InquisitorM

That, my friend, is a very odd turn of phrase. At the very least you gave me the giggles. Interesting you should ask that question, though: I've been working on something that touches on that since I made this post, with the indirect help of one Dr. Gabor Mate – author of "In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts". As an extension of where I am in counselling, I had a very powerful reaction to his comments on implicit memory, and several details that I had been juggling fell into place. An absolutely crushing sense of worthlessness has come up time and time again, but after watching videos of the doctor, it just sprang into my mind – almost as if it had been waiting to be given voice – that not having my needs reacted to must, by extension, mean that I have no value to anyone. I've consciously excluded the circumstances of my birth (the incubator) from any previous emotional models I have built of my past because I've never felt any emotional traction with it before. Guesswork is useful for finding a thread to pull on, but I've always waiting for some emotional connection before digging too much deeper, lest I risk being led astray by internationalisations. This is what Dr. Mate's talks highlighted: that I had been following the threads of my need for distractions, rather then the underlying cause – a deep scar of worthlessness. So when it comes to my definition of value, I would mostly do with the common dictionary definition – relative worth, merit, or importance – but with a strong reminder that value is always dictated by how much people want something. That is to say that the word 'value' on it's own is meaningless without either an implicit or explicit qualification of who it is valuable to. The reference was to Vogon poetry, not the idea of value. To follow on from above, if I have the internalised sense of being without value then it follows that I would have trouble understanding the value statements of others as anything more than arbitrary. I can understand the concept of a person who has worth and therefore can interact economically with an employer, but I cannot imagine what it would be like to have that sense of value – that is that part that is alien to me and feels like trying to communicate in a different language. And no, I don't think I've ever really experienced the feeling of being valued on a social level, either. I can tell you that there are definitely people that do, but I can't feel it. Again, the 'language' that would allow it seems to be simply missing, like a missing driver to use a piece of computer hardware.

Well, you may have thought 'fuck', but to illustrate the point I'll return to what I actually wrote: I asked how you felt and you told me what you thought. Now that I've challenged you again, have another go at seeing if you can focus on how you feel. There's a high chance you just can't. Don't worry about it. I mean, it's important and all, but it's perfectly understandable for someone in your position to have a great deal of work ahead of you to have easy interactions with your feelings. I expect writing provided a way for you to feel something that was otherwise unsafe. Let me know how the experience goes for you. There may be some online CBT guides that can help you, and I know someone who works in that field who could give me a general idea of how appropriate that might be for you. I wouldn't want to suggest anything with the potential to cause short-term harm while you're still living with your mother.

First and foremost I just want to say how incredibly sorry I am for the physical violence in your life. I mean, I'm sorry for all of the violence in your life, but I can sympathise with the mind- and blame-games from personal experience and I feel that such will come across in my reply, but the physical violence is something I have had very little experience of. As such, I feel the need to single it out as something I can't even imagine. Now, I'm not sure I'd say it was advice per se, but there are two things that spring immediately to mind regarding what you have written: Firstly, my own access to difficult or repressed emotions has been strongly affected by my ability to express the framework by which those emotions come about, so when I look at phrases like 'I keep on trying to make myself docile every time i get angry' I get a sense of where the limits of your ability to express yourself are. For example, you're not 'trying' to do anything, you are doing something. Framing it in a positive light (that is to say as an activity, rather than a 'positive experience') has always been very useful to me, so I invite you to try and extrapolate what it is you are doing when this kind of situation comes up. Further, the phrasing in question is more of a fixed narrative than a situation that invites curiosity. In the same vain as discussed in Stef's Real-Time Relationships (available for free), it helps to consciously put a mental moment between the event and your reaction to it. When you supply a narrative for what is happening, you risk suppressing the possibility for a conversation. I often freeze up when I get angry, too, but many years of therapy – and no philosophy – have brought to to understand that I don't freeze up because I get angry. First, I can look at what exact event is triggering my anger – usually being ignored, trivialised, or dismissed – and use that to understand what I am gaining from getting angry or