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In relationships (Friends, special other, etc) specifically. Is there some defence mechanism?

I've heard Stef say men verbally abuse each other to help acclimatize each other to verbal abuse. That strikes me as the "we bullied you in high school in order to make you stronger". Bullies don't bully for your benefit because I don't remember mine doing post-game surveys and asking me for feedback. It's 100% sadistic. When I started going hard in the FDR a year ago, my self attack habit totally vanished. I used to do it at least 3 times a day and now I can't even imagine self-attacking. I got rid of my "friends" who were verbally abusive and with the friends I had remaining I never again made passive aggressive remarks or insults out of "playfulness", and none of our conversations dithered in value. They turned more serious and whole. I can see honest no-sugarcoat feedback as the closest thing to what he's talking about but I can't make the leap into "verbal abuse can be helpful". Was this just a colloquial hunk of wisdom Stef was giving out or does it have some rational backing?

Young Philosophers Reason, Honesty, Empathy, Intellectual Integrity. _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ IF INTERESTED IN JOINING, PLEASE READ THE UPDATE I WROTE BELOW THE ORIGINAL POST. Who Are We? A group of FDR listeners who sought genuine connection in an irrational world, ultimately forming an ongoing Skype-based Conversation Young Entrepreneurs, Blacksmiths, Engineers, Welders, Psychologists, Designers, and Philosophers Advocates of Liberty, Anarcho-Capitalism, Peaceful Parenting, Bitcoin and Precious Metals Men and women from ages 17 - 29. What's Our Purpose? We want to foster genuine connections between intelligent and rational beings who share core values. If you use reason and evidence to guide you to truth, if you're honest and empathetic, if you've got the intellectual integrity to discuss ideas without the need of a Yale safe space, we want to meet you! From what I gather, so many of us in the FDR community are isolated, like lone torchlights burning inches above a turbulent sea of irrationality. In the physical realm, the odds are against us when it comes to meeting those worthy of a voluntary relationships. However, through the internet, we truth-seekers are able to connect via video, voice, and text through Skype. What Do We Discuss? Wow. A lot. Uhh... Let's start with: Technology, Current Events, Philosophy, Relationships, Psychology, Peaceful Parenting, Personal Struggles, Self-Improvement, Self-Directed Learning, Entrepreneurship, Business, Industry, etc. etc... There's a lot of fun discussion as well.. SJW's, Political Correctness, Trump, and more! Where Are We? That's a tough one. We're spread across 7 different countries in 3 continents as of now. Most of us are from the U.S. We've got our fair share of Europeans in the mix as well! (So Multicultural!) Wow, Fantastic! How do I Join? I'd like to be able to gauge people's interest on this forum. I plan on linking this to the FDR Facebook group, and would appreciate it if you'd post here if you're interested. For those of you who'd like to remain anonymous for whatever reason, feel free to READ THE UPDATE BELOW, then PM me and I can add you to the conversation. I'm super excited to reach out to you folks today. The value of the connections I've formed is truly amazing to me. I really, honestly hope that we can meet you, the intelligent and motivated reader, and get to know you soon.

If you read the post, like the idea, live near Richmond VA, but don't have a forum account, feel free to reach out to me via Facebook! I'd like to hear your feedback and ideas. Hello, folks! I'm greatly interested in starting a Freedomain Radio / Philosophy meetup group. I've already worked to advertise and manage an online Skype group called the "Young Philosophers" for teens and twenty-somethings of the FDR community to connect with like minded individuals around the world. I've greatly enjoyed the experiences, conversations, and relationships I've fostered and maintained there for almost a year now, but I'd love to expand that into physical reality. If you're a curious, empathetic, and intelligent lover of ideas and seek genuine connection as I do, I want to facilitate that. Today I ask if you live within driving distance of the Richmond tri-cities area, would you like to help me start a Freedomain Radio / Philosophy meetup group? I'm 20 years old, and have a friend who is turning 21 soon who expressed that he'd be interested too if there's support for the idea! I invite men and women of all ages to participate - it'd be an awesome opportunity to connect and network regardless of age differences, offering and reciprocating value for value! Please do let me know if this is of interest to you! I'd be willing to expend the time, planning, and resources necessary to make it a reality. I look forward to your responses, Nick

