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Fear of death and terror are both symptoms of real Threats and Violence in your childhood this is not something you are inventing. It looks like to me that the violence began very early in your childhood as small human being attacked by your parents (3 to 4 times your size) this would produce enormous fear in you because imagine if today someone 4 times your size would attack you, you would fear for your life as a child multiply that fear factor x100 maybe more. Your parents/family are the ones who terrorized you and let danger come to you without protecting you so they become the abusers and then you would run to them for protection when you are afraid of "life" so they do both roles at the same time this can lead to Schizophrenia in some cases because of the confusing nature of being the abuser and the loving parent (see Stockholm Syndrome). This is like having your lawyer becoming your judge and after returns as a lawyer or imagine a prison guard who tortures you at the same time gives you food and sometimes can show you even understanding. This scenario is not so rare btw a lot of children go through that and develop social anxiety in adulthood the problem is they do not remember the attacks which could have happened as early as in babyhood in preverbal stage and this inevitably produces a lot of shame and fear of death or fear of life. I can really understand you that you cannot know who likes you and who doesn't I ran thru similar fear like you. I would suggest to not focus on who likes you and focus to protect yourself from who doesn't like you like in the case of your co-workers. In therapy at one point you will become to like yourself and you will see how much your family victimized you this insight can really unlock much empathy for yourself and you'll see that the rejection that you fear in the now already happened and it is not dangerous to discover it in your therapy in my view you need to go through that fear of death/rejection slowly so you can process it express it with shakings and sobbing and with your therapist next to you because come out of dissociation is intense. The ultimate goal of a therapy in my view is you become your best friend no matter what is the circumstances, whether being loved or hated your self love will be unshakable and you'll become the person who loves You the most, after that you will attract only the people who love themselves. Thanks for bringing this up! I wish you best of luck in healing the effect of this early rejection in the beginning of your life.

Your idea is very interesting I thought about this as well. Many directors try to depict a tomorrowland without wars, without violence in movies but they failed in it because they failed to talk about where all violence starts which is in the family in childhood. The closest thing I know to what you are looking for is a french movie called “La Belle Verte”. I want to contribute to your idea but differently if there will be a novel about a peaceful world as you describe it I would like to write the preface on how we achieved it so I wrote a Preface. I hope you like it Preface Our world now is finally peaceful but when we read history books we can hardly believe we finally made it to the other side. We know now the fact that most of humans for thousands of years had trauma inflicted on them in childhood and that this changed the way they viewed themselves and others they began to behave toward themselves and others in an unnatural way especially with their children. Violence received in childhood percolated in violence inflicted on others in adulthood. This toxic cycle has been around for thousands of years like beating children in order to make them good and moral adult persons (see Lloyd DeMause) so the whole society back then and for a long time has been believing in things like: violence brings peace, blind obedience is good and violence do good. This unnatural way has become the norm and the "natural” way of thinking. That is why people talked more about the "violent gene" while avoiding condemning their parents violence on them as small children. This guilt attitude has been among humans throughout history and for a long time and this contributed to build a narcissistic society. We do not know how the world would have turned out back then if every child was respected in his/her dignity since birth and since the dawn of time. On the other hand there were very few people who undertook the path to self knowledge, doing therapy and rejecting their parents behaviour altogether this resulted in a big awareness about what we have missed since our birth, the trauma and the difficulty parents have put their children through. After such a breakthrough in therapy these people changed and they became peaceful challenging the dogma that depicted humans as an innately bad and violent specie. These new parents became loving with themselves and with their children and friends, they proved to the world that when children are loved and cared for they do not randomly become criminals. These brave people came to know what they have missed. It was their courage to experience their pain in therapy and to talk about it. Some have written books and others have started a no spank movement. Even though the movement started to grow most people at that time did not investigate their childhood at least not in a profound way for that reason it took humanity a long and painful time to radically change, abandon religions and start a real movement of peace and love not only in songs but in everyday life. Today we finally have a peaceful and empathic society the world now is different. The remaining documents, audio and video files they will forever be a witness about the dark past of humanity so we do not have to repeat the past ever again.