have gained from it in the past. Ideally, this is the kind of thing you can work on in therapy, and I think everyone here sincerely wishes that you managed to get some in due course, but right now I can at least try to help you understand that you don't know yet to make navigating such strong emotions more manageable. Secondly, I find myself extremely curious about the relationship between your level of communication skill and the validity of communication as a pursuit in your family and immediate surroundings. I'm not saying this to attack you, but the lack of capital I's and extra or missing spaces really give me a sense of actual competency mixed with... almost despair, I guess. As if it really can't make much difference. Naturally I could be so far off base that it's not funny, but writing is something of a recent passion, to me, and so I feel confident letting those instincts off the leash to see if they can sniff anything out. I mean, it would stand to reason that quality of communication is hardly the norm in your environment, and it seems unlikely that you have a lot of emotional freedom to be critiqued for something as simple as writing. Yet, writing is how we come across on an internet forum and is therefore linked to our self-esteem and self-worth, so I'm wondering how it feels to even have it noticed, let alone commented on. It seems highly plausible to me that anything that comes up with regard to that would likely be a factor in getting a job. I hope that gives you something to think about, and I look forward to hearing from you. And again, I am deeply sorry for the experiences you've had. How old are you, If I might ask? -Scott 'Inquisitor' Mence

Yeah, I definitely think that success, both literally and as an expression of desire, flags up as dangerous because it makes me visible. This is why I say that I understand that my protective reactions are my ally because they served a purpose, but I don't yet have the right language to repurpose a function that is no longer working to my benefit. There are lots of comparative minor misfires that I have isolated and exorcised with relative ease simply by being able to understand it and put it into words – or make it 'thinkable' as it is phrased in counselling. There is another aspect to it, that of internalised value, but I'm going to mention that in reply to Slavic's post, below. Please don't think I'm short-changing you, and thank you for reading and replying Nothing like that, no. Frankly, my Dad doesn't seem to be able to get past the idea that other people don't see things exactly as he does – it's almost narcissistic now that I think about it like that. People need jobs to have money, therefore people should get a job. If that doesn't instantly make sense there there must be something wrong with you. He's also staggeringly adroit when it comes to bullshit non-apologies. 'We didn't know any better' and the like. Well, as I see it, there is a pretty fundamental (if not always obvious) difference between airing a similar experience to see if it lends context, and using context as an excuse to talk about yourself. I can certainly see how people might think the latter – you do have a rather intense way of expressing thought writing – but I think the real issue might be that 'unsympathetic' is being thrown out as a pejorative. Does it seem a little unsympathetic? Perhaps, but that's just implies that something doesn't quite strike a cord with you. But I don't know you, so I can find no reason to take that as any kind of attack on my person or any indication of maladaptive behaviour on your part. In fact, I would go as far to say that it felt a great deal of integrity in the way you replied. Sort of, 'I've no idea if this helps, but here's what it makes me think of'. You didn't make any claims or judgements; you asked a question. Sympathy isn't a requirement for either curiosity or compassion – though it certainly helps. Yeah. Value. That's been a sticking point since my very first counselling session seven and a half years ago. It's not so much that I feel worthless – that is, a worth of zero – but I simply can't process on that level at all. Not applicable. Does not compute. How to talk about my value to a company once I have a job isn't something I have difficulty imagining, but valuing myself to imagine that I could get that job in the first place is like harder that critiquing Vogon poetry – the mutually agreed language just isn't there. I have no idea how to press this matter at present. No. Moving out was a big jump forwards, but without a job I'm still essentially benefit scrounging. That was a huge deal to come to terms with and it rankles at every turn, but there came a point where I just had to put it down to working with what was in front of me. I haven't strictly de-foo'd, but after an unpleasant back and forth over my birthday (I have issues with my birthdays, Christmas, etc. because it's a system of expectation that I didn't get to opt out of) I told her clearly that I just wasn't going to talk to her again until I was good and ready. I make no pretence that it was a good way to handle it, but I have no desire to hold on to that relationship so I'm just focusing on what is more useful to me. I have a little more contact with Dad, but barely – he is still the enabler for some of Mum's craziness in a sort of 'don't upset your mother' kind of way. She can't be upset, but I don't get the same consideration, of course.

