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My life reads like a Shakespearean tragedy, no I'm not being melodramatic. Despite years of therapy, inner work, etc I'm continually being bamboozled, and trolled by people who negatively affect my real life. I've heard Jordan Peterson talk about there are people who after a certain age they're just screwed, it's just over for them. I'm 43, I'm a felon because I fell for a real estate scam and even though I brought proof to the courts they still saw fit to punish me alone, and to even award the conman a restraining order against me after he violently assaulted me from behind. The D.A in los angeles refused to press charges against my attacker, but are considering pressing charges against me for "slandering" the conman. I'm jobless, living in an RV on my parents property in the middle of nowhere, they're not supportive of me getting back on my feet. At this point I feel like I'm some fucking 90 year old waiting to die, not like some middle age man trying to find a way to salvage what life I have left. Every solution I bring to people so that i can help myself is shot down. I am kept from being independent, I'm not allowed to borrow a car for any reason. I've tried making money online, but have never been able to make money online due to my destroyed reputation, I am marketed online by my haters as a schizophrenic, an alcoholic, a racist, sexist, violent felon, even a potential child molester and school shooter. If this shit sounds unreal , join the club. At this point I really can't see any solutions, I hate myself for what I've allowed myself to become, I really honestly feel like this isn't reality, it sure as hell doesn't feel real, and I really do kinda want to just go to sleep and not wake up rather than continue suffering needlessly for who knows how much longer. And yes, for the past year I've been pretty much alone in my RV, the closest people being my family who I really on't care much for to begin with.

Hello FDR community! I would like to know your thoughts about the ethics and emotional necessity of caring for ones parents in old age and through sickness. I've always felt it was a persons duty to care for their parents. I've also felt that being with our parents through that terrifying experience gives us essential knowledge and perspective about life and death. I know that the ethics around this topic are relative and so I'll share a bit about my current relationship to this common human experience in order to create more opportunity for the responses to this topic to help me understand the root of my interest in this subject. My parents neglected and abused me to the extant that I have endured a great deal of trauma. They are now having health issues from living a life of overconsumption of toxic substances. They both deny their illness. My Father has been telling me that some of his organs are injured for the past 2 years. The first thing was hepatitis C, he contracted before I was born. He has a history of heroine abuse so he may have contracted while living in London in his early 20's. He denies that possibility but does not deny using heroine. Though he was aware of the virus before I was born he took medication to get rid of the virus at the age of 55 because he thought it was making him fatigued. He decided to take a newer experimental drug so that he wouldn't have to pay as much for the prescription. One of the drugs caused his haemoglobin to drop and he went to the doctor reporting pain in his left arm and his chest. He was sent to hospital and after some weeks found that the results of the testing he had done showed that he has clogged arteries. He also discovered that 30% of his liver is not functioning while being tested for eligibility to take the experimental drug. He denies any of this has to do with a lifetime of chronic drinking and smoking. He did quit smoking 10 years ago and drinks less now. .. When he discovered he had clogged arteries he was in denial and attributed the results to his physical reaction to the severe drop in haemoglobin. It was suggested that he go for surgery but refused. I spoke to him yesterday and he has decided that he will in fact go for the surgery for a number of reasons including 'everyday when I go to the gym, after about 8 minutes on the treadmill I start to feel a pain in my left arm' and that the doctor has classified him as high risk. ... He takes pride in the fact that he is still going to the gym. .. He has asked me to go back to my hometown (the bad part of hell) to take care of him. There is no where else I could be but there while he goes through this. I have a relatively strong loyalty to my parents. I tell myself to be grateful that I have the chance to see him again. But this isn't going to be triggering emotions associated with mortality alone. There is also the feeling that I've been neglected and traumatized by this person and now I must go and watch him suffer the consequences of indulging in the things that were more important to him than my well being(smoking, drinking, an unjustified and irrational moral authority, etc). I must watch him suffer while feeling the panic and pain associated with watching a loved one suffer. And there is also the pain of the cause being self inflicted And the pain of the absolute terrorized destruction of my potential to have a peaceful life as a result of his masochism And the fear of the only person in the world I think is closest to loving me unconditionally being gone- The fear of being alone. Then- there is the fear of interacting with him, putting up with the non reality, untruth, disassociation, and sometimes still, though I am almost 30, agression and possibly physical violence. There is the fear that I will become so upset in this situation that I'll break. I've just come into relative emotional and material stability after almost 3 years of chronic depression, possibly longer. I'm living in a city far away and have made arrangements to take prerequisite courses in order to prepare for furthering my education should it happen I don't find a suitable father figure to have a family with. I'll have to leave everything here (which isn't that great but is heaven compared to my hometown) in order to care for my father. This should not make me feel this kind of discomfort. I feel like I should be entirely grateful to be able to take care of him. There is a part of me that is spared injury because I feel more secure taking care of my dad than leaving him without anyone around who has an intrinsic value in his well being. It would drive me insane if I couldn't be there for some reason. But I'm more terrified of the kind of insanity that being in an abusive environment while enduring great loss could cause me to retreat into. Since our discussion yesterday I've been in a completely disassociated state and I've been experiencing psychosomatic physical pain in a number of ways that are incredibly distracting. I suppose my question is, If family is the most important thing and that is why I must care for my father(aside from love) And his lack of care for me has created a threat to my ability to further our family by having the emotional, psychological, and material stability required to have my own children And caring for him may further that threat by breaking down the self worth I've been diligently building based on truth and reason Then is it not the best thing for our family for me to protect myself from further injury? I'm concerned that my feeling of obligation comes from a place of cowardice rather than Reason. Some advice I've received is 'don't let the past get in the way' 'you'll regret it if you don't go' 'you owe it to him' And I'm not sure why I'm having such a hard time accepting those claims. I understand them but the reality is that the result of my going to my hometown and being close to my family is always conflict. Conflicts where when I ask myself if I have or ever would treat my parents the way they treat me I am shocked at the disparity between the level of respect we have for each other. I understand that therapy will help, I've been moving in that direction but at this point I'll be going to to take care of my father without a doubt in my mind so I'll likely wait until I arrive to find one. I'm hoping that seeing a therapist will allow me to have the time I desire with my dad and help me to avoid any conflict. I find it almost impossible to believe that taking care of a loved one could be the wrong thing to do. Looking forward to your thoughts and I hope this thread is of some use to all of you!