When I was younger, I was very shy and didn't have many friends, nor did I talk much. People always said I was really quiet. As I've gotten older and more confident I have apparently gone in the opposite direction. A few years ago, before I actively started pursuing self-knowledge, people sometimes said I talked too much. I've noticed that I happen to talk about myself or things in my life a lot as well. I'm in a weird place where I know what I'm doing, but I have difficulty not doing it. I know the key to having a good conversation with people is empathy and active listening, but I find myself just anticipating when the other person finishes so I can give my two cents on the matter, no matter how trivial. Is there any way to fix this? I've tried going "silent" a few times and only responding to people, but I always end up back to jabbering away at some point. I really don't want to be either silent, nor hog conversations or turn it to myself. It's weird because it only affects my personal life really. When I'm in a professional setting I don't seem to talk about myself too much unless asked. I thought perhaps a solution is to view my personal life as a business setting, but then I don't feel authentic. One of the first books on self-knowledge I read was "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie, and it has only helped me become self-aware of how much I do talk about myself. I've used a lot of the advice in the book, but it seems to only help professionally and not personally. As a result I still have few friends that I'd consider close. Does anyone have any past experience with this or advice on what I can do? I know I need to ask questions and be genuinely interested in others, but that impulsive itch to talk always creeps up and it's hard to stamp out when it does. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

There is something I'd like to make the people of FDR aware of... A few months ago, I made contact with a person from FDR through a skype group conversation I am currently hosting, the Philosophy Europe Call. He lives in Sweden, like me. His name is Henrik Eriksson. We started talking to eachother on a daily basis through skype. He was in a very emotionally rough position, so I thought that I'd try to help him out a bit by listening to him and talking to him. From the first time I came into contact with him though, and all our conversations ever since, there was something ''off'' for me in the interaction. I felt uncomfortable. But instead of bringing this up, I pretended like it wasn't there, that it was some fault on my end. However, one night when we talked, I told him that I felt uncomfortable talking to him. I told him that I had been in the wrong fro not bringing it up sooner, that I hadn't been honest with him. It went really bad from here on. Henrik was very upset with this, asking me why I felt uncomfortable. I told him I didn't know why, but he wouldn't settle with that, asking me ''What do you mean you don't know?'' in a very aggressive tone. The next day, I hosted the weekly Philosophy Europe Call. Henrik called in. There were 3 of us in the call at that time. At first he pretended like everything was alright, he came into the call laughing. However, he was very passive-aggressive with the third caller, asking him when he was going to start ignoring Henrik (apperantly Henrik has been ignored by other FDR users before). Also, Henrik started to question caller number 3 about his exercise program, telling him that it was stupid. It was a very, very tense conversation. A few days later, he started to write to me on Facebook, telling me I had no principles, and that I should leave FDR, that he was much ''higher up'' than me, whatever that means. I asked him a few times if we could try to sort things out, but he said he didn't want to have anything to do with me, even though he kept writing to me on Facebook telling me how horrible I was. Then came the call that was the final straw that broke the camel's back for me. It was 10 minutes before I was going to host the Philosophy Europe Call. Henrik called me on skype. I asked what he wanted to talk about (I was quite mad at him at this point because of all the things he had written to me on Facebook). Henrik told me he didn't want to talk about anything with me, yet he still wanted for us to be on that call! I told him I was hanging up on him to host the Philosophy Europe Call, and so I did. He joined that call, and that third caller I mentioned before was in this call aswell, so it was me, Henrik and number 3. Henrik came into the call, pretending once again that everything was all good and joyous, even though he 10 minutes before had said he was very upset and mad. I told him that I didn't want to brush past this tension that was between him and I. But he simply said ''I don't want to talk with you''. I then asked him why he was in the call then. ''I want to talk!'' he than said.Number 3, after telling Henrik that he was annoyed with him saying he wanted to talk, and at the same time he didn't want to talk, dropped from the call after approximatly 10 minutes. I then decided that I couldn't let this shitty interaction with Henrik ruin the call experience for the rest of the coming callers, since there was no reasoning with him. So, I blocked him on skype and on Facebook. However, a week ago, he started calling my cellphone on a private number (meaning I can't block it). The first time he rang, his first words were ''You blocked me from the euro call''. I hung up on him, not wanting anything to do with him. He has called me several days now, 4-6 times a day. Most of the time, I just shut my phone off because he would keep calling even though I kept rejecting them. I wanted to tell you guys this, to give you a heads up about Henrik. I thought I could help him out, but I couldn't. Instead, it turned out really ugly. It fucking sucks to write something like this, but I believe that I am doing a service for other people who might come into contact with Henrik in the future. I don't want anyone else to get into this situation that I am in now. I have experienced it, and I will serve as a warning.

