Marco

Thank you all for your responses! I think I get the general tenor of it. You have helped my friend a lot.

Hello everybody, I'm curious what you think about this issue. A friend of mine (not me) is currently in a third world country and has to do a visa run (a stupid bureaucratic thing in itself already). It's very common to give 5$ more lest the officials let you wait for a couple of hours while you are anxiously waiting and worrying if they will approve the visa or not. Many people told my friend that he should give the "coffee money" to make things easier. On the one hand, there might be a moral problem with giving money to corrupt officials because it rewards bad behavior and gives even more money to government officials, it's probably illegal, though never enforced, (we are talking about my friend here, I would never do such a thing) but on the other hand if it was not a moral issue, my friend would happily pay 5$ for less stress and saving time my friend is already very anxious about essentially being at the mercy of the officials when in Rome, do as the Romans do - it's the responsibility of the citizens to fix their country refusing to pay would have little impact on corruption as with the grey and black market, corruption is sometimes the only thing that keeps things running in an authoritarian system - maybe it's good that you can get everything you want with enough cash Please let me know what you think!

That's great! We could collaborate!

You tell me! What would you think is fair? As I said, it will be FREE for the beta testers. Basically everybody who responds now will be rewarded with rebates or even 100% free. Right now I am doing market research. So an answer to any of the questions in my post would help a lot. Don't forget to sent me an email to get updates. Thanks!

Stef talked about how he greatly enjoyed D&D and looks forward to playing it with his daughter. I am right now working on a philosophical Adventure. This could be: A skype conference where I am the DM, you don't need to do anything but play. An e-book giving you all the tools you need to play it with your friends. A coaching course on how to be a great DM. Please help me out to make this project happen and tell me: Would you like any of the above? Which would you like the most? Would you like me to do anything else? Would you pay money for such a service? How much? If you wish to get updates, please write an email to [email protected]. If you answer in this thread or write me an email, you have the chance to become a beta tester and get my services for free! Thanks!

Sylvie Shene, she wrote a book I backed on Indiegogo. It tells her story, which is truly remarkable. I highly recommend it. I'm curious: Why are you interested in women in particular?

I agree, you can get pretty far. For me, it helped a lot to have an "enlighted witness" to help me. It also helped a lot to have people in my life who can hug me. :-) I heard from a woman who healed herself from repression by reading Alice Miller and she did not have anybody.

Well, I most important thing is to have the COMMITMENT to change. Then you will spend time on self-knowledge (and then it's o.k. to only have 24 hours in a day), i.e. journaling, (self) therapy, meditation, deep conversations with other people etc. But most importantly FEELING the feelings from the past. It took me a long time to get that. Only knowing the truth intellectually is not enough, you have to feel it in your bones. Other than that, I don't think much more can be said to this because your post is very abstract.

I should have mentioned that I have TWO podcasts: One in English and one in German, here's the German one: http://howihelpmyself.com/alice-miller-audio-deutsch/ Alice Miller Bot DE: https://twitter.com/AliceMillerBotD Yes, for now I am just reading things posted on her website. But I would like to do discussions and conversations with listeners as well. If people like it a lot, I might just begin translating. If I post an article or reader's mail every day, I'll be done in almost three years So there is lots of content for now. Not to forget that she also has content in Spanish and French.

Hello Freedomain Radio community! Do you know Alice Miller? Her books and the reader’s mail helped me a lot to understand my own past and free myself from trauma. This made me a much happier and carefree person. Now I want to share them with you! Check out my podcast, where I read Alice Miller's articles and reader's mail: http://howihelpmyself.com/alice-miller-audio-english/ Please follow the Alice Miller Bot on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AliceMillerBot

Oh, I've been there and I sympathize. The difference is you have a son, which makes it much more urgent. As a short term solution, you can delete your account. You write that the anxiety is real and I believe you. I think it is totally logical for you to feel anxiety. It's not logical if you think of it in terms of not playing a game. That wouldn't cause anxiety. But it is perfectly logical if you think about it as a feeling from your past. Try to recognize that that feeling comes from your childhood. When did you feel anxiety as a child? YES, go to a doctor, dentist and most importantly a therapist. Also read a lot of books, which is almost free (book recommendations on my blog). Read reader's mail and articles on alice-miller.com. You can only free yourself from gaming addiction by treating the root cause.