Yes and no. It is not wrong to limit the children that a parent's child comes into contact with any more than it is wrong to limit the number of boiling pots of water a child has the possibility of experiencing. The only time there can be a 'wrong' is when force is used to prevent the contact in a very immediate setting. Just like the boiling pot, the lion's share of prevention comes through preparation – and problems are indicative of a lack thereof. Where more immediate problems might crop up, a child who has properly attached to a guardian they can trust will not need to be forced, as they will generally choose to follow the desires of that guardian, even if, as Stef suggests, some degree of bribery is required. As for the well-being of the abused child, any position that advocates the necessity of grating it access to said well-adjusted child is, by definition, in violation of property rights. You cannot make up for the emotional warping of one child by acting against good philosophical principles. Otherwise you'd have to be in favour of the minimum wage, etc.

This has been a long time coming and one of my primary reasons for resisting is not being able to focus on something specific that I wanted help with. As of last night’s counselling session, this has changed. I would really appreciate the collective thoughts of the community as it is high time to change gears and turn this one-man-with-a-flashlight expedition into a well-equipped monster hunt into the dark recesses of my soul childhood. I’m 38, I haven’t been employed for almost 12 years, and the very idea of seeking employment fills me with a terror that I have had a hard time making sense of. Before last night, I wouldn’t have been able to say it was terror – it was just a roiling fog of nothingness that would consume me like a void so vast that it could obliterate me by scale alone. Many times I had struck a nerve – usually during counselling – and burst into tears while having absolutely no idea what the emotion was that I was experiencing. I would describe it as textureless, featureless, or grey. Most likely a product of a childhood I can remember little of. About a year ago, maybe two, I discovered that I was born jaundiced and spent the first two weeks of my life in an incubator. I think that goes a long way to lending context to how non-existent the communication between my parents and I has been. I cannot recall a single meaningful conversation with them. There isn’t anything that I am aware of having been taught by them – intentionally, at least – and the few narratives that I can remember pushing were all met with either total bewilderment or unyielding chains of ‘because that’s how it is’. Perhaps that lack of physical contact at my birth set the tone for where I am now, but I am under no illusion that it is the event in-between that have made it a problem. They’ve never taken an interest in hobbies,and Mum has frequently been very passive-aggressive about dismissing things that she doesn’t think are good pursuits (while sitting in front of the TV night after night, of course). I have a few flashbacks that I have uncovered in my seven years of relatively sparse counselling (50 minutes a week, part-funded by charity, with anywhere from 5-10 weeks missing per annum). Just last night, I remembered that I used to wet my bed frequently, though I couldn’t tell you what age I was at the time. What I remember is that I felt less than human: broken, deficient, worthless. No-one asked how I felt. No-one asked if anything was wrong. I felt like an inconvenience. That word has been something that has cropped up over and over again. I remember being singled out to be moved up a class in French at school. I hated the subject, and being put up meant that I had to do German, too. It was bad enough that no-body asked me if I wanted to be moved up, but what really rankles me now is that even then, inthe first year of secondary school, I was already devoid of any resistance to being pushed around – life wasn’t something I got to make any decisions about. Moreover, life wasn’t something that anyone was ever going to explain to me. I was just supposed to know. I’m supposed to love my extended family. I’m supposed to want to go to school. I’m supposed to want to be good. If I didn’t, I was defective, because I had no reason to assume that anyone else was having it explained to them, either. I used to have those dreams of walking into class with no trousers on (for me, it was specifically no underwear, rather than just no trousers – I have no idea if that’s the norm), but over time I have pieced together an undercurrent to everything that I am: the fear of being discovered as someone who doesn’t understand, and doesn’t fit in. And clearly I wasn’t entirely oblivious to the fact that it wasn’t just me that was wrong, because I can remember having a conversation with my Dad once where I tried to reason out that ‘people didn’t have to breathe; people just want to breathe’. I’m always careful