Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - My First Failed Call In! CALL IN SHOW

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Oct. 27, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:06:26

My First Failed Call In! CALL IN SHOW

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	Yes.
	Hi, Stefan.
	Sorry, my volume is muted.
	No problem.
	No problem.
	I had a bit of background noise there.
	Yes, I can turn that down.
	Yeah, just background noise is not ideal.
	Okay, gotcha.
	Sorry about that.
	No, no problem.
	Are we on?
	Are we recording?
	Let me just get my backup recording going.
	And yeah, it's a public call.
	So just remember, no names and places, please.
	And we are all set.
	Yeah.
	Do you want to just tell me what the issues are that I can help you with?
	Well, first, I want to thank you for taking my call and also for returning to Twitter, X, whatever.
	I think it's quite a testament to your skills, what you've been doing with your life that your daughter was able to provide you some great reasons to come back and talk to the people out there who need your help.
	Yeah, so I suppose I could just jump into it.
	This past year of my life has just been a year for me where I've been going through a lot of, I've just been going through it.
	I've had like a lot of just rapid changes, experiencing a lot of new things for the first time.
	I think in my email to you, my basic, I kept it very brief.
	Obviously, I'm in my mid-30s for over a decade.
	I was on welfare benefits due to injuring myself in my early 20s.
	And I finally managed to come around and get healthy enough to get back on my feet, get into the workforce last year.
	And I'm really going at it.
	I'm working in a retail environment within a very short period of time.
	Thanks to the time I spent while I was injured, spent a lot of time listening to you, listening to other mentor-like people out there, trying to improve myself, improve my reasoning abilities, stuff like that, learn philosophy.
	So thanks to that, I was able to excel quite quickly, learn the job quite quickly, pretty much end up being one of the top associates working in the store at the entry level.
	That being said, it's been very, very stressful.
	Earlier this year, right around my birthday, I had a very, very stressful week.
	I managed to actually, after finally entering the workforce, within six months, I would manage to pick up a second job.
	And so I was working like, you know, just you can imagine going from zero to, you know, working no jobs at all, zero hours a day to within like a six, eight month period, working like 60 hour weeks between two different places, trying to balance stuff and, you know, get right sleep and stuff.
	Pretty stressful.
	During this one stressful week in particular, I had a very close run-in with a gang of people that came to my house very, very early in the morning.
	They stole my mom's.
	I'm still living with my mother, which is, you know, we'll get into that, I imagine.
	But this gang of people stole my mom's catalytic converter and I confronted them.
	They were armed.
	They pulled a gun on me.
	And, you know, I managed to get away.
	I managed to make it through that.
	But I've been realizing, I've been trying to prepare myself for this conversation with you.
	It's lots of things I'm going over are somewhat painful.
	So I didn't want to exhaust myself and dwell too much on it.
	I have been reading, I'm about halfway through Peaceful Parenting Now.
	Excellent book.
	Definitely worth checking out for any listeners out there who have not taken a look at it yet.
	Anyhow, going off on a tangent.
	Yeah, I had a gun pulled on me.
	I managed to escape and survive.
	But I, you know, Having that situation, being these, these men ended up getting caught.
	I'm sorry, um, a couple months later.
	How long ago was this?
	This was uh earlier this year, about um eight months ago.
	Okay, thanks.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Um, so these gentlemen got caught, they did end up killing a man uh before they were done under spree.
	Apparently, they'd been uh hitting neighborhoods, stealing catalytic converters for about four months, five months.
	Um, uh, yeah, so it just in being in that situation, uh, I it it uh suffering like uh PTSD, I think, and it's just brought up uh a lot of um memories of things I've had to deal with in my childhood in situations where you know I was in um uh yeah,
	just in situations where I could not fight and I could not run and I just had to sit there and take it and um and yeah, in my childhood, also in my um in my 20s when I was uh injured very, very terribly.
	Um, and uh you know, I couldn't stand up for myself.
	I pretty much just had to take um abuse and helplessness and certain situations that you know I had no control over.
	Sorry, and what was the injury that you had in your 20s?
	Um, I uh injured my low back and uh it's somehow or another, I'm not entirely sure what happened, how it happened, never really got a formal diagnosis.
	I have some ideas, um, but uh that being said, you know, the consequences of that injury, I had very, very terrible sciatica.
	Um, I could not sit upright for periods longer than um like 10 or 15 minutes without being in just you know, completely agonizing pain, and I could not walk very far distances either.
	And um, you know, where I was attending um higher education, you know, I needed to walk, you know, a good two to five miles a day in order to you know attend my different classes and uh yeah, take care of uh different assignments, things like that.
	But uh, I'm still not sure what happened though, like right, how did you get the injury?
	Yeah, uh, well, I was um the idea that seems like most uh plausible, most possible is is that um I was uh I was in the midst of moving from one apartment, one living situation into another.
	And so I was uh you know bending down, lifting heavy boxes of books and um you know other things, and uh I just ended up fatiguing myself and um yeah, causing some sort of um some sort of injury to the the lower lumbar spine.
	And did it come across slowly or I'm trying to what was what was the ideology of the Lord?
	Yeah, well, I mean, it was pretty, it was pretty sudden, you know, so like you lifted and you're like, Yeah, and and yeah, my my whole muscle, uh, my lower back muscles just went into spasm, were super tight.
	Um, yeah, I could barely bend.
	Uh, I mean, it was, it was just awful.
	Wow, I couldn't uh do much of anything that I'd been used to doing, and uh, you know, I was uh away from my parents at the time, living alone, um, in just a um, an in-law sort of unit.
	I, I had to, um, university was a, was a very, very rough period of my life.
	I was definitely very, very unhappy during that time.
	I had to hit a lane.
	I'm sorry, I don't want to jump on that.
	I still need to understand the injury.
	Okay, so, right, okay.
	So, you got this injury, you felt it at the time, and sort of what happened then, or what did you do from there?
	Like, you got this injury, did you like got to get to a doctor, got to get to like how did how did you deal with it?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, um, I uh, you know, when I first hurt myself, I pretty much just waited out until the next day, and uh, I went to an emergency room.
	Thankfully, the way my health insurance worked out, the emergency room that I had coverage on was just up the street from me, so I was able to walk there, even though it was very, very painful for me to do that.
	Um, they took some x-rays, you know, gave me some ibuprofen.
	I forget if they gave me any other painkillers.
	But, you know, they couldn't find anything.
	They couldn't find anything.
	And so, I mean, from that point, it was pretty much just going to a doctor every week or two weeks, saying I'm still in pain.
	And then going, hey, you know, here's some physical therapy.
	You know, we can do an MRI, investigate further.
	You know, they were never really able to find anything.
	And it was very, it was pretty upsetting because, you know, I was in a lot of pain and pretty much being told that it was all in my head due to like anxiety or any other general diagnosis that doctors tend to throw the towards the patient's way because they don't have an explanation and
	aren't motivated to really figure it out.
	And what were the symptoms you were experiencing?
	Right.
	Well, as I was saying, sciatica.
	Yeah, I don't know what that means.
	Yeah.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	So sciatica is nerve pain.
	Okay.
	It's nerve room pain.
	It was wrapping around the left side of my hip into my groin.
	Like I felt like my balls were being pinched.
	And then it was also running down my leg, my left leg, stopping at the knee.
	It's like an inflamed, pinched nerve sensation, kind of like you're being stabbed and it burns a little bit.
	And yeah.
	Okay.
	So they could the doctors could see, they could see, they couldn't see any issues.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And so what was their explanation as to why you were in pain if they couldn't see any pain nerve compression or any of those sorts of issues?
	You know, I had MRIs done.
	I showed some disc bulges, but nothing serious.
	I mean, their explanation was just you have anxiety, which never I never found satisfactory because my pain was, they're saying your pain, your anxiety is the cause of your pain.
	The way I saw it, the way I experienced things, my yeah, your anxiety is causing pain.
	The way I experience it, my pain is what was mostly causing my anxiety.
	Like I had, I was dealing with anxiety, you know, the years earlier when I was younger, and you know, this was something else.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So, and I know back stuff can be a bit voodoo, right?
	Some people don't really know what's going on.
	So, um, I'm obviously sorry, but big sympathies.
	And what happened from there?
	Um, well, it took me from the date of my injury.
	I was still living around my university.
	I had to take a leave of absence from my school to try and recover, basically.
	And then by the time the leave ran out, it was clear that, you know, I was not recovered yet.
	So my parents did have to come and help me pack up my stuff and move back home.
	Okay.
	And so when you said you weren't recovered, was the pain getting any better or worse?
	So how was that going?
	My pain remained pretty bad.
	I'd say, you know, if we're going for a scale here, it would be like eight out of 10.
	Oh, God.
	Eight or nine out of ten.
	It was pretty awful.
	I mean, I just hurt all over all day.
	The only relief I would get would be when I would fall asleep at night.
	So that was the situation for about two years.
	And were you on painkillers or?
	No, I was refused painkillers.
	At this point, I still have chronic pain.
	I went to a pain management doctor recently.
	They're still refusing me painkillers, which at this point would be very, very helpful.
	Of course, right?
	So they're concerned that you're just like a drug addict or something?
	Yes, yes.
	I'm pretty much, I'm at that.
	I've got that demographic of, you know, someone who would be drug seeking.
	So it's understandable, but it's very frustrating for me that the way I experience pain now, I think you might find this interesting.