Upvoting only ? or downvoting too that you don't find a use for it. I upvote some posts because I find them useful or courageous sometimes I will comment them or answer them if they contain questions, sometimes there are answers that I like so I upvote without commenting them. On the less bright side of voting downvotes are so much more important to me they keep trolls' toxic posts hidden and that I find very useful.

Hi, I think the podcast was about the caller seeing a religious person yelling in a park warning others of hell and the girl friend of the caller had empathy for the religious person in the park. The caller also pointed out that in his view all religious persons are not good or something like that. Is it this podcast you are looking for ? I think It is podcast 1975 http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1975_sunday_show_aug_14_2011.mp3

Not all women are like your mother or female caregiver and not every man is like your father or male caregiver. Good people do exist FDR is one good example where you can find support, empathy, love... and a girlfriend! Isolation is a choice not a fate.

Andrew, I hope that you will care less of what people think of you and care more of what you think about yourself and work on it. Your last statement shows that you lack, self validation and good self-esteem and this has its origin in childhood. Maybe what I am telling you here is new for you but the lack of trust we have within us attracts exploitive people with poor self-image of themselves. Also we tend to view people as source of approval or disapproval like in childhood. I recommend you the books of Nathaniel Branden all of them it will help you to raise your self-esteem and attract high self-esteem girls. To help you out I quote down below Nathaniel Branden about relationships this is from his book Six Pillars of Self Esteem page 21. "An important principle of human relationships is that we tend to feel most comfortable, most "at home," with persons whose self-esteem level resembles our own. Opposites may attract about some issues, but not about this one. High-self-esteem individuals tend to be drawn to high-self- esteem individuals. We do not see a passionate love affair, for example, between persons at opposite ends of the self-esteem continuum just as we are not likely to see a passionate romance between intelligence and stupidity. (I am not saying we might never see a "one-night stand," but that is another matter. Note I am speaking of passionate love, not a brief infatuation or sexual episode, which can operate by a different ~t of dynamics.) Medium-self-esteem individuals are typically attracted to medium-self-esteem individuals. Low self-esteem seeks low self-esteem in others-not consciously, to be sure, but by the logic of that which leads us to feel we have encountered a "soul mate." The most disastrous relationships are those between persons who think poorly of themselves; the union of two abysses does not produce a height."

I was struck by the shadow of the father bullying his son the shadow coming from a shattered glass window. It is very expressive. I liked it !!

I had the same experiences as you! :-) The joy is so strong and intense you feel it's like you're out of control so try to jump and scream your happiness, give it expression, dancing would be also a good catalyst you'll see you will get used to be happy and it will be less scary. I hide my joy from people who will not tolerate it and become jealous of my joy other than that it is good to feel joy. I'm happy for you!!

In my view the betrayal came from both of your parents. You can choose to not to be a bouncing ball between the two and get out of this silly and dangerous game they put you in let them figure out their relationships on their own now they are using you as a tool because they do not want to confront real issues. I think what is most important is to feel how this affected you as a child and most likely the abuse started before divorce. Seeing the reality of your childhood for what it is will slowly bring more clarity to your vision and get you out of this confusion. You should not side with any one of your parents you should remain on your own side and on the side of the truth and not your parents' propaganda. This podcast can help you http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1662_the_effects_of_divorce_listener_convo.mp3

I agree with you completely as you can see unfortunately people still see kids as tools to use to feel better and this is what we all were conditioned to think and say. It's a propaganda that parents use it against us and then we believe in it blindly then we use it to perpetuate the use of children for personal gains and "happiness". And guess what when children do not bring the happiness that they were supposed to give to their parents and they begin to cry and to be angry? Well then they get beaten, ignored, hated and broken that is how most of us were treated when we did not smile at the parents. The healing power comes from within no from the children or the spouse, thank you so much for your very wise comment!

