Frederik

Why is he not a member of the boards?

If you can’t find an offline app that satisfies your needs, maybe it would be helpful to find out more about your fear of lack of security for your journal and if that fear is reasonable. Maybe this fear comes more from early experiences where your intimacy was compromised, rather than a rational skepticism about cloud storage safety. I personally don’t worry in these terms when it comes to my personal journal which is password-protected and stored in the cloud, because I know that nobody is going to be even slightly interested. In this video, an IT-guy talks about this kind of view. (It’s only partly relevant.) Just a thought, maybe that will help.

I found the following video enormously helpful. It includes answering the question of how to find a great therapist, but also a ton of other aspects that I find important when it comes to psychotherapy.

I find this is most excellent advice from a fine and intelligent lady, and I am happy to see that kind of information out there. Thanks for sharing!

Holy gee, that's it! My mother made me feel ashamed of romanticism! It's not that she just didn't want me to have a partner so that I would leave her behind as her youngest son, because I could have easily hidden a relationship from her. It's that she has repeatedly communicated to me that male romantic desire is something to be ashamed of! I have multiple memories that I have surely kept exactly because of this truth. Thanks guys, I just had an emotional insight

I did both feel uncomfortable around girls my age and felt desinterested in a rather unconscious manner, like someone not being able to understand a language but not actually being aware that the problem is having missed out on learning the language people are speaking. Though maybe that is not true based on that I was in love with a girl for a short while when I was about 8 years old, and because of difficulties in school I have been surrounded by mostly unattractive, r-selected women in my school years. Now I do not feel uncomfortable around women my age anymore and I am very much interested in pursuing a romantic relationship if I really like a girl who is also interested in me.

I am a guy in my mid-twenties, and I have never been intimate with a girl or woman. I also have no rememberance of my parents ever showing to me what romanticism meant and looked like, and it seems to me very strongly that this is the main reason for why I have not even considered romantic interaction as an option. I have been only learning about romanticism in a deep and coherent way in the last two years. I have also not yet been able (or willing?) to process that issue emotionally and have been equally unsuccessful getting anywhere with the thoughts surrounding it, very much confirming what Eh Steve has written about intellectual versus emotional processing.

Hey, I really appreciate your input and I find it fascinating that you seem to have come back to the forum. It looks like you have discovered FDR pretty much as it started? Lucky you! What you write makes some sense to me; I think I know where you are coming from. On the other hand, I found the quoted phrase a bit puzzling. I think it’s quite obvious that that the task of introspection itself does not offer much to the mate directly, as it is a very personal thing. But I think it would be very hard to argue that introspection and the resulting raised self-awareness is not absolutely crucial for happiness and loving relationships. Are you a long-time listener? Then I am sure you have heard Stef talk about the ’Selfish Phase’, which is basically a phase of healing through introspection. I would say everybody who wants to become truly happy has stuff to work out, and for that you need time to heal. Stef was in therapy for four years, and we wouldn’t be able sharing our thoughts here if he hadn’t gone through that phase. As far as I can tell, I would say that the thread opener still has a lot to work out considering his struggle with self-esteem. Doing all sorts of stuff is great of course, but he needs self-knowledge for that, too, anyway, in order to find out what he really loves doing. I would say that healing comes first, and with it a naturally gradually increasing desire to go out into the world and do stuff, and connect to people. Does that make sense to you?

If you want to have enjoyable relationships with others, you have to have an enjoyable relationship with yourself first. That’s the basic gist of how I see it. So any time you invest into introspection of any kind, like journaling, talking to yourself, therapy, analyzing dreams, talking honestly with people who have been with you for long, etc., is time well invested and will help you in growing the confidence you need in order to feel more at peace in a conversation of any type. Also, welcome to the boards!

Ha ha, that is bloddy brilliant! Thanks for sharing the two quotes and for the laugh

Thank you very much for sharing! I find this very interesting since I have been experiencing extreme psychological changes based on an equally extreme change in diet in the past. I am also supplementing B12, and am concerned about nutritional deficiencies that I might have. I may come back to you with questions. You certainly seem to have put in an enormous amount of time into researching this topic and you seem very enthusiastic about it, which I appreciate. Thanks again for sharing!

Humans produce their own cholesterol. It is a scientific fact that any dietary intake of cholesterol impairs health. Some people may claim the evidence is not sufficient and say that dietary cholesterol intake does not inhibit health, but to actually disprove the proposition you would have to prove that dietary cholesterol is healthy. Optimal Cholesterol Level on http://nutritionfacts.org Why Do People Not Want To Change Their Lifestyles ? It's worth it!