	Maybe some users might find this interesting.
	I'm sure you have the experience of stubbing your toe.
	In my experience, when you stub your toe, there's a brief instance, like right at the point of when you stub your toe, where you don't feel the physical pain in your toe, but you feel this like flash, this snap, this explosion of like impending doom in your head.
	And for me, because I've been in so much pain for so long, I pretty much only feel that impending doom in my head.
	The physical sensations that would appear in my toe afterwards are very subsided and subdued.
	So a big part of it is an emotional thing for me now.
	Back then, it wasn't.
	To get to the point to answer your question, it was about two years before I got relief from the back pain.
	I ended up just one day, sort of miracle of social media, YouTube algorithms.
	This video got pushed to my feed of a physical therapist who lived just a couple states over from me.
	And I managed to look him up, contact him, set up a visit with him.
	And in about 10, 20 seconds, he did some physical adjustments to my body and pretty much undid like 80 or 90% of the pain I was in.
	So one adjustment.
	Just one adjustment.
	Yeah.
	He was able to, he, so one of the things I was experiencing is called sacroiliac joint dysfunction.
	My tailbone, my tailbone would float around my body and I could feel it subluxate and I could, you know, I was doing like some kind of stretching and yoga stuff as part of my physical therapy recovery.
	I could feel it float around and pop and crack and do all sorts of crazy things.
	So this guy, he was able to sort of reset that, put it back in place, which made me able to, I was able to walk again.
	Like immediately after that, I was sitting around after that in a chair for so long my butt began to hurt, you know, after two years of not being able to sit for longer than 20 minutes.
	And yeah, yeah.
	So that was, that was great.
	But, you know, it still took me a while.
	That was in 2014 when he helped me out, but it still took me a long, long time to, I was still not in working shape.
	I had, I was still in, you know, just chronic physical pain, aching all over.
	Complicating that recovery from that injury, I had, and I mean, throughout this whole time as well, I had numerous deaths in my family.
	Starting as far back as 2009, 2010, my stepfather, or he wasn't really my stepfather.
	So I mean, I noticed you were pretty wired when we first started talking.
	I was kind of hoping that that would calm down a little bit.
	You still sound very tense and wired.
	And I just wanted to address that before we continue.
	How are you feeling in the conversation?
	I get that a lot.
	Sorry, you get what a lot.
	People expressing what you're expressing, which is that it's not a criticism at all.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	I don't feel like I don't feel criticized.
	I don't feel like you're judging me at all.
	I don't afford it.
	I just'm okay.
	You know, I'm calling you.
	I'm just hoping you can help me generate a sense of what's going on.
	I'm trying to understand.
	I'm not saying you're not okay.
	I'm just trying to understand the emotional pressure.
	And of course, you know, you've had it very tough.
	And so I sympathize, but I want to make sure that I understand sort of the emotional pressure that's going on for you in the background or in the backdrop, because if your feelings are there, but we're not talking about them, it's a little distracting, if that makes sense.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I just, I suppose intuitively, the first answer I would give for you to, you know, like indulge, unpack is that I'm really, really ashamed of myself that I've had to deal with these different problems.
	And I feel like I haven't done enough to support myself, get myself helped, get myself back on my feet.
	I don't know, something of that nature.
	Okay, so you've you feel ashamed of yourself.
	And I'm just wondering if we sh because the backstory obviously is very important, but I'm just wondering if that's a strong thing for you, then it might be worth trying to deal with that first so we can have a bit less of a sort of tense conversation, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it does.
	Yeah, I suppose, yeah, you can, if you have some questions you want me to like elaborate on as to why I might feel ashamed.
	Sorry, but you must have some idea why you would feel ashamed, right?
	Not really.
	I mean, I guess, you know, a big part of it is that I don't know.
	I suppose I sort of let myself, I feel like I let myself down.
	You know, the last thing I ever wanted to do in my life, you know, as soon as I was able to get out of my parents' house and head to university, last thing I ever wanted to do is to have to move back and deal with these people, especially my mother.
	She's just the older I get, as I've been sort of tuning back into your show with your return to X, just the more I look back at my family dynamic between my mother and my father, the way I was raised, the different things I had to deal with as a kid.
	It's just very, very unsettling to me that I had to be deal with those things and that no one was willing to step up and help me.
	And they more or less conditioned me to understand and to sort of accept the premise, principle, presupposition, whatever you want to call it, that it is my obligation to help myself, essentially, even if I don't have the skills or experience necessary to know what to do for myself.
	This is all quite abstract.
	I'm not sure I quite follow.
	So what is it that you feel that you have done badly on or harmed yourself in some way?
	um not not taking uh enough care of my body i guess to to be good enough physical shape to not hurt my back i i don't i I honestly don't.
	I don't know.
	Well, it's tough to answer an objection that can't be expressed, right?
	Again, it's not a criticism.
	It's just sort of a fact, right?
	So if you have sort of a sort of free-floating badness about you, then it's pretty tough to figure out how to deal with that, right?
	I'm sorry, could you repeat that?
	Well, I don't know if you've ever read any Kafka, right?
	But Kafta, sort of, there's a sort of famous book called The Trial, where France K is being on trial, but he doesn't know for what.
	And it's never really explained to him.
	It's probably being white or something like that, right?
	But I guess that's sort of like it's it's hard to it's hard to figure out how to address a criticism that is not expressed, if that makes sense.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Is there another example you could maybe give me?
	Like an analogy?
	Okay.
	Let me let me ask it this way.
	So you got injured and you spent two years in great pain and you couldn't work and you were on you were on disability, is that right?
	At that time I was not.
	Okay, got it.
	Me, yeah, took me like four or five years before I was able to get um disability benefits.
	And help me understand, okay, so we'll, we'll drop that and come back to sort of the self-criticism about what you may have done.
	So, what was it?
	What happened to your symptoms over time that you had this uh experience of it's kind of better because you got you got the YouTube thing and it got better and then it wasn't better and so on.
	So, just sort of help me understand, let's go with that journey and so I can understand what happened over the course of um i guess because you said if I remember rightly in the original email, it was something like 10 years that you felt and so I was trying to sort of figure out what's happened with the remaining eight, I suppose.
	Yeah, yeah, well, well, that's the thing.
	It wasn't after after I got like some relief and it took it from an eight to a what uh maybe about like a four okay or a five.
	I don't know, I was still uh I was still having like some trouble walking, um, still feeling stiff in uh different parts of my body.
	Um, it it, I mean, just just part of the part of what was complicating with with my recovery uh was uh just the different deaths it that I had to experience in uh in my family.
	You had relatives who died, right?
	Yes, okay, yeah, um, and and uh yeah, I mean, I mean, short shortly before I uh I injured myself, I think it was about two weeks beforehand, uh, my grandfather passed away.
	Uh, I was I was very close to my grandfather uh growing up as a kid, um, and so uh just seeing him pass was pretty rough.
	That was uh and sorry, how old was he?
	He was, I believe, 82, 84.
	Okay, so it wasn't like he was taking it some sort of prime of life or youthful thing.
	I guess grandfather wouldn't be youthful, but okay, got it.
	No, um, uh, then um I think about a month and a half before I uh I managed to go out of state to see uh this physical therapist guy who managed to heal me up a little bit.
	Um, my uncle passed away, he uh he killed himself.
	Oh, gosh, shot himself with a gun.
	Yeah, um, he had uh he was very, very unhappily married, right?
	And um he uh he had, I guess, really, really bad insomnia, and uh, so eventually it just got to a point where he he just um decided to end his life, and uh so it was um uh yeah, so that happened a couple of on on my visit to um to this physical therapist guy out of state after he he helped me out.
	I was um I took a flight out of the state to to visit uh my grandmother who was you know now widowed with with my grandfather and and her son.
	Uh, my uncle now passed away.
	We, you know, I went there to um for the funeral for the well, burial is maybe a more accurate um description.
	Uh, so so there was that.
	Um, two years after that, uh, my dad passed away.
	Um, this was uh yeah, so two years after four years after my injury, two years after recovering at least somewhat moderately from my injury.
	Um, my dad pretty much died uh just a sort of a broken man with without his family beside him.
	I was there with him.
	I was raised by my single mother.
	Sorry, but...
	Where did your father die?
	He um he was well, first off, he he died when um uh he was about 75 years old.
	He, you know, at that age where he's having problems with his prostate and, you know, has other health issues as well.
	So he was told by his doctors that he had a heart condition.
	He was told, We got to do the heart thing first, the heart surgery first before we help you out with your prostate.
	And he, you know, he made it out of surgery.
	He was doing okay.
	And then something happened and he flatlined.
	I think that happened twice.
	The hospital, I don't know what the hell they were doing, but they didn't follow proper protocols or something.
	He lost circulation to his feet and hands and arms.
	And it wasn't clear after he flatlined just how much brain function was there.
	And so it eventually got to the point where the hospital had to have a decision, had to have my stepmom make a decision whether or not they were going to amputate his limbs and keep him on life support or if they were going to take him off of life support.
	And so the day before that decision had to be made, I went into the hospital to visit my dad.
	And while I was there, I realized that I needed to spend the night there.
	And originally, I was planning I was going to go there, visit him, go back home, and then come back the next day.
	But I realized I had to spend the night there and just in case he didn't make it through the night.
	Right.
	And sorry, how long ago was this?
	This was about nine years ago.
	Gosh, okay.
