Quadrewple

What were you exposed to that shut down your thinking? I have had some success with marijuana in helping with the body pain which in turn helps with the hypervigilance and not feeling the need to know where everyone else is, but I want to try and fix the problem at its root - not simply manage its effects which is easier said than done for me.

I appreciate all the responses! Kurtis - the first two months of me going no-contact with my dad were hell. Basically every waking moment I was consumed by rage - this combined with the physical and mental exhaustion of my job (busy gas station), my long bike rides to get me to and from work, and the lack of quality sleep due to muscle spasms and night terrors led to many many days which I considered suicide. After this experience, which my therapist referred to as a type of purging, I understand why it took me 4 years of therapy to be ready to go no-contact. At a certain point I came to a crossroad - either I had to act out my rage on someone (it would have been my father) or I had to find a way to let go of it. I still believe death would not be an unjust punishment for what he put me through (not just what he did to me, but the person he turned me into), but if I had chosen to kill him, I would've also killed myself to avoid prison. Then I thought about how terrible the aftermath of all that would've been for my brother and sister and that was a stronger motivator than anything positive to look forward to in my own future. Though I do have a lot of hope now, the way I feel now may as well have been an eternity after back then. Back then I was more or less operating on faith - faith that things really would get better, faith that I would eventually go from dozens of flashbacks a day to recently having two or three days in a row without flashbacks, faith that the onslaught of negative thoughts and feelings were a result of breaking contact with the person I hate the most and finally feeling a lifetime's worth of backed up pain - not a permanent part of my existence. My mother lives in a group home somewhere in Alabama (I'm in California) and I do not remember the last time I spoke with her - probably about 5 years ago and she is so heavily medicated and out of touch with reality as it is, I don't know how useful it would be to talk to her, though more recently I have been thinking about telling her how horrible she made my childhood by everything she did while she was here and by abandoning me and my siblings. I still live in the same small town I grew up in. I have been slowly chipping away at repairing relations between me and my brother and thankfully they are at an all-time good. I don't have contact with my sister - it may take a long time for us to have the type of relationship me and my brother have now (which is still awkward), for lots of reasons, including that I treated her very badly when she was young. I don't plan on having any contact with my extended family, as not one of them stepped in to help me process my mom abandoning us, and I never really felt a connection to any of them so much as I felt the obligation to feel a connection to them. I didn't get one word of sympathy or one hug - with the exception of my mother's mother who kept reiterating how much my mom loved me, how she wasn't responsible for her craziness, and who successfully made me feel guilty for not keeping in touch with my mother even though SHE is the one who abandoned ME. I go to a CBT therapist currently. I hadn't heard of SE therapy, but I have had some recent success in trembling and relieving physical tension while meditating - Elliot Hulse's videos have been immensely helpful in the bodywork side of things. Are there any specific things you can tell me about your experiences in SE therapy?

That sounds awesome. I'm interested in finding and exploring new ways to heal in addition to my CBT therapy which I still attend and plan on attending for the foreseeable future. I've also recently broken off some relationships which were not helping me move forward in healing so having some other people to chat with about healing trauma may be just what I need right now.