I've been pondering this thought for a while; Is the West worth defending? The West of today, I can say without any doubt, is not worth defending, not worth dying for. Islam, to anyone who isn't a member of the cult, is very much a real life and death threat. I'm not saying they're the same; the West isn't likely to lynch me (yet) while Islam most certainly would. What I am saying, (and asking), is that with the West's gynocentric democracies, LGBT nonsense, increasingly Socialistic and Fascistic governments, and decreasingly White or identitarian cultures, is doomed to die eventually. I simply cannot see how the West will ever return to Nationalism and Capitalism, or progress towards Anarcho-Capitalism. All I see is a wheel spinning that will eventually lead to a repeat of history (whether it be South Africa, Brazil, the USSR, or NatSoc Germany--they're all seemingly inevitable disasters). With the White Woman being the greatest enabler of this travesty and the White Man becoming increasingly inert and flaccid, I simply lost the empathy to care for this "civilization". My thoughts (not a plan, really) are to simply tend my own garden and find a way to bunker down and stay away from the major hot spots where disaster is likely to occur. Call it cowardice, call it treachery. I don't care. In the 18 years I've been alive I have never cared for the non-existent values of this carcass and am convinced that the values history and some right-wing (and pseudo-right wing) claim existed either never existed beyond a small class of talented individuals or only existed in society for a brief period in time. But what I want to know is this; what does the FDR community think and am I right to think and act in such a way? EDIT: I posted in the Self-Knowledge section because I know this isn't an intellectual matter but a very personal one. While I think I have logical factors into my thought process I am also sure my own personal experiences and emotions have driven them. Therefore I'm focused more on the personal side of it rather than the intellectual side.

Check out my blog post about depression! In it, I talk about my perspective on the nature of depression and how to work through it in therapy, based on my own experience in dealing with it and more recently helping others through it as a therapist. Please share, if you like what I wrote. Thanks!

