cherapple

You're welcome.

This is what I've done: Journal, journal, and journal some more. Listen to podcasts and journal about the "parts," voices, and ideas that come up while I'm listening. Read books, talk honestly to people around me and see what happens, journal about it. If I don't want to talk honestly, have the conversation in my journal, as I think it would go, or as I'd like it to go. Record childhood memories and how they affected me and made me feel. Have conversations with my therapist or other kind person (myself) in my journal. Internalize the voice of kindness, acceptance, and curiosity that he or she has provided. Have loads of conversations with people who are also working on self-knowledge. Continue this process for three to five years, or indefinitely.

That is the fear, isn't it? That if we delve too deeply into ourselves, we get lost in ourselves? The truth is, we lose ourselves when we stay on the surface.

When you attack my understanding, I no longer care what you are saying.

Is it reasonable for the bulk of philosophy to take place in books and text?

You are the one who said the fight-or-flight mechanism will get in the way of reason.

I second what James said. If you can talk to your wife about your childhoods, that is the way to go. It's not about politics, anarchy, religion, or any of the other infinite surface issues that couples argue about and split up over. It's about the ways in which your own unresolved childhoods are coming out as defensive behaviors and affecting your relationship with each other and your child. You won't be able to fully see each other, or your child, until you are willing to see yourselves—particularly your child selves. What do you plan to do if you divorce? Do you plan to take your child away from his mother? Or do you plan to share custody and give your son an option of having a home at least part-time where he is respected and treated well? I'm sure you're thinking through the options, but I am writing from the perspective and uncomfortable position of one who chose divorce. I did not foresee all the consequences of my choice. They will play out, for good or bad, over the rest of my life, my children's lives, and their children's lives. I hope the balance is for good, or I would not have made the choice I did. If I could go back, I would try harder to connect with my children's father with skills that I have now that I didn't have three and a half years ago, but given that I married him in order to exile my child self, my only choice in relation to him was and is to forget myself. He's defensive, angry, blaming, and shaming about me remembering my history. He chooses family—mine as well as his—over me. Once I found people who were remembering their histories, however, there was no going back to forgetting. I wouldn't want to. I don't want to be the parent who insists my own children forget. It's a very difficult and devisive situation, and I'm sorry to see anyone, any child, going through it. If you can in any way reach your wife, exhaust every effort to do so.

If you are using text in order to avoid spoken interactions, then you are not avoiding fight-or-flight. You are enacting it. I'm not saying you're doing that, but I have. From the moment I learned how to read, I sought comfort in text. That wasn't the fault of speech. That was the fault of the mean people I grew up around. The way to handle fight-or-flight in spoken interactions is to speak with kind people—a therapist, friends, people on the board—and talk about the fear. Then you learn to speak comfortably in real time about your thoughts and feelings.

I highly recommend these videos. They provide a top-notch view into what a happy, successful, FDR, RTR relationship can look like. Steve and Courtney publically share three and a half years worth of relationship experiences, separately and as a couple, with more to come. The second video in particular, "A Non-Philosopher Gets With a Philosopher," had me smiling, laughing—and crying. I give them loads of admiration for the quality of their relationship, and for starting this series in order to share their process of getting to success.

A search on "negotiation" turns up these: FDR1513 Negotiations - A Role-Play FDR1491 Sunday Show Oct 25 2009, "negotiations and disappointment" FDR1276 Negotiations and Empathy - A Conversation One sign of the amount of human damage in the world is how threatened people feel in their personal relationships at the prospect of negotiation.

Are you listening to the listener conversations? Are you listening to your feelings, and differentiating which of them actually belong to (benefit) you, and which belong to (benefit) your mother? It's a long process to sort all of this out, which is one of the reasons for taking a break from family, to give yourself time to find out who you are, differentiated from who your family wants you to be. You don't have to explain your choice to anyone. The goal is to understand the truth for yourself. Your parents can and will come to their own understand, and if they aren't asking you any questions, it shows that they prefer telling stories, rather than doing any work to find out the actual truth of who you are and what you want and need.

Awesome. I look forward to listening!

My experience matches that. Beware of compulsive "helpers" and of your own need to help. If the need has the strength of compulsion, then it's a helpless part trying to compensate for what it's lacking.

