Starsky

Hi Wesley, sounds like a really good subject for a call-in show. Have you listened to any of the podcasts on ambition? And, btw, narcissists don't want you to thrive. They like you to stay small and stick around - for them.

You're welcome. I forgot to mention Dr. Gabor Mate, his work is extremely insightful. Stef has already done an interview with him and Mate has a lots of videos out on youtube. Well worth seeing!

Hi wings, I recommend Susan Forward, John Bradshaw and Pete Walker (his book about Complex PTSD is fantastic).

He's got the money, she's got the looks. I cannot imagine a constellation like that to be the basis of a strong and loving marriage. What if the first rush of sexual attraction wears off due to, well, everyday life? Will they stay together because they have kids? What is the foundation of this relationship? I am the child of such a superficial bond. My mother looked like Barbie when she met my father who looked like Ken. He was about to start his training in the States to become a fighter pilot. Since only wives were allowed to come along, they decided to get married within 3 days. How well can you get to know a person within 3 days? My parent's marriage lived on looks and prestige and my sister and I were born 4 years later because that's what couples do, have kids. None of the two took a real interest in us. Barbie's looks started to decay in her very early thirties and Ken escaped the daily routine by working extra hard and staying away as often as possible. My mother's only advantage were her looks. Until this day I can't think of any positive traits she had. None, whatsoever. My father in return soon displayed his life strategy: rejecting the consequences of his actions and fighting tooth and nail to not be bothered by them - even on his current death bed. Basically they set a monument to themselves and my sister and I were part of that monument, along with the house and the dog. Being a mere prop in this sick game we turned out like you can imagine - living a life of unimportance and non-existence. I have an ACE score of 5

Great video with great insight! I found the interview with Howard Stern very interesting. 'I could get my father's attention if I could get inside that box'. Now I know why I always aim at being perceived as intelligent and funny. It's to impress my father whose attention I always got by being just that. Sad to realize just who is still running my life...

I'm very sorry for what you had to go through as a child and thus as an adult. Nobody deserves to be treated like that, especially not a child. I can strongly relate to your post. Sounds like your parents used you as their contrast agent. You're the one who's selfish, lazy, thoughtless, rude, uncaring, etc., of course always with a bad intent. They applied those attributes to you in order to feel better about themselves. From what I read in your post, those exact attributes apply to them. It took me decades to fully comprehend and see through this kind of strategy often used by my mother. She projected all her malicious bullshit onto me and then attacked me for it. To her it was all about power and if she had to use her kids for that, so be it. We were an easy target for her and then labelled cowards. How mindfucked is that? Nonetheless I believed her crap for years. How could I not? Luckily she died when I was 12 but until recently, deep down, I still believed that her perception of me (very similar to yours) was accurate. The breakthrough moment for me was when I called her all the names and insults she gave me as a child. That rung true. It was like all the puzzle pieces fell into place. Or as Stef once put it, I handed the bags of shit with her name on them back to where they belong - to her. I found your father's comment about your fast typing really enraging. You left your assigned role of the hopeless loser and that obviously threatened your father's poor self esteem, so he decided to ruin the compliment your mother gave you. What an arsehole. How can you not believe you're a bad person when you've been told so repeatedly for years and years? How your (legitimate) anger was treated in your family is outright disgusting. Oh, what a delight it must have been for your sick parents when they saw you raging over a game of Monopoly! Instead of empathically guiding you in how to handle frustration, they decided to ridicule you. That reminds me of an incident in my childhood. My dog was given away since my mother had to stay in hospital permanently, leaving no one to look after the dog during daytime. I was told that at the dinner table and immediately broke into tears and screamed with sadness and anger. My cancer-ridden mother was so delighted to see her children cry and rage, she burst into such a heartily laugh that made all the fillings in her upper jaw visible. Go figure that out. There she stood, one foot in the grave, and she made her children feel worse than herself. I came to the conclusion that everything my mother said about me was an outright lie. I self-attacked for so many years to the point where I wanted to die. I was forced to adopt my mother's self-hatred and was made to believe it were my own. I don't think you're an arsehole or a bad person. You might want to return those labels back to where they came from. As somebody else already suggested, calling in to the show can be a good idea as well as considering therapy. All the best for your journey to self knowledge.

As a child I never had the impression that my mother was trying to protect me from cutting myself on a piece of broken glass. That wasn't the issue. The issue was more around me creating extra work for her, having to buy new glasses, mopping up sticky lemonade, cleaning a carpet etc. If I'd additionally cut myself then that would have been even more of a hassle for her and she'd have said that it served me right for not being careful. I knocked over a cup at a friend's house and I was quite surprised that her mum actually asked me if I hurt myself before she calmly cleaned up. Unimaginable in my home! Stuff was always more important than children. I still witness this today. Most kids flinch when breaking stuff around my home and actually ask me if I'm angry with them. Of course I'm not and I think it's important to show them the other option of reacting in a non-violent and compassionate way. That's how they hopefully treat their future kids.

My first suspicion was that the child is anticipating a punishment or rather an attack for breaking a glass. That's what happened to me growing up.

Ha Ha! I've done that and the outcome was interesting. I too was called retarded and accused of 'knowing what they meant'. Of course I did but I refused to self-attack and took the wind out of their sails.

I don't mean to hijack your thread, Joel but somebody else on the forum very recently posted a you tube link and I've been listening to that guy the whole day. I'll post 2 links below that struck me just the way your work did, Joel. I now have the validation that my mother did all that shit ON PURPOSE.

