Kevin Beal

That is seriously tragic. I'm very sorry about the crushing narcissism and the contemptible cowardice of your parents. That you were made to experience that for decades is a crime. You mention that you have a question, but I couldn't glean what it was from what you wrote. I do have a lot to say about this, though. I am a total amateur, but something you said really struck me. I'd like to make a case to you, if you don't mind, about what I think the problem is, and the solution. I realize it's probably annoying to have someone psychologize you from afar, especially after years of therapy. You mention how you don't feel motivated to make something of you life, achieving important goals and dreams. To me, that sounds like a lack of self love and self worth, which would make absolute sense given a narcissistic mother who was invasive and had horrible boundaries. To be used like a poison container and source of entertainment for an empty person. And a father who didn't care enough about your well being to get over his own petty cowardice. That is, being treated for decades in an unloving manner. You said that you feel anger and resentment, but then follow that with some ambiguous and ambivalent feelings around whether or not your parents loved you. I think this is extremely important, because this is going to affect how angry you get. If you think about your parents in terms of "they were immature and they loved me, but were too broken to be there for me" then that makes them sympathetic, and strips them of responsibility. I wonder how angry you truly allow yourself to be. I suspect that you block it with excuses and justifications. Or with self shaming, like it makes you immature for being angry. It's so monumentally important that you get angry. Anger is your body's immune system against injustice and evil. Anger means you care about yourself, your safety, your interests. And I don't think you are getting angry enough if what has been the result is a complete lack of desire to have personal goals and achieving them (i.e. self love). Love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we ourselves are virtuous. And love is less than meaningless if it doesn't change the way you treat someone. And let's just say that your parents did love you (I don't believe that, but ok). What difference could that possibly make? They have decades of restitution to make that I'm guessing they have no interest in doing. Your father just denies and denies and I don't know about your mother, but I'm guessing she'd just rage. Whatever you excuse or justify in other people, you justify for yourself and invite back. Toxic personalities are rancid venom to our mental and emotional health. Anger, hatred and contempt are necessary to build up the healthy immunity to the narcissism and the cowardice in yourself. Anger is self love. FDR234 Contempt http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_234_Contempt.mp3 FDR305 Anger or Compassion? http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_305_Anger_Or_Compassion.mp3 FDR352 The Difference Between Anger and Rage http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_352_Anger_Versus_Rage.mp3 FDR363 The Joy of Anger Part 1 http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_363_The_Joy_Of_Anger_Part_1.mp3 FDR364 The Joy of Anger Part 2 http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_364_The_Joy_Of_Anger_Part_2.mp3

By principled action, I just mean doing something that is consistent with healthy values. So, like me going to cook myself fish and steamed veggies rather than eating out at Taco Bell, or telling a buddy of mine that I don't want him talking about me in ways that suggest incompetence on my part in the joking fashion that he does, even though it makes me uncomfortable to say it. I don't mean anything too terribly heroic. Yea, that's an interesting question about life getting easier with self knowledge. I think it gets harder in some respects. At least from my own experience, which is that it's harder to ignore things. A quiet little nagging voice bubbling up when I see a child get yelled at is now a loud booming voice prompting me to act. And I can't even imagine a life without assholes somewhere in it. Like Stef said in the video I linked around courage; it attracts good people and bad people. And like he also has said, if you're not pissing off bad people, then you're not doing a good enough job as an ethicist. As far as work goes, I don't think I would advise you do anything that could compromise your job. And I think there are plenty of times that it's better to say nothing. Your question reminds me of what is maybe my favorite podcast: FDR678 Everything You Do Is... http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_678_Everything_You_Do_Is.mp3

I use the word "anarchist" because it's the least ambiguous. People constantly get "voluntaryist" mixed up with "voluntarist" and "volunteerist" and no one knows what it means. I find it pedantic and annoying, myself. I would much rather someone tell me that they are a communist than some more obscure collectivist thing that would be more accurate and less offensive to the ears. "Anarchism" is absolutely not opposed to hierarchy. In much the same way that "atheism" simply means a lack of belief in gods, anarchism just means "without rulers". I'm not even opposed to anarcho-socialism / communism / primitivism / syndicalism etc, as long as they are moral. If that's what they want to do, then that's fine with me. I accept anarchism as valid. Personally, I find conversation about the word itself to be interesting and productive. I've had more than a few people realize that anarchism is not a mad max style post apocalyptic nightmare and become more curious about it, even if they don't agree or come to the same conclusion as me. This introduction to the book Everyday Anarchy by Stef focuses specifically on this issue of the word itself. And it does a lot to invite and intrigue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AidXSubb-2U