Part of your confusion may lie with the fact that it's "the argument from morality," not "the argument for morality." This is when people say something is "wrong" because they want it to be wrong, and they use morality as a manipulation to get you to self-attack and stop doing what they don't want you to do. They're arguing that your actions are morally wrong; however, they usually want to exempt themselves from the rule they're making.

Welcome, Alex. I'm sorry to start with a response to Daisy on your introductory thread. You are doing a lot of difficult and admirable self-work. I would be careful not to own "your" anxiety. Own it in the sense that you feel it, but not in the sense that you chose it or inflicted it upon yourself. Anxiety can be such a difficult and painful emotion that carves your brain into "fight-or-flight" mode. In my experience, relaxing into myself has been like climbing a double Mt. Everest, but I started at 41 and you're starting at 21. I think the best thing you can do for your younger brother is what you're already doing. Give him an example of self-work like he's seeing nowhere else. Perhaps you could even talk to him about what you're doing, and if you decide to leave, the memory will stick with him and at some point he will come to you. He may not be able to understand or process it now, but you an be sure some part of him will understand, even if he's not able to be fully conscious of it. It's really, really difficult, but you want to give him an example of someone who wants self-knowledge, rather than of someone who avoids it. If you stay behind for him, he will know that you've sacrificed yourself for him, and a part of him will likely feel guilty and resent it. You didn't bring him into this world. Your parents did. You are not responsible for him, or for saving him. Most of all, you want your brother to be able to someday be responsible for himself. You can only hope to do that by being that—for yourself. Thanks for sharing yourself here.

Daisy, is the anxiety that you feel about leaving your mother hers, or yours? Is the duty yours, do you willingly and gladly choose it, or is the duty one that your mother wants you to have? Who is benefiting by you not "moving forward"? How do you benefit by staying? It sounds like a really mind-fogging situation. It's not your fault that your mother chose your father, a man who left her, and you don't owe her your presence in his absence, although she may want you to believe you do. Have you talked to her about the possibility of moving out, and how you feel a duty to stay?

Maybe this has already been said, but determinists say "Stef doesn't listen or give us a chance to speak!" Well, does Stef have free will to make this choice, or not? If he's pre-determined to interrupt and overwhelm the conversation, then why do determinists bother to keep trying to convince him? It must be pretty frustrating to be locked in a pre-determined battle of disagreement that they don't have the choice to escape. Hmm, where has this situation happened before?

How do the people that you like handle disagreement, and do you like that?

I'm very saddened that this would happen to the "bullet proof" man, who has been such a huge example to so many—of fighting the cancer of the false self, of living each day as if it may be the last—and who has spoken so often and so passionately about the importance of holding death close. It seems like the most terrible injustice. I'm so sorry, Stef. I share in the hope of the good prognosis.

The problem with non-judgment lies in childhood. A child must be able to judge who is good company for him, and who is bad, and he must be free to get away from those who are bad for him. If a child has bad parents, he cannot escape. If his parents do not teach him that it is perfectly right and good to be able to escape bad people, due to their own insecurity about being bad people, and also by forcing their child to be around other bad people, this teaches the child an obligation to not judge. This "obligation" potentially paralyzes him for the rest of his life from knowing and finding good people who will love and support him. Non-judgment paralyzes children from knowing how to love and support themselves. They become paralyzed adults, living in limbo land where "everyone is good."

Kids skip college, blaze different career paths Zero Tuition College and other college alternatives featured in USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/04/21/avoiding-college-avoiding-debt/1987309/

What about your girlfriend or the relationship is worth the effort? I'm not saying she isn't worth it, but what do you like about her or the relationship that you want to keep or make work?

You'd ridicule your wife in front of your children with that option. I wouldn't recommend it. It will create insecurity in your children, having a mother that is worthy of ridicule and wondering whether they'll be ridiculed for being wrong next. If your wife senses ridicule from you, it will likely push her more toward the comfort of religion. If you suspect that she's lying to you and manipulating you and the children, how can you even begin to have conversations about truth and honesty? Responding to her with your own manipulations won't solve the problem. Have you considered couple's counseling?

You say a lot about your girlfriend, but very little about you, which says to me that you believe that fixing her will fix the relationship. I can imagine she might feel some resentment about that. Are you in therapy? Would your girlfriend be willing to go to therapy with you? And what is your history with helping others and managing insecurity and defensiveness in others, specifically with siblings and parents?

What does it have to do with FDR? Each of us makes our lives about philosophy and discussion, or not.