What has been missed is gone but what you can do is therapy to feel finally the pain of your childhood and cry about it also you should not get over it but you can integrate it and live with it. This is what Truth means, because if you try to get rid of it (dissociation) you will not learn from it. It's like getting rid of the knowledge that touching fire hurts, you wanna retain that knowledge of pain so to not to hurt yourself again and not to hurt others. So learning how it feels like to not to be loved by your father will certainly help you to no more demand love from others to compensate the lack of it and welcome love when it is available and genuinely offered to you. You wanna have children after you invested a lot of time in therapy and self knowledge I feel it is way much better for the children so they don't have the burden of someone else's past. Stefan did have his daughter after he dealt with much of his childhood trauma and I think that was a wise choice. To help you out this is a quote from the author Alice Miller: Source Pain is the way to the truth. By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth. And throughout your whole life you'll try to earn love. In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than to think, "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis.

Your response was very clear and the guy noticed you are becoming stronger and he backed off. I smiled when he said to you “there will be problems” it is amazing how much these people lack so much empathy he did not see that there was already a problem he was creating but he delegated it to you to deal with it now you gave him his problem back justice was made. You see parents do the same thing when they have an internal problem they externalize it and vomit it in the child by blaming the child (poisonous container) and now the child has to deal with all the family problem. In your workplace these people acted like your parents and like everyone of us you were conditioned to not to see it and to take responsibility for other people problems. I think that’s why I said in the first post that you don’t need to please shit people just tell them no or ignore them. Anyways this is a very good step forward for you in dealing with people who lack empathy and compassion and what you did is truly encouraging and inspiring. How do you feel now about this situation ? Do you think it is resolved ? Do you think you’ll stay in this workplace ?

It's a very nice dream you had. Generally CAD means Canadian Dollars like USD maybe because of the fact that Stefan lives in Canada. The seeds are the plants for the future like investment so you plant the seeds of self knowledge and it will grow with time. The ants were the obstacle to your curiosity and joy and with this work you want to overcome the fear of them, maybe these ants are maybe the people of your childhood that still scare you deep down at an unconscious level also ant and aunt phonetically are close, did you have an abusive or scary aunt in your childhood? I liked the fact that Stefan would say to you to do it anyways I understood that he is asking you to have more courage facing the unknown. I hope this helped you.

You are absolutely right you should not allow it to continue to erode your sense of self. I did mention childhood before because people usually don't wanna treat the root of the problem. I think you should continue to stand for your rights to be respected it will make you feel miserable with guilt feelings at first but the more you defend yourself in the present the more you will feel safe and protected by yourself the fear will go away also this will make you stronger to confront more efficiently your past because you are making your present and your future different from the original template. It worked that way for me when I had to defend myself and say no to people in my life. Again about your workplace, see if you can write and send an official letter where you express facts about the abuse happening, that will shake them off a bit. I encourage you to continue to defend yourself go legal if you can or see if you can work in another company. Life is short you should not waste it trying to please toxic people. Btw what you're doing to find solutions to this is really courageous and inspiring good luck in your therapy!

I'd suggest you to read books on how to deal with abuse at the workplace and there is a very good book called Stalking the Soul written by Marie-France Hirigoyen. If you read in french there is another book by the same author called "Malaise dans le travail, harcèlement moral : déméler le vrai du faux" One more thing to help you in this very painful situation is to try to talk to an empathic friend or an empathic therapist about this situation that will help you to express your feelings of despair, sadness and anger. Also maybe you are reacting to old and unworked traumas in childhood (triggers) and It looks to me that the root problem relies more in your childhood when you say that kids infuriated you in school, did your parents know this ? Did they protect you or they also were abusive so you could not talk to anyone and you felt isolated ? Here's a good podcast about taking your feelings into account at work http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1454_RTR_At_Work.mp3

Much of the anxiety and difficulty we face now as adults to make decisions, have personal preferences or building boundaries comes from the early rejection you mention in the podcast. It's good you're in therapy btw and I can tell you that childhood is a goldmine and the fact that you still feel that you were a bad child show you how you were viewed by your parents and you internalized it, you had no choice, your therapy will help you to recover your self esteem and change the way you view yourself. Just imagine that you can live free and have the right to make decisions for your future and no longer reject yourself because other rejected you. You can achieve that by exploring your past and talk about it in your therapy. Stefan's Podcasts are extremely helpful. Go to this address http://www.fdrpodcasts.com and type any keyword, for example "rejection" or "fear of rejection" and you'll have results of all the podcasts where the subject of rejection is discussed. Best of luck!

