MysterionMuffles

What would art look like when there's less dysfunction in the world such as crime and child abuse? I feel like some of the most moving pieces of art are the ones that hit you in the feels and I wonder if all that would still be possible if there was a huge reduction of dysfunction in the world.

I've recently started a blog called Your Write to Live, which is dedicated to providing practical writing tips you can apply to your real life and not just any possible works of fiction or writing endeavours you may have in mind. My latest post is The Goal, Motivation, Conflict Chart in which I share one of the most essential writing exercises for gaining clarity on a character's motives and desires, in the hopes that I can also help you use the chart for your own life. I'd appreciate if you guys can tell me what you think here in this thread (but preferably on Wordpress to drive up some traffic for me) and let me know if you'll put it to any use.

Until I realize that I am one of the few people who are living on principle. So many times I've been told to abandon my "ideals," because I think people sense that that's how I have more integrity than them. At least in terms of poison people. I still have a long way to go, but in comparison to the many dead people out there, I think they want people like us to believe that our ideals and anger are only going to destroy us. Now I understand how anger CAN be healthy if directed towards the right source. It does no good to hold onto of course, but it's very helpful while you're fleeing destructive environments. So I am really glad to have heard from you that you're out on your own now, away from your mother, and making a living and something out of yourself. Words cannot describe the tremendous pride I have for you for stepping up to the challenge and do well for yourself despite of your history.

Yeah this podcast came up the right time in my life. Because despite the anger helping create psychological defenses from other assholes, I am also losing some hope in life.

I think you should read My Theory on the Keyboard Warrior. Tell me if it rings to you or not.

right that's why I said "counter" inner-father--like the ideal type of father I wish I had as a child and the type of father I want to be who is a better influence than my actual one. Thanks once again for opening this topic up! I know it's okay to notice beauty in public, and it's hard to quantify when my eyes linger for too long, but needless to say when I find myself desiring them too desparately, I know in that split second that I should look away and go about my business. At least now I do.

How was difference of opinion handled in your childhood?

I breathe.

I KNEW that name was familiar. Thanks for the share of my post Yeravos, I'll be sure to subscribe to yours too!

Hey everybody, I would like to share with you my new blog site Your Write to Live! This blog is dedicated to sharing practical writing tips that you can also apply for the express purpose of self knowledge. I will also be adding short stories I've written all for your viewing pleasure for FREE!!! For now, I have posted a story called Heart of the Warrior, a Dungeons and Dragons story I wrote for my cousins based on the characters they created. I would be honored if you checked my content out and left me some feedback either here, or preferably on the pages themselves to generate some traffic!

wow good job maintaining the original style and such! did you also translate the in between comments Stef had made between points or added your own?

Both interactions with your mother and your hypothetical daughter creeped me the hell out. The sexual predation of children is so fucked up, but to incestralize it triples, no it quadruples the creep factor. Thank you for sharing your experiences, it has reminded me of a revelation I've discovered in myself lately. My father, I don't think, has ever molested either me or my siblings, but the mere the fact that he is so open with his perversion with women in public has had an influence on me. He often greets a teenage cousin of mine by calling her beautiful and saying nice legs and stuff. Fuckin weirdo! Excuse my excessive french here but he really sickens me to my stomach. I even recall watching old home videos from when he used to record everything on camera. One of them started off with a shot of all the bare legs of my mom and her sisters, and her laughing away how she wanted him to aim the camera higher. For years I've struggled with setting aside my own perversion when I see a beautiful woman in public. I used to be unable to help but stare, but since I learned where this disgusting behaviour came from, it's painful for me to even continue now that I have a counter-inner-father telling me to stop oggling that beautiful girl in the dress by the cash register. I know I can treat women with much more respect and dignity than my father ever has and ever will. The mere fact that I even took care of a little girl (my neice) for a year and a half has also denormalized my perversion because I've begun to just empathize with little girls and women. How hard it must be for them to dress comfortably in hot weather and to think that perverts out there oggle them--or worse, parents let them dress more than just comfortably in public, but to the point of near sluttiness when they haven't even developed yet. Shit, I was at a book store last week and I saw two prepubescent girls with short shorts that might as well have been undersized underwear. Then I saw their mother who wore like a pound of make up on her face. The apple of vanity, it seems, does not fall too far from the tree. I was so shocked by this that I almost had an axiety attack in public, had it not been for running unenexepectedly into a friend of mine. Because of the time I've spent with my neice, I always see the inner child in everybody, not just women, and it helps me empathize with them better, knowing that we were all once innocent children. The fact that I've treated her as an intelligible individual and not just a cute cuddly little girl like most of my family does, I think and I hope is going to help her understand her value beyond her looks. For a two year old, she is much more intelligent than her parents, I think, and the amount of conversation I'm capable of having with her, I hope sets her on a path of higher pursuits beyond feeding the narcissism of her mother who just parades her around as the pride and joy of attractiveness she no longer possesses. I also have my own hypothetical daughter. In the young adult novel I'm writing, I'm writing through the perspective of a 14 year old girl who I treat like my fictional daughter. She has all the fiestiness and wit I would have for my own daughter, but unfortunately living under the roof of an abusive mother, and an immasculated father. Through her POV, it has helped me tremendously in just imagining how much more care and compassion young girls require. I started writing this book with the question of: my high school life sucked, and how much worse would it be if I was a girl? So far I think it has helped me undo the propaganda that teenage girls are evil harlotts. I always knew it wasn't true, but because of all the rejection I've received for them back in the day made me develop a deep seated hatred for them. It wasn't until my adult life, most recently, Ive learned that my fear and hatred for some women has stemmed from the relationship with my mother. Surprise surprise huh? It should've been obvious all along, but it wasn't. I was blinded by all the things I was meant to see as positive from her, the whole hovering over my shoulder stuff and using me as a pseudo husband to talk about vulnerable stuff in her life--where on the flipside when I came to her with emotional problems, I would just be gaslighted into thinking my concerns didn't matter. And I have just recently, within a year, have had dating experiences where in two women (and one platonic female friend) have all exuded destructive qualities my mother possesses. Especially the stuff you shared in your post about narcissistic mothers. Recognizing the parallels between these women and my mother was scary as hell, but man has it helped me to better shield myself. The art of penis negotiation has gotten strong in me now that I am able to reject the advances of such women, or in some cases, not to cling onto them despite the rejection. My new mantra: if I notice any similar destructive patterns in the women I date in parallel to my mother...I RUUUUUUUUUUN!!! RUN LIKE THE WIND!!! Anyways thanks again Joel, your posts have been huge eye openers into my own life this morning.