Foolhardiness (too much courage), like Aristotle argues with the "golden mean" is similarly as bad as too much cowardice, but I wonder if this is actually incorrect. Consider the following: If courage is honesty carried into principled action, and if in order for an act to be foolhardy it must be deluded in some sense, and since delusion and honesty are antonyms, then foolhardiness is not an excess of courage. But that's not how I would define "cowardice". In fact, it could be wisdom that keeps you from engaging bad people. If it's the truth and honesty that leads you to act in a principled way, that's what I would call courage. Stef talks about courage in this listener email question I sent in last year, and gives a really interesting, and unique perspective on what courage is for that I found very helpful and true. (Thanks Stef!) If your parents call you a coward, it could be a last ditch attempt to control you into conforming by getting you to self attack or self loathe. I question whether there is even an ounce of cowardice on your end, in that interaction, but I could definitely see how such vitriol would provoke self doubt. As Stef has argued consistently, we can't be impartial to the opinions of our parents / family. You share way too much history to be impartial. They occupy a portion of your mind, i.e. have been internalized. The outside parent is in agreement with the one inside, almost like a conspiracy against you, making you doubt yourself. But if in conversation with people who aren't total assholes about it, you find agreement with the other half (that I would suspect is the true self) then you can bypass the inner parents and connect with a certainty and moral clarity that you probably already contain within you. That's part of the reason I like talking to other people who have self knowledge, that is I can connect more to myself by connecting with others.

I define cowardice, not as fear, or even as a betrayal of values out of fear. Cowardice, as I understand it, is making the avoidance of your fear or anxiety into a virtue. For example, take the grown man who, instead of confronting his mother on the evil she inflicted on him as a child, pretends to himself and others that he does not do so because it is a virtue to forgive and forget, rather than what is the real reason, which is that the prospect of doing such a thing fills him with overwhelming anxiety and dread. It is against my values to pay taxes, but the fear of getting kidnapped and stolen from keeps me paying. This doesn't make me a coward. Being afraid of lions doesn't make me a coward. Being afraid of moths doesn't make me a coward. Cowardice is not an emotion like fear is. Cowardice is bad (anti-virtue) because it is self deception. It works against honesty. Cowardice is a learned emotional defense developed in early childhood in response to a reality too unbearable to remain conscious of. We can have sympathy for the child who pretends to himself that his parents are not evil monsters in order to maintain his own sanity, but as with a lot of emotional defensiveness, to continue to rely on it into adulthood is something you become responsible for. Similarly, we feel contempt for the man who narcissistically manipulates people, even though it was an effective defense against his mother's terrible lack of boundaries and covert incest when he was a boy. Cowardice evokes my contempt because through people's cowardice they risk infecting and hurting others. "Forgive and forget" is a false morality developed by sociopaths and maintained by cowards, and has enabled much evil in the world. Cowardice is the opposite of courage because it is through honesty and acting on the truth that we achieve courage. Cowardice prevents courage because it is an attack on the truth.

Is it worse in the case of a female student given the chance of pregnancy? I don't know...

Feel your feelings. You said that you feel "depressed, lost and isolated", but those aren't really emotions. In fact, depression (in the clinical sense) is a lack of emotional connection with yourself. "Lost and isolated" are judgments about where you are at. What is the feeling? The emotions themselves carry the wisdom of how to deal with situations. Thinking about emotions as something you manage or work with is backwards. If you feel anger, it means you perceive an injustice, and you have enough to work with that you aren't likely to ask yourself how to handle your anger. Rather, you'd want to respond to the injustice in some way. (i.e. you aren't focused on the feeling, but the reality). If you feel grief, and as well you should, oh my god, I'm so sorry about your child. I can't even begin to imagine how painful that must be. But if it's grief that you feel, some thought preceded that. Grief wants you to connect with reality. Stef has a quote that goes something like "[all?] insanity arises out of the avoidance of legitimate grief". And that's because grief is the harbinger of the truth. I would change your question to say "what essential truth do I need to connect with?" Also, like regevdl advised, I too would suggest a therapist if you're not already in therapy.