It was difficult for me to find a good way to word my question. I know there is no objective answer, but I want to explore it and get some feedback. From as early as I can remember until age 9, I was frequently and viciously beaten by my dad, and also by my mom. I was mostly beaten by my dad at the request of my mom, who requested these beatings for my questioning her authority or disobeying her orders. My memory of my entire childhood is very fuzzy because I was forced to be on the constant lookout for anything I might say or do which would get me beaten, and also because I was severely neglected. As early as age 6 my parents would leave me home alone for a day, and when my mom (labeled schizophrenic) moved across the country to a group home at age 9, I lost the only of the two parents which paid any attention to me whatsoever. My dad stayed on his computer or in his room and ignored me and my younger siblings and I only have two clear memories of him which don't involve him beating me. One major problem I still face because of all the abuse is that my nervous system still constantly prepares me for being physically attacked. In other words, it's extremely difficult for me to relax and take a deep breath. I have been in a state of non-stop stress ever since I can remember, because almost any interaction with other people has the potential to trigger an emotional flashback to childhood. It has improved since going no contact with my father and my extended family (it has been just over 4 months at this point), but there are still days when the whole day I am stuck in a state of physical and emotional pain, combined with an inability to feel physical or emotional pleasure. When I put my preferences over the other person's - especially if it's someone I don't know well or trust my fear response is activated. I am equally as prone to be triggered by positive events as I am with negative ones. Someone being very nice to me often triggers my fear that I'm being tricked somehow into letting my guard down so I can be hurt even more. This is especially true with women, which makes sense given the fact that my mom was capable of being very nice to me when she wasn't threatening me, brainwashing me, or keeping me from developing my own identity. I struggle with flashbacks at my customer service job. I was never able to develop my own identity with my mom around because she treated me as an object which she could showcase to her friends. Because I was smart, because she was so good at teaching me language skills (homeschool), and because she was a narcissist, I was something for her to show off to her friends in the church and the only way for me to gain her affection was to play the smart, obedient little boy to gain her status with her "friends". I was never able to develop my own identity around my father because he simply didn't interact with us in the home. In high school I started to use my constant anxiety and verbal skills to make people laugh and started to become very popular for this. I had 2 of my 4 closest friends move away and for various other reasons, I was unable to continue to use this strategy, which was a type of personality structure in reaction to my trauma. My personality changed to something akin to a paranoid schizoid, which I couldn't truly shake until I moved out of my dad's house and to a different city. This drastic change in my personality happened sometime between the end of 10th grade and the beginning of 11th grade. I never consciously decided to make either of these changes to my personality - they happened unconsciously, and because of my lack of social support, not a single person reached out to see to try to understand why I went from loud, popular guy to eating lunch in the bathrooms guy who couldn't make eye contact over the course of a few months. I believe the only reason I survived this period of my life without killing myself or becoming a monstrous sadist was because I was able to suppress (in the short-term) my impulses, feelings, and do whatever the people I was hanging out with me wanted to do. I am unable and/or unwilling to go back to either of those personality types. My ability to exist and express myself unconsciously was taken away from me, because I was filled with rage and hate yet smart enough to realize the social consequences of me acting out my rage on others (other than my siblings which I unfortunately was abusive to when I was a child). For me to "be real" in front of other people would have gotten me ostracized by anyone other than someone else who had their humanity stolen from them. It feels like I can't be real now (except in therapy and with my one good friend), because the real me is full of rage, sadness, and fear. I have been in therapy for 5 years now and have made tons of progress, but it's very disheartening how much I struggle each and every day. To me this is the most sinister part of child abuse combined with severe neglect. You are filling the child with rage and hateful, murderous impulses - which gives them one of two options: Either act out the impulses and face the consequences from others and society as a whole (probably prison), or constantly suppress those impulses which is to create one's own prison and erase one's identity. It's extremely difficult to be outgoing without being either a people-pleaser or letting my rage surface. I work at a gas station and I have been leaning towards the people-pleaser side because at least I get some positive reactions from people, but I can no longer keep that up and it makes me miserable to act this way. I know how to be nice, and I can tell which people deserve to be treated nicely, but I hate doing it because when they are nice to me it triggers me that this person is trying to lull me into a false sense of security and will send someone to torture me (the way my mom did). When they are mean to me it triggers me and my brain sends the signals to my body and mind to prepare for torture. Also, when I am nice when I don't want to be, it feels like a continuation of my survival strategy in my childhood environment. It takes so much work for me to get through each and every day having to constantly suppress the emotional roller-coaster that my brain and body go through even during what other people consider mundane social interactions. My brain is constantly going a mile a minute and telling my body to go a mile a minute, but I realize that these are impulses which don't need to be acted on, and if are acted on only serve to tighten the chains of my past around my neck. I feel trapped. Maybe my weariness with people-pleasing means I am finally strong enough to live without the positive opinions of people who I don't really care about, but the fact that lots and lots of people now know who I am and the way I usually act (practically everyone in my relatively small town comes into my gas station) makes being the real me even more difficult. I've stopped hanging out with two people I was spending a lot of time with and have hung out with for several years with because I recognized I was constantly engaged in people-pleasing with them. I think I'm already taking good steps to solve my problems but I could use some advice from anyone else who has struggled with similar issues. Sometimes it feels like I'm fighting an unwinnable battle and it feels like I've been fighting for a lifetime.

A list of implicit assumptions made in the original video: Women are so insecure that they need to have more females in video games to gain some vicarious sense of empowerment in regards to their gender. Both males and females have a constant need to validate their genders' power in comparison to the other gender, and in comparison to video game AI. Women are so insecure about their hobbies and interests that if someone asks them if a purchase related to their hobby is a gift for someone else, they are too weak to deal with an incorrect assumption by others regarding their own preferences. Males automatically prefer male characters and females automatically prefer female characters. If a woman is being harassed online, it must be because the harassers hate females - it couldn't be that trolls just say whatever will get the strongest emotional reaction out of their victims. This list of assumptions is held by basically every third-wave feminist I've come across, and you can see these assumptions at work when these feminists talk about just about any aspect of life - not just video games. This unfortunately also applies to lots of people who talk about racism.

