freemickey

Hi there, I just started a flair/pin company and it's been interesting going around selling my first pin. As I hoped, it has sparked discussions with people about philosophy and current events, due to the nature of it being what it is, but mainly being a mysterious green thing on my lapel I designed this enamel pin as a reference to the meme wars that thew the MSM down onto it's haunches this year . Have a look and share it if you would. I'll be making more but this is probably the only "Pepe" niche one I'll produce. And because I have gained so much from FreedomainRadio and the community built around it, for every pin sold to a FreedomainRadio member I will donate half the payment back ($3.50) to Stephan @ FreedomainRadio. Just message me your order confirmation # and name, or you can email me @ [email protected] with your FreedomainRadio username and reference your order number. I'll post back to you the donation receipt, and you can confirm that with Mike! I'm also into giving away a few of the for FREE to those with tighter wallets but can share pinbit.club with their friends! Pin image Attached!

Well I applaud your resilience WasatchMan but let me ask you this: What do you think you would be doing right now, today had you been raised differently, i.e. by a mother who was emotionally available, nurturing and could give you guidance? Would you be worse off? Why or why not? Personally I consider what special circumstances bring about success to be quite complex and varied. I'd like to point out endless supportive parent/child relationships that have fostered hugely successful adults like: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, etc, because I just plain don't gut instinct believe that adversity creates success.

Hi Beast, I think doubt is probably the most persistent obstacle you will encounter de-fooing from a family as you've described, and It will be tough to convince yourself. The decision to defoo was / can still be emotionally painstaking for me. I have a very similar story of neglect from my mother and a workaholic father. I have the same problems with my short term memory from that time as well as re-occurring habits of disassociation. My medications were self perscribed. I used alcohol and weed at 13 all the way up to heroin in my mid 20s. I am going to speculate that the memory lapses and the dissociation can be attributed to a lack of stimuli, like a compassionate or caring person present could provide, persistent fantasies like daydreams, and prolonged stress. These things would induce memory loss and disassociation in addition to prolonged drug use. I hope by reading some of my experiences going a similar event, you can use some of it to make your ride a little smoother... That rage you spoke of, in my case, was a blessing. A signal from my body screaming "I'm still here damnit, and I matter!" I would become angry when my mother would text me, "get over it" or "your incharge of your own happiness" and "then I will luv you always". These texts were sent to me after I explicitly asked her not to text me, because I felt she used them to avoid speaking to me. I was ashamed that text messages could make me so mad, and that she had that power over me. But if you read into things (which she got angry at me for doing) she was right even though it meant something very different to her; my forgetting and moving on instead of remembering and making a chose. So you can test your parents now for evidence of past neglect and abuse. I'd suggest creating a few of your own tests to satisfy your doubt for the time being, for instance my therapist asked me what would make it forgiveable for my mother to have done or not done these things in my childhood. Find out if that was the case. . I did this sort of haphazardly and didn't realize I was asking such questions at the time when I conversed with my folks, but since I had been reading up on healthy child rearing and with FDR, I could recognize the manipulation passive aggression and dismissive behaviour when it reared it's ugly head! I think Stef did an episode where he talks about being honest and vulnerable with your parents in an attempt to re-connect and you can find out pretty quickly how happy they are you to you want to love them. Sometimes I would doubt myself and ask, am I just de-fooing because I have been listening to these podcasts? Ask yourself why these podcasts resonate with you in the first place. I would ask my mom to explain why I hadn't any memories of intimate or playful moments with her, and she would describe how she was always home, and that she drove me to school everyday, and that she was always there for me if I needed her. Do you see the proof she provided that she did not provide intimacy? I would suggest re-framing the above question without accusing her neglectful parenting, like it's your fault you can't remember... and you need her help remembering. I think I was much more accusatory when I had asked and later I doubted myself because I thought, well maybe I didn't ask it right... maybe she didn't realize she was in self defence mode, maybe this, maybe that. It will always be maybe. I would argue that a child who was loved and nurtured by both their parents would not have any doubt their parents were integral to their success and happiness. Also lookout for contradictions! My mother said that I and my brother were "her world" and in the very next sentence said she "did her best to put up with me.... " The greatest reward to my self-esteem was the realization that I chose to cease contact with my mother after testing the relationship. That I was capable of making such an important decision that would literally change my life for the better has given me an impetus I haven't felt for a decade. Your situation could be better, worse, but I think you know that doesn't matter. What matters is what you decide and for what reason. I think you do have to make a choice though, or in my non-scientific, un-educated personal opinion, the memory loss and dissociation could get worse. Please feel free to share more, or ask me about dissasociation and isolation. I've studied it plenty)

Still trying to get a skype call going with my brother. It seems like he is creating excuses to avoid my attempts to contact him now. I'll keep you posted.