I've been suggesting we bomb the public school system for years

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience with the therapist you saw. I lucked out on my first interview with one, but I know a lot of people who were not so lucky. I don't mind at all. In fact, I love talking about myself It all hit me like a tidal wave after reading On Truth. The cynicism I had all my life was validated, finally. Someone was willing to tell the truth. It was incredibly painful for me. For me, it meant not seeing my family. That may change in the future, but when I came to them for help, I was told that I was selfish, opening up old wounds & hurting people, that I need to forgive & forget and a constant minimizing of things which were traumatic for me. My family mythology was much more important than I was to them. So I was to either acquiesce or get away from them. And I had compromised my values enough for one lifetime, so I got myself in therapy and took a break. Fortunately or unfortunately (I'm not sure) I was already incredibly isolated. I was unemployed, had no friends, drinking daily and using illicit drugs. And I knew everything needed to change, and that I was the only one who could make that happen. I may not have had a real relationship with another human being in my life up to that point, so it was incredibly awkward, confusing, embarrassing and made me feel very insecure. I came to face a great deal of self loathing and shame. Because someone was genuinely compassionate, I gradually became compassionate toward myself, was able to relax my defenses and discover whole dimensions of myself that I never knew were there. During that time, I became interested in my own dreams and kept a journal. I looked at other people in the community who seemed to have some credibility in this area, and other people loosely affiliated that I liked (Daniel Mackler) and I emulated them. So, I went to therapy more frequently, started analyzing my dreams, connected with other people on this same journey as me, got into parts work (like IFS) and I feel like I grow more and more every year at an accelerating pace. (I'm 4 years in from reading On Truth). I'm very proud of what I've been able to accomplish. Thank you for asking

Same topics might be good, but if you are getting bored with it, then that doesn't sound like a good sign, to me. How would you feel if you told your therapist "hey, I'm actually getting kinda bored. I don't know what to do about it, but I want to be honest so we can talk about it" ? They work for you. Whether it's them or you, or whatever, it's something that should be discussed. I found that when I got bored in therapy, it happened to be (at least in part) because I was censoring myself and saying nothing when my therapist would say things that I didn't like or thought sounded like nonsense. Bringing it up with her was very productive. More trust was established, and I felt more free to voice disagreement. And that's an important skill worth developing. Who better to do it with than a therapist who I pay to put up with me, haha Also, I don't think that listening to FDR is self therapy. I think it's a great resource to learn, but self therapy is an active process. (At least that would be my definition). Do you keep a journal? Have you been recording your dreams? Do you talk to yourself? Do you do any kind of meditation? Visualizations? Sentence completions? Dedicate time to introspect? I have recently changed up my routine which I'm finding very productive: Start out the day writing any dreams I had that night (and starting an analysis if I have time before work) Sentence completions when I arrive at work to remind myself of what my values are I audio journal when I get home for a half hour to 45 minutes about my day If I'm having an emotional experience that I can feel is loaded with things that need processing, I do parts work instead of journaling Then I work more on analyzing dreams I don't always have time to do all of the above, but that's the goal anyway. The more I do self therapy, the more fulfilled I feel, the higher my self esteem and happier I am. And when I was seeing a therapist, the more productive it was. Daniel Mackler is a great resource for self therapy. I would highly recommend checking him out.

I don't know about any kind of studies, or the biology of singing, but I do know that I used to be a bad singer and by practicing every single day, I now get complimented on having a really nice singing voice. I only took one singing lesson, but fortunately there was enough there to realize the mistakes I was making, and a lot of people (even trained singers) make. For example, most people, when they project their voice, are throwing it forward and it goes flat. It's just abrasive. Instead they should be projecting into the back of their own head and letting the natural harmonics amplify the sound. And a lot of people close their throat too much, also making it flat. Vibrato comes easily and organically when you have these things taken care of. I don't know, right? But I'm skeptical of the idea that it's more innate than practiced. That's not what professional singers have told me...

