Horseradish

I agree with this, and I want to clarify that when I am talking to someone, I find it distracting when they are looking at something else. If they are just averting their eyes but I feel that they are listening or engaged in what they're saying, just uncomfortable with eye contact, I don't find that rude, but I wonder why they feel uncomfortable with eye contact.

I wonder if these kind of obligations in their life make them resistant to doing school-related things. I know while growing up I was most of the time resistant to anything forced on me. I remember a time when I was about to do my homework, and then my dad came and told me to do my homework, and then I didn't, because I felt a strong urge to not do something just because someone told me to, I only wanted to do it as my own choice. You said "I like to give the impression" which is the same as lying. If your kids drops something on your toe, and it hurts, and you "give the impression" that you are " physically tough-as-nails and impervious to harm", then you are telling your kids that it doesn't hurt, which is the opposite of the truth, which is a lie.

I find this topic interesting, I have some thoughts and observations, I don't know what the right answer is. I do find it distracting when you are talking to someone and they are looking elsewhere, and I also try not to look elsewhere myself, and when I sometimes do, I feel that I have been rude. I usually like eye contact while talking, but I heard somewhere that it's good to give the other person a chance to took at you, so I sometimes look away for a few seconds, not at something but off into the distance. I think this seems to make people more comfortable, but I'm not really sure.

It doesn't seem likely that someone would have done something that had zero effect. I don't find it believable that it had no effect on you. You also said that it wouldn't be a punishment if it didn't bother you, but you say it had no effect. I was wondering that, if it bothered me because I couldn't argue with it. However I think what bothers me is what I said earlier, that children don't have the same level of moral responsibility, so I don't think they should be punished. This affectation is a lie to your children though. Leading up to now, what kind of things have they been forced to do in the past, or even right now? Are they forced to go to school? It does sound frustrating for you. What are they experiencing? Have you talked to them about it?

Sorry I'm a bit confused, you asked for them to pick something they want to get better at, but they don't want to do the thing they picked?

If these punishments had zero effect on you, then why did you parents do it? If it was completely ineffective, what was the point? This post bothers me, but I'm not sure why. I know I disagree with it, but I'm not sure where. After some thinking, I think this post bothers me because children are not full moral agents, their brains have not finished developing yet, so I don't think punishing them in kind is appropriate to their brain development. The other thing that I knew bothered me right away was "I also like to give the impression (not just to my children) that I am physically tough-as-nails and impervious to harm." Why would you want to do that? You are not tough-as-nails and impervious to harm, why would you want to give your children an impression of yourself as an adult that is false?

I think they might be less likely to participate, but that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. They would have happy lives and display it to people around them, and some of those people might become curious and try to find out more. I think not fitting in is a good theory. I have a low ACE score of 2, and I might have said 1 before FDR, minimizing my memory of past negative feelings. The Daniel Mackler theory kind of made sense to me, until I saw the high scores other people posted. But the not fitting in thing makes sense. That is definitely something I felt. I never fit in with any peer groups or cliques, any group I spent time with I never felt that I was actually "in" the group. I only ever had one friend growing up who I thought wouldn't abandon me for another friend if they had the chance. I didn't feel understood by my parents. I spent a lot of time alone in my room listening to music and writing in my journal or reading. And then in college while I was busy partying and hanging out with lots of people I stopped writing in my journal or thinking about my inner world. And then when I failed out, I stopped hanging out with all those people, and I was alone again when I went to a group therapy thing which led me to podcasts and I discovered FDR.

Taking things away was one of the main ways my parents would punish us. Yelling was the other. When they took things away I felt angry and helpless. It was mostly video games, computer, or TV. They would disconnect the cable or internet, or take away the console or the cables for it. Most of this was around doing the dishes or some sort of cleaning. It usually felt unfair, because none of us 4 kids would usually do the dishes, but we would all be punished. I remember my mom saying how great we had it and that she had to work all day. And we had to go to school all day, and not get paid, and we were stuck in this house, it didn't feel like a fair trade-off that we had to do all the housework. And I am tempted to omit the detail that my dad was a stay at home dad, except for sort of part time work helping my mom's business. But dad, who is the parent who I tend to idealize, he wasn't working or going to school full time. So he fits into the "you kids should do a bunch of cleaning" picture even less. I just remember I had no energy to do dishes. And no desire. I did have the desire to be helpful, but that was squashed whenever something was forced on me. I remember once I was about to do my homework, a very rare occurrence for me, and then my Dad came and told me to do my homework. And I didn't, I remember having a bit of an inner battle between my desire to do it and not wanting to do it now that he told me to. And, the few times I used my innate desire to be helpful, like wash the dishes or something, Dad would sarcastically say something like "Oh you're doing the dishes this one time? Woooow that's soooo impressive". Wow Ruben, that sounds really twisted. I don't know the word for it, but it was probably emotionally confusing, and the mutual smiles and eye-rolling sounds like you had to stifle emotions and fake yourself a lot. Buying something with your own hard work, except that hard work was forced on you. And then you can't even keep the products of your forced labor. How has this affected you? Did it change your relationship with money or work or anything like that?

