courtneycm

Hi threebobs, It should be fixed now. Mistake in setup on my part but it seems to be going through now. Please shoot me a message if you're still interested.

Hi everyone, I was introduced to FDR in 2009, and since then have taken a radical journey in self-knowledge. I'm very pleased that this path has taken me towards wanting to help others heal, and I have opened an online therapy practice to help me do that! I am currently enrolled in a Master's in Counseling program but more for the credibility and legality of practicing in the US. Most of my education has come from thousands of hours of journaling, extensive reading of books on rationality, self-knowledge, and psychotherapy, breaking from my family of origin, and exploring the world by living and working in other countries. I have been a client of therapy in the Internal Family Systems model since 2011 and have found (and continue to find) immense value in having the support of a therapeutic environment to help me process. My approach is greatly influenced by the idea of parts and I am very comfortable with using Internal Family Systems approach. That said, I am also influenced by other approaches, mainly existential and experientially based therapies, so sessions wouldn't necessarily be strictly IFS. I offer flexible scheduling and rates. Much more information can be found on my website, The Uncharted Self, if you have more questions. Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing from you! Courtney

Filled it out. Will pass the word along for you!

Congrats on getting into therapy. It takes a lot of courage to take that step. It's hard work but the rewards are SO worth it. Good for you also for standing up for yourself and not taking the drugs. Numbing yourself is the opposite of what you're trying to do by going to therapy and journaling!

Wow, thanks for posting this. I've got my journal prompts for the next while! Other questions: What were my favorite activites as a child? Which were encouraged and which were discouraged? How did I think of myself/define myself as a kid? How did my parents think of me or describe me? Friends? Siblings? How was I taught about sex and sexuality? What were my earliest experiences with sexuality? What were my favorite toys and what emotions do I feel when I think of them now? How did I feel interacting with friends' parents? With my teachers? With teachers who I didn't personally know?

What was your goal by posting this thread? From reading through the comments it seems like you are trying to connect with more women online and especially through FDR, is that right? I ask because I felt confused by your initial post, which seemed to be lamenting the lack of women without really explaining why it was important to you that there be a female presence. There are a bunch of reasons why there may be less women involved in the communities you are in, but IMO a post specifically stating your goal to make more online female friends and the reasons why that is important to you might yield you more results.

Wow, this is pretty horrifying, both in its content and the lack of surprise I feel by reading it. How awful for the victims to have not only had to endure the assault, but also to endure the invasive process of this exam, and to have it all be for naught. I totally agree with you that it is much easier (as things stand) to pump money into branches that steal instead of actually try to solve or prevent crime.

It makes sense to me that there would be a link. I don't know the science of it and if there's a chemical link between the two, but I have personal experience with the psychological side effects of gaining and losing fat and believe firmly those two go hand in hand. For me, gaining an extreme amount of weight and fat in college was an incredibly comforting shield. Even though I hated the way I looked and would fret about it, I absolutely loved the way it helped me be overlooked, not taken seriously, not approached sexually. That shield that kept me from being noticed also kept me from having to deal with my history and the fact that MAN I was sad because my parents taught me from a very young age that the real me wasn't worth much. Some major life changes helped me to get my confidence up enough to start losing the weight about a year after I graduated, and the more weight that came off the more my journal pages filled up. I would be gleeful and excited on the outside but felt very exposed and very scared on the inside. The more my protective covering melted away the more I felt the pain that led to me to gain the weight in the first place. I actually had my first experience with a panic attack around this time, not long after hitting 10% of my weight loss goal. I am incredibly glad that I had enough good sense to journal my way through it to be able to at least be aware of the emotional changes it was bringing. (It was quite a while later before I could actually process them.) I would say that if you are experiencing big emotional triggers in response to fat loss, it's well worth exploring your history with weight and body image by yourself or with a therapist. I've had huge success understanding my issues in this area through IFS work.

Thanks for the kind welcoming! I would say that what was most uncomfortable about my relationships is that the people I was in them with swore up and down that they loved me, but for most of my life I very purposely let very little of myself out so they had no real basis on which to make that sort of claim. My contribution to almost every relationship pre-philosophy that I can think of was to listen to the other person talk, not to speak much other than to confirm the other person's biases, and comfort them after they were done. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time but would often think about how "squirmy" I felt when I had an opinion that differed from someone else's, and it's because on some level I knew that the person didn't actually care at all what I had to say - only that I was listening to them. Of course I played an active role in creating these friendships this way; I was being used because I wanted to be used. My mother was perineally depressed and would never admit it, and I learned very early on that listening attentively and comforting were ways to get people to feel better, even if only for a little while. I pretty much was hooked on people's sadness and that's definitely an uncomfortable place to be.

I can totally relate to this. I actually JUST rejoined Facebook after being off it for over two years. For me, the process was a bit of the opposite - as I got into philosophy and liberty, I found myself censoring so that people on my friends list wouldn't see and get offended. I slowly started deleting and deleting and eventually had no one left other than who I saw in person anyway. Other circumstances led to the deleting and I'm very grateful to have had a break from it. I think FB can be a valuable resource and connect like minded people - which is how I hope to use it this time around - but I don't believe that is its primary purpose or what most people use it for. In my experience, people use it more to pad their egos and fill unmet needs of popularity rather than as an idea sharing source.

Hello boards, I've been listening to FDR for about three years but have never participated in the boards before. I've fully accepted voluntarism and atheism and the results have completely changed my life. When I first heard FDR I was a feminist vegetarian liberal visiting my parents every other weekend and maintaing really uncomfortable, emotionally shallow friendships. I am grateful for who I was and what I did to survive but am even more grateful for the place I am now! I'm most passionate about improving my relationships through the application of RTR, pursuing self knowledge through therapy and journaling, and learning all I can about peaceful parenting to be ready if/when I decide to take that step. My hope is to use these boards to practice talking about my ideas and to extend more of a social net after isolating my real self for most of my life. Thanks for reading and I'll talk to you soon.

Wow, thanks for the honesty and vulnerability. It takes a lot of courage to recognize those things about yourself and much more to post them. I'm very, very sorry for what you went through. I also have wrestled with timidity quite a bit and it's only been through lots of work and therapy and conversations like this one that I've really made headway. I'm glad to hear you are digging your teeth into liberty and the best advice I can offer is to be sure to keep up the self work while exploring the intellectual side - it'll make it all click in a way that is more naturally you. A belated welcome to you, Daisyanarchist!