I agree that we cannot undo the deeds. Sometimes out of hopelessness I would wish my past was otherwise. I think that it is ok to help others but more important to know why do you help those who reject you or use you. I know for a fact that we repeat the past that we refuse to acknowledge therefore it would be very fruitful to investigate this pattern so you can arrive at the root of this and I believe when you know the truth it will protect you and you will be better judge of people in the future. It is beautiful and encouraging that you feel good about yourself and love yourself, I know that feeling very well, and automatons do not feel the self love you are describing I am very happy for you! I think it is a clear sign that you are on the right track.

What you describe is a lot of fear of rejection and toxic shame. I think you are afraid of being rejected if you do not do what you think you are expected to do. I think your fear to be rejection is very valid and also think that the rejection already happened maybe in your childhood or at school but it has not been worked out in therapy yet. Rejection produces a lot of shame and can really be a handicap to feel worth it and to feel that you have the right to exist and have your own preferences. The problem is not with you it is with the people who shamed and rejected you. I think you are still complying with an old rule and you internalized a false image of yourself though in therapy you should be able to feel a lot of anger to assert your right to be who you are without feeling embarrassed or guilty. There is a great book on this topic of John Bradshaw: Healing the shame that binds you. There is a podcast I think is useful http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_720_The_Hell_Of_Attempted_Connection.mp3

The quote you quoted is very insightful and I was really sad to hear he was abused at school and at home this was awful it makes sense why he hated school so much and why he wanted his kids to have another type of school I hope he is not isolating them from the outside world to "protect" them from bullies, parents who did not work on their past will pass their unresolved trauma to their children even if they mean well they still do it unconsciously. By the way I agree with you on the minimization I think the pain of not being loved by his father is strong maybe his success is a form of vengeance on those (father and others) who did not see a great and creative mind in him as a child.

Thank you for mentioning Elon Musk I wanted to say something about this guy. I do like him. Not long ago he donated 10 millions dollars to researches to keep artificial intelligence safe for humans not many people do that. I watched the video the part about fatherhood and I was disappointed. In my view fatherhood is not only about assisting in schools but also love and presence he did not mention that. I hope Stefan interviews him one day. https://youtu.be/vKC85-jnPpU

In my view all religions are dangerous for our brains and especially for the brain of a child. Please listen to Stefan's Podcast on how to break free from Religion http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_2591_The_Thinking_Atheist.mp3 Best of luck

For example in Egypt it is very highly regarded if your son or daughter is a doctor. The Egyptian society gives more respect to a family where one of the members is a doctor or architect/engineer. Poor and uneducated parents can feel grandiose when their son/daughter has a title of a doctor and this is very narcissistic.

