Lians

Marriage is on the table and you've only met this girl twice? I don't think your friend cares much about your opinion.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-propose-1-billion-to-prepare-for-climate-change/2014/02/14/d18d3712-95a5-11e3-afce-3e7c922ef31e_story.html Obama's track record: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/18/president-obamas-taxpayer-backed-green-energy-failures/ Looks like Russia has a competitor.

I'll be there as well! Any attendees that would be willing to share a hostel room to cut down on travel costs, feel free to PM me!

You keep using the word contradiction. I don't think it means what you think it means. For Stef to contradict himself or make arbitrary exceptions, philosophically raised and abused children have to be put in the same category relative to the proposition. That's like putting people with no arms and NBA players in the same category relative to the ability to play basketball. The delineation here is empirical. Read up on child development and you'll see why my analogy is quite apt.

I'm a quarter of the way through, and so far, there's nothing new relative to the FDR audience. I got the book when it first came out because I consider it a valiant attempt to push the voluntary family movement forward. Daniel is not pulling any punches which makes for a really refreshing read!

Thank you for sharing this powerful dream! Before I share my thoughts, I'd like to point out a pattern that extends past the bounds of your dream. A tall, lithe quadruped that behaves like a pet, a Great Dane and your board name - sighthound. The image of a hunting dog is the first thing that popped up in my mind when I read your description of the creature. The Great Dane is a hunting breed. A hound refers to a dog bred for hunting. I don't know anything about your history with dogs so I'll rely on my own associations. Hunting dogs assist humans in the killing of animals. In a way, they're enablers. This, to me, is a sign of dissociative splitting. Whatever happens in the dream is related to an aspect of yourself that you're rejecting. Names are identifiers. The fact that you don't know their names may mean that they are references to generic types of people in your life. It may also mean that they only exist in your mind, hence why they don't need names. Human beings creating intelligence superior to their own is an absurd proposition unless you're talking about one's unconscious mind. It would make sense for the creature to have superior intelligence if it's actually a part of your psyche. Also, it makes no sense for a creature with such tremendous power to obey its human creator. The fact that it needs a gullible woman to fulfil its destructive nature is the first clear sign of enabling in your dream. Despite taking part in the creation of the creature, you don't assume any responsibility for it. You could have intervened at any point in your dream. Talk to the woman, reveal information about the creature, expose the plans of the man. However, you do no such thing. Instead, you sit there - almost as if you're invisible - and you passively wait for an outcome that you know to be inevitable. After she makes her decision, you feel suffocated and decide to run away. What are you running away from? Guilt? The creature can destroy the entire world. Where are you going to hide? You're locked out of the place where you live and end up sleeping on the roof. Your actions denied you access to your unconscious. In the end, you find comfort in a dog that is practically helpless relative to your own capacity to protect yourself. It's an absurd situation no matter how you look at it. It's good that your dream didn't end with an apocalypse. It means that you can still turn things around. The creature that is born with your help has the capacity to destroy your inner world. I think the dream is telling you that your future is doomed if you don't stop enabling corrupt and manipulative people. It's probably related to something that happened the day before you had it.

Excellent research! Here's a quote from a book called Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt (page 48, Kindle edition) that discusses the child's need for a physically present, emotionally available adult: I think Stef and Mike also have a presentation about day care in the works.

Pink Floyd - Mother Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb? Mother, do you think they'll like this song? Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls? Ooh ah, Mother, should I build the wall? Mother, should I run for president? Mother, should I trust the government? Mother, will they put me in the firing line? Ooh ah, Is it just a waste of time Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry. Mamma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true, Mamma's gonna put all of her fears into you, Mamma's gonna keep you right here, under her wing. She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing, Mamma's gonna keep baby cosy and warm. Oooh babe, Oooh babe, Oooh babe, Of course Mamma's gonna help build the wall. Mother, do you think she's good enough, for me? Mother, do you think she's dangerous, to me? Mother, will she tear your little boy apart? Ooh ah, Mother, will she break my heart? Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry. Mamma's going to check out all your girlfriends for you, Mamma won't let anyone dirty get through, Mamma's gonna wait up until you get in. Mamma will always find out where you've been, Mamma's gonna keep baby healthy and clean. Oooh babe, Oooh babe, Oooh babe, You'll always be baby to me.

