on these psych meds for a long time, there seem to be some challenges, to put it mildly, but the question is, if he did not have guilt, he would be more successful.
	I'm not saying that's the only factor, but if he was genuinely a victim, and was defending himself against the bully and was doing the right thing, his conscience wouldn't plague him.
	We have to listen to our conscience, especially when we disagree with it, because that's the most dangerous part, right?
	That's the most dangerous time.
	When our conscience is making us feel bad for something that we've done, then we have to listen to it.
	And we might not like what the conscience has to say, it doesn't really matter.
	We have to obey the conscience or suffer the price.
	Now, of course, I'm not saying that it's only because of the conscience or whatever, but when people say, I was just a victim, I believe them if they're living that way.
	Now, if your brother is not succeeding and has wasted his life and is self-medicating through recreational drugs, then he clearly does not just feel like a victim.
	Because if you are genuinely a victim, then your conscience is clear.
	But when you victimize others and you have the choice not to, that's when you start to get into some serious, serious
	trouble.
	Mmm...
	Mm-hmm.
	I mean, you were a victim as a child, and you're happily married and raising children according to peaceful
	parenting, so you chose well.
	And your brother chose to deal with his emotional problems by assaulting and injuring his little siblings, right?
	And now, do you not think that there's a price to be paid for that?
	Yes, he's... And how is he going to control his temper at school when he has indulged his temper at home?
	Yeah, and when you say indulge too, like that was just part of the family culture.
	Dick, he was...
	He just got his way with lots of things.
	There were certain movies that we saw a lot because they were his favorite movies.
	Sure.
	It worked.
	Yeah, and we would buy... Dad would buy him things and take him on special... It was a sort of special treatment for him because he was troubled.
	He was... And again, I guess Dad is that appeasement guy.
	Do everything to... Well, no.
	No, it's not appeasement.
	No?
	No, it's not appeasement.
	Tell me more.
	It is that your father didn't want to find the source of your brother's upset.
	Of course.
	Because that leads directly to the mirror.
	It's not appeasement, it's a cover-up.
	Right.
	You know, if I'm part of a criminal gang, right, and someone says, I'm going to the cops unless you give me
	a thousand dollars, and I give him a thousand dollars, I'm not appeasing, I'm just covering up.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, your brother used his anger to get what he wanted, right?
	And when he got what he wanted, I assume, he calmed down, right?
	Yes.
	Right. Right.
	And so he could easily control his temper and it was not an attack, right?
	It's a good thing.
	It's not an attack if it can be altered quickly.
	In other words, he's like, I want to watch my movie, I want to jump up and down, hold his breath, scream, throw things, and then he gets to watch his movie and he calms right down.
	That's not an attack, that's just a manipulation.
	It's not real.
	Not a genuine emotion.
	Okay.
	Sorry, this is fascinating and I'm Seeing some behaviours of my own children that I maybe want to rethink here.
	No, all children are helpless, so what could they do?
	They can ask, threaten, lie, bully, manipulate.
	You know, when my daughter would want something, she would say, I really, really want that.
	I mean, we would direct, right?
	And I would work to facilitate it as best I could.
	And if not, we'd sort of talk about why and so on.
	And so, I mean, you know what it's like to be a kid.
	You desperately want stuff.
	I mean, I remember when I was in boarding school, we went to a county fair and I was desperate.
	to try and throw a ball, knock over some cans and get a coconut.
	Now, actually, in hindsight, I think those cans were welded to the ground, to the base, because, you know, it's a fair, which means that the toothless wanderers are ripping off kids.
	And I didn't have any money.
	Now, I knew that there was a certain amount of money that was given for spending money or pocket money or emergency money to the school.
	And I sort of begged and wheedled.
	And I really, really wanted to throw the coconut, throw the ball, knock over the cans and get the coconut.
	And I couldn't achieve it.
	Which is one of the reasons why I started working at the age of 10, because, like, now I have... I don't have to beg.
	I don't have to beg.
	I'm going to rely on the goodwill of others.
	Now, I did actually finally get, I think it was, I don't know, three pennies or something like that, and I threw the ball and I didn't get the coconut, but hey, at least it got my way.
	Right?
	Now, so your brother made the choice, and it is a choice.
	It is not inevitable.
	It is not genetics.
	It is not determinism.
	We have no choice but to react to trauma, but we have a choice in how we react to trauma.
	So your brother could have looked at your parents and said, well, that's terrible.
	Boy, what they're doing is just awful.
	I won't do that.
	I mean, my When I was a kid, my mother was mystical and subjectivist and so on, a relativist, as were other family members.
	And I was like, well, that's terrible.
	So, you know, I got my hands on philosophy and was introduced to philosophy and just sort of pursued that, right?
	It's sort of like, you know, the old cliche of the guy, the two twins, right?
	One's a drunk, the other's not.
	And you say to the drunk kid, why do you drink?
	Well, my father was a drunk.
	And you say to the sober kid, why don't you drink?
	And he says, well, my father was a drunk.
	I saw how terrible it was.
	That's the Dr. Phil thing.
	His father, I think, was pretty hard into the sauce, and he doesn't touch alcohol.
	Yeah, good for him.
	So, your brother made a choice, and I've talked to people who We're mean as kids.
	I mean, I've had lots of these conversations.
	Now, this isn't science, I understand that.
	These are people who are calling in.
	But every single time, every single time, I've talked to people about this.
	Do you know what they say?
	That it was my environment.
	No, I knew it was wrong.
	Oh, what do they say?
	I knew it was wrong.
	I knew I shouldn't.
	I felt terrible afterwards.
	I did it again.
	Well, and that was my sister, too.
	My older sister.
	Well, I don't have a younger sister.
	My sister.
	She was such a bully.
	She was more of a bully, even, than my older brother.
	We had to sort of... We didn't exactly share a room, but she had to walk through my room to get to her bedroom, and so I would be sleeping.
	Anytime she walked by my bed, if I was dozing, she'd knock it with her knees, you know?
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, and that's actually a form of torture, right?
	I mean... Yeah, it was!
	It was torture!
	Yeah, no, no.
	Literally, it's a form.
	Sleep deprivation is a form of torture.
	Yeah.
	I'd cry.
	I'd beg her to stop doing it.
	She'd just laugh.
	She thought it was funny.
	But a lot of times when she did make me cry, because she was so cruel, she would feel bad and then she'd make me laugh.
	She'd be funny, too.
	But she... She did, right?
	So after...
	After I read RTR and started making big changes in my relationship, she did actually, after I cut her out, she wrote me this letter that was like apologizing and it was, you know, a little bit of a BNF, but she was saying she was in therapy and she felt really bad, but I wasn't ready to talk to her at that point.
	So she wrote a letter saying she was sorry, and then I assume made some environmental excuses, and did she offer to make any restitution?
	No.
	Okay, so, you know, words are words, right?
	Yeah.
	And until words are matched by actions, you know, I mean, if you're a nutritionist and somebody's 350 pounds and they say, but I keep reading these diet books, Rose is worth something.
	You have to change behavior.
	Yeah, I wasn't, I haven't been interested in, this year I've been, I have, I did see her though for the first time.
	It was the same thing, like, not the same thing, the similar thing where I had dinner with her and met her husband now and her two kids and, you know, we didn't actually talk about anything real, but Okay, so hang on.
	How long between her writing the letter and you meeting her for dinner?
	It was like nine years.
	And the other thing too, if somebody were to write me a letter, I'd be very skeptical.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, I was.
	Right, and so how does somebody overcome that skepticism?
	What could your sister have done to overcome your skepticism and for you to believe that she truly was starting to empathize and truly interested in your sort of thoughts and feelings?
	You know, I don't know because what was happening stopped talking to her.
	It seemed like every time she would call me, she'd be crying.
	It was just very emotional, very extreme in her emotions.
	I know, being emotional is not bad, but it was just so intense all the time with her.
	And then we had this sort of group... Sorry, but what was she crying about?
	It was like we have different things.
	One of the times, it was a health issue she was having, and she was pre-diabetic.
	She's been overweight her whole life.
	She was pre-diabetic, and she called me crying over the diagnosis.
	And I was suggesting that maybe she should start walking because that's... I had actually lost... When I found Philosophy, I started walking a lot, listening to podcasts, and I lost a ton of weight without even really trying.
	And I wasn't super overweight, but just Yeah, anyway, I lost a ton of weight and so I just lost weight and I was trying to tell her, well, let's go walking together.
	Let's do something.
	This is not like a death sentence here.
	Let's be more proactive and if you lose the weight, maybe you can get that, your blood work will be clean again kind of thing.
	And she just was like, well, no, I'm not going to do that.
	Oh, you're such a nice young lady.
	You are so nice.
	Well, it's true that you did kick my bed and abuse me and were mean to me and cruel to me throughout my childhood, but I'm gonna... Let's walk together for your health.
	You're so nice.
	I'm not sure it's entirely warranted.
	Because that would have been my response, but, you know, that doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong.
	It's your family and all of that.
	My response would be, like, why are you crying?
	Yeah.
	Like, why are you crying?
	It's so ridiculous.
	I know!
	You eat like a pig and now you're pre-diabetic.
	I don't know why you're crying.
	You mean you enjoyed all the food, I assume.
	And you don't like to walk around.
	The only weight you lift is a fork.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, I'm a little confused.
	I mean, you've known about the health risks for years, everyone's told you about the health risks for years.