	It's still, it sounds still very raw emotionally, which is not a criticism, but it's just something I've kind of raised.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, well, I mean, he didn't make it through the night, is what ended up happening.
	I was talking to him, and I gave him my, I told him that he had my permission to die.
	Wow.
	And that I was trying to tell him that, hey, you know, if you need help, we will help you tomorrow.
	But if you could do it on your own, it would be doing us all a favor.
	And so 10 minutes after that, he was gone.
	Okay.
	And yeah, so I mean, that just I had a lot of depression after that.
	Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with your father?
	I mean, the sad thing is there's really not much to tell.
	He I would see him once a week for breakfast and then at Christmas at holidays, I'd maybe spend a week, five days, ten days with him and my stepmom.
	Okay.
	And but yeah, I never really got to know him all that well.
	He never really got to know me.
	But you and all you grew up together, right?
	I mean, you said you were raised by a single mom, but you had, did you have much connection with your father at all?
	I really did.
	I mean, just I'd see him at once a week for breakfast.
	Okay.
	For about 40 minutes to an hour.
	Okay.
	And then he might take me to a sports, a sports game.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I'm sorry.
	I don't know where to go from here about it.
	One of the things I've been doing over the past couple of days, I've been trying to sort of age stamp, timestamp things, how old I am against how old my parents are or were, You know, during different periods of my life.
	So, one of the things I was realizing the other day, I'm in my mid-30s at my age now.
	My mom, my mom and dad, they were together for about seven years.
	My mom was in her early 30s when they started dating, and he was in his mid-40s.
	And so, I was just, I'm now in my mid-30s.
	So, at my age, they'd have been dating for a couple of years.
	And I just have no idea what to think of that relationship.
	If I were to come up to a girl my age and find out she's with, you know, a man who's 10 years, 12 years older than her, I'd have a lot of questions and concerns.
	Right.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, I was just thinking of that.
	I'm thinking now, you know, I obviously have a complicated, dysfunctional, for lack of a, for that's not even lack of a better word.
	That's a pretty accurate word.
	I have a dysfunctional relationship with my parents.
	My mom as well has had a fun, uh, poor relationship with her own parents.
	Uh, my mom is now in her mid-70s.
	Um, I'm comparing that against my grandma.
	And I was thinking the other day about I had a great relationship with my grandma and my grandfather.
	They, you know, were a huge positive influence on my life, I think.
	Um, but I'm just comparing my mom's behavior and personality and where she's at in her life in her mid-70s to where my grandmother was at the time.
	I, at that period of time, I would have been in my teens, 14, 15.
	My grandparents ended up during that time taking me on a trip to Washington, D.C., which I didn't really appreciate at the time.
	I was a very, very moody teenager, but I managed to many years later talk to my grandma about it and tell her about all the different things we did there that I remember that have a profound, that had a profound impact on the way I see the world.
	But yeah, going off on a tangent again, my apologies, but just my grandma, very, very classy, very put together for her life in your mid-70s compared to my mom, which with this.
	I'm talking to your grandmother on your mother's side?
	Yes, yes, sir.
	So, how is it possible that you're, I mean, it could happen, right?
	But I'm not sure how you understand how it's possible for your grandmother to be so classy, and then you say your mother is not, right?
	Yeah, well, at this same phase in life, yeah, I know I'm kind of losing track of where I was.
	Okay, let's wrap that a little bit because, again, it's a lot of details.
	But so, what is it that you're looking to get out of the call?
	How would you know if the call that we have is successful?
	How would you know that?
	Right.
	I mean, the one thing I'm really sort of interested, hoping to gain out of the call is a sense of direction of, you know,
	what I should do with my life, where, you know, how I should handle the challenges that, you know, the traumas, tragedies, whatever you want to call it, that I've been faced with in a positive way.
	And yeah, be able to.
	Okay, that's that's very general.
	Yeah, I obviously can't tell you what you should do with your life, but right, what is it that you can aim to get out of the call that I could sort of reasonably try to achieve, if that makes sense?
	I mean, this is the thing.
	I don't know.
	All I really know right now is that I'm very, very desperate for help and to just and I want to help, but I don't know what the help means.
	Right now, it's a bunch of stories about your life, which again, interesting, but I'm not sure that that gives us a solution or gives us an approach that we can take that is going to be really helpful.
	Right.
	So, and what are you desperate about?
	Well, one of the things I'm desperate right now, I had to, Because of the just the situation I was in earlier this year with getting a gun pulled on me, it's pretty clear to me that I have pretty bad PTSD.
	I mean, I'm not sure if I'm not sure what I'm doing.
	But why did you approach these criminals?
	Well, I heard something going on.
	No, no, no.
	But why would you approach them?
	I'm just trying to understand that.
	I mean, I didn't know.
	I didn't know what was happening.
	Yeah, I didn't know what was happening.
	There were loud noises outside of my contact.
	There were two cars.
	There's one up further the street with a, I'm sure there was a driver in it.
	There was a driver and a spotter, and there was a car closer to me down the street, driver and the spotter.
	My mom's car sandwiched in between them with a guy trying to steal the catalytic converter.
	The spotter who was closest towards me made eye contact with me.
	He pulled out a gun from his jacket pocket.
	I couldn't see the shape of the gun.
	I could just see the glint of the floodlights from other houses on the metal.
	Sorry, I don't need the second by second stuff, although again, of course, great sympathy.
	But philosophy, you know, can't, it's not a PTSD thing, right?
	So I'm trying to think, and again, great sympathy, but I'm trying to figure out what it is that I can do to help you.
	I can't undo the terrible thing that happened with the criminals and so on.
	So that may be something for a therapist to work on.
	But again, I really want to know.
	Like, you wanted to contact me and you know what it is that I do.
	So I'm just trying to understand.
	And none of this is a criticism.
	I just want to make sure that I'm adding value.
	So what is it that I can provide to you that would be the most help?
	I mean, this is the thing.
	I just right now I don't have much of a sense of purpose or direction of what I want to do in my life.
	And I'm just.
	Okay, so hang on.
	So how would you know?
	And again, not disagreeing with you at all, but how is it that you would know that you had a sense of direction?
	In other words, what's missing that would be clear to you if you had it.
	Say, ah, now I have a sense of direction.
	Like, what would that look like?
	Well, it seems to me like I am very much struggling with formulating a healthy, meaningful sense of identity.
	And I don't know what that means.
	You have to hang on.
	You have to, there's a lot of therapy speak.
	So you have to be a little bit specific.
	I don't know what it, like, how do I know that you have a sense of identity at the end of the call, right?
	I need something a bit more, a bit more practical.
	Sorry to be annoying, but I need something a bit like sense of identity is all very abstract.
	You know that you're a man, you know that you're a whatever, right?
	So, so help me sort of understand a little bit more what it is that you are looking for so I can help you.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, I mean, that's the thing.
	I'm qualifying that by not just like sense of identity, but like meaningful.
	Okay, meaningful, it's not meaningful, it's not something I really understand either.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, um, I can't give you meaning, right?
	I don't, I wouldn't even know, I wouldn't even know what that, what that would mean, so to speak, right?
	So I gotcha.
	Yeah.
	Uh, it's just you said like you're a man, like that, that's just like a superficial characteristic that okay.
	So, so okay, let me let me, I got to take over here a little, if you don't mind.
	Okay, so, so, um, do you want to get married?
	I do.
	Okay.
	Do you want to have kids?
	I do.
	Okay.
	And what is your dating history?
	Uh, well, I mean, non-existent for the past over the past 12 years.
	I had a couple of girlfriends in high school.
	Um, there were some girls that were expressed interest in university, but uh, it didn't feel like we were very compatible.
	So what do you mean?
	What do you mean by that?
	Uh, just they seem very, very naive and sort of uh juvenile, unambitious.
	Um, some of them, uh, unambitious.
	Yeah, just others, just like hang on, hang on, unambitious.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you haven't done much over 12 years, right?
	Well, right.
	Well, this was before I had injured myself.
	This was when I was very, but if the injury is a valid reason to not do anything, then I don't know what philosophy can do to help you.
	If, on the other hand, you know, maybe the injury became a bit of an excuse or it's a way to hide out from the world, which, you know, I can understand if that's the case and so on.
	But, you know, if you say, well, you know, these women, they just weren't very ambitious and yet you succumbed to your injuries.
	Right.
	Right.
	In a sort of very foundational way.
	And again, lots of sympathy and all of that, but you succumbed to your injuries.
	Your injuries became something that you could not overcome.
	Now, I don't know because I don't know.
	I don't know if you could have overcome them or something like that or not.
	I don't know any of that.
	But I do know that you succumbed to them, that they won.
	Well, for a long time, yes.
	Okay, 12 years?
	Yes.
	Okay, is that a long time?
	It's about a third of my life, so I should say so.
	Okay.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So do you think, looking back, do you think that there was any other way to deal with your injuries?
	Do you think that it was possible or could have been possible for you to do better or find some way to overcome these injuries or do better with the issues as a whole?
	I would tentatively say yes, that my inability to recover quicker, as quickly as would be desirable, preferable, was due to a deficiency of willpower.
	Okay, so tell me a little bit about that.
	Yeah, I just, I suppose I am to a significant degree have a tendency to give up on doing things that are difficult.
	Okay.
	Go on.
	Yeah.
	I wish I could think of more if the injuries had something to do with that, right?
	Then you don't need more examples, if that makes sense.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I just look back on what I was dealing with with my injury.