I can relate to this, though I've never made a commitment to not think about those things. It sounds like you're dealing with CPTSD (Complex PTSD) where you get emotionally triggered by events which are hard to pinpoint. Complex PTSD usually arises out of very long-term traumas like child abuse, prisoners of war, etc. It is possible that if you didn't aggressively try to stop the negative thoughts or feelings you would have an emotional flashback which is an emotional re-experiencing of the trauma. In the past couple of months I've started to have them in therapy and it's extremely painful - for me I start sobbing uncontrollably, large sections of my body start to go numb and the best way I could describe it would be hell on Earth. In order for me to get to a point where I could let my guard down enough to have the flashbacks took years of therapy and building trust with my therapist. For years I had an inability to accept how damaged I was and was constantly projecting my severe anxiety onto others, which meant I had to rationalize my constant emotional triggers as a normal part of the human experience (which they are not). I'm not saying this is the case with you, but IMO the best thing you can do is continue to go to therapy and build trust with the therapist. This guy has some really great videos on mental health and complex PTSD which I would highly recommend - https://www.youtube.com/user/SPARTANLIFECOACH/videos

Your situation has some huge similarities to mine. The only praise I got from my parents was from my mom and it was almost solely for doing things she wanted me to do whether I wanted to do them or not. For a child raised in this environment - you've spent so much time focusing on what other people want that your awareness of your own needs and ability to meet them is significantly damaged. My mother abandoned the family when I was 9 and my strategy of people pleasing significantly accelerated at age 11 and continued on until age 15 until I couldn't keep it up anymore. Of course, I didn't have any support and at the time wasn't even consciously aware of what made me so different from the other kids, and so I wasn't able to change into a healthy person. I instead isolated myself and went from being the extroverted people pleaser (constantly and usually successfully trying to make people laugh) to being a shell-shocked, unexpressive, and depressed person. I was significantly abusing alcohol and weed at the time as it was the only way I knew how to feel any better. The clinical term for MePLUS is porous ego boundaries, which means your identity has been damaged to the point where other people's needs and wants invade your identity and your identity is not strong enough to fight them off. I could go on for days about stories I have where I've provided immense value to someone without getting anything back because of these porous ego boundaries I still struggle with. Some of the most painful things from my past are the ridiculous amounts of missed opportunities which arose from my inability to put what I wanted over what other people wanted. I wanted to be in West Side Story in 9th grade, but I was worried about what my "friends" would think. Around 6 months ago I was also unemployed, and finally got a fast food job shortly after my call into the Sunday Show (Google - The Bad Philosophy Show, I am the last caller "Ambition is Social"). I was constantly trying to find some balance between being an extroverted people pleaser and being withdrawn and unexpressive, as those had been my primary social strategies until that point. I think the only way I've been able to find a healthy way of interacting is by learning when appropriate times are to withdraw and say nothing and when the times are to be more extroverted and speak up. For example: A customer asks me "Do you have 12 packs of Corona"? At one point I would have literally winced, outwardly pretending to deeply care that we didn't have that product, and apologizing. Nowadays I wouldn't pretend that I care, I would simply inform them that we don't and let them know any other applicable information I do have, and I likely wouldn't apologize unless it was a regular customer whose favorite product we were out of. And guess what has happened to my stress levels since that change.......... they have PLUMMETED. That is just one small example of a situation that I handle completely differently now than I did just 6 months ago. In order to make that change, I had to be highly vigilant about examining my physiology when interacting with other people and highly vigilant about examining my thoughts when interacting with other people. For example, why would I wince or screw up my facial expression when I have to tell a customer something they don't want to hear? Obviously, I care very little whether or not we sell their particular product as it doesn't really affect me. But because of my porous ego boundaries, I would pretend to care to a degree which was disproportional to the severity of the situation. I know for a fact this happened with me as an early child - my parents explained to me arbitrary and completely trivial things I would be punished for. Even though I didn't see the things I was being punished for as wrong, I had to pretend I did in order to keep them from abusing me further. There's nothing more dangerous than being powerless in a situation where a sadist wants you to be afraid and not showing them the fear they want to see. This meant screwing up my facial expressions, shallowing my breathing, adopting a fearful tone of voice - essentially turning my body into a receptacle for expressing fear. They set me up for a life of being a slave to abusers and manipulators. I believe (with solid reasons I think) that you cannot change your thoughts without also changing your physiology. It's hard to express how difficult this process is - it means in the beginning you have to live every moment without going on autopilot - constant awareness of your physical movements and mindstate. MePLUS is a state of constant fear, and when you start to resist your brain's addiction to fear, it literally feels like you are going to die because in 99.9% of human history, you grew up in fear and that prepared you for your short life of fear. The idea of living in fear and then living in peace is almost foreign to our DNA, and so you are in a sense facing death every time you don't allow yourself to be triggered into a fearful reaction. Not that it really matters when you're fighting through this process, but fighting that fear turns you into an incredible and rare badass worthy of the highest praise (as is everyone who overcomes abuse and neglect). My own experience was that paying close attention to my thoughts helped a bit, but it really wasn't until I started paying close attention to my physiology that I started making real progress. I find that if I simply put my awareness on my own body most situations, negative thoughts more or less cease to be a problem. I think this is the case because I experienced severe physical abuse which happened far more often than verbal abuse growing up and so my physical integrity was trampled on to such a degree that most of my negative thoughts arose out of my physical pain and the hijacking of my nervous system to please sadistic monsters, as well as neglect. I think this led to my negative thoughts being less specific than with people who were mostly verbally abused, and thus the physical side of things was what I needed to focus on most to become less fearful. Perhaps this was not the case for you, but it's something to consider when looking at how you approach solving this problem. "I always set these schedules of things I want to do, with the assumption that if I just do it, then I'll feel good and have success and everything will work out in the end. But, inevitably I fall off the wagon within a week, then get upset with myself for being lazy and repeat that cycle ad infinitum." All too familiar stuff you're saying here. I believe that with Robin Williams, he spent his life achieving great success in something which he was great at as a result of his trauma (pleasing crowds). If you waste your precious energy and time on things without knowing the psychological reasons why you're doing them, even if you succeed, you have failed. I am a notorious procrastinator and a musician and I have been very hard on myself for procrastinating. There was even an amazing opportunity to work with one of my musical idols (APlus from Hieroglyphics) last November which I didn't take full advantage of. In my head I was thinking "Well isn't this why I put so many hours into my music? Didn't I want to work with one of the greats? Why do I feel so unmotivated to work on tracks for him?" It turns my justifications for spending so much time on music were completely false and ex-post facto justifications for not handling other areas of my life - i.e. working on healing my own trauma and becoming a healthy adult. So I was procrastinating on something (music) which itself was a procrastination for actually becoming happy. I don't know how much this applies to your procrastination - I will only advise that you are very careful and rigorously honest about the reasons why you want to achieve the things you want to achieve. In an alternative universe I would have been working 10 hours a day to send him some great music, and not focusing on getting my stress under control. Maybe that trajectory in a long enough time-span would lead to me becoming an icon in hiphop, but it would all be all for nothing because it was all just a way to postpone dealing with my psychological issues. No level of success would be enough to erase the inner pain from my childhood. If this is the same dynamic behind your procrastination, then the only difference between you and I and Robin Williams is that we didn't spend 40+ years investing in something for tragically bad reasons....some speculation that may be of use to you. Congratulations on everything you've done thus far! I'd love to chat with you sometime - add me on Skype: Username is Karahashianders