	Why are you crying?
	I don't understand.
	You chose this.
	Yeah, so it was pretty annoying for her to cry over that to me.
	Well, and also, you know, you're crying over a health risk from bad behavior you utterly chose and you've never shed one tear for how you treated me as a kid.
	This self-pity is, you know, I'm going to throw up for you.
	Right.
	No, it's self-pity, right?
	It's just, oh, me, me, I, and I'm so sad, and help me, help me, help me.
	I gotta tell you this other thing around that time that we were having this group text between, it was all my siblings and my mom, and I was, you know, I know, we shouldn't, RTRing over text is really bad, and I was guilty of it.
	No, it's good, I think it's fine if other people are sort of trained, versed, and experienced in it.
	I was a newbie.
	I was a newbie at it.
	No, no, no, but if your siblings don't know what you're doing, then you might as well just type to them in Japanese.
	But anyway, sorry, go on.
	Right.
	Well, I was trying to suggest to mom that... Let's see, I can't remember exactly how we said it.
	It was just something to get back to.
	I had criticisms about her behavior.
	I was like, mom, you read so many books.
	Have you ever picked up a parenting book?
	Channeling my inner Steph.
	She, you know, was basically, I'll just cry.
	Oh, you're attacking me.
	And Beth, my sister, uh, sorry, my sister, uh, she, she sent me, I think it was a private message.
	She's like, you can, can, oh, darn it.
	I said the name again.
	It's fine.
	You just, you've given me some exciting labor down the road, but don't worry about it.
	I'm so sorry.
	I told myself, I was like, I'm going to be so good.
	I'm okay.
	Just keep going.
	Just keep going.
	So she was like, you can't talk to people about their parenting.
	I'm a teacher.
	I know.
	She took some classes.
	She was a substitute teacher at the time.
	She wasn't an actual teacher.
	She had a degree in teaching, but she never actually was a full-time teacher.
	Anyway, I was like, hello?
	This is my own parent.
	You can't say it as a teacher to another parent, maybe, you know, legally or something, but I'm talking to my own parent.
	I can't talk about my own experience, and she just starts crying, you know, that sort of thing.
	Was she a mother at this point?
	No, no.
	She became a mom.
	Yeah, so she's just your mom's meat puppet, right?
	I mean, don't talk to mom, you're upsetting mom.
	Okay, the lessons of your dad.
	Okay, can we get back to your dad for a sec?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So you did say that your dad would blow up 10% of the time and sort of reactive and so on and be worse than your mom and that seems sort of reactive and with your mom.
	Now with your brother you mentioned that your dad was verbally abusive towards him.
	Because there's a little bit of your dad as like, low-up, reactive, Mr. Magoo, distracted, academic, Einstein-type, you know, messy office, innocent heart, you know.
	But I was really struck when you were talking about him, your father, verbally abusing your brother.
	What do you mean by that?
	So, an example that comes to my mind, my brother, Right.
	I'll remove that too.
	Go ahead.
	My brother was, we had this sort of beach house that had three stories.
	The kids were up on the top floor.
	In his room, there was a balcony.
	My father found him walking along the railing, balancing, just walking along there.
	And how high was he off the ground?
	Three stories up.
	Okay, kind of a death wish, yeah?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it was scary.
	And how old was your brother at this point?
	Eight, nine?
	Okay.
	Maybe even a little young, maybe even seven.
	I'm not Totally sure.
	Between seven and nine.
	Anyway, dad yanks him in and just screams at him.
	I don't really know all that happened, but afterwards the room was like, the lamp was knocked over.
	It looked like there had been a Like in those crime scene movies, you know.
	A brawl between two wrestlers or whatever, right?
	Yes.
	So I don't know all the scope of what happened.
	And I mean, he was, it was over safety issues.
	Dad would get very explosive.
	Once when I was maybe six, seven, I was playing with my younger brother who was, you know, a toddler at the time.
	We were right by the door and I noticed, I actually noticed it, that his fingers could get caught in the door with the doors opening and closing.
	So I decided to close the door so it wouldn't be, while I was aware of my younger brother's phalanges, his fingers, you know, making sure he was safe and I closed the door to just remove that as a risk, right?
	Dad saw this and he completely blew up.
	I remember him grabbing me by the hair, had me against the floor, screaming in my face about how dangerous it was.
	Sorry, how dangerous what was?
	That my younger brother's fingers could have gotten hurt in the door.
	Oh, but you were closing it to prevent that?
	I was, and he didn't understand.
	He thought I was closing it without protecting him.
	I wasn't saying that's what I was doing, but he couldn't read my mind.
	But he assumed that I was putting him, the younger brother, at risk.
	Sorry, my apologies.
	Just back up for a sec.
	Where were you phalange tracking?
	Where was your younger brother's fingers when you were closing the door?
	They were well away.
	Yeah, they weren't in the door, right?
	I mean, that would be cruel, right?
	They weren't in the door.
	I was making sure they were away while I was closing it, and I knew that Dad would be worried about the fingers, because he always talked about fingers getting hurt indoors, a lot.
	Well, I mean, as a doctor, right?
	So, you've got to keep your fingers, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so you were closing a door, and your father freaked out.
	Even though you were doing it to protect your brother because he thought that somehow your brother could, what, like rubber man, stick his fingers in the door from across the room or what?
	Well, he was nearby, you know, but I was just making sure he wasn't, his fingers weren't there while I was closing it.
	But then dad took this like little plastic, like soap holder thing and he's like, this is what can happen.
	And he puts it in the door and he slams the door as hard as he could and it shatters and goes everywhere.
	It was really terrifying.
	That's pretty psycho.
	I'm so sorry.
	Yeah, that's the level of explosiveness, which was so different.
	I told my aunt this, this is his younger sister.
	She almost didn't believe me.
	She was like, your father did that?
	Because he was so mild most of the time.
	Sorry, why would you believe her?
	Why would you believe her?
	Have you never watched Doctor House?
	Everybody likes it.
	So, why would you believe her?
	Are you saying that she grew up with your father, right?
	Well, there was a big age gap.
	Huge age gap.
	Like 9 year age gap.
	Which also means you would have babysat him too, right?
	I assume.
	It was 12 years.
	Actually, it was 12 years age gap between that.
	Yeah.
	The other brother was 9.
	Okay, so hang on.
	So, your aunt grew up in the same household as your father, right?
	Where his mother was this raging drunk who got possessed by the demons of alcohol from 5pm till the next morning, right?
	Yeah.
	So your aunt grew up, and I assume there was this explosive rage, and all of this dysfunction, and mess, and chaos, and aggression, and maybe violence, probably violence, and verbal abuse, and so on, right?
	So she would have grown up in that household, right?
	She did.
	She had a different experience than the brothers, because being the baby girl, she didn't get a lot of the direct I'm sorry, did she not know her mother was an alcoholic?
	Or had her mother cured her alcoholism by this point?
	No, she was still an alcoholic.
	The aunt lived with her grandparents for some time.
	She was removed from its sight more so than her brothers.
	Okay, so I'm trying to figure out how she's surprised that a house that was so dangerous, aggressive and violent, that she had to be removed That this might have an effect on your father.
	Yeah, I don't... That doesn't make sense now you mention it.
	But that's why I'm... So... So why would she say I had absolutely no idea?
	Again, it's the conscience!
	She knew that your father had been raised...
	In a chaotic, violent, neglectful, and abusive, and addiction-laced household, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So, if you know that, what should you do?
	When your brother wants to get married and have a family?
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	What should you do?
	What should I do?
	No, no.
	So what should your aunt do knowing that your father was raised in a abusive, neglectful and chaotic and violent manner?
	And he says, I'm going to get married and have kids and all of that.
	what should you do?
	Vet the fiancé.
	Well, maybe, but you certainly should say to your brother, listen, you got to deal with some stuff because the
	household was so bad, I got pulled out of it, God knows what happened when I wasn't
	there, but I assume it was pretty terrible.
	So, listen, before you become a dad, I mean, you gotta deal with some stuff.
	And if he doesn't listen, then you check in with his kids and you say, kids, how is, you know, how are things going?
	Right?
	Because, I mean, dad went through some serious chaos and aggression and neglect as a kid, right?
	So she would check in with you and she would, you know, make sure, because she was around the family, right?
	She had a, she had a guilty conscience because she, she also saw my mom's treatment and she was, She actually tried to say thanks something a few times.
	That's why mom hated her so much.
	Okay, so when somebody who's had decades of exposure to the chaos that defined your father to some degree, because he let it happen, right?
	Let it define.
	So if she doesn't talk to him, doesn't try and deal with anything, because she was the one who got it easiest in the family, so it would be easiest for her to deal with the family issues, right?
	So she was in a privileged position of having received the least harm, which means that she had some responsibility in dealing with the family trauma, right?
	And so, it really, I'm telling you, it bothers me at a foundational level, which doesn't mean that I'm right, I'm just being honest about my sort of emotional experience, when these little Pollyannas, who've neglected to protect their nieces and nephews, And neglected to take a stand for the protection of the children in the environment.
	And then when one of those children, as an adult, comes and says, Dad had a vicious temper, Oh, no, I never saw such a thing.
	I had no idea.
	Oh, man, come on.
	Give me a break.
	Like, just stop lying.
	She has a heart.
	She doesn't even, she has this thing where she doesn't want to say anything negative about anyone, you know, and she doesn't use the word.