	I mean, it was just a very, very complicated situation I was in.
	So, you know, it was being injured on top of not receiving much help from doctors, not receiving much help from either of my parents, and just being depressed that, you know, I had, you know, the plans that I had originally had for myself in my life had pretty much gone by the wayside.
	And, you know, a lot of spend a lot of time, you know, just like playing video games, trying to distract myself rather than, you know, doing like exercise rehab stuff.
	Okay.
	Oh, so there were rehab exercises that you could have done that you did or didn't do enough of, is that right?
	I would say so, yeah.
	I mean, if I were to give myself my own sort of critique, criticism, whatever, of things I wish I'd done better or that I could have done better in a particular situation, that that would be one of them, yes.
	Okay, got it.
	So then why would you say, if, of course, you know, like all of us, if you're injured, like your number one thing is to get better, right?
	That's generally the way that people approach these things.
	So if that's the case, why do you think that you were delayed in that?
	Or why do you think that you took the path of not exercising as much or not doing the rehab exercises?
	Right.
	Well, this is one thing that I was thinking a little bit about.
	And for what it's worth, you know, looking back on my childhood and the way I was treated by my parents, you know, the way I behave now and think of myself now, I have a very, very difficult time thinking of myself, considering my well-being, my own life as something that has value.
	You know, there was lots of neglect, I would say, Growing up as a kid.
	And if I were to describe sort of how I was raised, how I was treated by my parents, I was sort of treated as like a lifestyle accessory for the most part.
	And how did that look in terms of how would that show up in your life?
	Just not much time, not much attention being spent on me.
	I can't recall either of my parents really fundamentally asking me what my needs were in school, who my different friends were.
	As I was getting older and looking at higher education, where I wanted to go, what I wanted to study.
	There was an absence of being taught many different practical life skills.
	So you were sort of untutored.
	Yeah, I was pretty much lots of stuff I've pretty much had to kind of learn on my own.
	How to manage my own finances, how to do laundry, how to cook meals safely.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Stuff like that.
	So it's maybe to a certain degree been conditioned to just feel like taking care of myself,
	prioritizing different needs of mine are that, you know, it's like an impossibility for me to conceptualize that because I don't have any value.
	So why would you be trying to, you know, focus energy on cultivating, preserving something that doesn't have any sort of value?
	Okay.
	So, I mean, lots of people, and again, not to diminish your suffering, but a lot of people do go through the issue where their parents don't seem to treat them as valuable.
	And why do you think it took for you so much?
	Could you maybe expand on that a little bit?
	Explain what you mean?
	Well, so I've talked to a lot of people over the course of, you know, kind of doing what I do.
	And those people, a lot of them, have had parents who don't treat them as important.
	And they are able to some degree.
	I mean, it always leaves the mark, right?
	But they're able to find a way to move beyond that and say, well, okay, so my parents don't think I have value, but I'm going to find a way that I'm going to have value or something like that.
	Right.
	Well, I mean, yeah, that is, I suppose, something I am struggling with right now.
	It's figuring out, I mean, at least for myself, if there's anything that I value in myself that I like about myself, and I just, I don't know.
	you don't know if you can find anything that you like it yourself uh um yeah i mean at least at least at the moment um yeah
	i i just i have i have a really really negative self-concept even though i know that many of the things i think about myself are not really all that true uh okay so what are the things that you think about yourself that are not true um i i feel like i'm very foolish um like
	uh i'm maybe um manipulative uh that um i'm maybe very abrasive and um aggressive and
	um in in ways that make other people feel uncomfortable maybe like unpredictable like you are unpredictable yeah okay uh yeah i mean i suppose that's a good starting point right okay okay and why do you think that um
	sorry let me ask sorry let me ask a slightly different question what would you consider admirable if that makes sense like you say oh i i you know i i don't have traits in myself that i consider admirable which of course begs the question what are those traits that you would consider admirable
	uh i'm i'm pretty creative no no that you're missing i would say the the admirable traits that that are missing yeah um
	just being able to to get along with uh other people and and to interact i guess more gracefully more smoothly um but i'm sorry but that's actions but what what virtues or what what what did you what would you need in the mind to be able to achieve that
	uh probably better empathy i suppose um patience but sorry why would you need patience with people
	uh i'm not disagreeing with you again i just want to make sure i understand yeah yeah well well i mean i mean you've you've been uh fairly patient with me during during this call uh i thank you um it it's uh you're approaching like exercising that that virtue here i like as you can tell i'm i'm kind of struggling to uh express
	certain things reason myself through um
	certain uh faults of mine and uh definitely in dealing with and interacting with other people um it would be good for me to just be more patient and uh sorry and i'm sorry to interrupt but patience patience patience indicates superiority right right so if we say well i have to be patient with my child uh that would indicate that i'm superior and
	that my child is inferior like if i have to be patient with someone learning spanish it's because i speak spanish very well and they don't right yeah okay so so the patience would indicate a feeling of superiority does that make sense yes okay i i suppose so uh the opposite of patience tends to be vanity right
	uh okay sorry it sounds like you're agreeing with me or saying that you agree with me but i'm not sure if you do but you don't have to agree with me of course i'm just telling you that's my sort of thought about it yeah well i uh i'm willing to indulge the um the argument essentially okay uh so in what in what way do you disagree with the argument uh why
	i i would just um intuitively i would think that that um the opposite of patience would be impatience well but that's just an antonym exercise right right no so we have to sort of figure out a little bit more than that right so sorry go ahead yeah well i i just um i could could you um just maybe elaborate on on how
	vanity would be expressed by uh impatience well um so so
	if if uh i would need patience uh if if i'm vain about something then one of the ways that we feel vain about things is uh we think that it's easy for everyone we're just better if that makes sense okay okay so with um With impatience,
	it's like, well, people should be getting it, but damn it, they're just not getting it.
	They should understand it, but they're just not understanding it, if that makes sense.
	Okay.
	Gotcha.
	Yeah.
	I mean, because it would make sense.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, just a clarifying question.
	You said that patience implies a sense of superiority.
	Wouldn't the same be true for vanity, though?
	Well, sure.
	Yeah.
	No, patience is a form of vanity.
	Oh, sorry, impatience is a form of vanity.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So let me ask you this: Do you feel, and it could be wrong, right?
	Do you feel, or do you go through the experience of feeling superior to people?
	Um, I don't, I don't think so.
	Maybe subconsciously.
	Well, we can't if I'm not aware of it.
	You don't feel it.
	You don't feel it, right?
	I don't want to, I don't want to just make things up, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, I, I, you know, I don't want to be dishonest and say something that maybe isn't entirely, I don't want to be vain and you know, and uh, no, but you also have the theory doesn't mean that that it's true, right?
	So if the theory doesn't match your experience, so to speak, then we wouldn't want to we wouldn't want to bend the experience to match the theory.
	Yeah, uh, it just just what I experience with the patience issue is that I get uh frustrated with with people um more easily than would be ideal um in their opinion in their opinion okay so uh why do you get frustrated with people or give me a circumstance in which you get frustrated with people please um yeah well
	Well, in working in retail, one of the things I'm kind of going through here is because I have more or less been out of the workforce, out of society for over a decade, I'm now realizing that, you know, at least where I'm living, there has been a very, very significant, hopefully you could even say radical.
	Uh, there's been a change in the culture and, um, you know, the different kinds of people who are out there.
	Uh, I'm thinking that my, um, the models that I've had in my mind of the way people think are, um, are pretty far outdated.
	So, so, you know, these different people come in and, uh, they want, you know, different products.
	Uh, they want to purchase different products from the store and, um, uh, it just, there's some just like very basic things that, uh, they don't understand.
	You know, they, they've had a cell phone for a number of years.
	They don't know what charging cable they need for it.
	Uh, you know, they, they need to purchase, um, yeah, some batteries or, or whatever.
	Um, you know, they, they don't know what size battery they need.
	Uh, you know, they're not able, these are all like easily like Googleable questions, uh, stuff, you know, written on the box of the product as they're buying it.
	And, uh, you know, it's, of course it's, it's, it's, it's the job to, you know, be graceful with these people and things like that.
	But, but on occasion, uh, just some of the questions that they ask, you know, are, are just, uh, uh, uh, I, I'm just wondering how, you know, how they, how they managed to tie their shoes before they had had out their home.
	Right.
	It's, uh, it's, it's that, um, shocking just, yeah.
	How uninformed, uh, people are.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	All right.
	Okay.
	So, well, let's hold off on the vanity thing or, or the, um, the, the, the impatience thing.
	So, uh, let's, uh, try and figure out the dating situation.
	So, uh, did you, I mean, was it pornography?
	Like, what is it that got you through like a fairly monk-like dry spell over the course of 12 years?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I probably have a pretty bad habit Looking at pornography.
	Okay.
	And what about in terms of so you don't have any particular?
	Sorry, you said that there were some girls who were interested in you when you were in your teenage years, right?
	Yeah, late teens, early 20s.
	Okay.
	And what was the longest relationship that you had?
	Longest relationship was when I was in high school, my senior year of high school.
	That lasted about a year.
	Okay.
	And how did that end?
	Suddenly, I guess.
	I mean, suddenly, but not unexpected.
	The girl I was dating was a grade or two under me.
	And so I was heading off to university and she was going to be in high school.
	And, you know, we never really, we were both very young.
