cherapple

I liked the concepts portrayed, and the man's presentation of them, but I didn't like the woman. What did you like about the video?

Have you listened to the podcasts on social anxiety?

For me, lack of interest in movies comes from feeling like life was a movie, one that I wasn't part of. I was the passive audience, and everyone else got to play parts. Sitting in front of a movie, especially one that I don't enjoy (which is most of them because most of them are similar) reminds me of that passive feeling of watching other people live. There's no possibility of connection between me and them. I don't get any input. I can't express thoughts, feelings, or preferences. And nothing I say or do will have any impact on the people I'm watching. That pretty much describes my childhood, and much of my adulthood, prior to self-knowledge and philosophy. Why would I want to spend any more time like that? If I watch a movie with someone — an intelligent, curious, empathetic, thoughtful person — discussing it afterwards can be grand joy and fun. But I'd still rather be talking than sitting and staring at a screen. I once heard people in modern society described as "the people who stare."

People who come here to post "you're wrong!" in order to relieve themselves of fear and anger might want to slow down and read for a while. (Not that I've never been guilty.) It's probably those very people that you fear, and you're not being one of them, so welcome! Kind people will not expect you to know everything.

If a person's actions are chosen in response to present circumstances, they are rational. If a person has not processed his past and still responds to the world as if he's living out his childhood — in which he was forced to live in the company of irrational people who had near-infinite power over him, and who used that power to harm (abuse) HIS capacity for rationality — his actions are irrational. An irrational person's main method of interaction lies in manipulation, a repetition of the way his parents treated him. A rational person uses negotiation (or escape, when the other person is irrational and negotiation is impossible) to achieve and create real, present-day connections. I've said before: Judgment of others must be allowed. To remove it removes a child's — and later an adult's — capacity to judge whose company is good for him and whose company is harmful to him. It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. ~Frederick Douglass If you think that everyone is good, it is not possible to be rational, because it isn't logically true. People hurt each other and abuse each other all the time, especially making victims of the most vulnerable and easy targets (children). Those who can't, weren't, or aren't allowed to judge are put at risk of becoming vulnerable and easy targets for life. Either targets for life, or abusers for life — because non-judgment of others, no matter what they do, leads to non-judgment of oneself. Which is what most proponents of non-judgment want: A pass to commit whatever harms or wrongs they desire. Mistakes are one thing. Paving the way for wrong-doing is another.

What do you think about the idea of looking at it as a gift every time a woman tells you No? That's not to say it won't be difficult to hear, and it won't hurt, but that's one less woman for you to get involved with and have it not work out. You don't want the ones who tell you no, anyway. They're being up front and honest right away that they're looking for something else. They may not know you, and if not, they're saying they don't want to know you. There's no greater expression of a lack of curiosity than "No" (depending upon how it's expressed). My thoughts: "Wow, thank you very much for being so clear and allowing me to move on to someone who might actually want to know me." Next! (With a smile.)

You could talk directly to the therapist about your concerns. Say that you are an atheist, you are concerned that his or her religious beliefs may affect your therapy, and ask whether that will be a problem for the therapist. The response you get will help you decide whether it will be a problem for you. Make sure to have this discussion in a free consultation.

Do you anticipate that you won't have good friends or a spouse? If family is all you have in cases of emergency, then it's likely that family caused that very situation of isolation—from which they later benefit by "coming to your aid" and calling it virtue. It's like that saying: The government breaks your legs, hands you crutches, and says, "See how much we're helping you."

I would say that you continue to think about your family because of the lack of resolution to the conflict. When I have conflicts that I can't resolve — either because I no longer want to talk to the person in the situation, or because every time I try to talk to them, emotions escalate — the conversations that I don't (or can't) have often continue in my head, sometimes for years. The not-present person becomes "a voice in my head that just won't shut up." The conversation repeats and goes in circles like a broken record, raising over and over all the anxiety and anger that I felt with the person, but couldn't effectively express. It can be pretty maddening. Is the problem with thinking about your family anything like that? What I've learned to do is journal the conversation. I find it easier to break the repetition when I write it down and make it in some way tangible. I engage with the person in my imagination, saying all the rational things and expressing all the feelings that I either am not able, or wasn't able, to get across to the actual person. It's kind a role play with the voice in my head, where I play myself as I'd like to be in the conversation (calm, curious, rational), and I engage in my imagination with the person who has inflicted their irrationality on me. As I grow more skilled in have self-conversations that involve curiosity and rationality, the voices themselves become more relaxed and rational, even if the people themselves never do. Does that make sense? See the "You Are Not Alone" podcast, Internal Family Systems therapy, and any mecosystem or role-play podcasts here that you can find in a search on those words. If you need links or references, I'll provide some.