	She's a coward.
	I get that.
	But then say, say I'm a coward.
	She doesn't use the word bitch.
	You know, man, I knew your kids were, you know, I saw your mom and I knew your kids, I knew your kids were getting abused and neglected.
	She has a code word.
	I don't, you know.
	Okay, sorry.
	Yeah, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't do anything.
	I didn't lift a finger because I'm a nervous Nelly and so on.
	So yeah, sorry about that, man.
	I, I failed you guys.
	But instead she's like, I never saw, it's just, oh my gosh, just, it's just a lie.
	It's just a lie.
	And it's sorry to say, from the outside, I get, from the inside, right?
	But from the outside, it's just an embarrassingly obvious lie.
	Right.
	Right.
	I mean, she saw your father getting ripped on by your mom, and she didn't think that might have any kind of effect on his parenting?
	Well, I can't imagine!
	Your father, so meek!
	It's like, oh, come on.
	Now you're just, you're literally gaslighting the children you failed to protect.
	That's scummy beyond words.
	Right.
	I'm sorry, and I just think it's terrible.
	Don't gaslight children you failed to protect, now you're discontinuing the abuse.
	Right, right.
	Because then she's also saying, well your father, you see, had perfect control over his temper because I never once in 40 years ever saw any temper.
	It's like, oh come on, oh come on.
	He was particularly bad.
	I've heard some crazy stories from when he was in his 20s.
	That's when aggression and men had their peak.
	Right, so she knew.
	She knew, she knew, she knew, she knew, she knew.
	Now, maybe she doesn't want to say, I was a gutless coward who abandoned the children I was supposed to protect, and I feel a real urge to lie to you about it now, but I don't want to do any further harm to you by gaslighting you after I let you get abused by your dad.
	Then she can just shut up.
	Oh, tell me more.
	Just be sympathetic.
	But at least don't gaslight.
	If you don't want to tell the truth, at least don't gaslight the children who are begging for the truth.
	Right.
	Yeah, that's what I've been doing, begging people to tell me what happened.
	Right.
	So my question is, and we're back to that, right?
	Why?
	What are you aiming to gain?
	And I'm not saying there's nothing to gain.
	This is not me being skeptical, like, why on earth would you go crazy?
	You're going to the desert for water.
	I'm not asking that.
	I'm genuinely curious.
	Because maybe there's things that are important and things that you can achieve and so on.
	But what are you trying to gain from your family of origin?
	Because all of this comes at the expense of who?
	My children.
	That's right.
	So why are you doing that line from The Great Gatsby, you know?
	Born back against the current, born ceaselessly into the past.
	Why are you mucking about the gravestones of your childhood rather than further nurturing the flowering life of your future?
	Well... I mean...
	First thing that comes to my mind is I want proof that what they did was wrong, and that I have all these anxieties and the mental health issues that I've been through in my life.
	It's their fault.
	They did this to me.
	I want proof of that, and I want them to be held accountable.
	And as a mom, it's really hard not having family to help, you know?
	Both my husband and I are not close with our families, you know?
	We're far away from them, and I wouldn't have to say I wouldn't want my mother around my children ever.
	No, but you'd want a mother who would be helpful.
	I know!
	I long for that, and I feel so jealous of these people.
	My aunt, my dad's sister, who I talk to very regularly, I have cousins who are close to my age, and they have kids.
	Well, one of them has kids, and my aunt is so, so helpful.
	It's possible that that's also maybe too much, but she It's like almost every day they get free babysitting, you know?
	This is the aunt who said she didn't know about your father's temper?
	Yeah, she's a very dedicated mom and grandma.
	You know, she's a stay-at-home grandma now, you know?
	I feel so envious of these people who can just go on romantic weekends with their spouse, because they could just send the kids to grandma's or grandpa's for a week or something.
	I'm so envious.
	And also the people who get divorced and then they have their only part-time parents now, so then they can go off with their new lover or whatever and have a romantic weekend.
	I'm like, I want a romantic weekend with my husband!
	But we can't do that.
	We can't spend a night away because we don't have anyone to watch our kids.
	Even hiring a babysitter is so expensive.
	I just feel pissed off, Steph.
	I'm really angry and frustrated.
	I just... Anyway.
	Is that a question?
	No, I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that.
	Now, were you raised Christian?
	No.
	Have you made any moves towards Christianity as an adult?
	No, I did go to church, like the Bible study group, like the moms groups, just to, you know, connect with the moms, pre-pandemic.
	So you're not a believer, right?
	No.
	Okay, can I give you a mental exercise here?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Now, if you were a believer, what happens in general, generic Christianity, what happens to child abusers after they die?
	They go to hell?
	They do.
	Oh, yeah.
	You can leave it up to God to, just give it up to God, right?
	That's the phrase.
	Well, the punishment is handled for you.
	Your parents did you great wrong, and I'm really sorry.
	It's terrifying.
	And your siblings did you great wrong.
	I hold your parents primarily accountable, but your siblings are also, to some obviously smaller degree, accountable.
	Or at least that's what their conscience is telling them.
	So, if your father was being punished, now if it's an eternity in hell or maybe it's just limbo or
	you know, it's just some punishment after death.
	If you genuinely believed that those who did evil were punished, how would you feel about your family of origin and your involvement with them if the punishment was out of your hands?
	I'm not sure.
	Okay, just try it.
	Try it on for size.
	I'm not trying to convert you to Christianity.
	Try it on for size as a mental exercise.
	You don't have to lift a finger.
	It's up to the priest, their conscience, and God himself.
	You can pray for them.
	You can suggest that they pray and talk to a priest, but it's out of your hands.
	Mm-hmm.
	There's relief there, for sure.
	So tell me about the relief.
	Um That it's it's not my responsibility to um
	Hold them accountable that they um I'm fogging a little bit right now, but
	um you
	you It would be relief.
	Yeah.
	They would get what's coming to them.
	And what?
	They would get what's coming to them?
	Yes.
	That's not very Christian.
	No, no, hang on, hang on.
	That is very Christian.
	Oh yeah?
	No, that is... So one of the reasons that Christians can be all about forgiveness is God's gonna get them.
	Hey, I forgive you, but God's gonna get you.
	Right, right.
	Mm-hmm.
	You know how, like, in all these Mafia movies, there's always this soft-spoken, charismatic Mafia guy?
	And, you know, like the Don Corleone and so on, right?
	The guy who's in True Romance, the Christian walking guy.
	So there's always this soft-spoken, but the reason it's so intense is he's got these three thugs with guns behind him.
	Right.
	Right?
	So he could say, well, I'll forgive you and, you know, and so on, and then his thugs will blow you away, right?
	Right.
	My hands are clean, you know.
	Yeah, yeah, and I can be soft-spoken and I can be nice and funny even, because, right?
	Because the thugs will... the thugs are, right?
	So Christians can be forgiving, right?
	I forgive you to let go and move on, but the forgiveness of the Christian does not generate forgiveness from God.
	Right.
	Your father was punished, I suspect, though of course I don't want to tell you what you feel.
	If your father was punished, and let's say it wasn't in eternity in a lake of boiling fire or whatever it is, right?
	I don't want him to hurt him too bad.
	I'm sorry?
	I don't want him to hurt him too bad.
	Right, right.
	But some appropriate level of punishment, right?
	Right, right.
	Without punishment, there is no closure.
	Like how many times have you, I don't know, are you a true crime person?
	Do you ever watch or listen or?
	I did when I was younger.
	I can't take it anymore.
	What's that old meme?
	It's like, I don't know why I had so much anxiety, said the woman who just had three espressos and two murder crime podcasts or whatever, right?
	Yeah, I can't do it anymore, but when I was younger, yeah.
	So in so many true murder, true crime stories, there's a criminal.
	Who kills or rapes or whatever, right?
	And the family pursues justice, right?
	They can even hire private investigators if they feel the police aren't doing their job.
	The family pursues justice.
	And then the family gets the killer of their kid or their mother locked up for the rest of his life.
	And they say, now that's closure.
	I got him.
	There was a story I once read about this woman who was a landlady, and she turns out to have been convicted of killing and getting the social security checks of some people.
	And years before, there was a suspicion that she had poisoned this guy's mother, and there was no proof.
	All the records were gone, and so on.
	And he was like, there's no closure.
	So even though she's in prison for murder, she's not in prison for my mother's murder.
	And, you know how, I've never quite understood this, but people, I mean, believe it, that, you know, well, if I can't find the body, you know, I can't, there's no closure, I can't have a funeral, I can't, you know, and without a body, it's very hard to get a conviction for murder, and, right, so, the closure is the punishment.
	So, I think, and listen, I could be completely wrong about any and all of this, right, so I'm not ever going to try and tell you your experience, and this is why I sort of made a joke about how you're a very nice young lady, and you are, and it's a very great pleasure to chat with you, but I think you may be Misinterpreting your motives that you just want the truth.
	I don't think that's true.
	I think you want them to hurt for what they did to you.
	And if you get them to admit and you hold their faces to the wrongs they did that they will suffer and then some of that suffering will transmit from you to them.
	You carry this burden.
	I'm sick of it.
	We haven't even gotten to the conversation I had with my mom on the trip
	Oh, I know.
	We've got some time.
	But no, because we're looking as to the reasons why.
	Right.
	Why do you want that conversation?
	Someone is going to suffer for your childhood.