	So we didn't really know how to talk to each other about things we needed, things we wanted, you know, how to handle me leaving if we wanted to stay together and try a long distance thing.
	But eventually what ended up happening is she caught feelings, so to speak, for another guy and, you know, ended up breaking up with me over that.
	Okay.
	So she got interested in another guy.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	But yeah, that was very heartbreaking for me as a young man.
	And sorry, did you fight for her?
	Did you like, I'll do anything?
	how did it go in terms of the breakup um you know we talked a couple of times uh and uh we continued talking um a little bit when i when i was at university But eventually it got to a point.
	I think she got, she went to some party, got pretty drunk, and was sending me some text messages.
	I agreed to meet up with her.
	And I don't know.
	It just, it didn't go so well.
	And I just, I realized that I had to cut contact with her.
	Okay.
	That, yeah.
	So you said you're in your 30s now, right?
	And how long?
	How long have you been back in the workforce?
	Since last year.
	Okay.
	In April.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	All right.
	All right.
	So I guess the question is: so when you first introduced yourself to me, you were talking about all of the sorrows that you had experienced, right?
	Yes.
	And why do you think you did that?
	Well, that's what has most been on my mind in watching your shows.
	That's a superficial answer, I would say.
	And I think a more honest answer, as I was saying, I have a kind of a negative self-concept with me.
	I think it's manipulative.
	Okay, yeah, I got that sense too.
	So tell me.
	I think I'm trying to manipulate you into having more sympathy for me than is actually deserved.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Okay.
	So tell me a little bit more about that.
	Yeah, I just said that's the way I feel.
	You know, I, I don't know why I do that.
	Um, I, I don't know.
	I'm in this weird position where I feel like I'm in between a rock and a hard place.
	No, no, I don't want, please, God, don't give me any more analogies.
	Give me stuff that actually makes sense.
	I don't understand what you mean when you say you're between a rock.
	I understand the analogy, but it doesn't explain anything to me.
	Yeah, well, I just, I feel like I don't like talking about the things I've been through because I feel like it's manipulative.
	You don't like talking about the things you've been through, but that's exactly what you talked about.
	Right.
	No, no, well, well, I don't like doing it because I feel like it's manipulative to people, but these are things that are in order to address whatever the underlying reason is for the manipulation, I have to talk about them.
	Why?
	I don't understand.
	Why do you have to talk about them?
	Well, because they're very painful for me to deal with.
	No, come on.
	That's not true.
	I mean, hang on, hang on.
	How many years ago did your father die?
	About nine years ago.
	Yeah.
	So, you know, nine years ago, your father died, and, you know, but you're still like, oh, God, it was so painful.
	And he wasn't, you met him once a week.
	Well, yeah, but I mean, that's what's kind of painful about it.
	No.
	No, that means that his death would affect you less.
	That's what that means.
	Okay.
	Right.
	His death would affect you less because you weren't close.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I mean, even despite the fact that I wasn't so close to him, I mean, having him around was helpful for me.
	He's the one that assisted me in recovering from my injury, seeing the specialist.
	You know, I don't really have any other family members that I can reach out to and ask for help.
	And, you know, my dad was at least, if I really, really needed help, willing to step up and do things to help me.
	Okay, so did he ever say to you, you had two years of bad pain, you've gone from an eight to a five or a six, get off your ass and go and make something of yourself.
	Not in contact with you.
	You can't rock for 12 years because you had a bad back.
	Right.
	Did he ever say that?
	Well, he was a man of few words.
	Okay, I don't want excuses, man.
	Come on.
	Did he?
	I mean, he did.
	I don't know.
	Did he ever give you a tough love?
	No.
	Okay, why not?
	No.
	Because he was enabling this, right?
	Everybody who's part of your life was enabling this, right?
	Well, yeah, I mean, that's one word you could use.
	Well, was it possible?
	I mean, I thought I understood this.
	Maybe I didn't.
	I asked, was it possible for you to get off your ass sooner than you did?
	And I thought you said, yes.
	Maybe I misunderstood.
	I needed help.
	No, that's not what I asked.
	You said, and you said, I thought you said, again, I'm sorry if I got things wrong.
	I asked, was it possible for you to have gotten off your ass earlier than you did?
	And my understanding was you said, yeah, yeah.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Right.
	Well, I mean, it's a matter of degrees, is the way.
	Okay, everything's a matter of degrees.
	Everything's a matter of degrees.
	That doesn't answer anything.
	Saying things are a matter of degrees is like saying, well, oxygen was involved.
	Yes, I understand.
	I was I was, you know, I was unable to do anything with myself for about 12 years.
	So maybe if I'd taken on, hang on, slow your role.
	Again, I'm sorry if I misunderstood something.
	We can't rewind live, right?
	But my understanding was that you had said that there were things that you could have done more so than what you did.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	That were within my own locus of control.
	I'm just saying, like, I don't, this is all speculation.
	So The most bro, I can't do speculation because then you're saying, well, there are variables that I can't possibly tell you because it's all speculative.
	Okay, but then I can't, there's nothing to talk about.
	I need some facts, right?
	Right.
	If you go to the doctor and you say to the doctor, I need some help, right?
	And he says, well, can you tell me where it hurts?
	And you say, I can only speculate where it hurts.
	Can the doctor help you?
	Okay.
	Right, right.
	Can the doctor help you if it's speculative?
	No.
	Right.
	No.
	So I need things that are facts.
	Now, my understanding was, and again, I apologize if I got it wrong.
	My understanding was that you had said that you could have done better with some of your issues.
	You could have gotten out of bed or you could have gotten back into life, you know, with difficulties, obviously, and so on, but you could have gotten back into life sooner than you did.
	Well, I mean, that's at least like a feeling that I have, you know, a criticism that I could make of myself.
	I, you know, I honestly can't say for sure because I had, I just had tons of different things going on.
	Yeah, in my life, I mean, COVID hit in 2020.
	You know, I was going through.
	I can help you with bad decisions, right?
	Okay.
	I can help you with bad decisions, which we all make, right?
	No, no, you know, no big, no big issue, no, no, big contempt or anybody.
	We all make bad decisions, right?
	I can help you with bad decisions, right?
	Can I help you?
	Can I help you with chronic health issues?
	You cannot.
	I cannot, right?
	So what I'm looking for is if you want me to help you, which I'm happy to try and do, if you want me to help you, you have to give me some bad decisions and then we can figure out why you made them and what premises you had that led you down the wrong path or something like that, right?
	We agree with that.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So I thought that there was a bad decision, and the bad decision was that after two years, you went from an eight to a five or six in terms of pain, but you spent much more than two years in bed, so to speak, or crippled or underperforming or underachieving or something like that, right?
	Does that make sense?
	Right.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, I mean, I, you know, it's not like I was doing nothing.
	Okay, so if you were, hang on, but if you were doing everything you could do, then you would, you would, we would have great sympathy, but you wouldn't have a negative self-view.
	The negative self-view has got to come from somewhere, right?
	Right, right, yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so I thought, and again, my understanding was, I mean, I'm not crazy, right?
	Do you remember saying that you could have got out of bed earlier?
	You could have gotten life going a bit more sooner.
	Yes, yes.
	If I had had better discipline and willpower to exercise more.
	Yeah, because I think that might have been a term.
	You didn't do the right exercises, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Pretty much.
	All right.
	So that was a bad decision, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Sorry, why is that doubtful?
	It's not doubtful.
	We can call it a bad decision.
	I might use just a different word to characterize it.
	That would be more charitable towards me.
	Well, but if you were hang on, but if you feel I'm being too harsh by saying it was a bad decision, then why would you have all of this negative self-view or this negative view of yourself if you didn't make a bad decision?
	I mean, you're not just sadistic to yourself for no reason, right?
	Like if you got hit by some bus out of nowhere, it wasn't your fault.
	You didn't do anything wrong and you had this terrible injury, then to say, well, I'm really mad at myself wouldn't make much sense, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So you see where I'm going, right?
	Your negative self-view has to come from something that you could have done better.
	Does that make sense?
	Um, yeah, yeah, okay.
	So, so I'm trying to identify what you could have done better, or I'm trying to help you sort of understand what you could have done better.
	It makes sense, yeah, yeah, no, I got you.
	Okay, great, okay.
	So, then if I say, uh, here's what we can work on and things that you could have done better, right?
	And then you say, Well, gee, uh, there's really nothing I could have done better, then we're kind of at an impasse, right?
	Or we need to find because if you have a negative self-view, then there must be something that you could have improved, right?
	Uh, yes.
	So, let's say, let's say that when I was in my I was 30, right?
	Let's say that the perfect woman for me was in Dubai or Russia or someplace I wasn't.
	Okay, would I say, Oh my God, I can't believe I didn't ask her out.
	Like, I didn't even know she existed, right?
	But if there was some great girl that was like next door that I didn't ask out, I would then say, gee, I should have asked her out, right?
	Like, I have to have had some decision that I did that was negative in order to have a negative self-view.
	I have to have done something, I could have done something better.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, yes.
	I want to make sure I'm making sense.
	Well, I no, no, no, it does, it makes sense.
	Um, uh, yeah, no, the pauses, though, and listen, I obviously want to make sure that I'm making sense and also that I'm being fair and reasonable.
	Because if we don't agree on this, then we can't take another making sense.
	No, no, I got it.
	Um, I guess uh, one of the um compounding uh factors to my injury that I've been um somewhat concerned with, uh, I think might have played a role is drug use.