Well I am sure an inner journey can be wonderful, but for the purposes of a bright introduction I omitted the pain and anger I wrestled with out there. While cleaning fish and cooking meals day in and day out I began feeling all the emotions of anger and sadness I repressed as a child. The act repressing them even there on that boat, fighting them everyday in order to get the work done, was recursive of what I experienced as a child, having to survive, and in so doing this I hit bottom emotionally. But it is wonderful to be on the other side of that initial flooding of emotion and I am so appreciative of the circumstances that had to be there in order for me to break down a wall to myself I had maintained for as long as I can remember. I feel as though if I were to have been anywhere else at that time I would have found ample distraction to keep me from the fact.

Hi there, I'd like to get some of your feedback on a pressing matter, I have been procrastinating about calling my brother after completely terminating my communication with our parents. I want to extend an invitation to talk if he would like, about why I will not converse with our parents any longer and what effects their parenting has had on me. I want to share this with him because he is a new father, and I fear he will unknowingly pass our parents abuse and neglect on to his daughter. He knows our father is abusive but he would not call it that, but our mother is completely off the hook and works hard to maintain her ignorance. We have talked about my recent experience finding myself, taking the time to think about our past and the strong emotions that I unearthed, but he maintains it's not worth thinking about and I can predict will become more deflective if I get off the topic of myself. From what I have worked hard to understand, and using my own personality as indicator, my mother was neglectful and apathetic to me. She has an almost complete lack of empathy towards me and is passive aggressive and manipulative which I was able to observe when I tried to re-connect with her several times over the phone (I live on the other side of the country) and put my self in a very vulnerable state. The conversations each were subject to her denial, minimizing, criticising, demanding forgiveness, disowning any responsibility and then aggression in text messages followed by complete disrespect towards me and a simple request to stop texting me and to call me instead. I was expected to move on and go back to the "way it was before." I now believe she was a functioning alcoholic as I remember most evenings there would be a wineglass in her hand. I have no memories of her companionship when I was a small child, although I know she was around the home. I can remember feeling alone for a very long time, and empty rooms... It was painful writing this line and I am continuing to process everything with a councillor. Our dad sucks. I'm sure his parents were terrible as my mother will state and he will admit that his abusive parenting is all he knows. He is very sadistic in that he creates dependent victims which he can abuse. I am just seeing it wholly as I read more into psychology and unravel my history but I get that he feels impotent and seeks power over others. Verbal abuse is commonplace with him ever since my brother and I grew larger than him in our mid teens even though we were skinny as twigs. He is quite short, thank god for that. He claims he sacrificed his whole life for us. I've once herd him speak of how much he despises us to an absolute stranger when he thought no one else would hear. Thats a basic profile of the negative aspects of my parents....but onto what I would like to hear your feedback on, My brother is 27. He lives across the country. His to be wife just had a baby girl in November of 2014. He is completely enmeshed in my father's business and is dependent on my father now for his livelihood. My father put the money down for the house my brother bought. My brother works for my father managing a fast food restaurant. My brother's to be wife I can't say I know much about, avoids eye contact with me. My brother experiences tremendous migraines that render him immobile from time to time. I am not aware of how frequent they are now but he does refer to them as still being present. He had a brain scan several years ago and it was diagnosed as not a physical ailment. I am implying that he has experienced similar trauma growing up from our parents and is unwise to it like I was. I think my relationship with my brother is worth salvaging or at least attempting to salvage but I could not handle this knowledge under the circumstance he is in. I cannot pretend there isn't a high risk he will continue the cycle of abuse if he remains unaware. I am torn because this sounds like the attempted rescue which can't be done. Any serious conversations we have about family are met with deflection or topic changes. I am finding it hard to act on this presumption that a child I have never met can have a better life because I do something or share something with her parents. I think it's worth trying so but I don't want to miscalculate my intent. I want my brother to be happy and experience the joy raising his daughter can provide. I think there is another way to approach this other than what I am hesitant to do, which is to just tell him to let me know if he wants to talk about it, because I think he already told me he doesn't. But I think that is all I can do. I would appreciate hearing what you think on the matter.

It's good to have finally made it to the boards! 2 years have past since I was first introduced to this beautiful podcast and the principles of anarcho-capitalism. I made a big push in my life for truth after returning from three and a half months working at sea on a small wooden fishing boat in the North Pacific. My False Self had no one to bounce my bullshit off of, for it was only me and one Captain who knew himself well and had no expectations of me except to do the job I was hired to do. I was left alone with my OWN thoughts while I cleaned fish, and it had been a very long time, 15 years I think, since I had last listened to them. I brought some books on philosophy, economics, an ipad full of Freedomain Radio podcasts, that helped provoke an inner journey.... and help out with a lot of the boredom too. I'm amazed and truly humbled at what the subconscious is capable of, what is THERE and real and contained in our minds ; the feelings and realities that can be revealed to your conscious self, even if you don't ask for them. I met myself out there. So I give a warm digital HELLO from the first posting of my True Self. I hope to share some good banter with the community here and hope I can help to add to some serious discussion as well! Thanks for taking some time to read my intro.