	Because where there is wrongdoing, there also is their suffering.
	That's how we know, to some degree, that it's wrongdoing.
	So there is suffering, there is a demon that is created through abuse.
	And that demon sits where?
	Generally it sits in the hearts of the children because they have to take responsibility to imagine they have some control.
	And then, when they get older, Some madcap philosopher in Canada says, the demon belongs to your parents.
	And then what we do is we say, I'm going to sit down with my parents, I'm going to give them this demon, because it's their fucking demon.
	And we call that, I just want the truth.
	But it's not.
	I want them to suffer for what they did, because the alternative is me continuing to suffer.
	And if someone's going to suffer, shouldn't it be the evildoers?
	Not the innocent?
	And I think you feel that if you have the truth, then you can dislodge the demon and give it back to its rightful owner.
	Your mother, maybe a little bit of your elder siblings, But this thing's gotta go somewhere.
	You can't will it out of existence because you can't will the suffering out of existence.
	Where does the demon go?
	And I think you're around your family so you can give that thing back.
	And get it off your chest.
	And off your neck.
	And off your shoulders.
	and off weighing you down.
	That's been a I've had
	chronic pain issues and that was some uh There was a forgiveness section like about forgiving
	I had a really hard time in this part of the—sorry, there was this app that I— I did.
	That was all, you know, trying to work through... Sorry, did you say app or yap?
	I'm sorry, an app.
	Sorry, my daughter is very big on the term yapping these days.
	It's too painful for me to go into the context in which she uses it.
	But she's very keen on the phrase yapping.
	I just yapping.
	And so I wasn't sure if you said this is yap or app.
	No, it's an app like about help.
	It's called curable for anyone out there who has chronic pain.
	It's very Good app, but it's to help process and release, you know, sort of trauma and pain from your body like that's Anyway, there was a section on forgiveness and I had a really hard time with it stuff and Yeah, because forgiveness if no one is suffering Forgiveness stays with the victim.
	Mm-hmm.
	Sorry.
	I miss miss miss miss miss spoke.
	Let me fix that If there is forgiveness without suffering, the demon stays with the victim.
	Because the demon is suffering, and if your parents aren't suffering, and the people who harmed you aren't suffering, the suffering stays with you.
	So I think you want them to confess their sins, so you can vomit up the demon and put it back on them, and they can wrestle with that son of a bitch.
	There was something really partly satisfying about seeing, having that conversation with my mother, where I felt like, for a lot of the conversation, I felt like in this power position.
	Sure.
	Because like, because she, you know, all of the things she said were just such bullshit and like, just so easy to untangle her manipulative and bullshit, irrational things she was saying.
	And it made me feel powerful, you know, to be in that position and just... But you're still powerless, I think, because, which is why it's unsatisfying in the long run, because you're still relying upon her to feel bad and she can wave it all away.
	And even if you make her feel bad in the moment, she'll rationalize it later and the pain will go away.
	That's what she kept saying, you're attacking me!
	You're attacking me right now!
	You're bashing me and attacking me and you're so mean.
	Yeah, yeah, I get all of that.
	Yeah, of course, of course.
	And I asked her, I said, Oh, really, Mom?
	Do you think this is, you know, I'm talking in a completely level voice.
	I'm not yelling.
	I'm not cursing.
	Do you think this is more scary for you being attacked this way or for me as a child as you were screaming at me in the face, you know, and cursing?
	Well, what did you do to make me scream at you?
	Right.
	Right, and then you can say, well, clearly you did something to make me be upset with you.
	So, sit back and take it the way I was supposed to.
	The incident I was thinking of was when I was sick, and it was really inconvenient for her that I was sick.
	She was screaming at me, and I actually fainted.
	I think I told you I had fainting spells a lot as a kid.
	I fainted during a screaming session, and when I came to from blacking out, nose hurting from falling on my face, she was still screaming stuff.
	It was ridiculous.
	She didn't cease.
	Well, but that's wonderful in a way, and obviously terrible that it happened.
	But the wonderful thing is it doesn't even matter if you're conscious.
	It doesn't matter if you're there.
	It has nothing to do with you.
	You're just a piece of flesh in the room for her to scratch at, or claw.
	Okay, so...
	Hmm...
	We get frustrated.
	So, I don't know if you've ever had a relationship like this, but Seinfeld, the TV show from, I guess, decades ago now, you know, this woman would be like, I think we should break up and he's like, okay.
	Right, and she's like, well, you're not upset.
	No, Steven, Steven, another girl will come along.
	Right, so if there's a breakup and one person is indifferent and not upset, they're perceived to be in a power position, and the other person who is upset is shocked and appalled that the person is not upset, right?
	So the typical thing is, You know, let's say the woman says she's gonna break up with the guy and the guy's like, yeah, you know, oh, yeah, probably right.
	That's fine.
	And he's, you know, maybe they've been together for a year or two or whatever and he's just, you know, he's completely blasé about it.
	Yeah, I can send you your stuff back.
	It's fine.
	And she's like crying and retching and, you know, like upset and so on.
	And she's enraged, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	She's incredibly frustrated because he's not suffering.
	Mm-hmm.
	And sometimes this is why women want to make men suffer because they want to feel that they meant something.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, I think your perception is my mother will not admit fault, she does not experience the pain of what she did, and therefore, she has escaped suffering.
	And therefore, I have to hold the demon.
	Mm-hmm.
	This is not true, but it's easily mistaken for being true.
	Now, I want you to picture something.
	Your pain stops completely tomorrow.
	Emotional, physical, psychological, whatever.
	And you feel nothing.
	No happiness, no sadness, no pain, no pleasure.
	Right?
	Food, sex, nothing.
	And you go to the doctor and the doctor says, oh, yeah, you've lost the ability to feel pain.
	Now, this would be an indication of a severe problem with your body, wouldn't it?
	Mm-hmm, yeah.
	That'd be bad news, you know, like there's this old video game where, you know, people are shooting each other with rockets and occasionally some guy screams, I can't feel my legs!
	I can't feel my legs.
	Pain is a symptom of health.
	Numbness is a symptom of extraordinary bad things with the body.
	You know, you're in some bad car crash and the doctor tickles your feet and says, can you feel this?
	And if you say, nope, that's not good.
	Yeah.
	So, if you don't feel pain, you're in for a very difficult life.
	you.
	Because you don't know.
	Right?
	Did you scratch yourself?
	Did you bruise yourself?
	Did you cut yourself?
	You can't feel if you have eaten too much, you can't tell if you're thirsty, like it's just really complicated and unpleasant.
	You have no motivation, you have no way to guide your day, what you want to do, what you don't want to do.
	You're a machine.
	An NPC, right?
	Now, the people who do wrong and don't feel bad, and I think that's the case with your mother and sounds like it was the case with your father, that the only tears they would ever cry was of self-pity, not of empathy.
	I can't believe how badly I treated you.
	It haunts me.
	I can't sleep.
	They're fine.
	They're fine.
	Now, what I want to tell you is you think you need to put them in hell.
	Oh no, my friend.
	They're already there.
	I'm going to speak to your father as if he's still alive.
	I'm aware he's not.
	They're already there.
	My mother never admitted fault for the wrongs she did.
	Neither have other family members.
	and not one of them has a life that I wouldn't pay just about everything to not live.
	Your mother is already punished more than you can imagine.
	Because without a conscience that you're aware of, without feeling, without empathy, there's no bond, there's no love, there's no connection, there's no honesty, there's no intimacy, there's no trust, there's nothing.
	Other than this stupid staccato dance of desperate manipulation and superiority in the moment.
	All that you find that makes life worthwhile.
	Self-respect, love, connection, virtue, pride, courage, none of these things exist in your parents.
	If you were to live one minute in their mind, you would claw to escape it and you would give up almost everything.
	If somebody put me in my mother's mind and said you can live here for the next 20 years
	or you can come back to your life but you can't use your legs,
	I would choose to come back to my life and not use my legs.
	How much you have to give up when you lose the fight to retain your conscience.
	When your conscience turns against you, and your conscience blocks off all human intimacy and love, affection, spontaneity, laughter, fun, joy, all of it is gone.
	And you think you need to make people suffer, but their lack of suffering is their punishment.
	Because you become a better person because you suffer, and you think, well, if I make them suffer, A, I'll feel some relief, and B, maybe they have a chance to be better people.
	But that's like torturing someone who's paralyzed and numb.
	Right.
	No feeling below their waist.
	And someone's down there with a little knife or something, and they don't feel it.
	Mm-hmm.
	Punching the stomach and it's nothing.
	Yeah, I mean if they feel nothing from the neck down, right, then torturing them is like, no.
	So you are guided by positive and negative emotions.
	They are not guided by any of that.
	Your desire to punish them is because you think they're like you.
	But they are punished by being nothing like you.
	Everything that you take for granted in your life that gives it happiness and meaning, your love for your children and your husband, your pleasure and surrender, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, trust, and all the difficulties that come along with that.
	And I understand that, and I'm not trying to say, oh, it's all just a ride of bliss and joy.
	Right.
	But everything that makes life worthwhile does not exist in the mind of unrepentant child abusers.
	If you could live for 30 seconds in their skull, you'd come back and you'd say, I don't need to lift a finger.
	It's hell in there.
	In the same way that even with our body's aches and pains, if we had to live 30 seconds in the mind of someone completely numb from the neck down, we'd say, oh my God, that's horrifying.