Both your childhoods was truly a HELL. I was horrified by what you described and I sympathize a lot. I have some thoughts, hopefully they'll help. I couldn't agree more. Madman, you also seem to (used to) seek dangerous situations and especially adrenalin rush. You call your rage "this horrible darkness in me" and "disgusting white-hot rage". Why? I think your rage was thoroughly justified! You are not a bad person for standing up for what is right. You KNOW what hurt you in your childhood, so you know better than anyone just how mindbogglingly evil that preacher was! Have you read the books of Alice Miller? To quote her: "It is necessary for you to get eventually angry ONLY with your PARENTS and overcome the fear of them." How to get rid of the rage? "You shouldn't kill your rage, you NEED it as your compass. But you must direct it toward the people who deserve it." We need the rage as a compass "SCREAM OUT YOUR JUSTIFIED RAGE and THE PAIN OF YOUR WOUNDED SOUL and the pain of your body will leave you." Psychosomatic Symptoms and Working Through the Pain, #2 More about rage Reading her reader's mail has helped me a LOT! She advised against medications btw, but that is your decision. I once talked with some people about abusive parents and the discussion was cut off short because we were car pooling and it was my destination. I went home with this feeling of deep rage. It grew more and more. I imagined punching my father in his goddamned face over and over again, imagining his bloody face. Once I got home, I put heavy metal on my iPod, took my favorite stuffed animal (representing my inner child) and went into the nearby forest. There I listened to the angry music, sang along and screamed. I imagined punching my parents, making them hurt, paying them back for all that they did to me! Taking revenge for all the abandonment, neglect, manipulation and sadism. I took a large piece of wood and smashed it against the trees, which I imagined to be my parents. I held the stick in one hand, my stuffed animal in the other. I said, “Now I will protect you.” You don't even need to get triggered to get the emotions. I suppose art can help a lot. For me, it was dreams or they just showed up when I was ready. I always try to listen to my body and my feelings. I still sometimes feel the rage against my parents. I let it come and try to feel it as much as possible. That helps me tremendously. I felt the rage DIRECTED AT THE PEOPLE WHO HURT ME THE MOST.

I go: your link -> Board -> Start New Issue -> (filling in Text ->) Post New Issue -> error Tried it again today, same problem.

Unfortunatly I get this error. I have tried yesterday, too.

+1 for recommending meditation (and science for it!), which I had not considered. Do you know any good books about it? I have read a couple of books about it but they were not very helpfull (e.g. a mystic going on about how his wife left him because he spend too much time on meditation... ).

Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts! I think you're right. I'm preparing a sheet of paper with reminders for me to bring in to every conversation with my parents and there I wrote something to remind myself of this dream. The more I think about this dream, the clearer my relationship with my parents gets.

Oh, it did help! Especially the second to last paragraph.

Hi everybody, I'm near Stuttgart, too! In Leonberg to be precise. I think it's an excellent idea. Feel free to add me on skype: MarcoR7154 There we could discuss all the details.