Hello. I have suffered from social alienation most of my life, and have always been surprised by this as I am fairly smart (top 5% SAT/GRE/various others), tall, athletic, etc. I see myself as generally ethical, and am fairly circumspect before acting generally. I did move to an area with a college campus and many social justice warrior types, and had a very difficult time there, but wrote off my social troubles as being due to that. In short, I took a couple years off dating then started again about a year ago, and ran into a series of seemingly disturbed people in short order. The first was a single mother who was very attractive, but it was an odd online arrangement. The thing deteriorated when she mentioned believing in crystals, the color of people's auras, and chakras. I also briefly saw a girl who was a daily pot smoker for the better part of a decade, who had been seeing a physically abusive boyfriend for 5 years who just left a week prior, and to whom she returned to after stating that she was done permanently with him. One question- am I & Stefan being too rigorous about requiring people to be logical? If I honestly had to do it over, I would have ignored these idiosyncrasies as I had previously been totally alone and now am again. To make matters worse, I did not expect to get attached to either, but a week after the second one ended, I suddenly had an 'acute stress reaction,' couldn't sleep for 3 days, and had to get Xanax from a physician, then ended up trying to see her after the xanax reduced the inhibitions at work and had a flurry of punches thrown at me in front of one of the nicer establishments in town, right around the corner from where I lived, and basically had my reputation destroyed as during a couple occasions dating I had a bit of performance anxiety after having taken a year off dating and being a bit nervous. The first girl I messed around with was a socialist and feminist and invited me back to her place after we met at a bar, then invited me into bed, then told her friends that I had been 'sexually aggressive' the next day and threw a tantrum, after being totally normal the next morning and asking for my phone number. The problem worsened as I entered a suicidal depression after being in what I thought was turning into a normal relationship with an empathetic person. People who knew both of us around town would make subtle asides regarding very private things I had shared, attempting to be vulnerable as Stefan suggested. I could see them really getting off on it, and during the girl's explosion she mentioned that I had never meant anything and the whole thing was insincere- girl here is relative- late 20s aren't girl ages (I'm early 30s). Anyway I found Richard Grannon's spartan life coach youtube channel, and it really, in my opinion, saved my life. I had noticed some odd behaviors like the narcissist death stare, and a fit of rage after mildly suggesting that daily drug use was a bad idea (while trying to help someone to be more healthy), and suggesting that while she was very attractive with a bit of regular exercise she could probably be a model or something similar. In any case, Grannon and Stefan had broached the topic of poor relationships being a result of patterning off primary caregivers. Further, my father is largely deaf, and thus was somewhat emotionally distant. My mother is very volatile, and alternates between explosive anger, sulking, criticism, and detachment. The topic of my intelligence was always threatening to both of them, and Grannon pointed out that narcissists can view children as competition to their perfection, which I feel describes my case very well. I was so depressed in middle and high school, until rebelling, that I had dark circles under and around my eyes constantly, would blink frequently, and sometimes would have eyes water uncontrollably. This was totally ignored by them, and if I ever brought it up I would hear about my being lazy and getting Bs instead of As occasionally, how hard they worked, and how my misbehavior was threatening their marriage (I was a total nerd). I sought out assistance from my extended family, people to talk to, and was essentially told that I was being weak, that my parents are great people, and that I'm a bad and weak person. I had developed a drinking problem when originally in college and had a bit of legal trouble after getting in a fight with a group that assaulted me then turned victim when the cops arrived. To make matters worse, the resultant depression aided my making a series of poor financial choices, and losing 2 IT jobs in short succession over the course of the year, which has made my regaining entry into the field difficult. I was advised by a therapist to move closer to family as I was living across the country in an area with no family or friends. Upon returning home, I realized that the reason I had left was that there was nothing to stay for. I am nothing more than a whipping boy for the family's frustrations, and always suspected but now have confirmed that they were looking for an excuse to discard me, which they now have from the financial troubles. I suppose I'm writing to see if anyone has had similar problems. While up there, I had always spoken my mind about FDR-type principles and found myself losing jobs, and friendships or relationships, etc very quickly in a very leftist, SJW-type climate with a state capital and state main campus in the same town, in the very reserved upper midwest, where truth is frowned upon if it causes any social stir. It seems that my attempt to be ethical has met with nothing but trouble. I get the sense, generally, that the ethical are being bred out of the gene pool. I'm fairly physically fit and surf, and always see the attractive women with very seemingly weak types, or ethnic minorities. It's very strange as when I engage people in conversation, with the exception of strong-willed professional types like myself or foreigners, they seem to drift or bolt away, especially females. I almost never see them with people that look like the type of person I am / would want to be- able to stand up straight. I do live in a semi-rural area currently which is essentially a mixture of trust fund beneficiaries, retirees, and a somewhat criminalistic, hyper-aggressive underclass which struggles to serve them. To attempt a question again, why is it that by trying to be decent, I seem to get a reputation as a bad person? I was thoroughly maligned in the last place, utterly vilified. It was so frustrating to work 50-60 hours a week in IT, and be totally hated for being a white male, or not being subservient to every woman or minority- just trying to preserve some basic dignity for myself. Why is it that sociopathic, evil people are so able to manipulate their currency of lies and thoroughly convince others that they are the good, that the people they torture are bad, and do horrible things to people then walk away being praised with no ill consequence? And how do people treat their children so vilely and have no regret for doing so. I was basically suicidal and called them and they were too busy taking a vacation or something to visit. Whenever they have health problems I drop everything I'm doing and fly wherever. The cognitive dissonance is deafening, and I'm stuck here another week or month or so before being able to skip out elsewhere. It's just so incredible to return to where I grew up, invited by family who I ran from, to find the place I grew up in desolate of friends, inhabited largely by strangers with no interest in talking, all the relative opulence of material but none in warmth or friendship, and this constant, petty infighting for women and/or position. It seems so unattractive but pervasive, and I spent so much time thinking I could rise above it but no longer see people as being morally capable of doing so.