	I'll come back to my aches and pains, thank you very much.
	If they will suffer, then I am relieved.
	But you can't make them suffer any more than you can hurt someone who's paralyzed and numb from the neck down.
	I mean, I guess you could flick their ear or something, but you know, you can't hurt their body, and that's the hell.
	Look, they're immune from torture, they're immune from everything.
	And so, and you're certainly younger than me, considerably, and I'm telling you from the vantage point of the last third of my life, I have not seen one person get away with anything.
	The people who mocked and scorned me for my focus on philosophy and self-knowledge and this, that, and the other.
	They all had terrible relationships.
	They all had unsatisfying careers.
	They all ended up distant from their children.
	Many of them are divorced.
	Many of them never got married.
	No one got away.
	No one escaped punishment, and the worst punishment of all was numbness.
	And I'm trying to give you that relief of, Sister, you do not need to lift a finger for them to suffer.
	It is their lack of suffering that is the worst punishment of all, just as it's the worst sign for your spinal cord if you can't feel anything below your neck.
	Mm-hmm.
	And part of the torture that you have is you want them to suffer.
	Because of their coldness and their callousness and their lack of compassion and empathy and their lack of suffering, you think, well, I must make them suffer to gain relief.
	And that's perfectly understandable.
	But the mistake is that Because they don't appear to suffer, you think they got away.
	And part of the search for truth is to hold them up to the horror show of their lives and have them suffer and change.
	It is partly an act of love.
	It is partly an act of love.
	Tell me more about that.
	If they suffer, they can change.
	I want my mother to get better.
	I want my mother to be back in my life.
	And the only way that I can get my mother to be better, have compassion, have empathy, is to get her to feel, to
	get her to confront her conscience, to get her to admit she did bad things, and that way she can change, she can go to
	therapy, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Which is why it's sort of tied into other people have their grandparents and they can have their romantic weekends away
	with their husbands and so on, right?
	So part of it is an act of love and part of it is an act of vengeance.
	And I'm just here to tell you, the people who don't have empathy seem to be doing really well.
	Like the people who take drugs.
	They seem quite happy for a short amount of time, right?
	Right.
	But nobody's getting away with anything out here.
	Because my mom has all these markers of achievement, right?
	Sure.
	She's been presented awards and gets standing ovations for her performances.
	A brilliant and talented woman, I have no doubt.
	Right.
	And that's, like, the only thing she has, you know?
	Like, that's it.
	Well, does she?
	I mean, doesn't she still have, to some degree, contact with your siblings and so on?
	Oh, yeah.
	So she's got family, except for you.
	Mm-hmm.
	As mom said.
	No, the other children!
	have these complaints.
	Why are you like this?
	Right, right, right.
	Now, of course, you're a mother, I'm a father, and if we did something inadvertently to hurt her children, we'd be wretched, right?
	I apologize, you know, you do the repair work.
	Of course, of course you do, absolutely, absolutely.
	And people who don't have a conscience and who don't have empathy, and when I say don't have a conscience, I mean they have no functional access to their conscience, their conscience will still punish them.
	Because the problem with not having access to your conscience is that the effect is bottomless hypocrisy.
	Right?
	How dare you upset me, says your mother who screamed at you throughout your childhood.
	Right?
	That's so bottomlessly hypocritical, it's hard to imagine.
	Like my mother's shock at me using any of my physical strength to protect me from her after she'd beaten me black and blue for, you know, 13 years.
	I mean, she was just appalled at the use of force.
	Like, I mean, it's so unbelievably hypocritical.
	And you require integrity in order to be loved.
	Integrity is tough, right?
	It's hard.
	A lot of punishment.
	Social punishment for integrity.
	The reward is someone can actually love you because integrity means that you have consistent behavior and therefore can be trusted and therefore someone can give you their heart and you won't just throw it in a blender whenever you feel like it.
	So, the problem with not having any access to your conscience is you just make up bullshit in the moment to win in the moment, which means you can't ever be trusted and you can't ever be loved.
	And the sad thing is, they don't know what they're missing.
	And so we want them, oh you gotta know what you're missing!
	But they never will.
	And that's the punishment.
	And yes, the world will absolutely give people prizes and awards and all of that, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Apparently Brad Pitt was such a bad father that his son has stopped using his name and has written public letters about how terrible a person he was.
	He'll still get paid ten million dollars a movie.
	Mm-hmm.
	People don't care.
	Right.
	And your mother will still get standing ovations and awards.
	And that's what people get.
	And my mother, who was slender and attractive for most of her life, got lots of male attention and never was loved once.
	And now has spent twenty years alone.
	And it's hell!
	There's nothing you need to do.
	The conscience has taken care of all the punishment that you could inflict and done it for you.
	Because people who do evil, particularly to children, have to lie to themselves perpetually
	and lie to others and make things up and will continue to do it.
	So your mother, playing the victim and accusing you of being a bad person, is continuing to abuse you.
	Now why you would want to go back and put yourself in a situation of being abused again is because you want her to take the demon.
	But she can't take the demon because she is the demon.
	The demon is You're not giving full responsibility to your mother, which means she can't change.
	She won't change.
	She doesn't have any capacity to change because she's numb from the neck down.
	You don't say to a paralyzed person, dance better.
	That's kind of cruel, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	She's done decades of wrong.
	Many decades of wrong to your father and to her children.
	And she continues to gaslight and lie, right?
	Her punishment is herself.
	There's nothing you need to inflict.
	At all.
	This is why the Christians have it right.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	No, the Christians have it right.
	That you do not need to inflict vengeance.
	Now, if it's direct criminality and so on, and of course in a free society what your parents did to you guys as children would be direct criminality.
	If it was direct criminality, I have no problem with people, you know, putting murderers in jail because otherwise they go out and kill other people.
	Right.
	Now, your siblings, if they have kids and they're Letting your mom around the kids, that's a problem, but it's not your problem.
	Right.
	Right.
	My mother's life is not my problem.
	I tried to help.
	She rejected help.
	It's not your problem.
	This is why I was sort of struck when you said your sister's pre-diabetic and you're like, I'll make this my problem!
	Right.
	Right.
	And it didn't work.
	No.
	And you've tried to make your mother's conscience your problem.
	I'm going to tell you the truth.
	Maybe you just don't remember.
	Maybe you just don't get it.
	I'll just explain it again.
	I will become real to somebody who's that selfish.
	is like saying I'll tickle someone who's numb from the neck down.
	And especially when they've been paralyzed and numb for decades,
	trying to give them massages to restore their feeling is not healthy.
	That would be crazy.
	So, I know we've talked for a long time, but if you want to tell me more about your conversation with your mother, or what led you to... because it's been nine years, right?
	Yeah, it's been nine years.
	Um...
	Well, last summer, you know, like I think I mentioned, she sold that property.
	Mm-hmm.
	And, uh, it was... I actually did talk to her on the phone for the first time in eight years.
	And she was horrible.
	Like she cursed me out and screamed at me.
	Um, I was crying.
	Did you talk to her for the money?
	Yeah.
	So she was like, did you get the transfer basically, you know, and, uh, Oh, so you'd already gotten the money.
	Yeah, I'd already gotten the money and she was calling and texting and trying to see if I'd gotten it, making sure that it went through.
	No, but she can get confirmation.
	She can get confirmation of that from her bank, right?
	Yeah, I know.
	I finally, she had called several times and I just... Sorry, why didn't you block her number?
	I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't have, I'm just curious why.
	Well, with being business partners on the property and stuff, it was...
	I don't know.
	I don't know why I didn't block it.
	What did your husband say?
	He didn't want me talking to her.
	Right.
	So why didn't you defer to your husband?
	Is he more objective?
	He is.
	He's so wise, Steph.
	I should have listened to him.
	He's not that wise, though, or you'd have listened to him!
	I know.
	So, okay.
	So this thing was happening with me.
	Where I had de-fooded, I'd gotten these people out of my life, but I was feeling almost trapped.
	This was the perception, and I know it's not true.
	It was all my own choices, but I was getting into this trapped feeling where I wasn't allowed to talk to them.
	I really delve into family history.
	And I've sent her texts where she'll answer family history questions.
	Sorry, so you were in contact with her?
	Via text.
	Hang on, young lady.
	Hold the phone!
	Hold on.
	So you said you weren't in touch with them for nine years, but you were via text?
	Yes.
	That's a little weaselly.
	Yeah, sorry about that.
	Asterisk!
	Yes, I was in contact.
	Yeah, I guess it wasn't a full defu.
	It was... She also... She would send money sometimes.
	It was really... I'm ashamed of this, but... Sorry, why are you ashamed of it?
	Well, it's like... I'm mad at my siblings for continuing to I live off of her, and I don't live off of her anymore, but occasionally getting a check from her, it's a relief.
	Let's say you cashed the check, why does that mean you have to be in touch with her?
	Well, she would send it through like a phone, like the machine, my number to like send it and I would get like a text.
	Anyway.
	Okay.
	And then?
	Yeah.
	That doesn't answer my question, though.
	Sorry, what was the question?
	I'm sorry.
	So she sends you money, it comes into your bank account.
	Why would you need to be in touch with her?
	I don't know.
	Well, unless she's like, did you get the money?
	I need to know if you got the money, in which case she's sending you the money to pay you to text her.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Right.
	Was it a lot of money?
	Please tell me you sold for a lot of money.