Oh man....I should totally do a video about Womanspreading on the counter of a cash register. I work at a cash register and by FAR more women are guilty of this - when the transaction is over they will oftentimes spend 25-30 seconds doing things with their purse, and blocking the next customer from coming up while there is a line of people behind them. It's as if they are completely oblivious to the fact that they can just move over two steps to the left and allow other people to get on with their day. I've started to ask them to move over once it hits the 10-15 second mark, but sometimes I just sit and watch in silent amusement at the lack of awareness these women have for the time of others which they are wasting. The funniest part is, usually the people behind them are just getting one item and their entire transaction takes about as long as it does for the woman to organize her purse. For many complaints women bring up about men, I can easily find a equal or greater complaint about women which exhibits the same trait - in this case, lack of consideration for others.

Thank you very much, this is quite useful.

Yes, my therapist has talked to me about creating some self-soothing habits - the most comforting one for me is for me to verbally say aloud "Andrew, you don't have to be afraid," but I don't feel very comfortable doing that when I'm at work. I clearly haven't yet internalized the sound and tone of a voice who comforts me that I can trust, so it helps me to say it aloud and through continuing to do so and with the help of my therapist - that internal voice will gain strength until it is louder or at least more level with the negative ones.

I greatly appreciate your post - you went through true hell and it feels good to hear about someone who is on the other side (for lack of a better phrase).

The first sentence of this quote is very interesting. You went docile because those terrible things repeatedly happened and so you "quit life". I believe I understand what you mean by that, and it could also be said that you chose life. Obviously your safety was constantly threatened and if you had continued to fight back, especially since your mother tried to hold you morally responsible for the fights, your actual physical safety was being threatened by the police and law who could have thrown you in juvenile hall or jail or even prison if things got even more out of hand than they already were (i.e. a fight escalated to the point of serious injury, or even attempted murder). But I think I get what you mean by quit life - you had to sit back and basically be a slave to the evil assholes who raised you. I disagree with the way you phrased the thread title. Based on what I read in your post, I would phrase it as "If I connect to my rage which was beaten into me by those who raised me, it makes me want to do things which are criminally punishable and deemed unacceptable by society." Saying "I have trouble connecting to my anger" seems highly inaccurate to me. Your caregivers were the ones who put you the position where you have this rage inside which you cannot express without being viewed as mental ill or a criminal. I'm afraid I can't in good conscience give you advice for what to do because I recently got a job and still haven't moved out even though I have the means to and had horrible parents as well. But I want to tell you how sorry I am that the people who were supposed to teach you to walk tried to cripple you, and how glad I am that they were unsuccessful, and that I hope you will find what you are looking for on this forum and in life.