This! I love it! Wonderful. Fuck schooling, make life a constant learning experience that it really is! It's so funny that I only saw at the end that it was you who wrote that post, while reading I thought "This is great stuff, this guy has figured it out! What a great guy. His children must be the happiest kids ever!" It's interesting to me that I assumed you were a dad, overreading the "I imagine". I think that speaks to your potential as a future father, to "understate" quite a bit I am very sorry to hear about your schooling experience, though. It is truly heartbreaking what millions of natural geniuses like you have to go through in the modern gulags of the state! No way my kids will ever even come close to one of those scary buildings blocks, let alone one of those horrific maniacs who manipulate and break wonderfully kind and curious souls five days a week! I really liked reading this thread. Thanks for starting and sharing to all

Thank you for sharing what was going on for you! I find it is very courageous of you to open up your heart and share these intimate details that seem largly new even to yourself. At this point I personally do not feel like I have anything more concrete to add. I would like, however, emphasize again that there seems to be an overwhelming amount of childhood incidents and beliefs that were formed in that time that you have not yet processed. This is essentially why I had experienced such a strong reaction when I read the first post, and I must say I found it quite sad, even heart-breaking, to read your Intro post where you said that you were regularly yelling at your children Your children suffer under the burden of your unprocessed trauma. You cannot truly love your children if you describe multiple beatings, paternal neglect, perpetual physical aggression, emotional unavailability, and the like, and in the same breath talk about your parent's "dedication to peaceful parenting", your father's "unconditional love", how you say you have a zero ACE score, etc. Your children suffer because of that. I can one-hundred percent absolutely and completely guarantee that your children's emotional development is hampered as a direct effect of your unprocessed trauma. This is not something you don't already know deep down, but it is crucial that you get into the forefront of your head what this is really about. This is not so much about your personal happiness---how you interact with your children is life-defining for them and I know that if what you write can make me cringe like nothing else, your children will also have a lot of questions about you when they are adults. You don't want to end up telling your sons exactly what your dad told you on his deathbed! I think it would be a great idea to call into the show. You have great depth and humility, and discussing what is going on for you would be tremendously helpful for thousands of fathers and sons to hear! It would be a great joy for me if you would do that. Will you give it a thought? The most, most, most important item on your list now, however, should be to get yourself a good therapist as soon as possible! You have young children whos life-long happiness depends on your mental health! Here is a podcast on how to find a suiting therapist that might be helpful: All the best, and pleeease let me know how it goes

As much as I appreciate your concern, I do not quite understand why you feel such a strong need to discuss my childhood. Again, I agree with everything you have written, but it doesn't seem to me that I was clear enough on that I never ever felt that my parents were peaceful parents - "I do not remember [stef] being more precise than "Don't hit or yell" in general, and I fully agree that this alone is not enough. I only brought this up because the OP called his parents peaceful." Again, I don't know the appropiate definition of peaceful parenting - the insufficiency of "Don't hit or yell" was what I wanted to point out, or rather how meaningless it is to call parents peaceful only because they do not hit or yell. The information I provided was aimed at helping in raising questions about the OP's validity of the claim that his parents were dedicated to a peaceful method of raising children. As much as it is helpful to get an outside perspective on my childhood, I did not want this thread to be about me and my childhood. It is Jaeger and his childhood that deserves all our attention in this thread. That is why I asked what the "FDR definition" of peaceful parenting is, to bring this thread back to topics that are directly relevant to the OP's issue. That said, I think I am not alone if I say that I await with great curiosity your report of what has been going on for you, Jaeger!

We don't take kindly those political folks like you *redneck accent* I'm just kidding, welcome on board

That is the fat from the cheese and dressing (and meat?) entering the blood stream, leading to a thickening of the blood and lowering its ability to transport oxygen. Here is what that looks like, referring to the one and only mad genius a.k.a. Harley 'Durianrider' Johnstone ^.^ (a big inspiration of mine in the past) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlVBOMuxXes I forgot to mention another important aspect which very likely played a role, which is that the sandwich led to dehydration because not only is it very dry itself (the bread) but it is also very high in salt. Salt binds water, which is the same reason for why sea water is dehydrating.