So yesterday shortly before I went to bed I had a very enlightening conversation with a fellow FDR listener. (Thanks so much, you know who you are!) We talked about my family and me defooing from my grandparents. It's difficult for me to evaluate my parents objectively and to connect with the experience I had with them as a child. With my grandparents I don't feel ambivalent, because I don't like talking to them and they beat my father with the belt whenever his grades weren't to his parents satisfaction. I'm away from my parents now because I am doing an internship. My mother has asked me to call my grandmother because "she wished that". I said no, I'm not going to call. When she asked, I just told her I have an bad feeling whenever I call my grandparents and she didn't pursue the matter much. I was very sure I was going to have a dream after the conversation with the FDR listener and sure enough, I had one and woke up at 4:46 am. It's very short and most of it I think is very obvious, but maybe you see even more than I do and hopefully it helps some of you out there. The dream:I am in a forest with my family. My father says, "We'd like to make an important announcement." He takes me and somebody else to be at each of his sides and puts his arm around our waists. He starts singing a birthday song for my grandfather. I suddenly hang in the air, because apparently my father has lifted me up. I start beating my father in the ribs because I am starting to panic and want to get out of this situation. I am angry at my father because he knows that I don't like and don't want to speak to my grandfather.My father collapses and shows signs of an heart attack. He says, "You have broken something." I cry out, "Heart attack!", to alert the others and think (and maybe also say) "The time has come." - as if the heart attack has been anticipated in advance. I hold my fathers head in my hands and say "Look at me." or something like that so he doesn't loose consciousness. Somehow I feel this is the most important thing, that he doesn't loose consciousness. My father sticks out his tongue like a defiant child. I feel like I am not taken seriously. My father looses consciousness.I wake up. I have deep compassion with my inner child. More info: My brothers birthday is this month and my father's birthday is in December. With both birthdays, I feel very unsure about what to do. I don't know (didn't know) whether or not I should congratulate my brother, since he didn't respond to my last message and I don't like him that much any more. I will probably not congratulate him. The only reason I would want to talk to him now is to find out more about our childhoods. My father's birthday is going to be his 50th, so the whole family (a couple dozen people) will be there, including my grandparents. (Also men in their 50s are prone to heart attacks and my father has a desk job and works long hours.) I don't know how I should act towards my grandparents then or if I should even go. I do realize on some level that it is a bad idea to go. I hear my parents in my head saying, "But it's his 50th!". I go back to my parents when the internship ends in mid-October. I aim to learn as much as I can about myself until then, so I can be strong enough to see them as they are. What I think about the dream: The forest reminds me of the one my other grandparents regularly camp at. Who is the other person he wants to sing with? Is it maybe that one is me as a child and the other me as an adult? My father is clearly ignoring my wishes. Me hanging in the air means that I am a child and that he is preventing me from escaping. He is forcing me to participate in trying to please a violent person. I do what I feel in the dream and now to be totally justified: I try to get out at any cost. I am the wronged party but then it's all about him. He collapses and has a heart attack. I try to save him. I do cry out in order for people to help me but nobody does. Nobody is even calling an ambulance. "The time has come." Is this the anticipation I feel about what is going to happen when I go back to my parents? Why is the dream making him have a heart attack? Is it genuine or not? This is very difficult for me because I still do somehow want to save my father. I have no idea of what it will do psychologically to him if I mention his parents violent behavior. His sticking his tongue out makes me feel sorry for him because I feel like he is a child that is trying to mask great pain. But it could also mean that he is manipulating me with a faked heart attack and then mocking me for believing it. In the dream I did not feel at all like that but rather forgot about the situation he put me in before that. I am glad, however, that I felt such a deep compassion for myself in the dream after I woke up. I rarely had such a deep emotional connection with somebody from a dream. I am very relieved that I am starting to connect to my deepest emotions.

There is a page where I can see all the files I have downloaded, so the data for this is being saved. How about showing all files I have not yet downloaded and/or marking files for me that way (when browsing Premium content)? I want to avoid downloading the same file multiple times. Nice would be to also be able to download multiple files at once in a zip folder maybe. If that would be possible, that would be great!

First of all, thank you so much for the responses! I really appreciate it. It’s amazing how much soul-searching one short dream can bring. It’s definitely helping a lot, thank you! :-)@Pepin: It is certainly true that I am conflicted about my mother. For a lot of things I can give you an example where she is a very good mother and another where she is not so good. For example she writes a kind of journal for my brother and me since we were born where she writes down everything that is noteworthy about us. It really warmed my heart when I read things I remember from my childhood in there. She was a kindergartener once and I think she gave child-rearing a lot of thought. On the other hand, she is not very interested in my ideas and just argues against them in a way that I perceive as very aggressive and non-curious.Also, I do feel very dependent on my parents, for good or ill.So yeah, there is a big internal debate going on in my mind right now.@Lucas: The thing with the AMD, that’s a very good idea. It would certainly clear up why I have no clue what the letters stand for.Well, it’s not really the case that she doesn’t want me to be there while the child is there. The child is not there (maybe I’m the child though). I got more the impression that she just wanted to leave her house in order to do something/get to some place and therefore I had to leave, too. And we then both went outside.With the suitcases, yes, I think I was stalling. Maybe for some reason I wanted to stay – I was implanted, as you say. I think the socks where black or brown. If they had been white that would have been an unusual detail since I don’t own white socks (for laundry reasons).I haven’t yet considered the sexual dimension yet but it is a possibility. I have to think about that. It certainly makes a lot of sense considering I found the second mother pretty and the association chain: mother meetings in the dream, poly meetings IRL and relationship with R and J.The last point I found very interesting and it really struck a chord. That was a beautiful image in the dream: me with two women in an inner garden with the sun shining and the women chatting. It being a kind of sanctuary/true self place makes sense.@Lucas (second post): Thanks, I almost overlooked the fact that if I am not the child than yeah, there might be a child that I cannot help. I how strong the impression was that I and the kid get along well (because that would indicate that I do see him and care for him). It kind of seems to me like the child not being there was a logical inconsistency that had to be explained away in the dream.Your advice about women rings very true to me. I took a lot of pride in being sexually open minded and being a good lover. I was curious enough to check out the poly and BDSM community. Also for a Satanist, carnal desires are something to be cherished (not irresponsibly, of course, but it is definitely a hedonistic as well as an epicurean philosophy). Now I see it a bit differently and I try to take an approach that is more rational. As I said, I really appreciate it. Even if some things doesn’t seem to fit, it is definitely a good conversation starter or for me a “thought starter”.