Well! That was an informative hour. I got to #17 and surmised that my own mother has many of these traits. The only ones I'm sure she doesn't possess is having the golden child and scapegoat child paradigm. My siblings and I are allies so she can't use us against each other.

You don't post too often, Joel, but when you do, goddamn is it powerful! This reminds me of my mom hovering over my shoulder so to speak, when it comes to my food choices. I have a heart condition so that is partly why she may say things such as "you're eating pork sausages? All that fat?! Think about your heart." "Hot sauce? Think about your heart." Oh, my favourite is before I could even crack my first beer at a party, "what about your heart?" Yes mom...what ABOUT my heart? You spend an awful amount of time trying to warn me about food or exercise because of my heart condition, but what about my heart in the emotional sense? You ever stop to think about that? Of course not. All matters of the heart are truly foreign to you despite of the ample time you've spent with me going to check ups. Anyways that sounds like a conversation I should be having with her, thanks for the prompt idea! quick question though...what happened to SHem's posts? I just see a default avatar and ... as a name with empty posts

Yeah Joel thank you very much for sharing. Man...your words are freaky in that they really resonated with me. What were the events and thoughts that made you want to think about this more deeply and watch this old VHS? While I never watched shows like this as a kid or like Barney or anything...I had this same feeling seeing other kids playing during recess when I had no friends for 1st and 2nd grade. I always wished I could join, but I too was not modeled any social skills that could help me feel free in just going up to these other kids and asking if I could join. This paragraph filled me with sadness especially when you said you realize you couldn't go back...and even knowing that intellectually, emotionally I still feel stunted by this realization in my daily life. And when the children explains to the elephant why what she did was a bad idea they bluntly say, "I understand your intention, but the way you fixed it was wrong." After knocking over a fence and telling the train what happened the train just says, "oh, and did you learn anything?" Isn't it funny that TV shows usually have the answer in how to communicate with each other peacefully, yet almost nowhere in the world do you see this kind of openness, compassion and curiousity? You know what...this reminds me. Remember the conversations we had a couple months ago about my interest in MLP? I'm not sure if I mentioned this when I was geeking out about its objective merits. The subjective merits of My Little Pony, I think are actually more important and other Bronies should look into--but the subjective reasons I watch this cartoon is because what you said here captures how I feel. It's like I'm watching with my adult self. My child self is getting the touchy feely emotional show he didn't get after school, or hell at home, which is why he based all of his value in life through media. My adult self while watching helps rationalizes the morals taught in the episode and also gets inspired by the writing at the conscious level, while unconsciously my child self sits back and lets the drama play out for his own entertainment. Together, I feel like both subsets of myself interact in a way of reparenting myself in saying, "yes this is entertaining, but what have we learned today?" Even as a kid I remember digging deep for meaning in what I watched, but as I mentioned before, I was horribly disappointed in not finding it watching stupid empty shows like Dragon Ball Z. ANYWAYS I'm gonna think about what you've provided here and see if I can apply that to my life and my interest in MLP a bit deeper. Wouldn't want to dominate the thread with ponderings of my self as I also do want some answers to the questions I asked at the beginning of my post. Thanks for this post, it helped me discover a few more realizations in myself!