I climed the wall and am glad that I did I completely agree on everything that you have written! Indeed neglect was used as punishment - what immediately came to my mind was that in multiple instances I expressed my dissatisfaction with the meal when I was about 15 years old and then my mother got so upset she chose multiple times to just leave the kitchen right away, saying very little, or even nothing! She left me sitting there all alone feeing bad about myself. Plus, I didn't learn anything from that! Regarding the yelling - I misinterpreted the term. I cannot remember being yelled at, and actually I also do not remember any specific instance where a raised voice was directly aimed towards me, though voices probably were being raised by my father against, say, my oldest brother every couple of weeks or so. On very few occasions my mother raised her voice when we lived together, but again, I cannot recall specific instances. As you can tell, I am quite uncertain about this, and becoming much more specific about my anger that I have towards my parents is something I have on my list. The reason for which you doubt whether my parents can rightly be called peaceful is the same reason for why it was not until yesterday that I had come up with the thought that my parents could be called peaceful by the standards that I thought Stef had communicated - I do not remember him being more precise than "Don't hit or yell" in general, and I fully agree that this alone is not enough. I only brought this up because the OP called his parents peaceful. So what is the "FDR-definition" of peaceful parenting? PS: This is the first text that I am writing on a completely different keyboard layout (Colemak), so this post is the result of over one hour of brain-melting gruellingly concentrated work. I hope you appreciate xD (I really didn't think it was going to be that tough.)

Well, I was not saying that I am instead concerned about some other thing in the world that neither has direct influence on me, nor can it be changed through my actions, but surely it's a great thing to be concerned about something. Great post, Matthew! I find your passionate aversion against those kinds of parents is entirely justified. You make a lot of sense to me and I greatly appreciate your psychological insights on the matter!

As much as I feel humbled by your words of appreciation, Matthew, I must say that I absolutely loved your post! It was very interesting to read about your insights on the inner critic. Combined with the additional information you have about Jaeger, it gave me an even better understanding and clearer picture of the situation - and hitting enter every couple of rows would make it even better! Indeed I felt that I had connected to his childhood in a special way. In fact, it was today that I realized through the participation in this thread that I was raised with standards that would described as peaceful by this community (ACE score of 3). Just to provide some additional information, I was never ever hit by my parents, hardly ever yelled at, but predictably not raised in a truly kind and compassionate way. My parents did a lot of mistakes and do not want to own them, which is why I have no respect for them. I was the youngest child of four, and my parents seperated when I was 7. I was a highly "troublesome" kid in school in my first four years, and I was lightly depressed (dysthymia) throughout my entire childhood up until just two years ago (I am 23). I really respect your courage and openness with which you embrace this process, Jaeger. It is fantastic to see great fathers like you sharing some of their deepest thoughts, fears and emotions! Your children are blessed to have you

I think the main reason is that this discussion has no direct influence on my life whatsoever. I really am passionate about it in a way, but only in that I find it saddening how the philosophy of health and nutrition seems to get rejected by Stefan and Mike. I might get more interested in it again at a later point, but currently, that is not my focus. Thank you for your concern!