I will be 23 next month, and I called into "The Bad Philosophy Show" - FDR 2634, and was the last caller (starts at 2:19:35). Since I called into the show I have found a job - unfortunately only part-time, but I still live with my abusive and neglectful father who I hate and have murderous wishes towards. The focus of my therapy since I called into the Sunday Show has been on taking steps to get me out of this miserable hellhole and I've taken the first big step in getting the first job, but am feeling MASSIVE anxiety surrounding the next step which is actually physically leaving. My therapist brought up that I could find a room-share and still have enough to save a small amount each month, and that I could sleep under a bridge somewhere, as the summer nights here are very warm. I am trying to work out a situation where I sleep in a tent in friend's yard in exchange for rent but it's likely not going to happen because he has roommates. I also have the potential to get a second job as my shift is always the same at my current job. I do a trade-out at my local gym (work for membership) so I have access to a shower, shaving cream, and soap and all that. So I'm not all too concerned with the practical matters of getting out, though if anyone has any creative ideas I haven't mentioned, that would also be useful. Mostly, I came here for some emotional support. I realize very clearly now that the reason I quit my job 2 years ago was that I was in an environment where I didn't have intense amounts of anxiety and pain to manage and that I was so heavily inflicted with both of those as a child that for to adapt to being in a peaceful and calm environment felt incredibly dangerous. My own normalization of what I went through made it feel as my safety and security could only be an illusion, and that if I let my guard down, something far worse would happen to me than the terrible things which made me that way in the first place. As I told my therapist, it doesn't feel like my brain is wired for feeling safe - it feels like I'm allergic to being safe, which is more or less a prerequisite for happiness. My struggles day-to-day mostly revolve around recognizing the "fear program" booting up in the moment, in situations which are not dangerous, and trying to manage my response in a way that doesn't make me look crazy. This is particularly bad at work because I work front counter at a fast food place where they expect you to be friendly with customers. I'm always exhausted after work, probably because of the mental gymnastics I have to go through every day dealing with other people who I don't know and being in a working environment where there is very little time to get to know my coworkers (every conversation gets interrupted by a customer). I'm more or less always exhausted anyways, and I know that my hyperactive fear response takes a physical toll on me because I have trouble moving around in a grounded way (a problem which Stef mentioned adults who had insecure bonds as children often have) and have problems with my joints when I exercise the way most people do (I have significant muscle imbalances and joint problems from a sedentary lifestyle). Every single day I catch myself breathing shallowly and have to remind myself to breathe deeply. This honestly probably happens hundreds of times every day, especially on a day when I have work. The fact that I also work at a high-paced job where there are very few gaps of free time makes this worse. I know why I breathe shallowly - it is a way of repressing my lifeforce and by extension my emotions - though knowing this does not make it any easier to stop. I used to distract myself from my constant state of hyperawareness by using it to make people laugh - acting crazy, making funny faces, doing impressions of people, and I was very good at it and made tons of "friends" from it. At some point, I was unable to continue this charade, and fell into depression which lasted 3+ years starting at the age of 15, and only gradually subsided since then. My therapist agrees that I have PTSD, and I have had several emotional flashbacks in the past month - one of which thankfully happened in his office. During these flashbacks, my lips, my forehead, and where the neck meets the skull go numb, and I cry and shake. The worst of these lasted for about 3 hours, and in each one I feel a strong urge to kill myself or other people - especially my parents and family who either stood by or participated in the destruction of my life. As I'm writing this, I'm almost in disbelief of what I'm writing. How could things have gotten this bad for me? How could everyone have let things get this bad? How could they have stood by or participated in turning me into robot programmed for fear? The answer to these questions is clearly that my parents and everyone around them was evil and/or narcissistic. This truth seems nearly impossible to accept emotionally. And of course, the most terrifying question to answer is the one my therapist asked me a few days ago: "Why aren't you using every last bit of energy to leave?" The more I realize how not normal the way I feel on a daily basis is, the more enraged I become, the closer I get to getting out of this terror. I need some people to talk to who understand or have been through similar situations. I feel that I'm on the brink of leaving this place, but I'm asking for more social support to help propel me out and KEEP me out. After all, Stef's title to my call was "Ambition is Social." My Skype name is Karahashianders and I would happy to talk with anyone who responds to this post as well.

Yeah, she moved to a different city with a friend's family which was obviously the best thing for her. I talk to her every once in a while, but it is very painful for me to see her for many reasons - I still feel saddened at times when I see how well she is doing compared to me at that age because it reminds me of how shitty my childhood was and I am reminded of all the stuff I put her through. This is all still outweighed the care I feel for her and her amazing personality. I apologized to her a little while after finding FDR, and we both enjoy the times we do talk so I feel lucky that the relationship was never damaged beyond repair. I'm glad to hear the bond was never damaged beyond repair between you and brother as well!