I just donated

Hi snark! Welcome to the boards I'm sorry about the lack of reality in the people around you, and the previously severed sense of self. I'm very glad that you've decided to post on the boards. I find that the more I connect with other people who are on the same journey as me, the more real it becomes and the more motivated and productive I can be. So kudos to you for pushing past the anxiety and posting! As you're finding out, it's not easy to live a philosophical life. It's important to have someone in your corner. For me, I found it incredibly valuable to find a good therapist. Someone to have my back and help me navigate the high seas, the ocean of the unconscious. Someone to take my inner life as seriously as I would like to take it. Especially in what was easily the biggest transition of my life. Have you considered therapy? Also, how did you find the show? What do you mean about always having an inclination toward philosophy and psychology? How's your self work going so far?

First of all, I'm very sorry that some of the most your basic and fundamental needs were denied to you. I'm sorry your dad was a contemptuous asshole. I'm sorry your mom was a cowardly enabler. A childhood without security, bonding and validation (as with all neglect) would make you much more prone to having issues with depression & anxiety, alcohol & drug abuse and difficulty forming healthy relationships. Absent fathers, I believe, adversely affect your capacity for empathy. Your parents never asking your opinion would likely result in being disconnected and other focused, rather than focusing on your own needs. Having a contemptuous father would surely affect your willingness to be vulnerable, which is going to mean you don't develop a lot of important social skills around connecting with other people. I think you know all of this already. You are an alcoholic if you are drinking 2-3 drinks every day. I know it doesn't feel like that much when your blood-alcohol levels are high and your tolerance up, but you are doing a lot of damage to your body. And it's escapism. If you want to have a more productive time working on yourself, figuring out where you are now and where you want to be, you need to be sober. There were some words from a famous psychologist that have stuck with me about drinking. He said that he had clients come in who had been drinking, and they were able to disclose a lot of painful things, and even feeling grief in their intoxication, but it didn't translated into any kind of action. A lot of therapists won't even see clients who abuse drugs or alcohol. Also, you said "I did 4 months of therapy which were alright". Does that mean you stopped going? 4 months, how often? Was it just "alright"? Are you doing self therapy outside of therapy? Personally, I take that the way that I would take a romantic relationship. If my friend tells me tells me that things with his new girlfriend are just "alright", to me, that's a problem. Something has to change. It should be great! Maybe what drove you to post today was a part of you insisting that you push yourself to take your life more seriously. And it makes perfect sense that someone denied so much essential affection, bonding, closeness and love would have patterns of behavior that are self sabotaging. I would just urge you to push forward. No one is coming to save us. You know that fulfilling feeling you feel when you do push yourself to rise up to the challenge of living in line with your own values? It's this pleasant whole body feeling,... kind of like a hug. It's self love. And there is no end to that feeling. You can have as much of it as you want, you've just gotta work for it. And to do that, you need someone in your corner. If your therapist is not working out for you, fire them. It's important to feel motivated and that you can't wait to come back and make more progress on yourself. Somebody who takes your inner world as seriously as you wish you did. That's my amatuer opinion, anyway.

AFAIK, that's the only one so far. I filled that one out and put it in the database myself. I think this has just been buried under a ton of other work on Mike's plate. I don't know what the status is on that.

The functionality is there. Data just needs to be loaded into the database. The only thing about it is that unlike youtube, you cannot skip ahead of the loaded portion on the seekbar. The timestamps turn into clickable blue links as soon as enough of the podcast has been loaded enough to go to that point. For a working example, check this out: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/2692/8-unsolvable-philosophical-questions-solved