	You don't have to tell me the amount, but was it a lot of money?
	It was enough to pay for getting our house painted, which we needed desperately.
	Our house really needed to be painted and our AC broke, had just broken.
	Like, it was such a relief to get that money from that house.
	You're a stay-at-home mother, right?
	Yes.
	Why are you emasculating your husband?
	Which is not good for your marriage, I'll be frank with you, as a man.
	Because as a man, if it's like, well, the woman who brutalized my wife is sending us money, we'll take it.
	Did your husband want the money?
	Well, no.
	Did your husband want the money?
	Yes and no.
	Can that be an answer?
	Well, I mean, it's always yes and no, but if you take it, that's a yes.
	Yeah, we accepted it.
	We didn't, like, send it back or anything.
	Okay, so why did your husband want the money from the woman who was an unapologetic child abuser of the love of his
	life?
	It paid It paid for we needed we needed things like we you know, we
	had this a few years of like some financial Just there was like a lot of
	You know emergency kind of things that came up where like we okay. So what we weren't what should we hang on? Okay
	Of course, there are always emergencies that come up and the pandemic was tough economically.
	I mean, I got de-platformed.
	I understand that the income can go down considerably.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So, by taking the money, what is being prevented?
	Because you then have an answer.
	Well, we need money.
	Okay, we'll take money from the child abuser.
	But what is being prevented?
	Making more money on?
	Making more money, cutting your expenses, doing whatever you need to do to make the ends meet, right?
	Right, right.
	But with two small children, you know, we've made a conscious choice that we don't want him working Oh, so, okay, so I get it.
	So the argument is that, well, we have to do what's best for our children, right?
	Yeah.
	Where am I going?
	You know where I'm going.
	That being in contact with this abusive woman is not best for our children.
	Right.
	So don't, you can't sell me on the, oh, my kids, I had to take money from a child abuser Because children don't use kids as a shield.
	Like, don't do that.
	It's not their fault.
	That's your choice.
	And it's at their expense, right?
	Because you're distracted, you're stressed, you're upset, you're worried, you're waiting for the phone to ping.
	You're dissociated, right?
	Yes.
	So please, it's for the best of my children that I re-traumatize myself for a couple of grand.
	Right.
	So it's not for the children.
	So what's it for?
	That's for my own anxiety.
	Like I, well, no, it's not helping your anxiety, is it?
	I know.
	I don't know.
	I feel crippled with, in terms of money, because how I you've, you've talked about in, I think in a show before about how it would feel to have like an, a bottomless bank account.
	Like I kind of had that in my.
	Yeah, walking up to life before kids, I get it.
	Okay, so what?
	Kids are money holes.
	Yeah, I get it.
	I didn't have to work for it because my dad would just, I not only got an allowance, like they didn't want me to work.
	Oh, so you were hanging off daddy's wallet.
	Mm-hmm.
	I was.
	And my parents, like, didn't want me working while I was in school.
	And so then I had, like... Wait, who paid for school?
	My parents, yeah.
	Wait, did they pay for... Private school.
	Did they pay for everything?
	Like, I mean, sorry, you mean university, right?
	University, yeah.
	Did they pay, like, living expenses, books, dental, medical, like, tuition?
	Did they pay for everything?
	Absolutely everything.
	And did they give you extra spending money?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And after school, what happened?
	They continued to support me financially.
	Why?
	I don't know why.
	Oh, they wanted me to go to grad school.
	I didn't want to go to grad school.
	There was nothing I wanted to Study.
	I floundered around with the applications for a while.
	I mentioned my brother not doing anything for a few years.
	That was me.
	I traveled with the money they gave me for a few years.
	I was a mess.
	It didn't make sense for me to even get a job because I made more money with my allowance.
	At what age?
	When did this allowance end?
	When my dad died, basically.
	Which was two years ago?
	No.
	How long?
	No, it was... So he died in 2013.
	You don't have to tell me your exact age, of course, but was this in your 20s?
	Mid-20s, yeah.
	Mid-20s, yeah.
	Mid-20s, yeah. Mid-20s. Mid-20s, yeah. Mid-20s. And then the money just cut off?
	Uh, kinda, yeah.
	I don't know what that means.
	So, yeah, driving, so I had a gas card up until then, like where it was paid, all my gas was paid, anything, my gas was all paid for, and on the drive back from his funeral, it was out of state that his funeral was, the gas card stopped working.
	Wait, you had to actually pay for your own gas in your mid to late twenties?
	I know!
	Can you believe it?
	No.
	Yeah, I was offered some money from my father's estate.
	I understand the temptation.
	Yeah, and... I said no, of course, but anyway, go on.
	Right.
	She, my mother, continued.
	We were, me and my siblings, we were on these LLCs for like distributions and stuff.
	Yeah, we don't have to get into the technical legalities of it, but... Sorry.
	I would still get money from... So you were still getting money from your mother?
	Yeah, well into my late 20s, and now I still am.
	Even though I cut her off, every once in a while the checkbooks will come in.
	How did you end up with half ownership of this property?
	I guess you didn't put your own money into it, right?
	No.
	Okay, so she's just giving you hundreds of thousands of dollars and money's flowing and so you haven't learned the value of money, you haven't learned budgeting, you haven't learned income expenses, you haven't, I mean, you've just been living in this like surreal sea of free money.
	Yes, and I don't, I feel so anxious about the money too, like I don't know, like it's hard for me to feel... Sorry, what do you mean anxious about the money?
	That's a very open statement, what do you mean?
	So, I don't have a concept of what a good emergency fund looks like, what... No, that's not true.
	Look, you're a very, very intelligent woman.
	You know exactly... I mean, come on, you just look that up, right?
	Right.
	You say, six months to a year, right?
	Everybody says six months income to a year income, right?
	Depending on reliability of income, right?
	So the idea that, you know, I was considering grad school, but I can't look up how much money I might need in the bank.
	That's not even remotely believable.
	Sorry.
	Okay.
	And does your husband come from money?
	No, no.
	Does he know he was marrying into fantasy fiat money princess planet?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	We talked about.
	Okay.
	So you chose to be a stay-at-home mother, right?
	Yes.
	Which means that your husband is responsible for making many core financial decisions, right?
	Yeah.
	So your husband's ambition has been blunted by the free money.
	Everyone thinks, well, if I'm getting $5,000 or $10,000 a year, if I don't get that money, boy, I'll just be down money.
	And it's like, no you won't.
	You'll be up ambition.
	You'll be up hard work, you'll be up concentration, you'll be up creativity.
	You know, if my donations go down, I don't sit there and say, oh, well, I guess donations are down, I have to adjust everything.
	I'll be like, no, I gotta figure out how to make some more money.
	And that, I mean, you know that, right?
	I mean, your husband should know it, because he didn't grow up with money, right?
	At least this kind of money.
	Self-made man.
	Okay, so good.
	So, he knows, as a self-made man, that if income goes down, creativity goes up.
	He has on his wedding ring, it says, creativity and commitment.
	Right.
	So, why are you taking the money from the child abuser?
	Now obviously because it's easier, but you know it's not, right?
	You've been listening to this show, you know there's a price for everything, right?
	You've been listening to this show for a decade, so why are you taking the money?
	So usually in a couple, right, one person wants something more and it's up to the other
	person to either concede or to argue or get them to not take it, right?
	So who wants the money more?
	you Me.
	Okay.
	So, why do you want the money?
	Now, again, it's obvious it pays bills, blah, blah, blah.
	But, I mean, you know the price, right?
	This is not a shock that you're anxious and stomach issues and pain issues and I don't know if it's all related, right?
	But it could be, right?
	It's certainly a risk, right?
	I mean, this is the most traumatizing human being who's ever lived on your planet and you're financially enmeshed with her.
	Tell me that's not going to have an effect on you, right?
	So why do you want the money?
	Owed me, Steph.
	It's owed me.
	Like, I put up with all her abuse for so many years, right?
	Right.
	And, like, when she died... No, no, but you're continuing it.
	Right.
	Right, so... Now it's my responsibility.
	I'm owed more abuse because of the prior abuse.
	Right, right.
	I think that's not the answer because it's just not logical.
	Right.
	Because my reward for being traumatized is more trauma.
	That doesn't make sense, right?
	So why do you want the money?
	I have been approaching this and trying to deal with it, like things around status that seduce me, you know.
	But you know how hollow status is because you saw it from the inside, right?
	Absolutely, yeah.
	And I notice when I'm doing it and I try to not... It's not that.
	It's not that.
	What is it?
	Do you know why, Stan?
	I don't.
	I know why.
	You know.
	Can you tell me?
	Sure.
	Okay, so let's play this out.
	So, you block your mother.
	You don't take any money.
	You block her on every conceivable thing.
	You change your phone number, whatever.
	Let's say, I don't know, you move.
	Like, not that you would, right?
	But let's just say your mother can't contact you.
	What happens?
	Uh, she can't.
	She can't.
	Oh, at least it's hard for her to contact you.
	I mean, she could find you, probably, right?
	Right.
	But so what happens, right?
	Um...
	What happens when your mother doesn't get her way in her will?
	What happens when her mother can't write you?
	What happens when your mother can't send you money?
	What happens when she feels rejected?
	She freaks out.
	She escalates.
	She escalates, yeah.
	And then you're in an unknown situation.
	Yes.
	Cars pass the driveway, people at work, at the playground.