I got very emotional during the second call, as soon as the second caller did (who was talking about moral responsibility and how he tormented his sister). I started to feel defensive and angry when Stef attempted to uncover the caller's reason for tormenting his sister in the moment. One thought that came into my head was "That's not important, just blame the parents" - a particularly disturbing thought because I realize that that is likely exactly how his parents likely justified their abuse of him (though they are obviously far more culpable for torturing him as adults), and is one of the first excuses my dad made for his sadistic behavior towards me as a child (he was quick to deflect his abuse towards me with how his parents treated him). Also, a feeling of horror came over me as Stef empathized with his sister - it brought to mind all the images I have in my mind of me making my sister cry and yell, and all the times I mocked her and filled her so full of rage, she couldn't bear it and ran into her room, locked the door, and made gutteral sounds as a desperate attempt to get me to leave her alone - memories which I've tried in vain to disassociate from myself. I started crying when listening to the podcast and felt immense sadness and anger. I haven't even finished listening to the call, but I think for me the reason for seeking out and starting conflicts with her where I could cause her pain was obviously that I enjoyed causing suffering in others and was becoming a full-on sadist. As I'm typing this I'm getting even more angry at my parents and I want to yell at the top of my lungs "YOU TURNED ME INTO A SADISTIC MONSTER!" It is starting to make sense to me why I was so depressed from 11th grade onward - I no longer had anyone to unload my rage onto - I no longer had a helpless little sister and my brother became bigger than me (he is 2 years younger and she is 5 years younger) - I was one of the smallest kids at school. So I had a brain wired for sadism in an environment which I had no power in - which explains why I became so withdrawn and anti-social and fearful of strangers. My brain was telling me that the world was a win-lose environment, I was now in the lose category - the victim category, and so my actions reflected that of a victim. It seems (based on Stef's actions during the call, and during the call with the guy who put other kids in the hospital) that in order to heal from having inflicted harm on others, you must give yourself responsibility for the damage you've caused others, no matter how old you were, and no matter what was modeled for you which led to that behavior being seen as an feasible option. This is hard for me to accept emotionally, though obviously that has no bearing on the validity of that idea. I suspect that my father and mother are both full-blown sadists, though neither of them were ever diagnosed (though my mom has been taking medication for schizophrenia for a long time). I suspect that if I had been big and strong (I'm fully grown now and 5'8, 125lbs), I would have been a vicious and dangerous bully physically, like the second caller in "Shame-Based DNA Death," so it's hard for me to really look at myself as any different from him as I chose the means of sadism which I could get away with (verbal abuse, not just towards my sister, but towards a couple of easy targets at school) just as he chose the means of sadism which he could get away with. There have been plenty of times since I found out about this show (which was about 6 years ago) when I almost wished that I didn't have a conscience because it has been so unbelievably painful to uncover and explore the truth about my history and there have been so many times along the way when I've been unable or unwilling to face the truth about the things I've done and the things which have been done to me - thoughts came up of "How could this be true? How could my parents have been so evil? How could it have really been that bad? How could I have done that?" Even though I've done a lot of self-work through journaling and therapy so far, It seems like every time I explore an incident from my past, 10 more come to the surface and I push them away to a later date (I know this is not technically true, but I do feel overwhelmed by how much bullshit I have to slog through just to achieve a reasonable level of happiness, or at least not fearing punishment from others on a daily basis). I know that I've done a lot of work so far and made a lot of progress from when I started therapy, but I can't rid myself of the thought that I need to work even harder and give myself less leeway to spend time on other things. It's the same thing in therapy - every session I feel that I have to push important things to the side for the sake of time for the things which I perceive to be even more important (which has its benefits but obviously drawbacks as well). I only have a couple of memories of my dad playing with me when I was a child, the other memories consist of him ignoring me, mocking me, and denying me the attention I needed from him and hitting me with on the bare-ass with wooden spoons, metal spatchulas, and a plastic pasta-stirring spoon with spikes. My mom hit me with the same items, frequently sicked my dad on me because he could hit harder, and though she was not neglectful in the sense that she spent a lot of time with me in early childhood (stay-at-home mom who homeschooled me), I can see very clearly now that she was trying to turn me into her subservient little pet and only gave me affection for doing what she wanted me to do and the threat of punishment was ALWAYS there if I openly expressed disagreement or argued with her, whether that punishment was physical (hitting, washing my mouth out with soap, making me eat too much hot sauce) or withdrawal of affection. She was unable to cope with reality by the time I was 9, and she now lives in a group home across the country, heavily medicated past the point of having humanity - she may as well be dead in my opinion. My parents heavily indoctrinated me with fundamentalist Christianity and punished me very frequently for supposed immorality, so according to the argument Stef made in this podcast as I interpreted it, they hold a very high degree of moral responsibility for what they did to me and how it affected me (please feel free to correct me if I misunderstood or misinterpreted Stef). Hopefully it is clear to anyone reading this why it is so emotionally hard for me to take responsibility for the way I treated my sister for YEARS, I'm talking 6 or 7 years of making her life hell, even though I logically accept it to a certain extent (I think my parents are even more to blame than I am). I felt angry when Stef said he couldn't understand why other children in abusive environments don't stick up for each other. The first thought that came to mind was, "Because you (meaning me) didn't side with your sister over your abusers, you are/were evil or at least morally inferior to Stef - who faced lots of abuse and neglect and was a good enough person to not hurt others when he knew how much he hated being hurt." On the other hand, I also have the thought that "If I was morally inferior, it was the fault of my parents, and my childhood must have been worse and/or at least I must have had some genetic predisposition towards sadism which Stef did not have." I later had the thought that "Comparing how good of a person you are to how good of a person Stef is is not productive or useful - how you deal with your wrongdoings moving forward is the only thing that matters." I'm a bit lost on how to reconcile these thoughts into some kind of emotional clarity, and I also suspect the caller may have been dealing with the same types of thoughts. Though, now that I've kept listening to the podcast, I can see that the alternative to me taking my anger out on my sister was probably worse - likely killing my parents or going on a shooting spree (something I've had a fantasy about doing several times in my life), or killing myself. That gives me some comfort, but it doesn't change the fact that I did those things and have to live with those memories which is still horrible. I apologize for the wayward nature of this post, but I fear that if I don't write this now, it will be a LONG time before these thoughts return to my mind and desperately want some discussion with rational and empathetic people about what I've written here.