of trying to reach too far where my emotions aren’t leading, but it seems I was pretty switched on to the deficiency of consistent and logical language around me. That fact that I was told I was wrong is one of many such repetitions that left me feeling very frustrated. At quite a young age I disappeared into the world of computer games and computers in general. Computers make sense. How could I not be drawn to the one thing incapable of being irrational? Sure, it wasn’t one to explain why something was the way it was, but at least I could always assume there was a good reason for it – a reason that could be learned. I can’t even begin to comprehend how many hours of my life I lost to sitting on my own with my attention glued to a screen. It was my crack, and I even ended up stealing the odd pound coin from my mother’s purse (my guess is 14- to 15-ish) to go round my local chippy and practice on the Street Fighter II machine there. I also remember that my mother would mock me for getting fat, yet not once ever took an interest in why that might be or tried to do anything about it. It still knocks me sideways when I tell someone that and they’re horrified because it’s so internalised now that it’s normal. That she would do it in front of other family members Being so utterly directionless, it is no surprise that I was completely lost when it came to a career. I ended up doing a BTeC National in I.T. (there really is no comparison that I can provide for those unaware of this British qualification, but trust me it’s a pile of shite) at a small facility that guaranteed employment to all of it’s participants. Though I have no interest in the electronics side of things, I was dumped into a job repairing monitors. Of course, I sucked at it because I had no motivation, no interest, and no real skills. Most importantly, I completely lacked the skill to simply state that I did not want to be there, being paid £35 a week under the guise of ‘youth training’. Yeah, was a government scheme to justify virtual slave-labour. And that’s it. Boom. I’m stuck. No aspirations. No joy. For five years life was just something to be endured in the vain hope that things might change. I jumped at the first chance to change job that came along, but things just went from bad to worse as I was just desperately flailing for short-term fixes that were burying the real issues even further. Eventually I got bumped off a driving job because while we all did overtime as standard I wanted mine taken and time in lieu rather than overtime pay – something explicitly provided for in the contract. After that, I finally caved in and didn’t even bother trying to support myself. Death was something to be hoped for, not feared. I moved back in with my parents, oblivious to how harmful this was, while doctors wheeled out the usual parade of useless anti-depressants. That only cemented me into the role of the ‘broken person’, treated as if the reasons for my lack of desire to live were a complete mystery. And I didn’t. The worst part of my day was waking up, because the feeling of having a whole day that I somehow had to claw my way through hour by agonising hour. Just simple fact of being alive was torture. It was another five years before I finally got even a drop of actual help. The NHS provided nothing more than a ‘pull your socks up’ attitude after no less than three evaluations by so-called psychiatrists. The first thing I managed to dredge up when I started was that I didn’t feel like Scott: I felt like a failed shadow of the son my mother wanted – or perhaps expected. Funny thing: I’ve never believed in any kind of deity for so much as a single second in my entire life, but the thing that really turned me around was Dawkins’ The God Delusion, because it showed me not just that the world could be wrong about something so profound, but that it demonstrably was. I think I’m in the right crowd to not have to waste time explaining how enlightening that realisation was. Some two years later, I stumbled upon a video by Stefan Molyneux. I already knew that taxation was crooked, but I never had the words for it. I knew that society was an illusory construct, but it was too much for me to really handle. I’d spent a lot of time getting into the anti-theism media that was abuzz at the time as a new chance to actually listen to people who actually made sense, but not until I discovered anarchism did anything truly make sense on the most fundamental level – and realise just how wrecked my emotional core was. I’ve worked very hard to put myself back together and straighten myself out. I take a great deal of pride in that. I could be dead, but I never gave up. One little part of me refused to capitulate to the idea that I was the one that was wrong, and now I know just how deep the wellspring of rage runs. I have never doubted that that rage is my most unwavering ally, but the time has come to renegotiate the terms of co-existence and I lack the words to do that negotiation. This is where I need