	You're scared, right?
	Yes.
	You take the money to prevent escalation.
	Right.
	Which is fine, but just be honest about it.
	That's why when you said, I feel so ashamed, it's so terrible, it's like, I don't know that.
	Maybe this is a minimization strategy.
	I'm not going to argue with you about it.
	You know your mother infinitely better than I do.
	But you take the money so that you keep her in view and she's not escalating.
	Right.
	Now, again, I'm, you know, maybe that's a strategy you can talk about with your husband and say, look, I mean, I'll, you know, we'll take some money, you know, hell, we'll give it to charity.
	It doesn't like, but, but, but if we take the money, we have to know why we're doing it.
	Now, the reason I said it's emasculating for your husband is that if your husband, who's supposed to protect your family, is having significant bills paid by his wife's child abuser, who's unrepentant, Then you are crippling his ability to protect the family.
	Now, if on the other hand you say, well, I'm taking this money because if I don't it's going to really escalate and it is protecting the family to take this money, that's a different matter, right?
	Great.
	And maybe it reduces the stress and it's more clear if you say, yeah, I'm going to take the money, right?
	Yeah, I'll take the money.
	And that's kind of this... You know, if you have some shady, you know, soprano mafia uncle who insists that you take some money, you take the money.
	Right.
	You don't want to offend the guy and have his goons, you know, set fire to your house or something, right?
	Right.
	So it's like, okay.
	So there was the money aspect of why I went.
	That was definitely...
	Something was there with that, with appeasement.
	But I felt a sort of trapped feeling, too, around Like that I felt that I was being like, philosophically inconsistent.
	I mean, that I wasn't allowed to talk to them.
	So like my sister and my mom, like I felt there was like a feeling I wasn't allowed to do that or something.
	So, and it has come up over the years of my marriage, especially when I was like pregnant and like emotional, like I would kind of like want my mommy sort of thing.
	Uh, But my husband and I always talked about it.
	I'm like, no, no, no, that's not right.
	No, we don't want to do that right now.
	She's terrible.
	But this time it was sort of almost like a rebelling against my own pseudo-defu.
	I know it wasn't full defuse since I still was in contact with her.
	Um, I don't know if this makes any sense at all.
	I felt like I was in a cage or something.
	I wasn't allowed to.
	And I forgot.
	I was forgetting how terrible she was.
	And then the gaslighting thing happened.
	I wrote this essay all about her.
	her abuse, and I shared it with my half-sister, and my half-sister... Is this true?
	I appreciate the speech, but this is easy to solve.
	This one's not complicated.
	Okay.
	Good.
	But it's, you know, not going to be fun.
	All right.
	So, you have two kids, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	How old is your oldest?
	Six.
	Okay.
	So, let's say that You get a babysitter for your children and obviously someone you've vetted and so on, right?
	Seems to be reliable.
	And you go away for your romantic weekend with your husband, right?
	And you have security cameras on your house, right?
	As most people do.
	And you see your babysitter doing to your children what your mother did to you.
	Screaming at them, shaking them, threatening them.
	your children.
	Would you have any ambivalence about your future relationship with that babysitter?
	Would you be like, well, you know, she is cheaper than the others.
	No, she'd be out of here.
	I mean, she's never admitted fault.
	In fact, when I criticized her for screaming at and shaking my children and terrifying my children, in fact, she screamed at my daughter so much my daughter fainted and she continued to scream at her.
	And she doesn't admit fault.
	She says it was my children's fault.
	It was my children's fault.
	They pushed me to my limit.
	It's their fault!
	Would you hire that babysitter again?
	No way.
	No.
	Nope.
	Never.
	So why are your children worthy of protection for something that happens once or twice and you're not worthy of protection for something that happens hundreds of times?
	You were your children.
	You understand that, right?
	Do you really get that deep down?
	You were the same size and same vulnerability and same helplessness and same defensiveness as your children.
	And your parents abused and neglected you.
	What if you came home and the babysitter just hadn't fed your children?
	And they'd just kind of foraged and eaten stuff they found in the fridge and tried to do their best but she'd never bothered to make them any food.
	Yeah, that would be horrible.
	So why are your children special and precious and you're not?
	Why would you never allow An unrepentant child abuser around your children, but you will around you.
	See, that's what I can't understand, especially now that you're a mother.
	You were your children.
	I was your children and younger and more helpless.
	You were them.
	am.
	you you
	And you'd never allow an abuser around your children, would you?
	If they kept abusing your children?
	And they would beg and plead and say, please, mommy, please don't have her come babysit us.
	She's terrifying.
	You're like, shut up, kids.
	Daddy and I are horny.
	Oh.
	You wouldn't do it in a million years, would you?
	No.
	Now, what if the babysitter said, hey, man, I miss your kids.
	I'll give you 500 bucks.
	You don't even have to pay me.
	I miss screaming at them, I miss shaking them, I miss frightening them.
	It's great fun for me.
	Here's 500 bucks.
	Sell me your children!
	Yeah, no way.
	But it's 500 bucks!
	Okay, 5,000 bucks!
	50,000 bucks!
	What is the price to let people abuse your children?
	There's no price.
	I wouldn't let that happen.
	So what's the price for you being abused?
	And this is your husband's conversation.
	There's no price.
	Oh, air conditioning works.
	Oh, air conditioning works.
	Well, guess what?
	Our ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years with no air conditioning at all.
	I'm not going to take air conditioning at the expense of your mental health.
	Right?
	I mean, if you had the babysitter, let's really extend this analogy, right?
	Your babysitter becomes an expert at repairing air conditioning, and she says, hey man, I'll come repair your air conditioning, but you gotta let me scream at your children and shake them.
	Would you say, yeah, that seems, yeah, okay.
	Yeah, I'm hot, man.
	I'm sweating.
	Yeah, you come abuse my kids, but just fix my air conditioning.
	Would you make that deal?
	No.
	And your kids traumatized, frightened, shaking, crying, passing out.
	They say, Mommy, why did you do that?
	You say, It was hot.
	Kids, you have to suffer because I was, you know, I was sweating.
	Would they say, Oh yeah, Mommy, that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	We'll do it again if you need to.
	Your children.
	So here I'm stronger that like I'm an adult.
	I've been going to therapy.
	I've been learning, you know, so many strategies for assert assertiveness and I felt like I would be able to handle.
	I know handling abuse is not I thought I could handle it.
	Like I thought I would I was so different now that I could handle talking to her talking about these things.
	Okay.
	What signs did you have that the conversation would work?
	I mean, if I run off a cliff and say, I saw a Flintstones cartoon, I was pretty sure I could fly, people would say, well, you have no evidence for that.
	So what evidence did you have that you were not going to be re-traumatizing yourself by trying to get your mother to see the truth when she would just lie to you and guess like you?
	Yeah.
	So what evidence did you have, right?
	We don't just act blindly, right?
	Right.
	We don't say, you know, I'll try driving with my eyes closed and see what happens.
	I'll try putting my hand in the blender, right?
	We, we, we think ahead of time, right?
	So what evidence did you have that your mother had changed?
	Well, she, She wasn't a grandparent when I last saw her, and she's expressed over the years, you know, wanting to see the kids, wanting to have a relationship with them.
	Okay, that's not evidence of any change.
	What evidence have you had that she owned the wrongs that she did and wishes to make amends?
	I had no evidence.
	No evidence.
	Okay.
	I had no evidence.
	You had no evidence.
	Now, do you know what the most traumatic thing that you did was?
	It was not being yelled at by your mother or being gaslit by your mother.
	The most traumatic thing you did was making it your fault and your responsibility to fix this relationship.
	That's what your mother managed to do.
	You understand?
	She's putting the demon back on you.
	Because you said, I'm going to go and have a successful relationship with my mother, or a successful conversation with my mother, and that means that you believe it's possible.
	Now if something is possible, and you fail at it, that's on you, right?
	So by seeing your mother, you are saying, I am now taking on the responsibility to have a good relationship with my mother.
	It's my responsibility, it's my fault, it's my doing, it's on me.
	And what that means is, you are now setting yourself up for total failure.
	Yeah, that's not the first time I've done that either.
	Of course it's not, because your mother wants you to do that, and she's very clear about that.
	If there's bad things in the relationship, honey, it's your fault.
	If I screamed at you and yelled at you and hit you, it's you did something.
	It's your fault.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So you are replaying that it's your fault your mother is a violent and abusive and neglectful mother.
	You're saying, it's my fault!
	If I approach the conversation this way or that way or I do this or, you know, I've got, I've got 500 keys.
	One of them is going to open this lock.
	I'm going to sit here until they do.
	Oh, shoot.
	I've gone through all five.
	I must have missed one.
	I'll start again!
	Yeah.
	Before I read our real-time relationships, I'd actually had tried to have a, I used non-violent communication in VC.
	I tried that method with her.
	Yeah.
	That failed too.
	Sure.
	That was awful.
	You don't, there's, there's no, there's no lock.
	There's no key.
	You're, you're, you're just, you're grinding imagination into a brick wall, thinking you can make a door.
	No.
	The reason why I'm bringing all of this up and bringing your children into it is because I think, my friend, that you have the belief that, you know, when I said, if there's a babysitter who's cruel to your children, you'd say, well, no, I wouldn't have anyone harm my children.
	Now, you understand that your mother is getting to your children through you, and you're letting it happen.
	In fact, you're making it happen.