	Um, I was using uh at this time at the time of my injury, I was using a lot of a lot of cannabis and um at the time of your injury, okay.
	Sorry, this is vaguely right, yeah, yeah, no, okay, so why have we been talking about why have we been talking for an hour and a half or an hour 20, and I'm getting new information about cannabis?
	Um, you hear a lot about well, I'm sad my dad died and stuff like that, yeah, but I'm yeah, no, no, I got you.
	I'm just I'm very, very ashamed.
	Uh, okay, that's fine, but then why call why call me up and say I want help and then not give me the facts?
	Um, I mean, if you go to this, like going to the doctor and saying, No, it's not this elbow that hurts, it's this elbow that hurts, right?
	Well, I just could, I mean, where I'm at in my life right now, I don't think it's that important.
	Um, but yeah, just at the time, I okay, I don't know what we're talking about.
	So, something happened, then why are you bringing it up?
	I'm trying to answer your question about negative self-concept and um, and and so it, if my drug use was causal to my injury, um, even if it was unintentional, hang on, are you bringing up something that you don't think is a factor?
	I don't, I don't know what I, what I vaguely remember is uh using cannabis and um and then experiencing excruciating pain um in my low back.
	Uh, I'm I there is a family history of kidney stones, it might have been a kidney stone, I don't know.
	Uh, what?
	Like, I don't know if you cannot raise my blood pressure or something.
	Hang on, hang on, I just don't know.
	Hang on, bro, bro.
	Yeah, sorry.
	What the fuck are you talking about?
	I don't understand any of this.
	And I'm sorry if I'm missing something.
	My apologies, but are we talking about kidney stones?
	What are we talking about kidney stones for?
	I thought you injured your back lifting something, something.
	I don't, I don't know.
	I mean, all of these things were happening.
	Uh, but they would have tested you for these things, wouldn't they?
	Uh, yeah, I was told no kidney stone.
	Um, okay, so if there's no again, I'm really confused.
	Like, if there's no kidney stone, there's no kidney stone.
	Uh, You know, I did actually, I'm pretty sure I passed some kidney stones a couple years ago.
	I can't help you with that.
	I know, I know, I know.
	I don't know what the hell you, I don't know if you've passed a kidney stone or not.
	I'm not a fucking doctor.
	How am I supposed to help you?
	No, no, I well, I got, I'm just, I'm telling you, I have not had, I've been dealing with doctors trying to get my pain addressed for, you know, over a decade now, and they pretty much just shrug their shoulders and pat me on the back.
	Okay, so again, I have no idea what you're saying.
	I can't do anything about the doctors.
	Okay.
	No, no, no, I got you.
	I got you.
	So, hang on, hang on.
	What bad decisions do you think you might have made that give you a negative self-view?
	That's all I'm trying to figure out.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, I was trying to give you one.
	No, maybe I passed a kidney stone.
	It's not a negative decision.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Well, I just, I blame myself for my injury.
	It is, I think.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So you blame yourself for your injury.
	And what do you think you might have done to cause your injury?
	Is this marijuana thing?
	The cannabis use, yeah.
	Okay.
	So you think that you might have injured yourself because you were using cannabis essentially, yes.
	I don't know what you mean.
	Okay.
	So that's your negative.
	So your self-view, your negative self-view is that you might have caused your own injury by using cannabis.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	I appreciate that.
	All right.
	And do you feel that that is quite likely or not likely as a whole?
	Well, I would say quite likely.
	Okay.
	So how is it that again, not disagreeing with you?
	Just want to make sure I understand.
	How is it that cannabis use caused your injury?
	Well, it was, I mean, it's a drug.
	It has all sorts of different effects on different people.
	Okay.
	I have no more patience for generic shit.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	I am aware that cannabis is a drug.
	You don't need to tell me that.
	I'm aware that it has a different effect on different people.
	You cannot give me this stuff and expect me to stay in the conversation.
	I need some facts.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	It messed up my proprioception, my ability to recognize what I was doing with my muscles, engage my muscles properly.
	I think it might have raised my blood pressure and caused me to release a kidney stone.
	Maybe.
	I don't know.
	So it caused you to release a kidney.
	Sorry, hang on.
	Again, I'm not a doctor, so just be patient while I try and figure out what the hell's going on.
	Okay.
	So you see, you feel like I'm sorry.
	I'm still talking.
	No, please, please, God.
	I'm trying to be patient here, right?
	Okay.
	So you feel that, or you think it's possible that the marijuana caused you to release a kidney stone, and that may have been some source or issue with regards to your back.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And have you ever asked a doctor this or looked this up or tried to sort of sort this out as to whether this may be the case?
	Not really that I recall.
	I mean, I did some very, very preliminary, superficial research when it first happened years and years ago.
	There's some people, you know, cannabis can cause like adrenal surges, you know, which are right above the kidneys.
	So it can cause low back pain.
	It does all sorts of stuff.
	Okay.
	One thing it was doing after I injured myself, I continued to use cannabis and it would aggravate my sciatica.
	But I was doing it anyway because I was very, very depressed from the amount of pain I was in and just a number of things and cannabis would help me out with that.
	Okay.
	It's better so that was sort of what I was put on.
	Sorry.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I had been put on antidepressants before.
	They made me like angry and suicidal.
	So I was using cannabis instead.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So is it that you have negative self-regard because you feel that you did something to cause your own injury by using drugs?
	Definitely part of it.
	Okay.
	So if that's, and when did you first think that perhaps it was the drugs that had caused the injury?
	Definitely when it first happened.
	Oh, okay.
	So when it first happened, okay.
	And that is a theory that has remained within you, right?
	More or less, yeah.
	Okay.
	Everything's more or less.
	So again, these caveats mean that there's no answer to anything, right?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So when did you not, or when did you go through the process of not doing the necessary exercises to most help with your injury?
	Um, I would say maybe two, three years after, uh, injuring myself.
	I don't know.
	It's hard to say.
	Well, no, because you got some improvement, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so you got some improvement.
	And so maybe in the process of that improvement, you were able to do more exercises, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so you got some improvement.
	You started to be able to do more exercises, but then you didn't do the exercises.
	And why do you think you didn't do the exercises?
	Yeah, well, I was, you know, very devastated when my father passed away.
	okay i don't understand why that would have you not do exercises um i just uh i well um i i i don't know um
	You know, one of the things I was telling him as he passed away was that I didn't want him worrying about me because I was still in a state where, you know, I wasn't working.
	I wasn't sure that I would ever be able to work.
	I was still in a lot of pain.
	And I don't know, just even though I wasn't very close with my dad, seeing him pass away in that way and I guess him feeling like we were close enough that, you know, he could just relax.
	It did just really deeply disturb me.
	Sorry, so I'm not just going.
	I want to make sure I understand.
	So you said seeing him pass away in that way and what else?
	And seeing him relax?
	Tell me what that means.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, just whatever relationship I did have with him, you know, when I gave him, when I told him he had my permission to die, you know, he, yeah, it seemed like that's all he needed to.
	Sorry, what does that mean?
	That's all he needed.
	I don't know.
	I suppose it doesn't mean anything.
	No, no, it means something to you.
	I'm not just, it means something to you.
	So I just want to make sure I understand.
	Like, you gave him permission to die.
	I don't know what that means.
	I mean, I told him I used those words when I was talking to him.
	Yeah, but death is not yours to give or take.
	Is it?
	I mean, you're not Thanos, right?
	Yeah, I'd been looking up some videos on YouTube, you know, the weeks before, well, he was on, or the days before, while he was on life support.
	And just one of them mentioned that it's sometimes something you can do to help people in that state.
	And just, I mean, the thing for me is because he had flatlined, it wasn't clear how much brain function he had.
	Right.
	So I just, I was not expecting anything to happen.
	What do you mean?
	After I said that to him, I was just expecting to say that.
	And that, yeah.
	I mean, he his blood pressure just started falling like five minutes, ten minutes after that.
	Right.
	And yeah.
	I wasn't expecting that to happen.
	I'm sorry, you weren't expecting him to die when he was dying.
	I wasn't expecting him to die after I told him that he was.
	Yeah, but that wasn't why he died.
	Right?
	I mean, come on.
	That wasn't why he died.
	He died because he was dying.
	Well, yeah, it's a coincidence.
	You think it's coincidence?
	Of course.
	But you don't have the power of life and death.
	You don't.
	Okay.
	Neither do I. Okay.
	I mean, I'm not saying that there's nothing in people's minds.
	I get all of that, right?
	But I mean, you said he was kind of half brain dead, wasn't he?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, there's not even any brain dad to hear.
	Well, that's what I was thinking to myself at the time.
	I just struggled.
	I don't know.
	I just, you know, if I hadn't said that, I just wonder if he would have been, if he would have made it through the night.
	And, you know, other family wanted to come and see him before we took him off of life support.
	And okay, hang on.
	Sorry.
	Sorry, I want to make sure I understand.
	Are you mystical?
	In other words, do you think that there was a father in there that was doing his thing, even though he was kind of brain dead, that there was a father in there somewhere who was able to be conscious?
	Is it mystical that way?
	Again, I'm not trying to criticize.
	I'm just trying to understand your thinking.
	Yeah, no, no, no.
	No, no, that's that's a I guess yes, yes.
	I would have to say yes, that that might be where my conscious is at over that event.