Hello there, I had a weird dream today. Maybe you want to help me figure out what it means? Infos about me: Search "The longest introduction ;-) - greetings from a guy with a long philosophical journey". (I am now single and at episode 598.) I rarely remember my dreams, but I was waiting for a dream to come since I am currently thinking a lot about my relationships with other people and I want to find out how to evaluate those relationships. (Also, I want to take ideas more and more seriously and live with more integrity.) So when I woke up at 3 o' clock I wrote down my dream. Wake-up at 22.4.2013 3:00 For some reason I participate in a meeting of mothers, whose children have psychological Problems. The mothers are all very nice to me. I visit one of the mothers at her home. Her child is not there but I know (?) that her kid and I get along well. Her boy has "AMD" [no association for me; the dream was in German]. She has to go and wants me to leave the house. My things are spread out in the room I'm in and I hurry to pick them all up. She says I should leave them because she can bring the things on monday (to the meeting). I continue picking them up and stuff them in my backpack and I even need another one. I do have another backpack which I also consider to be mine. Later I even have a suitcase, too. Meanwhile I chat with the mother and I tell her that it is somehow strange for me to participate in the meetings, as I only go out of curiosity and the others go, because they want to help each other. I leave behind a couple of socks because the mother is getting impatient. She seems tired and says half-seriously that I now owe her 10 €. I get the idea that I could sit her son for her instead and that maybe I can get another income from that. [i am currently getting more income through online tutoring and look for more ways in order to be financially independend.] We go outside to a beautiful, planted inner yard and see another mother from the meetings, who sits on a wooden bench in front of her house. (She has a pretty face and smiles at us, we greet her. The mothers talk with each other for a short while.) I wake up. Associations I had: Out of curiosity I used to go to meetings for polyamourous people. There was another teenager there, but most where in their late 20s or older (actually I feel more comfortable around older people i.e. late 20s because I feel they are more mature). I met a nice couple there (R+J) and began an affair with the man, R, with the consent of his wife J. The time I spend with them was very interesting. It was my first and only homosexual relationship (I normally prefer women). Once, we had a threesome. There was also non-sexual aspects: One time we had a picknick in the park with their girl and other mothers with their kids where present (I remember one mother in particular that was very nice to me). What's strange is that I don't really think about them that much now but rather about my parents and current friends. I value the experience I gained during my relationship with them, but I probably wouldn't go into such a relationship again because I would judge more critically. I no longer consider myself polyamourous, either. I might go to a party they are throwing in January, but haven't been in contact well over half a year (except the invitation to the party of course). Now that I am writing the associations down, the dream becomes much clearer. However, I might have gone into the wrong direction and given you only information that fits that direction, so ask away. What I find strange is that if the dream has to do with R+J, why do I dream about them and not my parents, friends etc.? Mmh, maybe I am. So, I wonder what you think. Feel free to speak your mind, I can take it. Thanks! []

Oh, OK. Then we actually agree and Wiktionary is not reflecting the commonly accepted definition in this instance. Now that I check Wikipedia I find, "even to the point of allowing self-harm rather than a resort to violent resistance" - now that is just masochistic... Thanks for clearing that up for me!

Thanks! ^^ Well, I meant pacifism as being against war. That is, as wiktionary says: The doctrine that disputes (especially between countries) should be settled without recourse to violence The active opposition to such violence, especially the refusal to take part in military action As I understand it, that's what he is arguing for, isn't it? As I see it, self-defense is not excluded. I personally are in favor of self-defense. So correct me if I'm wrong; I don't know if you are using a different definition. I know full well I have some integration and testing to do at that speed.

Well, not quite []. I once looked at his Wikipedia page and it said there that he was a member of the Church of Satan (which is only sort of true). Well, I checked out the Church of Satan and became a Satanist. (Am I still a Satanist? I haven't read the book in a while so I'm not sure and I don't really care.) Satanism was apparently influenced by Ayn Rand, so I checked her out and liked her politics. As I delved deeper into libertarianism, I discovered Freedomain Radio and listened to a bunch of podcasts (250 in about 5 months, now where is my medal!?). Well and Stef brought forth some really good arguments for voluntaryanism and pacifism, so I couldn't resist. Funny, how these things go, right? My hobby is delving into one philosophy until I know it really well, and then move on to the next []. Sometimes I integrate some ideas into my life, if they make sense.