RTR! ...with a bit of a conclusion jumping. But close!

Probably not the most philosophical thing to do, but I usually mimic their accent and mock them with ridiculous refusals. I get offers for duct cleaning and I make jokes about how my house doesn't have vents or that I live in an alleyway that gets phone service.

Dear God...yep. It always strikes me when high functional people still act out some of their childhood dysfunctions in their private time. You would think the success and meaingful work would replace that, but I guess not.

that's a good observation!

This has been presented so many times already. If you find someone you fancy, just start PMing them.

My God YES, kahvi! That's all it takes; a gentle reminder to BE gentle. When I read your post, I felt myself cringe remembering how my neice's mom yells at her saying "you don't hit mommy, THAT'S NOT NICE!" Without even realizing that my neice is picking up all these violent behaviours from her and her husband. That's all they ever do, they just say that's not nice, that's not nice, so the morality infliction has begun without them ever questioning their own code of ethics, or possibly lack there of. Kahvi, reading posts like yours give me tremendous hope to know that there are quality women out there who logically understand spanking children is wrong without even having to come to FDR to learn that. We ALL know it was wrong, but there's only very few of us who are still able to be conscious of it and work to do different--and better--than with what we were raised with. I was on a date recently with a woman who had no problem with her parents yelling at her and threatening to hit her with a slipper. She said that they never actually did hit, the threat was enough, and whether it's true or not, she was excusing hostility. Which was not so ironic that she also shared with me her history with ex-boyfriends, one of which yelled his lungs out at her and she was only smart enough to know to end the relationship, but not so much to do any self work to understand how and why she let a man like that in her life in the first place. I gave her absolute empathy for her history in childhood and romantic relationships, but then I told her of the abuse I suffered under my ex-girlfriend's impulsive fist, and this woman laughed. I knew I had to end the date very soon after. The reason why I brought that up is because she was nearly as attractive as you are, (not quite, but I must say you are very pretty) and to me it begs the question as to how many quality women are out there? And how many of them have basic empathy and self knowledge, let alone have your level of physical attractiveness? I also bring this date experience because I want to know if you and your husband had these childhood and child rearing conversations before you got married. If so, how did that go? To me it looks like it went well, but I would like a few more details. Kevin, kudos to you for standing up to that woman and showing her that her looks aren't always gonna last. I got the impression that even if she has many years to go, at least you gave her the idea that her looks aren't always gonna get her out of everything. The compassion thing might be much more important for strangers because you should make a connection before you can make a change. Otherwise they'll just perceive it as you attacking them on their illusions instead of helping them understand that they ARE illusions. I don't speak from a very high level of authority because I often forget the compassion component as well to these kinds of conversations with potentially abusive parents, but then again I DID try with my neice's parents for 2 years--and I've learned that they are fundamentally broken are damned to deal with the effects of their shitty parenting in the future. I did my best, I really did, when I took care of my neice for them for a year and a half. I showed her enough difference of interaction to let her know that it doesn't always have to involve threats and punishment to get compliance. Much like you kahvi, my neice only complied with me when I was gentle and understanding. And I don't mean to say that she had bow to my will all the time or anything like that, she has denied my requests and I did take those moments personally, but I knew had to give her the space to assert her individuality. I just now have absolute sympathy that that kind of "rebellion" is not appreciated where she lives and it makes me tremendously sad. Sorry to make this about me, but that's just how well this thread has touched me deeply! OOOOH and to add because I only read the first two posts before I felt compelled to reply: Socratic Method might be better to short circuit people's thinking instead of throwing facts at them. It is my belief that for anyone to listen to you, you must empty their cups before you fill them. This method of questioning actually helps people undo their OWN illusions from simply hearing themselves reason out their thought patterns that may in fact turn out unreasonable. Compassion and the Socratic Method is what I think is gonna save the world, which is why I love the call in shows. Stef uses those two so effectively before going on his long rants and ultimately providing objective feedback.

I sure hope that it's not. Because if it's made up, it's propaganda that self knowledge and delving into your history doesn't stop. But look it took her years to break it off with Jung even as she was becoming a respectable psychologist herself. I hope it is as close to the true story because that would mean it's a realistic depiction of how hard it really is to undo the chains of our history--that we may sometimes lapse into behaviours that were brought upon our histories.

yes there needs to be more for short attention span people to whet their appetites before fully diving in.

but if he's a good parent he won't have to worry about that

You tell them the truth; your family are self destructive people and you don't want your kids to be influenced by them in any way.