I remember watching an upload where Stef had an "interview/conversation" with a woman about child raising and the woman mentioned that she had a book that came with a bow so that it was perfect for a baby shower gift. I browsed the youtube uploads but have not been able to find that "episode". Can anyone help? If they have a link or remember the name of the woman or the episode? Thank you!!

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Hello everyone. This is the first time I've posted publicly about this so I hope it'll make some sense. I've come to realize that when I engage in conversations with people, whether they be friends, co-workers, family members, etc. that anything that they say I respond in a way that relates to something I did, or I experienced. For a long while I did not realize this about myself, but over the last few years I've been pursuing self-knowledge and trying to work on many aspects of my life. While I wasn't an only child, my siblings were much older than me (they're my half siblings from my father's first marriage, and are 9 and 11 years older than I am). And when my parents divorced when I was nine, I became an only child living with a working mom. So I spent a lot of time alone. I suffered from low self-esteem as a child and was bullied through school (I was overweight through my entire childhood). I was so nervous to even talk to people in any setting. I couldn't talk to people over the phone unless they were my family or friends. When I would be at social events, I generally kept to myself and often people thought I was stuck up because I never talked to anyone. When I had to give speeches in school I was so nervous I'd stumble and shake. I hated being the center of attention. It wasn't until I got a job as an ESL teacher living abroad, where I would have classes of up to 12 students or more, that I broke out of this nervousness about talking to others. I gained a lot of confidence with speaking in front of large crowds, and now that sort of thing doesn't bother me in the least bit. I actually enjoy doing entertaining things in front of crowds. I also now have no issues engaging in conversations in social situations. In fact, I happen to think I talk too much and dominate conversations. It feels weird when I am in conversations now because we'll be talking and when the other person is speaking, I try my best to listen, but I often don't find what they are saying particularly interesting. I want to find what they say interesting, and with a few people I've become genuinely interested in it, but overall I just don't. I've gotten better at not interrupting people and listening in general, but I still seem to always bring the topic back on myself. The more knowledge I gain of this the more self-aware I am in conversations. I know that asking people questions is a good way to engage them and not myself, and I do my best, but I still always seem to have to give my opinion or relate it to my own experience. I'm not sure if this is a subconscious way of trying to empathize with the person or not. And while I've known that I do this for quite some time, I still end up doing it and only realizing that I do it afterwards. And with people younger than myself, I find that I often give advice, even when it is not asked of me. Although I rarely fluff myself up or toot my own horn so to speak. I've asked some friends and co-workers that if I talked too much and they either didn't give a response or just said that I was a "good conversationalist" and always had something to talk about.Perhaps I am being paranoid and looking too much into it? I wonder why I always seem to feel a bit of guilt after having conversations with people. But I find it difficult to make friends on a deeper level than just the acquaintance level. And I feel it is because I cannot connect deeply with people because I talk about myself too much. I know that I don't want to do this, but it just seems difficult to have a two sided conversation. I have gone through days where I don't engage with people much just to avoid getting into the same situation again but I find that makes it worse. If the best way to get better at something is to practice it, how come I still do the same things? Any insight is helpful. Thanks for reading. Shea