	Because your parenting is less when you're screwed up about your mom.
	You're less emotionally available.
	You're less relaxed.
	You're less spontaneous.
	You're less fun.
	You're less engaged.
	You're less playful.
	So your mother is causing your children to suffer, but you're choosing that.
	This is self-indulgent bullshit, my friend.
	You cannot do it because it comes at the expense of your children.
	You cannot indulge your fantasy of fixing your mother because it harms your children.
	You are still inviting the babysitter into your house over and over and over again.
	And you have to stop.
	It's not your fault.
	Your mother is not your fault.
	Your mother was broken beyond repair by choice and circumstance long before you ever showed up.
	You're like a surgeon trying to resuscitate a corpse that is Roman.
	It is a fantasy that is your mother's fantasy, not yours.
	And this possession is because of a lack of boundaries.
	The sign that your mother might be worth talking to is she initiates the healing process, talks to a therapist, tries to figure things out, goes through this, makes it about you, tells me, tells you to tell her more about what happened and is open to you and empathetic to you and wants to know about your experience and your thoughts.
	And that is never going to happen.
	Yeah, never.
	It's like expecting somebody to hit their head and wake up speaking Japanese who's never been exposed to Japanese.
	It's not going to happen.
	And you are still indulging the fantasy that you're responsible for this and you can fix it.
	You're not and you can't.
	You're trying to talk your mother into regrowing her arms, like if she had no arms, right?
	Right.
	She cannot recognize your separate existence, because if she could, she wouldn't have abused you, right?
	You recognize your children's separate existence, right?
	Yes.
	Do you abuse them?
	No.
	Of course not, because you love them.
	Yes.
	Now, I know it's hard to imagine, but if you screamed at and shook and terrified and hit
	your children for 20 years, do you think you could just flip and care for them?
	No, I really don't.
	You'd be hollowed out.
	There'd be nothing left inside.
	It would be absolutely impossible.
	Yeah.
	Asking your mother to grow a conscience is like asking her to be five again.
	Well, if I just talk to her about how great being five is, she can be five again.
	Time goes one way, and evil doing scours the personality and destroys any vestigial capacity for empathy.
	Your mother would probably rather die than admit fault.
	Mm-hmm.
	She has no observing ego anyway, because otherwise she would have at some point said, holy crap, I'm really not doing right by these kids.
	But she never has, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	She has no observing ego, no conscience that's functional.
	Mm-hmm.
	She will never see you.
	She will never change.
	And you're still taking this ownership.
	Mm-hmm.
	And you're still taking this responsibility.
	And you're still saying, I can fix this.
	Like, you know, there's this joke on the internet, right?
	That some woman is arrested for all these terrible things, but she's pretty?
	And what do the guys joke about?
	That she gets away with it?
	No!
	Oh, sorry.
	They say... I can fix her!
	Oh.
	Oh, right.
	I mean, it's true, she did beat three puppies to death.
	But she's pretty!
	I can fix her!
	Right.
	And of course you've heard all of these... You've heard enough call-in shows, right?
	And all these stories of the men who... Try to fix their wives, their girlfriends, their... Right?
	Never happens, never works.
	Right.
	And those are chosen relationships.
	Your mother is not a chosen relationship.
	You never chose to have her in your life.
	No.
	Now, your husband is probably a very nice man as well, right?
	He is.
	Okay.
	Niceness is lovely.
	It really is.
	I like... It's nice to be nice to the nice.
	That's my mantra.
	It's nice to be nice to the nice.
	Yeah.
	The people who aren't nice get zero protection from me and zero consideration.
	Like, you gotta earn this stuff, right?
	I'm in a monogamous relationship with virtuous people.
	I don't cheat on them by being nice to corrupt people.
	Yeah.
	So, you... Okay, tell me, how frank do you want me to be here at the end?
	Lay it on me, Steph.
	I can take it.
	You, my friend, inherited the bad habit of playing on your husband's sympathy by being sad.
	But I want to be in touch with my mother.
	It makes me sad.
	I need my mother.
	Oh, and by the way, maybe we can go and have romantic relationships away.
	I'll appeal to your testicles.
	Maybe we can have more sex.
	But I'm really sad again.
	Oh, come on!
	Yeah.
	Come on, tell me that's not happening.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And he's a nice guy, right?
	So he wants you to not be sad.
	And he also might want a romantic weekend away or whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	We definitely want... We both want a romantic weekend away.
	I get that.
	I get that.
	So you play him.
	To get what you want.
	Yeah.
	Now he should be, of course, hey, I'm sorry that you're sad.
	But the answer is not.
	to hang with your mom and try and fix your mom.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So you're relying on his niceness and his consideration for your feelings to get what you want.
	I'm not saying a hundred percent, but I think there's that in him.
	Yeah.
	Oh yeah, there is.
	So yeah.
	I mean, listen, this is not, this is not for you that your husband can listen to this, right?
	Yeah.
	Don't let him do that.
	Don't be played.
	Because here's the thing, her father was played, right?
	And so you don't want to be in the category of the woman's father, right?
	In general, right?
	But in particular if the father was weak.
	And you viewed your father as weak, right?
	Because he was like to explode in rage after suppressing and conforming.
	Neither of those is strong, right?
	Yes, yeah.
	So don't be anywhere near the category of her father.
	Now, her mother Uses emotions and fake tears and crying and this and that and the other and I'm not putting you I'm not saying you're the same as your mother like I understand that right?
	But this is how how do women get what they want sometimes well They're upset knowing full well that the men who love them Will do almost anything to stop them from being upset, right?
	Yeah and Don't use that.
	Yes, sir.
	Don't use that.
	That'll be good.
	Because that's a great way to have that consideration dry up.
	And if the man ever feels like, wait a minute, I just got played based upon my care for this woman's unhappiness and sadness?
	Oh my, like there's this moment of existential horror where it's like, oh my God, I got played based upon my caring.
	Because it's not helping you.
	You are stressed.
	You are distracted.
	You are less emotionally available.
	Yeah.
	You are sad.
	It's not helping.
	And because your husband is a very nice guy, which, again, I appreciate, and, you know, that's a strength, but it can be a weakness, he'll be like, hey, you know what, we tried it, and it's not working.
	But I'm sad.
	It's like, yeah, well, Yeah.
	Okay.
	So?
	So be sad.
	Yeah.
	Feel the emotions.
	Yeah, but we don't wallpaper over your sadness by having you be in touch with, you know, this, this woman who makes our family's life worse.
	Right?
	It's not best for your kids.
	Right?
	Yes.
	And that's all you need to know.
	Thank you so much, Steph, for this.
	This was a really helpful call.
	Thank you so much.
	And, you know, A, you're welcome, and B, you know, I'm saying this in jest because, obviously, you're not in the same category as your mother by a million miles, but we all have some of these bad habits.
	Yeah.
	I definitely have bad habits.
	I do too.
	I do too.
	I can be a little grumpy at times and because I know people are very sensitive to that and I just have to watch myself.
	I mean, so this, you know, I'm not obviously, oh my God, he's just like, he's just like my mom.
	No, I mean, it's a million, million miles of difference.
	Because I was trying to figure out, like, why would your husband not just say, well, this was all a bad idea, so let's stop that, right?
	And it's like, because I'm sad.
	It's like, so yeah, don't, yeah, don't do that.
	Okay.
	Is that a good place?
	I think we should probably stop, right?
	Long, long, long chat.
	Yeah.
	Thank you so much for the call, Steph.
	It was, it was very helpful.
	You are very welcome.
	Listen, lots of big hugs and love to you and your family.
	Congratulations a million fold.
	I do love hearing it when the shows produce families and please, please, please keep me posted about how it's going, all right?
	I will.
	Thank you so much.
	And if there's anything I can do again, just let me know, all right?
	Sounds good.
	Thank you.
	All the best.
	Bye.
	You too.
	Bye.
	Alright, I just wanted to say something here at the end before I forget.
	So, this lovely and fine young lady, she was saying, well, I've gone through therapy and therefore I should be able to be around my mother, right?
	That's not the purpose of, I don't want to say therapy, like therapy therapy, but like healing.
	The purpose of healing is to deal with the trauma, not to put you back into it.
	So, if some guy's been at war for years, right?
	And blood, death, guts, murder, horror, sleeplessness, right?
	The purpose of dealing with his PTSD is not so that he can go back to war, but so that he can live in peace.
	The purpose of healing is so that you can live with the damage, not that you put yourself back into damaging situations.
	If you break your arm, the purpose of getting your arm healed is so your arm is fixed and whole.
	It's not so you can go back and re-break your arm.
	Like I remember many years ago...
	When I cracked my forearm falling off a bike, I went to the doctors, and I'm a pretty good patient, right?
	He said, do this, do that, do the other, and I did all of it, and I healed pretty quick.
	But when I was there, he was talking to some other patient, and this guy was like, my arm keeps hurting.
	And it's like, well, what happened?
	Well, I went skydiving, and the doctor was just yelling at him.
	Like, don't come to me to fix your arm and then go skydiving.
	Right?
	So, the purpose of healing is to make you whole, not to put you back into a state of re-trauma.
	So I'm so bulletproof now, I can go get shot again.
	It's like, no, you got shot and you heal it, but not so you can go get shot again.
	Right?
	That's not the purpose.
	I just want to mention that.
	And again, really appreciate this ladies' conversation.

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