Thank you, Joel. You put into words what is true and what I was never allowed to say. You wrote about my mother's abuse and precisely how I perceived it. I very clearly felt her vicious hatred and her insatiable hunger for power over me. I knew it all along - my mother did not love me, she wanted me gone, dead. And nobody believed me. NOBODY. In her fits of rage she showed her true colors, always behind closed doors of course. I was struck by the point you made of how these bullies are being honest when rampaging through their victim's lives. I always sensed that but now it's all the more clearer than ever. The dog analogy is dead-on. To increase and maintain the power disparity my mother desperately needed to have the illusion of self-worth, she simultaneously applied emotional abuse. She installed a self-controlling and self-loathing chip in my brain. I felt like a conditioned dog most of the time, only that our real dog was treated far better. Thank you so much for the effort you put into your work and I can't wait to read more.

I used to watch quite a lot of horror movies up to my mid twenties. I was never really into gore movies but rather stuff like Braveheart, American Werewolf and The Exorcist, all of them being quite violent and disturbing. While they used to make me laugh for being somewhat absurd and grotesk, I now refuse to watch them. Also, I could never watch crap like faces of death. That's all real, no actors, no fake blood, no make-up artists. I cannot comprehend how people can watch such horrifying scenes. Reminds me of those disgusting Romans cheering on a gladiator match. I don't think it's the fake blood/bones/brain in horror movies that put me off, it's rather the suspense that usually accompanies those stories that really stresses me out. I know it all too well. It reminds me so much of my childhood, having to expect the unexpected and impending doom out of the blue. My system is on red alert while watching and I just won't have that anymore. What also scared the shit out me was 'I Am Legend' or 'Cast Away'. In both cases the protagonist is all alone and depends solely on himself. No one there to help or comfort. Ah yes, I know that theme to an extreme from before I could talk.

Thanks for your replies. You're right. I guess I put far too much pressure on myself and I realize that I cannot will motivation and inspiration into existence. I decided to stop attacking myself for not being ambitious and enthusiastic. That would be repeating my childhood trauma.

The topic might sound weird yet this is the question I currently face and have been for almost 40 years. A bit of background: I grew up with a fellow victim (twin sister), a sadistic and deranged mother and an indifferent father (he changed when my mother died at age 40 and became a single dad raising us). In school I noticed that arts and crafts was an easy and enjoyable task and I always came up with terrific results. What I found to be an effortless and fantastic occupation was recognized as a great talent by all my arts teachers. That led me to studying interior design. My mother showed no interest in my abilities but rather pointed out that it's far more important to be good at subjects like maths, German and science since those are the areas where good money could be earned. She simply proclaimed 'you don't need that stuff' like all other preferences, passions, interests and desires I had. That witch made it clear that she considered her children to be worthless, embarrassing and a nuisance and my father happily chimed in with her. He made a 180 degree turn in his parenting once my mother was in hospital permanently. I, as an 11-year-old, assumed my mother not only terrorized her children but also her husband. Sadly, by then, I already had a damaged identity, if I ever even developed one... Fast forward to 2001 where I graduated. There I stood holding in my hands a diploma and I had no idea what to do with it. I was scared shitless of job interviews, constantly thinking I wasn't prepared enough to start an employment, lacked motivation and creativity. For the first time nobody told me what to do. Nobody assigned me a task. Instead I started working in dead-end jobs which required low skill sets like waiter jobs, helping out in my boyfriend's business or even as a test driver. All of those jobs were badly paid and I always got them through people who already worked there, so I never had to apply for a job. Beggars can't be choosy I thought. I quit my last shit-job almost a year ago to become a self-employed designer along with my partner who has been doing just that successfully for over 20 years. I know that this is a bold decision regarding my history of low level jobs, but I just couldn't stand the thought of wasting away my life as an underachiever. So in january I started catching up on the required software and helped out in my partner's business. Again, I was assigned tasks. As soon as I finished them I did nothing in the realm of design and creativity. I had no motivation what so ever. I just don't know what I want to design or create even though I am thrilled when I see good art or design. A blank page scares the hell out of me. There seems to be a block when it comes to deciding what to do with my life. I'm also interested in psychology but when I imagine having a degree there, I blank out too. I seem to be waiting for permission yet intellectually I know I don't need to. At best I can say 'I don't know what I want to do but I know what I don't want to do'. I feel hollowed out and a failure. Have any of you had similar experiences? I'd gladly appreciate any input.

Thank you Bipedal Primate and Kevin. Again you provided excellent posts and a lot to think about and I am very grateful for the effort you put into it. I've done quite a bit of parts work, getting to know many of them (I met around 30) and they filled almost 200 pages so far. Yet I noticed that I tend to slip back into autopilot mode, dissociating and watching my life like an uninvolved bystander and completely disconnecting from myself. In those situations I merely react like I'm supposed to react and it's exhausting. This, of course, was pounded into me in my childhood, making me very convenient to my parents and other arseholes. No wonder I got an A+ for the analysis of the Logical Song by Supertramp in 11th grade... Yes, yes and yes. I'm struggling with this a lot, especially in the work field. I'm a self-employed interior designer and operating from my false self totally messes up my creativity. Somewhere I've read that your inner child is directly connected to your creativity. During my parts work I noticed that communicating with my inner child is a real challenge. My inner child is still really anxious, still thinking that she's not allowed to exist or merely permitted to mime as a ghost. As a child I was beaten into believing that whatever I contributed was childish(!), stupid, silly, embarrassing, worthless or megalomaniacal. So I became whoever the fuck any authority wanted me to be. Thus I was cut off from myself and constantly scanning the environment. And that is so exhausting... However, the effortless feeling of being in the true self is familiar to me. It's rare but it's always a bliss. I feel an inner light shining brighter than a thousand suns and whatever problem bumps into me, I know I can handle it. I guess I'm going to do more parts work now.