The video quite disturbed me, partially because I could sympathize with his rage and isolation from everyone else, and also because my childhood experiences of severe neglect combined with abuse were very similar to his in severity. It brings thoughts that I am very lucky to not have ended up like him and that there were most likely certain positive experiences, however short-lived which enabled me to not turn out a sociopath or clinical narcissist. I too carried hateful thoughts and murderous thoughts towards both parents, especially towards my father, who was more neglectful, and which I only recently told my therapist about. I think the video provides a great example of how an alienated child who experiences no validation or curiousity about their inner lives will continue to build up a secret life of rage which can only contain itself for so long without exploding onto innocent people. It's truly sad that the people who deserve to bear the brunt of the explosive anger rarely do, and even if they do, it would end up in the destruction of the rageful child (imprisonment and/or permanent guilty conscience). The child has so much pain that they normalize their parents' cruelty by projecting their parents' qualities onto the world, and so they usually end up killing or otherwise harming innocent people.

When I think of the times where the light has gone dim - a couple of which unfortunately lasted over a year in which I stopped going to therapy even though I could have continued, it occured at times when I fell into the mindset that I had done enough work and was ready to "cash in" on the work I had done, and that I was "good enough" because I was no longer as miserable as I was when I started. When I look back on what caused these thoughts, it's most likely from the people I was associated with (who were not committed to self-knowledge), and the fact that I still lived with my father who was extremely abusive and neglectful. I think the resistance to more self-growth also stemmed from anger at how much work I had to do just to be generally in an okay mood - and to quit therapy or quit pursuing self-knowledge persistently was a way of letting my unconscious rage say "fuck you" to the voice in my head which was telling me that I still had a long way to go to reach consistent happiness and I was quitting too early. It felt like allowing this rage to guide me gave me a sense of mastery rather than slavery - the problem was I was being a slave to my false-self's desire to stay stagnant in dysfunction, and not a slave to self-knowledge. I'm using past-tence, but this is still something I am struggling with, my light just happens to not be dim at this particular time.

I don't believe that the source of this mess is you being hard-working and focused on your work, at least from what you've mentioned so far. Perhaps as Waleed suggested, they are uncomfortable working with someone who works as hard as you or someone who is as smart as you (I'm guessing you're one of the smartest people at that job). But regardless of the reason, people who mock others who aren't doing anything wrong are always doing so because of their own issues - inferiority complex perhaps in this situation. I'm also curious to get some examples of how the conversation comes up where they mock you. As for strategies to deal with abusive people at work, I've found it surprisingly effective when someone attempts to belittle me or make me feel shame to simply look them in the eye without cowering for a couple of seconds, without responding verbally, and without tensing up physically - as if to say "I see what you're doing, but I'm not going to engage in that type of interaction, and I'm not going to internalize what you just said." This is a very useful skill to have and if you are unpracticed, you'll get better with time (it's an unfortunate skill to have use for, but I feel a necessary skill to have in today's world). My guess if that if you're able to do this effectively, these people who treating you poorly will be too cowardly to continue, because they're only interested in preying on people who are already prone to self-attack, and will feel no delight if you don't respond in the way they want you to - whether by arguing back or withdrawing. In the past, my typical response to being belittled was simply laughing even though I didn't think what they said was funny. This type of response encourages them to treat you like a joke - someone to not be taken seriously because you are not taking yourself seriously. And this attracted me to all the wrong sort of people and alienated me from potential real friends. I started my last job a couple of weeks ago and I had a coworker tell me something that I felt was a bit insensitive, though certainly not abusive. She asked me if I had had any prior jobs and I said yes, and she told me it was her first job. Then she asked me how old I was and I told her 22, and she said I looked like I was 16. Like I said, it seemed a bit insensitive, because I am an adult and she's telling me I look like a child - a bit akin to me telling her she looked 6 years older than she actually was. My response was briefly looking her in the eye and saying "Yeah, I know." I was able to not get visibly frustrated and I wasn't very frustrated to begin with, and I like that way of handling that situation because I didn't provoke anger in her, I didn't jump into anger or defensiveness myself, and I was able to also assert myself by not laughing nervously or avoiding eye contact. Looking back, this could have only made me uncomfortable because of my own body image issues, many of which are fixable, but regardless, I think it's a decent example of a useful way to react to a situation which made me slightly uncomfortable.