I'm a male, 21 years old. Living in Sweden where I grew up with my mom and dad, older brother who is mentally and physically handicapped (dyskinetic cerebral palsy + mental disability I do not know the name for), and younger sister. At 13-14 I cut myself, and at 15 I started doing drugs. Things were all right as far as my earliest memories go, maybe that's because there aren't that many of them. The ones of my brother are happy and with parts of our extended family around helping out. My brother can not talk with words, he does not have that kind of control over his muscles. He does communicate though, like an infant. Crying when upset, making sounds to hint at something, blinking for yes and almost pronouncing a "no" when he means "no". As I grew past him I never realized the situation, my parents never talked about it. It was 100% normal until I started being away from my family and hanging out in friends houses without wheelchairs at around age 7-8. That's when I first noticed things were off in our family. I never had trouble with kids teasing me or him for it, but I would be scared having girls over when it came to that. My friends got to know who he was but they never got close. He was mostly in another room if we were playing in our house. They never/very rarely asked about him. If there was an option to play at someone elses house, I would fight for that. When my brother was around 14 years old and I was about 10, he started having problems with his hips and back. There were many surgeries and trips to hospitals in different cities for many years. We never talked about it. We went there, said comforting things to my brother like "it's going to be better soon" "you can go home soon" etc. He understands these things to an extent... After 10 minutes he'll be asking "when can I go home?". Very annoying for parents who does not want to talk about anything. My parents never asked me or my sister about our experiences of any of this. My brother stopped eating around this time. My parents would mix "regular food" into a mush like the ones for babies because chewing was hard, but even this got too hard for my brother to eat. So naturally, my mother got mad. It escalates quickly and soon she is full on yelling at his face, he's crying and there me and my sister are sitting across the table, watching. So is dad. In these intense moments of action he's passive. My brother has gotten nutrition through gavage ever since (I'm not sure if that's the right word. Food through feeding tube in stomach to bypass the throat). Then he stopped sleeping. So now my mothers screaming would not end after dinner, it would carry on into most of the nights when I was around 13-19 years old, until I moved out. I asked my sister earlier today how the nights are now, she said "he still wakes up, but I guess mom is less mad". She would scream so loud, and so would he. "You have to sleep, don't you understand?! I'm tired of this, it's *enough*!". The worst thing she ever said was "if you don't shut up I'll throw you out of this window". That stuck with me, you could say. Then the next morning, she and dad is acting like nothing has happened, smiling and ready for the day. My brother was happy too, but he can't really help it. I thought I was going insane, I obviously couldn't process reality. There's lots more, but I guess that is enough. I've been to counseling for a few months, once every 2 weeks which is not enough for me I feel. I've told my parents all of this, how I feel they abused all of us. But they do not get it. Just today I told my mother that I do not want to come to the birthday dinner, because I'm afraid I will burst into tears. She replies with the usual "but I've said I'm sorry already! What do you want me to do? It's in the past... I can't go back in time, and change what is done! I'm sorry!". I've invited them to a meeting with my counsler in 2 weeks, looking forward to that. I work as a personal assistant for my brother, have done for 2 years. He didn't have anyone else at the "daycare" he went to after school. My parents report good times in school, and when he left at age 19 for something called "day center" (roughly translated) he was miserable. He cried every morning, he did not want to go. He would cry until he puked. Right, I forgot to mention he would average vomiting something like 2-3 times a day for the later half of his life. I have a lot of gross memories of him and vomit running down his chest, me and my sister panicking yelling for mom or dad to help... He's 26 now and I believe it's getting better on that aspect. To be honest I think it's my communication with him that has made this improvment (among other things, like going out for wheelchair dances and hanging out at a café for handicapped people). He is always looking forward to going there with me, he has lots of friends who want to be with him, I help him communicate through translating his body language to others, and he has only puked 3-4 times during my 2 years working with him. I have to start the day with going home to him, and he still lives with my parents. Then we take a taxi to the Day Center, when the day is done we take a taxi back and my parents take over the role of "personal assistant". This makes me very sad. I don't want them to take care of him, and I don't want to meet them every day. I don't know why I made this post. I originally called it "feeling guilt over not going to dads birthday dinner" but it turned out a lot bigger than that. Don't think I have a question for anyone to answer, I just wanted to express how I feel and maybe have someone listen.