Glad I could be of help! It was certainly a very powerful dream.

This trailer is profoundly disturbing.

Are you talking about humility or humiliation?

Having a map isn't helpful if you don't know where you are in relation to it. Your first reaction to your strong feelings is: "What do I do?" You're desperately looking for something that you can do in order to quell the internal turmoil. In my experience, that's never the right approach. You're looking for a map but only your feelings can tell you where you are on it. Listen to them. Stay with them. Explore them. You moved in with your parents and even started working for them. Even if the former was inevitable, you could have looked for a different job. You mention how much you're able to save by working for them, but you avoided the essential question: Compared to what? Let me offer a simple calculation. Suppose your goal is to save $10,000 before you move out. In your current job you're saving $300 a week and you'll be able to move out in roughly 33 weeks or 7.6 months. Let's assume that you'll only be saving $200 with a different job. The new rate of saving will get you to the goal in 50 weeks or 11.5 months. Four additional months of living with your parents? Not good. However, let's adjust this calculation for the time you spend with your family. With your current job, you're spending 24 hours a day around them. Assuming you'll be working 8 hours a day at your new job, you'll be spending only 16 hours with your family - 67% of what your current environment offers. Factoring this ratio in the previous calculation, you'll have to spend 7.6 months of family time with your current job and 7.7 with a new job, which is a difference of roughly 3 days. That's an insignificant cost compared to spending 33% of your day away from your abusers. You can, of course, work longer hours or get a second job. I'm not willing to accept that such a simple consideration is beyond the abilities of your conscious or even unconscious mind. That leaves us with a simple question: Why did you really decide to work for your parents? This question may bring up a lot of strong emotions in you. I'll advise you to listen to them without an agenda. Your feelings are your body's way of informing you about your environment, not signs of a disease that you must eradicate. I wish intellectual understanding was enough to clinch the case against your abusers but that's not how human beings operate. It's necessary but not sufficient. Once you process your feelings you'll have the choice - and hopefully motivation - to do what is right. Stef explained this idea in more detail during a recent call-in show: FDR 2601 (starting at 1 hour 20 mins): http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_2601_Wednesday_Show_29_Jan_2014.mp3 It's also one of the core principles behind mindfulness meditation (doing vs being mode). For more information: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-embrace-the-being-mode-of-mind-for-mindfuln.html http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Eight-Week-Finding-Peace-Frantic/dp/1609618955