help. For the first time I have been able to label both sides of the perpetual war: the bottomless, soul-shattering terror of being a child trapped (I am in floods of tears even writing that) in a world that has no regard for me and that I cannot negotiate with, and a howling vortex of rage that struggles unceasingly to force that terror out of my conscious experience. And for the first time I can actually feel my day-to-day experience of life as numb, rather than simply empty. It’s excruciatingly hard for me to have an opinion that isn’t validated by someone else. I am terrified that my wants and desires and needs will inconvenience others and turn them against me. It’s hard for me to do anything that isn’t perfect, because the looming dread is that I will be revealed as a fraud and a worthless piece of shit. I have literally both burst into tearful hysterics and lost minutes to total paralysis just by picking up a phone to enquire about the shittiest, lowest-of-the-low cleaning jobs (I can’t even think about a more difficult job). I collapse inwards as soon as I feel the weight of self-imposed expectation, and yet I will bite someone’s head off the moment I get misrepresented, misquoted, or they attempt to diminish me in any way. I daydream about receiving praise for things that I have done (I cried the first time Stef ‘liked’ a comment that I’d made on a Facebook post), and yet after I said that I would give Erik_T some feedback on a story, I utterly froze up after he clearly said just how useful and insightful my commentary was. I haven’t touched it in a week and it still brings me to tears to even think about it. Any hint of worth and success and I seem to shut down, as if the very idea is anathema to me. The very idea of wanting has become intertwined with the the terror of my childhood. I can’t even find the perspective to decide whether I’m doing well at overcoming some valid issues or just finding excuses for being lazy. But I do want more, and I do respect that it is strength, not weakness, to ask for help. More importantly, I have a secondary drive that gives me impetus to push harder than ever before: one of my best friend’s daughters embraced me in her life as the one person she can truly be honest with. She told me that she was relieved to have someone in her life that she could talk to about a whole bunch of things she never thought she’d talk to anyone about. She’s had a pretty torrid childhood, too, and the openness with which she just wants to love and be loved is a shock to the synapses that makes me want to be a better role-model for her. I’m still seriously overweight, but I’m gradually doing more daily exercise and been phasing out more and more overtly bad food as time has pressed on (though I can’t pretend there’s much in the way of genuinely good food yet). I am unemployed, but I am here looking to tear down the next set of walls that stand between my fears and my goals. I need help to push in that direction and I’m no longer sure of what questions to even ask. I’m not even sure how much of this makes sense, but if I don’t post it despite the relative inefficiently of editing through bleary, tear-strained eyes, maybe I never will. Maybe it’s an awful reason to keep going, but right now, I’ll take any train headed to my destination. Maybe it’s just a bunch of whiney crap, but at least it’ll be honest. Scott ‘Inquisitor’ Mence.

I guess the reason I have spoken out against feminism at all – and it isn't all that much because I honestly try to stay away from that mess – is that, like so much modern thinking, it focuses almost exclusively on symptoms rather than causes (for example: teach men not to rape rather than stop raising men that can rape). On top that that already monumental issue, I have seen little willingness to make allowances for actual gender differences and negotiated inequity in specific arenas, such as the 'men should do half the housework' kind of thinking. It's the liberal problem all over again: more legislation means less chance for negotiation and less chance for healthy, long-term solutions. I have no issue with putting time and effort into short term problems, but only as long as it does not obscure the deeper causes and hamper solutions to them. I hope that doesn't come across as oversimplifying the topic, but it brings my favourite Einstein quote to mind: "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction." Like many in the anarchism movement, I imagine, I used to think feminism was a good thing. Then I learned all about child development and empathy and realised that feminism – as it is now – was more of a barrier than an aid to progress; I just don't see any way to any way to reconcile the lack of critical analysis with the desire for freedom and integrity. Feminism is forced equality, because any attempt to find equality anywhere other than in the uncoerced desire for equality is barking up the wrong tree. Many times I have deeply wished I was wrong, but it seems logically impossible.