	Okay, so you were speaking to his soul or something to just whatever the very base part of his soul or something.
	There's no base part, right?
	He's brain dead or close to it, right?
	So who were you talking to?
	Well, I mean, I didn't think I was talking to anyone when I was saying these things.
	No, but that's how you describe it.
	I gave him, like, there's no him there, it's a brainstem.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Right.
	Well, I mean, I didn't think there was any, I didn't think anything was going to happen by saying those things.
	I didn't think anyone was there.
	I was just kind of saying this, these things performatively on the offhand chance that something might happen and that someone might still be there.
	You know, but I mean, I guess it could just be coincidence.
	It still disturbs me, though.
	But there's something going on because, I mean, you're still emotional about this guy who was barely a father who died nine years ago.
	Like, holy Hamlet, Batman.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I, well, I mean, I don't know why.
	I mean, part of the thing for me is it's upsetting for me that, you know, I mean, one of the few benefits I had with my dad was being able to talk to him about what I was dealing with from my mom at home.
	And, you know, I mean, that was a benefit in some ways.
	In some ways, it would make me very, very angry because he was very well aware of what my mom was like.
	And, you know, it was an environment that he refused himself to live in.
	And, you know, but he would let me.
	He totally allowed me to be raised by that person.
	Yeah, so your dad was not a good father.
	I would agree, yeah.
	Okay, so what's all this sentimentality stuff?
	I don't quite understand.
	I mean, if he was a good, kind, loving father and made your life a better place, and you know, then I can understand the grieving, but not like nine years later.
	Yeah.
	I mean, do you think your dad would be happy that you were still grieving him nine years later?
	I'd be pissed if my daughter was still grieving me nine years after I died.
	Yeah, no, no, no.
	i gotcha um yeah i i just i i don't i don't know what what to think about it I did spend some time some years ago.
	I wrote a post.
	I put it on Reddit about all the different memories I had of my dad.
	It took me a long time.
	I had to keep going back and adding things to it.
	I mean, it was quite horrifying the different things I thought up, just memories I had of him not being that great of a father.
	Right.
	But I don't know.
	It's just, it was very, it's still very hard for me to that the relationship I have with my dad is, I don't know.
	I haven't you talking to me about how that situation is probably just all coincidental.
	Well, look, I mean, especially if he's a brainstem.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, I mean, this is the thing is it wasn't clear really at the time.
	Okay, wasn't conscious.
	Not that I'm not.
	Did you have a conversation with him?
	No.
	Okay, so then he didn't hear.
	Right, yeah.
	Okay.
	And you don't have the power to release people from blah, blah, blah, right?
	People just die.
	Yeah.
	That's what happens.
	They just fucking die.
	Okay.
	Because it's not giving you any emotional closure, right?
	I guess not.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, it's not a guess.
	It's very clearly not.
	very clearly not um it's uh is what would i um is there any advice you could do you think you'd be able to give me to get emotional closure With your dad from nine years ago?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, because I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I should.
	I should let you know, you know, one of the things my dad did as sort of a side gig, he was involved in the pyrotechnics industry.
	So since I recently got back on my feet, I have started doing fireworks shows again.
	Okay.
	Let me ask, because this conversation is just so all over the place.
	Yeah.
	are you still doing drugs uh i come on man this is not That's not a complicated question.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	I started using drugs again recently because of the amount of chronic pain I've been experiencing from my job.
	Okay.
	And when did you last do drugs?
	Be honest.
	This morning.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And you did marijuana?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And how long does marijuana generally last in the system?
	Well, the effects, I find, last only maybe like two hours.
	But I mean, the THC cannabinoids, whatever, they can stay in the system for what, like months on end, depending on how much you use.
	Yeah, days to months.
	Okay.
	All right.
	And so, how often have you been doing marijuana lately?
	Maybe about once a day for the past week and a half.
	Okay.
	And how long did you take a break before that?
	I would say about three years.
	Maybe more.
	And so what's the total number of years of your life that you've been using drugs?
	Adult life, like 18 or whatever.
	No, no, no, I got you.
	I got you.
	I'd say maybe about five years spaced out over the past 15.
	Okay.
	And how often are you in regular conversation with people?
	Well, I mean, that's the thing.
	Due to my injury, I haven't had much exposure to other people.
	And aren't there injury groups that you can talk about and discuss things with, though?
	I mean, people who've gone through similar difficulties.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I was a part of, you know, a group years ago after my dad passed away.
	This was a local group at a church immense group.
	I did that for maybe about six months.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Because you're way out of practice having conversations.
	Oh, for sure.
	Yeah.
	No, no, I agree with you.
	Okay.
	So hang on.
	Would you say that I am fairly good at having conversations?
	That would be an understatement.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So this is part of the impatience or vanity thing, right?
	So if, and I say this with all sympathy, right?
	So, if you're out of practice having conversations and you did drugs this morning, why are you fighting me when I try to lead the conversation?
	Because every time I try to take a particular direction, you go in some other direction, you tell me I'm wrong.
	So why do you, if, if I'm an expert and you're calling me for help, why so resistant to coaching or feedback or any kind of direction that I can take?
	It just makes me uncomfortable talking about this stuff.
	Well, okay, but then hang on.
	But you've listened to these call-in shows before, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So you know that discomfort is necessary, right?
	Absolutely not.
	Okay.
	So why on earth would you send messages to me saying you want to call in show and then not surrender to any coaching because you feel uncomfortable when you know that's a requirement?
	I guess it's a vanity thing.
	I've got a toothache.
	I want to go to the dentist, but you can't look in my mouth.
	Well, why go to the dentist?
	Can't look at your mouth, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I guess it's maybe a vanity thing.
	Well, I don't know.
	But that doesn't answer anything.
	So what would it cost you to have me take charge of the conversation since you've called me?
	You've called me up for my expertise.
	Why would it be so wrong to let me try and take charge of the conversation?
	Because it's really kind of like wrestling with Falk, trying to get a direction going in the conversation.
	Yeah, yeah, I got you.
	I don't know.
	Maybe I lose more self, lose more respect for myself.
	Well, do you think that calling me up and then dragging me all over Hell's Half Acre with every story and resisting any attempts that I try to put to get the conversation in a particular direction?
	Let's say that the conversation fails, right?
	do you think that your self-esteem or self-respect will be higher or lower if you resist any kind of coaching in this kind of call?
	I think I'd be indifferent to it, to be perfectly honest.
	Oh, so you're indifferent as to whether the call succeeds or fails or whether you get anything useful.
	Okay, well, then I'm not sure why we're talking.
	I'm sorry, I'm not sure why we're talking then.
	No, well, I mean, I'd be disappointed.
	I just, I don't know.
	Hang on, hang on.
	You said you would be indifferent whether the call succeeded or failed.
	To the way I view myself.
	Well, would you concerning my own self-like if you have some respect for me and you?
	Yeah, okay.
	Okay, so there's a thing that you're doing, which is you're talking in my ear every time I try to fucking say something.
	Do you know how annoying that is?
	Yeah, I apologize.
	Can you please stop doing that?
	Because it's really distracting.
	It's another way of interfering with any kind of progress I might try and make in this call.
	Okay?
	Begging you, because we don't have much time left, right?
	So I asked if your self-esteem would be higher or lower if the call failed.
	And you said, I'm indifferent.
	So you're saying that you would have neither a higher nor lower view of yourself if you kind of fumbled a call by being kind of bossy and not taking any coaching.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So you're indifferent, your self-esteem or your self-respect, you're indifferent to the outcome of the call?
	I think I might be, yes.
	Okay.
	And are you indifferent to the outcome of the call as a whole?
	I mean, you've listened to a lot of call-in shows.
	Do you think that this one is going the way that most of them go?
	It is not.
	Okay.
	And why do you think that is?
	Because I am very reserved, I guess you could say.
	I'm hiding things.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So why is that something you're doing?
	I mean, you know that you need to be honest and direct and so on, right?
	Because, I mean, we probably wasted half an hour because at least, right?
	Because my understanding was that you said that you felt that you could have done better with your injury.
	And then you said, no, circumstances and sad about father dying.
	So you changed stories, right?
	I, well, I. I suppose you could say yes.
	See, this is exactly the issue.
	I suppose you could say yes.
	Is it confusing from the outside as to whether you have a viewpoint on whether you could have handled your injury better or not?
	Yes.
	That is confusing on the outside, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, got it.
	So then when you say, I suppose you could say so, yes, why is it just not, why is it so hard to just say yes?
	I'm trying to understand why the, because it's almost like a mirror of the call I had last night.
	Why is it tough to just have an absolute?
	So the way that I wanted the conversation to go, and it's interesting that it didn't, right?
	It's not a huge problem.
	I mean, it's interesting either way.
	So the way that I wanted to take the conversation was that you said that you had anger or frustration with yourself.
	And I said, oh, well, do you think you could have done better with your injury?
	And you said, well, yes, right?
	And then you told me about the injury, the exercises that you didn't do to solve or deal with the injury and stuff like that.
	Do you remember that?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So then I was going to start asking you as to why you may have used the injury to kind of hide out from life a little bit.
	But we didn't get there because then you were telling me that you couldn't have done better with your injury.
	And then I sort of asked why, and we got into your father and you get all emotional about your father, which is manipulative and bullshit.
	I just got to be frank with you.
	That's just manipulative bullshit.
	Okay.
	Your distant father died nine years ago.
	Jesus Christ.