Only if you actually have a relationship do tough times make it stronger. If you can say to your family, "I haven't been enjoying my time with you," or "I've had a tough time in my relationship with you," and they react with curiosity and attempts to make it better, then your relationship grows stronger. If they reject your experience -- by saying, as you did above, that "those were not really tough times" -- so that you don't enjoy your time with them again, in the act of trying to connect honestly with them (and they accuse you of being dishonest, or even mistaken), then this reveals that a relationship doesn't exist. There's only dust. No diamonds.

If you dislike your family, and they expect you to hang around and take it, they ARE your tough times. That's the opposite of coming through for you. That's them expecting you to come through for them, at whatever the cost to you.

A related episode from the Voluntary Life podcast: "Why Your Gym Membership is 300 Times More Expensive Than You Think" http://www.thevoluntarylife.com/2013/07/115-why-your-gym-membership-is-300.html There are several $10/month gyms around here. I don't belong to one at the moment, but I do pay $10/month for membership to a website for working out at home, usually five or more days per week using my own collection of basic equipment: www.dailyburn.com

So blatant, chilling, 1984.

I can't stand television, but this looks fascinating. Thank you for sharing it.

Can you give an example?

What do you say that elicits the light slap? And what emotion do you think women are trying to convey by it?

Science and technology: Sovryn Tech - https://soundcloud.com/sovryntech - "an anarchist-run show about science and technology, and how they can set you free"

The Renegade Variety Hour - http://therenegadevarietyhour.com/about/ - "Aims to disassociate from the misinformation that plagues society, and move beyond the mental confines that imprison us." It's about whatever is on their minds presently concerning liberty. (I had said School Sucks, but I see now that you have that one, or perhaps you added it after I suggested it. Who knows what I missed while reading on my phone!)

If it's not possible to transfer self-knowledge, is it possible to teach and transfer the skills of gaining self-knowledge? What about shared feelings? Can empathy experienced from others, and felt for others, make it possible to gain more self-understanding, and thus more self-knowledge? I'm not sure whether these answer your question. Why is it important to you to make this point and to have it be agreed with? In what context do you ask?

There's the answer to your original question. You don't have to do those things anymore. You don't have to take the horrible, soul-murdering labels of "criminal" and "murderer" anymore. (Jesus, that's terrible.) Forget what it does to them if you're not there for them. What did it – does it, and will it – do to you to feel pity (and then guilt) for them?

What would your parents say in answer to your question? What did they say when you were a child?

Here's another podcast you might want to listen to: The Hell of Attempting Connection http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_720_The_Hell_Of_Attempted_Connection.mp3 The reason for your struggles with attachment can be found in this statement: "My relationship with my mother was exceptionally close but also abusive." I wonder who would define your relationship with her as "close." You or her? If she was abusing you, you would have experienced her as the opposite of close to you. I also would not define the "attachment disorder" as yours, but hers. Don't accept "disorders" upon yourself that were inflicted by someone else when you were a child. You were born with a perfect ability to attach, and your mother prevented that from happening. She forced you to attach to abusiveness. You describe the "disorder" as "the tendency to attach in a deep emotional way to someone when those feelings are not reciprocated or falsely reciprocated." That is a perfect definition of your relationship with your mother. She left you with a huge hole of want and need for healthy attachment, and relationship scars where she should have instilled relationship skills. She left you worse than in the dark about how to find and build relationships. Be gentle with yourself. Place disorder and dysfunction where they belong – not on you. Give them back to the person who inflicted them on you. You didn't choose them or inflict them upon yourself. You would never have done such a thing to yourself, had you been given a choice.

The video doesn't work for me.

Stef talked in a recent Sunday show about submitting himself to a higher power: Reality. He has also talked about how his therapist was mystical, and that this wasn't a problem for him. I think what he most wanted was someone with emotional intelligence and an appreciation for the importance of childhood history. I used to have a hard time when therapists disagreed with me, but it's not a huge issue anymore. I wouldn't work with a Christian, but it's just about impossible to find a therapist who isn't somewhat mystical. I don't need my therapist to completely agree with me anymore. I just need her to offer emotional insight into, support for, and understanding of my child self. Other than that, she has no control over my choices or beliefs. That's up to me and reality. I take from her what I find value in, and I understand that any mysticism is more about her own anxiety avoidance than about me. Even the best therapists have defenses, and you're bound to come up against them in sessions. The question is how willing they are to put those defenses down when they work with you. In moments of conflict, do they respond with justifications and insistence, or are they willing to explore the emotions that are coming up for you? It's easy to get a sense of a therapist's defenses very quickly by asking them about their own childhood and their past and present relationship with their parents. If they show sympathy toward themselves, they will be capable of having sympathy and curiosity for you.

The false self attacks and smashes the false self.