I'll start with the immediate associations that I drew while reading your dream: Basement -> Lowest level in a house / smallest child -> Underground -> Death -> Zombies House -> Family The overweight gentleman and Jamie are somehow related since your dream associates them with the same symbol - the chair. The teacher is related to your family. Jessica Hamway's height, from the standpoint of a child, is a symbol for an older kid or a kid that simply appears older. There's a strong irrational streak in the dream. People are preparing to have a test while knowing that the zombies are coming. Your teacher sends you out to pick up a backpack in the middle of a zombie attack with no protest on your part. Later on, you worry about a pen while knowing that the zombies might come any time now. Not only that, you want to make sure that you're following the rules because you're afraid of being attacked. No matter how insane the situation, you want to conform to the norm. Has that been the case in your school years? Your family? Were you the good girl that did everything by the rules? You mentioned The Lottery, which from what I read in the Wiki is a story about conformity in the face of insanity. I find it quite interesting that you used "counting down" to describe people's anticipation of the attack. In your dream, they're certainly not panicking, which means they must be used to this insane situation, much like Japanese people are used to earthquakes. In other words, the zombie attack is a recurring event with a fixed pattern. Your teacher later confirms that by telling you, "It's not time yet." She knows when it's going to happen. Unless she's experienced this situation many times before, how would she know that? The recurring event could be a reference to school classes. There's a play of elevation in your dream. You start off at the lowest, underground level - the basement. You later move up a level by going to the surface - the front yard. If I'm right about the lowest level meaning the youngest child, moving up a level refers to growing up. Seeing as it's a teacher who sends you there, it may also mean graduating from school. Following this logic, the events that unfold after you get back may be your unconscious expectation of what's going to happen if you go back to study psychology. I don't know what's your association with Jessica, but she tries to stop you from going to the surface. Were you ever afraid of growing up an being on your own? Did your family/school make you scared of the outside world? Was the threat implicit in your parents' behaviour/attitude? Did they hold you back from growing up and becoming your own person? You see, before you go to the surface, everyone assumes the time of attack is very close. However, when you go back your teacher doesn't take the threat seriously any more. Given that you weren't attacked on the surface, this means that the zombies are merely a scare story. What was the atmosphere of the front yard compared to the basement? You meet Daniel in the front yard. Wouldn't that indicate that the house you're in belongs to your mother? Taking the time frame of the dream into consideration, you're in your mother's house as an older person. In the beginning, you say that you were a cross between a child and an adult, but not a teenager. That's a very interesting description. You could have said that you were younger. As I was reading your post, my immediate assumption was that you're a child in an adult's body or an adult in a child's body. Did the experience of your age change as you moved between the basement and the front yard? Do you associate going back to school with going back to your family? Can you elaborate a little more on your mum's attitude towards your schooling? What happened the day before you had the dream? These are my initial thoughts about your dream. I hope you find them useful.

I found the study interesting because I wasn't sure whether the core differences in the abilities of humans and primates are a result of a different brain "clock rate" or a different structure. Computers aren't a great analogy, but it's like comparing a 4 MHz CPU to a 4 GHz CPU. There are certain algorithms/heuristics that become impractical on slower CPUs, particularly when it comes to real-time application. As it turns out, there exists a difference in the underlying computational structure, which may change the way scientists study the human brain.

http://www.livescience.com/42897-unique-human-brain-region-found.html

I remembered a few additional details about your conversation with Stef. I think I can tie this in a little better for you. Your relationship with this girl is not founded on any clear boundaries. You're neither friends nor lovers, which is a state that you describe as weird - a substitute word for lack of boundaries. At the end of your call, Stef decided to focus on your inability to set and maintain boundaries. Whatever happened after the call ended up with you attracting a girl that has a pretty clear deficiency when it comes to boundaries. This is why I stressed the importance of exploring sudden changes in a relationship dynamic.

Thing is, at some point she took a deeper interest in you. I think it would be useful to know when and why that happened. Generally, this is important in any relationship whose dynamic suddenly (or even gradually) changes. You went from an entertainer to a potential boyfriend, which is a pretty drastic change. I should have been more precise in the way I worded this bit. I was actually referring to the way you're treating her ("it was still mostly me questioning her and not saying too much about myself"). It's not a relationship if it's not reciprocal. I'd be very annoyed if someone who expects to have any kind of relationship with me keeps questioning me while providing little information in return. I'm not telling you to blurt everything out but at least explicitly acknowledge this disparity in openness. Let her decide if she's fine with that. I'd encourage you to finish reading the book and let it sink in before making any major decisions. RTR, much like empathy, starts with yourself. If you can't acknowledge, be curious and explore your own feelings, you won't really be able to communicate them to others in an effective way.

To me, the whole friend zone issue seems to arise out of men's inability to communicate and respect their own preferences when it comes to women. You want a romantic relationship with her? Tell her about it. She doesn't want to be in a romantic relationship with you? Move on. I'll let you be the judge of women who take advantage of guys like that.