My newest article for this holiday season. "Contrary to some people’s expectation, this article will not be a jolly, ho-ho-holiday read, despite it having both "holiday" and "hope" in its title. It will be about the reality of how a lot of people perceive holidays and their life in general, and about a possible alternative to that." Full article here: http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2015/12/holiday-hope.html

I am having a difficult time telling if the woman I am with is fit to be a mother to my potential children. The good: She is intelligent, nurturing, a good listener (mostly?), is completely on board with peaceful parenting, she can make some income from home, good looking, already owns a house. The bad: She is does not have a lot of friends, and her family would not make an acceptable extended network for raising children. She is prone to intense bouts of anxiety and/or depression, there is always a 'good' reason, but it seems far too often and too intense to me. therapy doesnt seem to be helping her, her therapist seems very feminist and pushes her into a victim mentality, which just makes things worse. I am very afraid that we will have children, and she will just "have bad days" when I am not around, and she will be left caring for my child(ren) while going into a frighteningly irrational and dissociated state. We are both in our late 20's, the time is here for this sort of thing and I dont know who to ask, I have never directly seen a marriage that I want to emulate.

I'm very keen on getting your thoughts on the subject and/or about the video

Hi, The reason why I bring this up is that I believe I may have inherited the condition? My behaviour parallels with the symptoms of the condition and a close relative was diagnosed with it. Want to find out as much as possible? Thanks. http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/bipolar-disorder-causes This like many other pages describes possible hormonal processes (not most scientific way to put it). Maybe what I meant to ask was what are the causes of it? Doctors still don't know the causes. I got carried away I think...maybe I will draw a line under this topic.