Hey everyone, I'm going to jump right in. I'd like to give a little background first so you're on the same page. If anyone has time, I would really appreciate opinions on the conversation below. My name is Andrew. I'm 26, and I'm a long time listener of FDR (my first post on the boards). I just started some serious self-work due to a tipping point finally being reached in my family. About three weeks ago I told them that I wanted a break. I expressed my desire to have space in order to figure things out. Without going into the full history, there's some serious emotional abuse and neglect that I feel I've been subjected to. I haven't seen them or spoken to them for about three weeks now. I've confronted my Mom in the past about these concerns I have of my childhood. What I'm trying to do right now is write down every single detail I can remember about my past. I'm trying to put together a timeline of sorts containing all of the events and experiences I can remember of as a child. So a couple days ago I asked my Mom if I could pick up all of the childhood school papers / pictures she saved. I told her that it would really help me in this whole process during therapy. (I found an amazing one thank god). She told me that she would put together a box with everything and that I could pick it up today (Sunday the 19th). All day today I've been a nervous wreck. And to make a long story short I decided not to go over. I couldn't do it. I just can't see her face to face yet. I'm not ready. So the below conversation is what followed through text message. (I purposely left the typos in the conversation. I felt that it would help paint a more accurate picture of my Mom. Also the lost key conversation happened through email earlier in the day). Me: "I'm sorry mom I cant make it over tonight. I have the day off tomorrow...would you mind leaving the box in the backyard or garage? I could swing over during the day and pick it up." Mom: "Why can't you make it over" Me: "I don't know...I guess I'm scared to..." Mom: "We'll Andy that really hurts me I didn't know I scared you wow! I guess all I can say is when you get your courage back you can come over and get the stuff I put together for you this week. Come over tomorrow if you want after I get off work at 2:30 and pick it up I would like to talk. Love you mom" Mom: "Did you loose all your keys can you still drive your car.? Please reply thank you" Me: "Yeah I got all new keys made last week. I don't think im ready to talk face to face yet, im sorry. Would you mind leaving the box outside? I'd still like to look at the files if you don't mind." Mom: "I don't know what files your talking about I put together dates on a piece of paper dates where we lived and when we lived there. Also the box of your time at meadow lake school and pictures when you were little. I'm not putting them outside it's going to snow tomorrow if you can't see me after work then you can pick the stuff up when you can you can face I'm sorry you can't even see me I love you andy." Mom: "I just don't understand why your feeling this way towards me what did I do? For you to feel this way ." Me: "What about putting the stuff in the garage? You usually leave that unlocked right? I really really want to look at these things. I appreciate very much that you took the time to write down dates...it would help me a lot..." Me: "I don't know mom...that's what im trying to figure out in therapy right now." Mom: "Sorry Andy if you want the stuff tomorrow you can get it from me I want to see you . You don't have to stay and talk. You said you would come over today well I'm going to hold you to that." Me: "Ok. I'll pick up the stuff when I'm ready to talk face to face." Mom: "Ok I'm sorry you feel that way about me remember you have mail to pick up to when ever your ready to see me love mom:-*" I just can't believe that she's holding these things "hostage" in a way. I feel disgusted, completely neglected, and angry as hell. I'm starting to remember her doing this kind of thing to me when I was a kid. Ugh.

I did it. I had the conversation for the first time in my life. ''Do you support the use of violence against me if I decide to disagree?'' After 3 hours, with a lot of distracting topics (who'd build the roads and such), to finally have him say ''Yes, I value your friendship more then my ideas of state''. Words cannot describe how uncomfortable that conversation was. A few times, I thought that this was it. This is where I will end this relationship. Damn. But it seems to have ended on a pillar of security. It was really uncomfortable and scary. But so worth it.

I'm looking for a Molyneux video what on what real conversation is, a definition that is meant to be shared like he did with this video on motivation and not liking your job. I've searched YouTube and podcasts and can't find anything like this, if anything, maybe there is a show where he talks about it. Thanks for any help.