Child abuse doesn't predispose but results in high adrenaline addiction in order to escape painful emotions. Jihadists or any other extremist groups cannot and will not work on self-knowledge. These psychopaths are not interested in knowing who they are and how they got to be like that all they want is power. All they want is to victimize others and fabricate enemies, make life on earth hell like the hell of their childhood, they do this driven by the unconscious. In my view religions and terrorism are the symptoms of unresolved trauma. Like fever (terrorism and wars) is symptom of an infection (childhood trauma and injury). Right now the society is focusing on the fever leaving the infection intact. In other words society is trying to blame religion for terrorism but they rarely investigate the childhood of the terrorist they want to think it's genetic or something else. For now the whole subject of childhood is tabooed we prefer saying that the islamic texts are violent but we do not say how much the majority of muslim parents are violent and unloving with their kids. I think investigating about our own childhood will unlock our capacity to understand the laws of life and how violence come into the world it is much better than reading the newspaper. I’ll paste this text by Alice Miller called The roots of violence are not unknown link: The Roots of Violence are NOT Unknown The misled brain and the banned emotions The Facts: 1. The development of the human brain is use-dependent. The brain develops its structure in the first four years of life, depending on the experiences the environment offers the child. The brain of a child who has mostly loving experiences will develop differently from the brain of a child who has been treated cruelly. 2. Almost all children on our planet are beaten in the first years of their lives. They learn from the start violence, and this lesson is wired into their developing brains. No child is ever born violent. Violence is NOT genetic, it exists because beaten children use, in their adult lives, the lesson that their brains have learned. 3. As beaten children are not allowed to defend themselves, they must suppress their anger and rage against their parents who have humiliated them, killed their inborn empathy, and insulted their dignity. They will take out this rage later, as adults, on scapegoats, mostly on their own children. Deprived of empathy, some of them will direct their anger against themselves (in eating disorders, drug addiction, depression etc.), or against other adults (in wars, terrorism, delinquency etc.) Questions and Answers: Q: Parents beat their children without a second thought, to make them obedient. Nobody, except a very small minority, protests against this dangerous habit. Why is the logical sequence (from being a misled victim to becoming a misleading perpetrator) totally ignored world-wide? Why have even the Popes, responsible for the moral behaviour of many millions of believers, until now never informed them that beating children is a crime? A: Because almost ALL of us were beaten, and we had to learn very early that these cruel acts were normal, harmless, and even good for us. Nobody ever told us that they were crimes against humanity. The wrong, immoral, and absurd lesson was wired into our developing brains, and this explains the emotional blindness governing our world. Q: Can we free ourselves from the emotional blindness we developed in childhood? A: We can - at least to some degree - liberate ourselves from this blindness by daring to feel our repressed emotions, including our fear and forbidden rage against our parents who had often scared us to death for periods of many years, which should have been the most beautiful years of our lives. We can't retrieve those years. But thanks to facing our truth we can transform ourselves from the children who still live in us full of fear and denial into responsible, well informed adults who regained their empathy, so early stolen from them. By becoming feeling persons we can no longer deny that beating children is a criminal act that should be forbidden on the whole planet. Conclusion: Caring for the emotional needs of our children means more than giving them a happy childhood. It means to enable the brains of the future adults to function in a healthy, rational way, free from perversion and madness. Being forced to learn in childhood that hitting children is a blessing for them is a most absurd, confusing lesson, one with the most dangerous consequences: This lesson as such, together with being cut off from the true emotions, creates the roots of violence.

The personality is the same as any person who takes a gun and shoot innocent people. A guy who shoots students in a college is no better than a jihadist or a nazi soldier they all are driven by hatred and rage. All of these murderers have in common a horrible childhood since their birth, their parents tortured them and killed their capacity for empathy and they told them that this is done for their own good. Islam or any ideology/religion is only a symptom of a much greater psychological problem. These murderers all of them deny their horrible past and label it "normal childhood” they say that the beatings never hurt them and it was to make them stronger. These murderers glorify the fact that they feel no fear and if they kill it is for a just cause. They are all the same to me they are all garbage psychopaths. Here are some books that can help you understand these personalities and more understand the roots causes not only the symptoms: For Your Own Good by Alice Miller The Origins of War in Child Abuse by Lloyd Demause & Stefan Molyneux link Emotional Life of Nations by Lloyd Demause I am quoting here also a text from Alice Miller from an article called The Wellsprings of Horror in the Cradle link "Hatred is hatred and rage is rage, all over the world and at any time the same, in Serbia, Rwanda or Afghanistan. They are always the fruits of very strong emotions, reactions to injuries to their dignity endured in childhood, normal reactions of the body that were not allowed to express themselves in a safe way. Nobody comes to the world with the wish to destroy. Every newborn, independently from the culture, religion or ethnic origins needs to love, be loved, protected, and respected. This is his biological design. If he is maltreated by the cruel upbringing he will develop the very strong wish to take revenge. He will be driven to destroy others or himself but only by his history and never by inborn genes. The idea of destructive genes is a modern version of the fairy tale talking about the "devil's children" who need to be chastised to become obedient and nice."

In Toronto area she can go to this website Assaulted Women Helpline http://www.awhl.org or call 416-863-0511 or toll free 1-866-863-0511 she also can find free shelter at any YMCA in Toronto. She will not be deported if she is a permanent resident.