Recently (about a week from now) I began feeling depressed and anxious about my work, which right now is being an intern in a furniture store, developing their website. I feel really confused about where these feelings come from, and I'd love some feedback from the FDR community about this. This last year i decided to take a one year course on web development, which here in Portugal is the (and I think Europe) is level 5 education (lvl 4 is highschool and 6 is college, i think). I was very excited in the beggining and really loved programming, and although there were some really useless classes, the course was a overall positive, and I was enjoying my time there. In the end of the school year, came all the exams and i was really under stress for two weeks. I needed to build a webstore from ground up as evaluation for multiple classes. I was really enjoying building this website in the start, and it made me very happy since I've had problems finding motivation in the past, and i was building a website that was really exceeding everyone's expectations, and I was also going to sell it to a friend. But in the end of programing it I started getting really annoyed with all the bug fixing and testing and working on it started to be really boring, like I didn't want to finish it. During the last 3 months I also started interning. It was ok in the start, but quickly turned boring because I wasn't programming, I was adding products to the furniture webstore I'm interning for. I was always thinking I'd have fun programing for the webstore i work for, and i was really looking forward to start since I was tired of the repetitive work. After some time interning, we finally started programming a website, to generate traffic to the webstore (a gallery of furniture to attract new customers). The planning was fun in the beggining, but almost as soon as me and my 2 friends also interning there got to work, I felt really unmotivated, and finishing the website felt more like a obligation and less like the job i wanted to have 6 months ago... I started feeling deep sadness and anxiety, mainly in the bug fixing and testing. During this period one of my colleagues asked the supervisor to start interning from home, which is doable given the nature of the job, and since it's almost 1h to get to work. He started being much less productive and everytime we'd have disagreements he'd respond with passive agressive comments, which was really annoying. My other colleague and I also started having problems and getting upset at eachother, for reasons that I won't go into here, but if you need details I'll respond to. To top off this combination of being upset at the job i was doing and my colleagues, the place i was working at was a badly lit cubicle, with barely any natural light. This is when I started to feel really bad. Everyday I went to work i felt so sad I had to take breaks to cry. I was counting every minute to go home. Even writing this made me tear up. I decided to ask my supervisor if i could work from home two days a week, and he agreed, while hearing me crying about it. I felt sad and anxious. Every day I worked there I was hoping for when I could stay home. Every day I worked home I was sad that the next day i'd have to go work there. Today is monday, and I decided to not go to work because i'm feeling too anxious and almost depressed. I didn't feel like eating (I'm a bit overweight), I didn't feel like doing my morning routine, I feel like ****. *I forgot to mention my girlfriend has been helping me through these tough times. ** Also yesterday my cat (he's very important to me) got really sick and the vet told me he could have the feline equivelent of leukemia or aids.

I speak with Louise Koch as we contrast the claims that the Danes are some of the happiest people in the world with real life experiences. Louise, aka "Fruity Lou", is from Denmark and we struck up a conversation about a meme that makes the connection between the happiness of the Danes and their extensive welfare state. But are things really as good as the propaganda suggests? I had to interview her to find out more and do some research of my own. The research institutions that produce happiness reports are funded by governmental agencies and of course they tell us that government intervention helps to make people happy. To find out more about Louise and her great work visit http://fruitylou.com/ Sources Depression and Antidepressants: A Nordic Perspective http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3854846/ The number of persons with alcohol problems in the Danish population http://sjp.sagepub.com/content/39/2/128 Happiness Research Institute http://www.happinessresearchinstitute.com/

Hello everyone! I have been trying for ages to be a better parent. Despite my best attempts and an improved situation, I was incredibly depressed. I would go through the motions. I agree with Steph on many topics, so it was distressing that I didn't feel better and couldn't behave the way I wanted or will myself to feel the way I wanted. I'd like to refer anyone to some of my thoughts on the subject. http://lisacoogias.blogspot.com I believe everyone is magnesium deficient. I'd like some more scientific minds to chime in on this subject with me. I started taking epsom salt baths (magnesium sulfate) on the 17th of December. COMPLETE RELIEF. Sounds like an utter exaggeration, but it has saved my life and my children's lives. The eby and eby study is a good starting base for research. Thank you for all this community has done for me, even if I were only capable of observation.