	To still be teary-eyed is just manipulative.
	Because you're not.
	I'm pretty good at knowing genuine emotion when I hear it.
	Okay.
	It's the same thing that you do with the wobbly, anxious voice.
	Well, part of that is a function of my injury.
	I think I have a bunch of pinched nerves in my neck and arthritis in my neck.
	Well, that's not what you told me.
	That's not a problem.
	Hang on.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	But that's not what you told me at the beginning of the call.
	It was just new information, new information, right?
	Every time I come up with something, it's like, oh, no, no, it's because of the injury.
	Oh, no, it's because, oh, my father died.
	Oh, you know, because I said this to my father when he was dying, and he was the only guy to protect me from my mother and blah, blah, blah.
	Right?
	So, okay, so somehow from the injury in your back or the kidney stone or whatever, you have pinched nerves in your neck.
	Is that right?
	I mean, my whole body is all fucked up.
	So, if you'll excuse my language, no, it's fine.
	It's fine.
	Okay.
	So, because you could have told me that at the beginning, when I said, you know, you sound kind of tense and anxious, right?
	You could have said, no, it's just a physical effect of the injury.
	Because the whole call, I've been thinking you're tense and anxious, right?
	And so I pointed it out at the beginning.
	Right.
	And you didn't tell me anything about the pinched nerves.
	It's a shifting landscape.
	Do you understand?
	It's like you're dialing the physics up and down, and I'm trying to play volleyball.
	You're dialing gravity up and down, right?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	I guess maybe another difficulty I have, I don't like the idea of things not being within the locus of my control.
	So I like I, you know, I imagine I could, if I really had the determination, the willpower, work on my vocal control so that my voice isn't as shaky because it does get shaky.
	And, you know, other people comment about that as well.
	Because as you were saying, I don't have much practice having conversations with people.
	That does having conversations with people, especially ones of a personal nature like this, make me very, very nervous.
	So, I mean, that is part of it.
	But I. Sorry, sorry.
	Is it nervousness or pinched control or pinched nerve?
	It's both.
	It's both.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	And is what I'm saying.
	But I could make a, if I had more willpower and determination, I could maybe work on my bulk.
	I don't know.
	You know, all I know is, as you were saying earlier, you're not a doctor.
	You can't fix the pinched nerves in my neck.
	You can only get more guidance.
	All I can help you with is bad decisions, but we can't get to the bad decisions.
	Like they're beyond this impenetrable wall of defenses.
	Like, I can't get to the bad decisions and talk about them.
	And listen, it's not like you're unique in making bad decisions.
	I've made bad decisions and so on.
	And so, you know, but we have to sort of be the only thing I can help you with is the thinking that leads to bad decisions.
	That's all I can do.
	I can help you with thinking.
	I can't help you with anything physical, right?
	Right.
	So when you say, I gave permission for my father to die, I'm like, no, you didn't.
	No, you didn't.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So that's bad thinking, right?
	Okay.
	Because if you have the ability to give or not give people permission to die, you'd be in great demand at hospitals, wouldn't you?
	Right, right.
	And I don't believe that nine years later that there's still, you know, wobbly, tearful stuff to do with you dead.
	I think it's a way that you gain sympathy.
	And again, I understand it.
	I mean, you've had a tough life.
	Like, please don't.
	I mean, I'm, you know, whether it had to do with the drugs that you were taking when you were lifting and hauling, I mean, even if it was somehow to do with the drugs, I mean, that's still a crazy bad bit of luck and a crazy bad punishment and all of that.
	So, you know, but all I can do is I can't help you with the injury.
	I can't help you.
	I can't undo the drugs thing.
	I can't do any of that, right?
	But all I can do is if you used the injury to hide out from the world a little bit, which is a temptation I completely understand, then we could have tried to figure out why.
	Okay.
	Right?
	But we can't because I can't get any facts.
	I mean, to answer your question, I don't really feel like I use the injury as an excuse to hide out from the world.
	Yes, but everything you think is wrong in this area, because if it wasn't wrong, you would have solved it and you wouldn't be calling me.
	Do you understand?
	This is the humility.
	The humility in calling me is, Steph, for 12 years, I've been dealing with these injuries, this problem, this issue.
	And I've got a porn addiction.
	I use drugs.
	I don't date.
	Don't have any friendships.
	Right?
	I get annoyed at people at work.
	I mean, I do have a couple of friendships, but I don't know.
	Okay.
	Let's go back.
	See, this is the problem, right?
	Is you just say stuff.
	Okay, why do you think I think you don't have a lot of friendships?
	Why do I have that perspective?
	Let's try the empathy thing.
	Why do I have that perspective?
	Well, because I'm not good at conversation.
	No, because I asked you.
	I asked you not 15 years ago.
	earlier about friendships it uh it it i i do not Okay.
	I'm sorry.
	I must have lapsed.
	Are you out of practice with conversations?
	And you said, oh, God.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	I don't really talk to people.
	And I said, well, can you, did you join a group, right?
	And you said, yes, for about six months, I joined a group for the pain and the back injury.
	Do you remember that?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Did you mention any friendships?
	I did not, but I didn't realize that that would be something to bring up.
	Don't lie to me, bro.
	But I don't know.
	Look, I'm close to ending the conversation, but I'm certainly not going to continue the conversation if you just lie to me.
	Suffice say you're out of practice with conversation and you don't think to mention friendships, but you mentioned some group that you joined.
	What?
	When did you join the support group?
	That was in 2016.
	Okay, so almost 10 years ago, you joined a support group for six months to talk about conversation stuff, but you wouldn't think to mention friendships.
	Well, I mean, at that time, I didn't really have many friendships going on.
	I was able to reconnect with some friends a couple years later.
	I had one friend that I was getting together with regularly to make music with.
	I was spending some time taking a couple of classes at a community college.
	I mean, it's not like my, uh, um, um, okay.
	So when you said, when I said you're out of practice with, with, with communication, with conversation and you agreed with me, do you remember that?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	Great.
	Fantastic.
	Okay.
	So I mean, honestly, I really do appreciate the call.
	It has been really interesting.
	Unfortunately, things just go round and round.
	Yeah.
	No, I. I try to establish things and then I'm just told the opposite and I try and get to the truth and then I'm told it's unimportant to you.
	And right.
	So I'll just have to like, for whatever reason, and I'm not saying this has anything to do with your fault or anything you've done wrong or bad, but we're just not able to make progress.
	Yeah, no, I totally understand.
	It may just be whatever, some odd compatibility thing.
	It may be just we have different rhythms of speaking.
	It could be any number of things, but I don't know.
	I mean, I've been, I'm not beating my head against the wall.
	That's a bit dramatic.
	But I have been trying for like, hang on.
	See, now I did ask you for that one thing, which is to not talk into my ear when I'm trying to make a point, right?
	Now, I know I've interrupted you a couple of times too, but that's when I feel like we're going off on some other tangent.
	So I think I don't know what else to do.
	And I feel a certain amount of like weariness or something like that.
	And the weariness, again, it's not a fault of yours.
	It's not anything big negative that you've done, but I just don't know where to take the conversation, if that makes sense.
	Sorry for interrupting.
	I wanted to express some sympathy, empathy for that, for what you're saying.
	You know, one of the other issues I have to deal with is ADHD.
	And it does really, really scramble my ability to think clearly.
	My cognition is much, much slower than it was when I was younger.
	Generally speaking, the way I manage my ADHD is I have to keep moving around.
	I'm standing in front of my computer here, not moving much.
	I don't know what that's worth.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I just think I get the idea.
	So I experience it as defensiveness and avoidance.
	But again, if you have been diagnosed with ADHD or you're in ADHD meds or something like that, then my experience of it being avoidance and defenses may be, of course, completely wrong and invalid.
	In which case, maybe the AD is interfering with the conversation.
	And my experience of avoidance and defensiveness is invalid.
	So I think we'll just have to chalk it up to couldn't quite connect.
	Thank you for your time, Stefan.
	Yeah, I suppose if I'm going to try again, I'll do a private call.
	I will pay you for your time.
	That way I have a vested interest in it going well.
	Well, yeah, and listen, don't feel bad.
	I mean, sometimes the connection doesn't quite happen.
	And for whatever reason, if the drugs are lingering, if your pain is high, if the ADHD is kicking in in some manner, then it's just going to be tough to have that kind of connection.
	So yeah, don't feel bad.
	Sometimes, you know, just doesn't quite work out.
	But I really do appreciate the call.
	And I did find it very interesting.
	And listen, I also wanted to say, my gosh, massive sympathies for like 12 years of pain.
	I can't even, I'm not even good with a headache, right?
	So 12 years of pain, I just wanted to say I have nothing but enormous and deep and visceral bone marrow kind of sympathy for that.
	And I really hope that you'll do the exercises that you need if they're going to help.
	And I hope that you'll continue to pursue some remediation for this because, yeah, it is a very, very difficult life.
	And you have my eternal sympathy for that.
	Thank you for saying that.
	Yeah, I will continue to listen.
	And I think I'm going to do some journaling.
	And yeah, maybe try and structure my thoughts better.
	Yeah, just, I mean, if you want to call me up, and I mean, if we're going to do this again, I think you just have to try and let me take the lead and not sort of tell me that every direction is incorrect because I'm pretty good at this, but of course not perfect.
	All right.
	Thanks, Emil.
	Thanks, Emil.
	Have yourself a great night.
	All right.

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