Hey Matt, As you know, we're all about empirical evidence around here. Let's see what you've got: Why the sudden interest? Why did she talk to you only when she was bored? I'm not a woman (FDR ladies, feel free to chime in), but I'd never consider a relationship with anyone who treated me like that without my explicit permission. Also, scepticism isn't a feeling. I don't think I need to point out the dysfunction in her previous relationship. In your conversation with Stef, he told you how long it takes to process a dysfunctional history. We're talking years here, not two months. Unprocessed dysfunction often turns into a repeating pattern in one's life. Sadly, that seems to be the case here as well. You see, she just got out of an ambiguous relationship with a fellow who was neither her friend nor her boyfriend. "We decided to just accept the weirdness of whatever it was that this was—and that it neither fit the box of friendship or relationship-relationship—and to reconvene on it at a later time." Do you see the pattern here? I'll also prompt you to reconsider your usage of the word weird because it doesn't say anything about your situation. People usually mask their discomfort with it. You ended up in the same bed after a week of what could hardly be considered dating. The sexual undertone is quite clear. Call me a prude, but bringing up sex that early in a (non-)relationship may be a sign of an inability to communicate in a healthy manner. I obviously can't tell you what to do, but you may end up in trouble if you move past these warning signs without acknowledging them.

I had to go to the Arts University next doors a few times, and my visitations left me with a very profound sense of emptiness. Never in my entire life have I seen such an aggregation of dysfunction. Walking around the campus almost made me dissociated. Mind you, I grew up in a really rough environment so I've encountered my fair share of severely dysfunctional people.

You can open it from this link: http://s7.postimg.org/rcctguem1/Be_Funky_522b29a9_48a9_4d82_9757_7afb13997e2dwall.jpg

No problem! I tried to give you some perspective, but it seems like you've already done plenty of work yourself. I suspect that your next steps will be emotional rather than intellectual. Keep up the good work and make sure you absolutely feast on this show's content! Philosophy has helped me tremendously in my life and it can sure as hell help you.

Thank you for this amazing post and the great deal of courage it must have taken to write it! I'm very sorry to hear about the abuse that was inflicted on you, and I'm also glad that you found this place. As Nathan noted, FDR changes lives for the better. You talk a lot about how Bob helped you, but I wanted to give you his perspective on this. I'll use a personal story to illustrate my point. I too come from a background that was rife with every abuse imaginable. However, there's one bright light that helped me navigate the darkness. It was a babysitter that took care of me when my mum gave birth to my sister. I was around 2 years old at the time, and she was a very empathetic neighbourhood girl of whom I have very warm memories. The empathy that was gifted to me by this girl helped me tremendously whenever I was at a crossroads in my life. It may have very well saved my life. I hope my story gives you some perspective on what you mean to Bob. What you're doing for these kids is incredible and they're really lucky to have you in their lives. Thank you so much for being there for them!

I just wanted to mention that the mindfulness book I recommended (you can get it as an audio book) is the product of a lot of scientific research and the techniques it outlines are rapidly gaining popularity amongst therapists here in the UK. Matter of fact, UK's National Health Service (NHS) refers people with severe mental health issues (people beyond talk therapy or medication) to mindfulness programs. The book references a lot of the studies, but you can have a look at this article and the NHS mindfulness page for a quick overview. Mindfulness practice might be able to curb the effects of your mind's permanent fight-or-flight state. You can also use the techniques as a stepping stone to Stef's Real Time Relationships (also available as an audio book) and the approach it outlines.

I edited my previous post with some additional thoughts while you were typing your reply. Have a look at it. For now, let's ignore the logic of you being a child and not having control over adults. What if your perception was correct? What if people did blame you, a helpless child, for what happened to your mum? What does that say about them? As a child, you wouldn't know what to make of the whole situation, so you'd have to take your cues from the adults around you. Here's something you may or may not know. Dissociated people tend to provoke their repressed feelings in those around them. What if your father's guilt somehow ended up in you? He had infinitely more control over the situation. It would be natural for him to feel guilty. By placing his responsibility on you and beating you, he could relieve himself of that guilt. You see, he tried killing himself for the first time after your sister's confession. In other words, he could no longer blame you for what happened. You say that you viewed your dad as a superman. Is that the behaviour of a superhero or a coward?