I think you're right on the money. I was severely depressed for 3+ years of my life, including the last 2 years of high school. After I found out about FDR, it took me about a year to finally gain the courage to do therapy, and my life has been very painful since then, but also happier - because I am no longer numb. There was an extended time in the therapy where I had so much pain to get off my chest and was in desperate need of validation, and my eyes hurt after every session from crying so much. This is the HUGE hurdle that I think many people sadly never make it past even if they go as far as to get help. It's very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, which is when you are pain free enough to build up the strength to start focusing on the decisions you're making. Maybe that was just my experience though - I know that for a while therapy was the only bright spot in my week, and I would sort of ride the after-high of that therapy session until I felt enough pain to take action in changing my habits. So I was using depression as anxiety avoidance and then therapy as anxiety avoidance (which I think at least is a step up because I was at least reaching out for connection). It took me quite a long time to get to the point where I was ready to commit to doing therapy homework every week and not giving myself any excuses for not completing it. On that note, I have something to cross off that list now which I've been putting off! Cheers, and thanks for a great topic.

I'm sorry to hear you're going through and have gone through such a tough time. When you mentioned anxiety around the law and state, and how your biggest (or the only one mentioned) reason for avoiding suicide was the despair of your parents, the first thought came to my mind was that your OCD tendencies are a way of unconsciously trying to defend yourself from punishment......which if I'm right would mean your parents punished you often, for things which were not wrong, and punished you disproprotionally to the "offense". Punishment could mean physical or verbal abuse, or withdrawing of affection for things your parents disapproved of. What was your experience with punishment as a child? I'll also add that I also experienced OCD symptoms, especially as a kid (mostly physical ticks) - I used the computer quite a bit and I used to have a nasty habit of every time I clicked the right-mouse button I had to "balance it out" by clicking the left-mouse button. I also perpetually did drum beats with my jaw clenching to the left and right.

In addition to what Mike and Kevin posted, I'd say see if you can find someone who does the first session for free. I was lucky that the first therapist I saw did this, and he was only the second person I called to inquire. If they do the first session for free, it's a good sign that they're really in it to help people primarily and not in it for the money primarily.

I listened to the most recent call-in show and Stef made a great point. Listening to FDR is like watching sports. Most people see a sport played before they actually play it and most people listen to FDR before they live according to philosophical principles. At any given time you're faced with the decision of taking what you've learned and implementing it, or continuing to watch/listen and avoiding taking action. You mentioned the word faith in your post. You may want to ask yourself why you are listening to him in the first place? Take a long hard look at what goes on inside your head when you think to turn on FDR, and whether your desire to listen is coming from the desire to learn principles which you will act on, or if the acquisition of knowledge is a way to avoid taking action. You don't need to tell me or anyone else what that answer is, but if you're honest with yourself, you'll find the answer and can use that information to better determine whether or not you're listening to FDR for the best possible reasons. For me, I know that my favorite way to take avoid action is to listen to FDR, because it's more brain engaging than watching sports or television. I suspect you may be acting the same as me (obviously this could be me projecting). I've decided to stop listening to FDR for the time being and spend that time journaling about ACTION I can take and not hiding my true self from the people in my life. I've been listening for 6 years and while my inner life has transformed in many ways because of the show, I have been using the podcasts as a distraction from action.

If you're not sure of the truth and claim to know it, that's lying. No one tells their kids "God might exist" in an attempt to change their behavior.

This is a great description of what it's like to be paralyzed by fear. You mentioned you were physically abused by someone much bigger than yourself - that would explain why fear and paralysis would go hand in hand. If you can't take action based on fear (fight or flee), then you can only freeze and protect your vital organs (moving your arms closer to your stomach allows you to protect your heart and balls). This is what's so terrible about repeated physical abuse - you turn the abused person into a neurotic robot, and without SIGNIFICANT work on their part, they will remain a neurotic robot for life, so the sadism is obvious in your father and uncle and cousin. The fact that you were put in dangerous situations by evil people where you couldn't fight or flee means you now have a nervous system primed for fear avoidance (like me). That's not to say it can't change, but I think that's the reality. As for what I think about therapy, I recommend you search for the keyword "therapy" in the podcast feed and "how to find a therapist" on the forums. Also, watch this video and anything else by Daniel Mackler. There is a lot of great information on FDR about finding a great therapist if you can find some way to get it. Also, you might try calling therapists and explaining your situation and seeing if you can work something out. I got lucky with my first therapist because he's awesome......he doesn't charge people for the first session which I think says a lot about his integrity. He's not interested in taking people's money unless he can help them and has provided free therapy for me at times, though I have easily paid him a few thousand dollars. If you're in a decently sized city then there's a good chance you'll be able to find a great therapist - I live in a city of 28,000 and still managed to find one (again, maybe I'm lucky though).

Again, great points. Thanks for your honesty and thanks to your insight I feel more comfortable in proceeding to bring this topic up with her. And I'm sorry to hear all these things about the way your sister treated you, and I didn't mean to imply in my last post that you were more in the wrong than her.