I find encores so weird, I feel uncomfortable to be in a crowd at a music gathering, because they have become expected.

What came to mind for me was similar to what David said. But for me it was something like society blaming the victim. A bunch of people's faces were criticizing you, but ignored the violence against you. What do you mean they would come after your mom? Do you mean the faces criticizing you? Or one of the guys who tried to rob you who ran away? You posted this dream awhile ago, have you figured anything out since then?

Mine last two donations still showed up as CAD for me, but I'm subscribed, so maybe it won't change for me.

From what I understand of Stef's experience, he came out of childhood seeing no evidence that anyone at all cared that he was abused. When he was in his late teens, people called the cops on him for having a quiet party, but no one called the cops on him for his entire childhood while his mom beat him. I think Stef's argument is that if the cops were called, the child would have evidence that at least one person out there cared that he was being hit. And that makes sense to me. And the idea that it could be worse to call the cops, well it could be better too. We don't have any studies about what happens when the cops show up. I think his point is to do something that the child can see. And maybe that's not calling the cops, maybe it's sending a carrier pigeon with a note to the child. Who knows. I struggle with what to do also, the family across the street used to get in screaming matches in the middle of the night. One night it was going on for a long time, I didn't know if I should call the cops. Eventually, someone else did, and then I felt guilty because I thought I should have done it. I don't know if calling the cops helped the family, but I haven't been woken up in the middle of the night by them since then. I still hear some screaming during the day, but less. I don't know if the kids have been helped, but maybe they have just a little.

That's right, I was going to mention that too. It wasn't just a one-time thing, which would have been horrible enough. They found it acceptable to do it over and over for years of your life. I don't think anyone said Heron didn't place blame on the parents. However Heron shifted the blame from what PetrKL feels most horribly about, what made him feel possibly the most scared he's been in his life. Heron said "Perhaps the Perhaps the issue of a possible lack of connection with your parents on their part, leading to your inability to talk to them about what was bothering you." Heron place blame on Petr's parents for *something*, but not for what Petr found most terrifying and horrible. And what Heron said is possibly a secondary issue, but he dismissed the main issue that Petr wanted to talk about.

PetrKL, I'm really sorry this happened to you. It sounds like a horrible, painful memory. No, you are not overreacting. This would not even be appropriate among adults who could process what was happening (unless they had agreed to it). But definitely not if it was your parents. And it happened repeatedly. And just to point out, maybe this is really obvious, but they could have gone to the living room they wanted so badly and had sex there, it's not like they were out of options. I don't think not feeling comfortable enough to talk to his parents about is the real issue. PetrKL said in his original post that he looked online and found that having sex in front of children falls in the sexual abuse category. So sexual abuse is the real issue. What was lacking in their parenting was that they had sex in front of him. I don't think you miscommunicated in your first post, you were quite clear. What you did was tell PetrKL that his terror was unfounded, that it was a minor issue and only about a slight lack of comfort in a relationship. I hope that you can figure out why you want to downplay this, BlackHeron, maybe something in your history. But I think you are adding to PetrKL's abuse in this thread.

It didn't come across as mean, it just came across as an assumption rather than a fact. Also, I'm a heterosexual woman, and I'm not repulsed by the idea of gay women or gay men. However this might be different than for a man. I have read about a study where heterosexual women have a sexual response to pictures of attractive men and women, where heterosexual men only have a sexual response to pictures of attractive women. However I haven't read anywhere that heterosexual men are naturally repulsed by gay sex, but I also haven't researched it. Do you know what book you read that in? Edit: The reason I care about this distinction in your post is that it might be the difference between some sort of cultural aversion to gay sex, versus a natural aversion. Maybe if you previously were disgusted by gay sex, and now you aren't, it might not have to do with your sexuality, but maybe you gained some sort of empathy for gay men? I am not sure, and I haven't listened to episode 2701 so I'm not sure how that conversation went.