Hello Josh! Well, I've been in counselling for seven and a half years, and I've gotten used to how many muggles I can freak out by being open and honest with my feelings. Honestly, it can be kind of fun on the right day. For me, the point is less about whether there is insight there to be shared and more about the trauma-induced assumption that a potential recipient won't care – either because they don't want to know or already know more. Empirical counter-examples are likely a productive way forwards. I'm having a little difficulty is parsing your wording, here, so I shall expand and let you draw any parallels for yourself. My biggest issue (as those years of counselling can attest) is that my parents explained nothing and, to my recollection, took almost no interest in my experience of life. It was like I was just expected to know how everything worked and what the rules were; if I stepped outside of their (mostly this is about Mum, bat Dad was a huge enabler by churning out repeated 'we mustn't upset your mother' type garbage) perception of how things worked, I was the one made to feel like I had it wrong but without any explanation as to why. They didn't even pretend to have the answers; I was just supposed to know. Hardly surprising that by the time I left school I was drifting so badly that I stayed in a job I hated for five years because it just never occurred to me I could be doing something else. After I finally gave up at 26 and sank into depression, it was like I had a magical curse that only an arcane ritualist could possibly understand. You know, it's all 'how can we fix him' rather than actually investigating what the problem actually was. Getting back out of my parents house again was a big part of speeding up my recovery, but it needed a lot of underlying work to make it fit. I do understand what you mean (and thank you very much for saying), but I think that consuming a little over two years of publicly available podcasts while knowing, however dimly, that some recompense was possible is just cause to accept responsibility for my questionable integrity. Sure, I had a plenty of reasons to be scared because of where I was mentally, but I did know. Even if I'd just popped in and said thank you, that would have been something, but I didn't even do that. I have a big thing about mutual respect, and thus I failed to act consistently regarding something I considered virtuous. To me, that feels like wilfully wronging him, even if it doesn't actually hurt him, per se.

I quickly skimmed the opening to get a quick feel for it, since I'm not in the mood for a decent critique at this moment, and I already saw a few stylistic things I wanted to give you some feedback on. Would it be okay to make up a GDoc to make notes on? It's just what I'm used to.

Hello everyone. From the first moment I even thought about joining this forum, I have been constantly surprised about much resistance I have felt towards it. I think I have a reasonable understanding of what has caused me a lifetime of depression and anxiety, and since I understand very well that causes are not justifications for a lack of responsibility, I have put in a great deal of time into working out why. To be blunt, I don't really want to be alive. It's not like I want to kill myself or anything, but between the extreme emotional indifference of my parents and figuring out that culture and tradition was a sham at a relatively early age, I've just had a life of knowing I was in the matrix without having the words to express or understand it. Like everything else I can remember about my childhood, the state of simply being alive was a choice I did not really get to make. Understanding that 'taxation is theft' and 'culture is abuse' was easy because I knew that deep down, but changing my perceptions about my life and self-worth has been something more of a titanic struggle. I have no fundamental objection to being alive. I just have little or no emotional attachment to it. Yet, here I am. It took a long while (no thanks to the utter failure of the NHS) to get here, but the simple idea of simply wanting more out of life is finally starting to affect my thoughts and actions in something approaching a cohesive and useful manner – confirmed by the fact that it hurts like all hell. I've started rejecting people... wait, no, that's not right, given that I've been isolating myself for years without understanding it. I've started consciously rejecting people who do not give me enough respect to have my own feelings and opinions – most notably my parents – doing some regular exercise (I'm about 18st), and wrestling with the genuine desire to hold some integrity together that gives me value, because that's something I've been missing all along. That sense of integrity has me wanting to give something back for everything Stefan's work has done for me (and my close friends who benefit from it indirectly), but not quite having sufficient self-knowledge to breach the barrier of how to do so. I haven't had a job in twelve years, which is something I've been struggling with constantly, and it seems that a severe lack of belief in my own value is the key. I know that the society around me really doesn't want someone like me around, upsetting applecarts, and I don't feel like I have anything to offer those who have already taken the red pill. I don't know how I can donate my time to help Stafan's work because I still haven't quite cracked the sense of self-worth that would allow me to think in terms of making a difference – those pieces just don't quite fit together yet. So here I am, trying to take one step at a time and wanting to help, just needing some support with the how. -Scott 'Inquisitor' Mence P.S. Stefan: I'd like to say that I am sorry for not previously being proactive in supporting Free Domain Radio. I haven't exactly been sitting on my hands over here, but I could have spoken out about how much I felt like I had nothing to contribute sooner, and for that cowardice, I apologise.