I've tried DMT and have seen geometric fractal shapes. I've tried most common psychedelics. I think that if science shows evidence for something said by mystical hippy dippy people, their conclusion may be correct, even if their methodology is messed up. I've heard a ton of explanations for what psychedelics do and are good for, and how they are supposed to bring important insights. I've taken a default position of dismissing these things since so many have turned out to be illogical and not supported by my own first hand experience. I've had the experience of that profound feeling of making a connection that is exciting and thinking to myself "oh my god, I've figured out a fundamental truth about the universe that no one else has yet discovered!" I started writing these realizations down to see if the sober me agreed, and no. They were consistently trivial or probably false. One example was on the exact respect in which everything in the universe is connected, in a geometric sense, picturing more than 3 dimensions as if it were 3 dimensions so that I could comprehend it. I don't remember the details, but the sober me was entirely unimpressed. I don't know that I can accept anyone's conclusions without them demonstrating that their methodology is sound. Stef wrote a great article about how conclusions without methodology are useless, here.

They are also supposed to have the largest penises

I also think of this question in an angsty sense, like how do I know how much I'm repressing, how little I see myself as compared to how others see me, what are just excuses and how I achieve certainty about myself and my life. Feeling disconnected in the sense that I don't feel real. More like I'm living a script. This is more connection with myself than with others that I mean it here. Something came to me in an audio journaling session just now that I think is important. In order to have some kind of empirical confidence about what's really going down in my own mind, we have to have access to our own raw, unfiltered psychological material. There are two sources of this that have come to mind. 1. Dream Work There is no pretense to dreams. Dreams are symbolic, but they aren't you dressing things up to manage other people or delude yourself. One of the prevailing theories as to why dreams are so important for our health is that they help in memory consolidation. The associations in your mind between a train on a track heading for a cliff, and a life you can't control headed for disaster is your brain consolidating your memories into a consistent framework of associations of like things. And if you are trying to consolidate memories symbolized as that doomed train, you could say that your brain is priming itself (like a homunculus) for some dreadful situation. If you have anxiety dreams, that's important. This essay by Daniel Mackler is good and goes into the benefits of dream analysis. (He argues that self therapy without dream analysis is folly). 2. Mecosystem Work If you look at a lot of schools of psychoanalysis, there is a focus on sub-personalities within the psyche which can all express themselves, either informing thoughts or judgments, or even blending with the conscious ego, as if it were a demon possession. IFS calls it "parts work", some Jungians call it "Active Imagination", Stef calls it "the Mecosystem", and the others escape me at the moment (somebody remind me, please). Naturally there is an inability to see yourself the way that other people do, but occasionally, emotional defenses and other psychological blocks make this problem worse, and being able to determine what parts of you get activated is important. Like in the previous example I gave with the person who initially feels anger but is immediately shut down with guilt or anxiety, it could be a personality within you that you've internalized telling you that it's not safe to feel angry (the anxiety) or telling you that you are bad for feeling angry (the guilt). I've heard Stef say before something along the lines of "personalities are the most contagious of human toxins" (or medicines if the person is a virtuous person). I have a part that I've internalized that will stop me when I get overwhelmed with how I'm going to deal with other people and asks me what I want, reminding me to focus on taking care of myself. I have another part that wanted to shut me down and shame me when I considered myself as being unmanly, telling myself that it was unattractive and made me unworthy of love. Being aware of what it is that the parts of me think about me and the life I live, and the people in it is an empirical exercise that helps me connect with myself. Experiencing the full expression of these parts of myself by engaging them in dialog. (Having a relationship with myself). More Resources Self-Therapy Without Dreamwork Is Folly - Daniel Mackler General Stream Mecosystem Podcasts - Stef Some random article about Active Imagination - Lawrence H. Staples Internal Family Systems parts work - Wikipedia Dreams Tag on FDRPodcasts.com - Stef

Hi Dave! Welcome to the boards I'm glad to hear that the things you've been learning have strengthened your relationship with your kids and are motivating for you. I really like this part a lot. I think this is true in a lot of relationships, and is something I'm committed to as well. I think it's a very important insight.

Google puts the percentage of introverts somewhere between 25-50%, usually closer to 50%. Psychology Today magazine has reported 50%, consistently. And the average transient attention span appears to be around 10 seconds as far as I can tell, while Selective sustained attention spans average at about 10 minutes.

I'm very glad to hear it

Stef's recent video is quite good:

Thank you previous generations fucking things up so badly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmQxS4XyDvQ