I have thought about it for a bit more and I came up with a theory as to why you had the desire to get spanked. It is the only theory that I see that makes sense of what you write. I will point out most of the inconsistencies and contradictions that I was able to identify and will boldly give my opinion as to why they are there. I cannot prove anything of this of course, but please let me know if it makes sense. The first essential thing to keep in mind is, peaceful parents are not automatically great parents. Peaceful parents can still neglect, ignore, scorn upon, dismiss, criticize, manipulate, project, and reject, be hypocritical, bigoted, irrational, conformist, and dishonest, ... . A child that was never hit or yelled at can still suffer severe mental agony. In fact, Stefan says repeatedly that children to whom the immorality of their parents is blatantly obvious through physical abuse have an easier time keeping their head straight - having the certainty of the validity of their despair and knowing that their parents are in the wrong - than children who were not physically abused, but instead verbally manipulated and thereby made to comply through a very subtle process of constant undermining of the child's integrity, leaving the child with great psychological pain that gets increasingly suppressed into the subconscious because the child cannot point out the actual evidence for what is so fundamentally wrong about the way he gets treated by his parents, and why the child often feels so angry and rejected... You write that you remember being spanked by your mother, and unlike with your father you do not mention any apology, which is why I assume there never was one. It doesn't seem to me as if you realize how horrible it is that your mother actually physically abused you when you were little and helpless. The fact that she actually looked at a young, helpless and innocent boy and felt compelled to use her sheer physical power to hurt and break the child when nobody was watching, is absolutely horrifying to me. The amount of self-work and deep connected conversations that would have been necessary for your mother to restore the trust and nurturing bond between you is staggering, and it didn't happen because you would have mentioned it right away. This tells me that your mother was clearly not dedicated to a loving, kind, peaceful and empathetic way of raising a child and that she has clearly not worked out her childhood trauma to a sufficient degree. You remember being spanked "once or twice"? What is it, once or twice? Every time I remember a caller saying something like this, the truth always was that it was way more than what was mentioned upfront. It doesn't make sense to me to be foggy about it, because either you remember distinct instances where something happened, or you communicate uncertainty about it and give clear reasons, for example not being sure if it was a dream or having some vague sense of being hurt when you were very little. I will assume that you fogged out there because your inner mother did not want you to tell the truth. How did you feel when writing this sentence? Another thing that struck me as odd was this: Of course it is good that they did not inflict religion onto you - interestingly (again, I am the son of a protestant preacher myself), the same exact thing happened to me, or not, rather. Still, it is a weird way of communicating it, because that is like being the son of a thief and saying "I will always be grateful for that my dad did not force me to join him on his nightly raids." Isn't that the least that you can expect from your parents? How does parents not inflicting their bigotry onto a helpless and dependend child make them good and virtuous? I don't get that. You state right upfront that your biggest fear as a teenager was to be labeled a goody goody, which is aimed at (and I had to look this up) making you feel bad for being a good person. I find that very interesting, because which child that was raised by good and virtuous parents fears being called good and virtuous themselves? Something doesn't make sense here... You rightly call these lectures punishment. Sure, they are peaceful, but they are not empathetic. An empathetic and truly connected way of working out disagreements is for the parent to be genuinely curious as to why the child felt compelled to act in a certain manner in the first place. Your father giving a lecture about how unhealthy smoking is would have been more appropriate with some chain smoker on the streets that made him cough, than it was to lecture you. You are his child, and thus everything you do is so closely connected to his influence that it is ridiculous and unempathetic for him to not actually feel the deepest concern as to why in the world you felt the desire to harm yourself with a potentially lethal drug. Him giving you a lecture about the harming effects of smoking was highly insulting to your intelligence. Of course you knew it was terrible for your health. A cigarette tastes disgusting to every child! I know first hand, because some idiot boys from my village tried to get me to smoke right around that age. Half a cigarette was all that I ever stomached! (or lunged? anyway...) Him telling you all about the science behind the health effects of smoking only told you how your father did not want to understand you... In fact, you picked up this habit exactly to upset everybody around you, especially your parents! You wanted to see your father not asking you about how you feel! You wanted to see your father's total lack of genuine care and concern for you, and his own parenting. No, he didn't show one bit of doubt about how he raised you and that was exactly what you expected! Unfortunately, in a satirical sense, you didn't get all the certainty you longed for. Once again, you only got this lame-ass boring subtle rejection of rational ignorance. That wasn't enough. You really yearned for the full certainty about your parents that would finally make sense of all the despair and anxiety you had felt all your life, of being disregarded, not taken seriously with all your deep thoughts and emotions - being raised by cultish hypocrites that cared so much about their fellow church members but let their child get addicted to lethal drugs while not showing one bit of self-doubt... Which child that was raised by good and virtuous parents fears being called good and virtuous themselves? You, if I may say so, did not want to be like your parents. You fundamentally despised your parents, and rejecting their religious bigotry wasn't enough. That wasn't doing the job, because they didn't care about that too much. Therefore, you needed to go much further. A lethal drug? That is great. That did the job, kind of. Your father was upset, but once again he didn't care enough. You felt so desperate! So desperate, in fact, that you actually asked him to straight out abuse you. Wow! I struggle to grasp that you actually said that to your father. This is the most extreme thing I ever heard of that a child can say to a parent! This is, I would argue, why you were struck so deeply when somebody pointed it out to you. It is the first time that someone actually recognized to what extreme your subconscious had brought you to when you were little. This is why this has kept you up at night. You write that this issue seems trivial, but I would not buy into that for a second. I would absolutely recommend that you seek out a great therapist and work through these issues. From what I read, there is a lot of unprocessed trauma within you about your childhood, which is why, I believe, so many things in your description do not add up. Finally, I recently listened to a podcast that might help you in getting a better grasp of the issue. It deals with a teenager who seemed happy on the outside, but for some reason felt very attracted drugs. ODing on Invisibility - A Listener Convo Hope it helps

Hey - I must say this is one of the weirdest posts that I have read in a long time and I had quite a strong reaction to it, but maybe I am somehow not seeing things or projecting or something - I am, actually, a preacher's kid, too, so.. That's why I would like to just ask you some questions. What is your ACE score? Were / are you in therapy? What about your parents? What exactly is your intention for creating this thread? Thanks.

Well, I certainly can't refute that. For some reason I am not convinced in general, but that doesn't mean that you are wrong of course. I feel confused about the discussion and specifically the argument, at the same time I have little motivation to really try to understand it. I would certainly be interested in hearing you debate with Stef.