I wrote this article a year ago, and since it's this time of the year perhaps some of you may find this helpful. Holiday Depression and Stress

Hi everyone, This is my first post. I am in something of a quandary. A month ago I reconnected with a cousin of mine, after eight years of no contact. He turns 18 this year, I am 27. I had nagging guilt about not being more in touch with him over the years. When he was younger he would come stay at my house, but when he was around 10 this stopped. I didn't ask myself why this was, and I feel shame about giving up contact so easily, now looking back. If I can keep this as short as possible, here are the facts: When I finally did reach out, he was in the midst of massive depression. We spoke on the phone for a couple of hours, two days in a row. He told me he had been depressed for a long time, miserable at home, awful relationship with his mom and dad. And he seemed totally lost. He told me he wanted to get help, which he got a few days later. He put his foot down at home and said he needed professional help. So he was voluntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, for two weeks, where he was treated for depression. I had time to meet him and talk to him, and got a lot of information on what had gone on with him for the past eight years, and what was troubling him at home. Now, this is the thrust of what I'm trying to figure out: I am related to my cousin through his father, they haven't seen each other since my cousin was five. So he grew up with his mom and his stepfather. From what I've gathered, his mom has been grinding his feelings and emotions into dust, and lying to him about why he doesn't get to see his father. I have heard information about why they stopped seeing each other, I believe he deserves to know that information, but I don't know if I should be the one to tell him. His father, my uncle, has expressed wishes of getting back in touch - if he is willing. Does anyone have experience with these sort of delicate matters. How do I get my cousin the information that he deserves to know? Help, please.

My thoughts lately have been revolving around how much the framing of my own situation in my mind might be causing my problems more than I previously thought. I will often think of myself in incredibly negative terms, and then realize (at least intellectually) that these things aren't really true. An example, I often think of myself as worthless, or unable to provide value to others around me. Then I remember that I have in the past provided much value to people, even if it isn't as much or as often as I would like. I also often feel as if I just don't belong with humanity, and that there are no people that I can relate to or have any kind of relationship with. Again, I know this isn't true, as the single digit number of people I 'know' are nowhere near the entire world, and there are at least a few good people that inhabit it. So at least intellectually, I know that I am capable of and it is worth putting myself out there for other people to see, but I just can't seem to get over this block I am feeling that makes me want to continuing hiding from the world. This is why I am increasingly beginning to think that I am essentially making my own life shit. Another thing that I just realized today, is that I am subconsciously expecting other people to do the work necessary for my growth in my stead. Before I began this topic, I had been Googling how to find low cost or better, free psychotherapy. One of the most useful pieces of advice was to just start calling therapists in my area and telling them my situation, that I am desperate for help and I can't really afford it. Instead of doing that, I came here to make a topic that was going to essentially be "What are your opinions such and such therapy, and how can I get it for free?". I can't help but think this attitude is a major part of my isolation. Thank you for reading.

In the past week or so, I felt a serious and real change in my attitude towards my life, and an apparent disappearance of a sense of apathy I had been carrying for as long as I could remember. I have spent this time being more productive than I literally have ever been, and it made me feel so good, and happy for once. But today, I woke up, and it was all back to the same. I once again am stuck back with all these incredibly negative feelings, and I have no idea why. My situation has not changed at all since yesterday, yet my mental state and my hope have bottomed out again. I guess I don't even have a question, and I am sorry for having so little information to go on, but I just don't know what to do. I felt for sure that I could finally maintain a sense of hope and worth, that definitely this time it wouldn't slither and fade away into the darkness. But I was wrong, and here I am, in the same negative mental state as always, without a sense of what went wrong, or why I am back to where I was. I guess I am just desperate for a connection somewhere. Thanks for your time and feedback.

My newest video. Topics discussed here: dysfunction in society, school / educational system, problems in one's childhood and adolescence, and more.

I posted Steph's video about Robin Williams and my cousin posted a "::jerking off::" motion in my comments. I feel so angry that being Anarcho-Capitalist means friends and family refuse to debate and would rather attack my character than discuss or defend the opposite positions. The implications mean I lose more and more of my old circle but then I realize I never had friends to begin with and I feel sadness and anger that I had ever had loyalty to people when they end up just having a lack of compassion like my mother is with me. I have anxiety because during the holidays I will see my cousin and I don't want to see my family now.

I have a theory of depression that I've been working with that I want to share with you. Yes, you reading this right now. This is for you By depression, I do not mean sorrow or despair or dread. I mean that numbing of emotional connection, a desire for isolation esp. accompanied by apathy, lethargy and cynicism. Some Background I was chronically depressed from a young age until a couple years ago. I grew up in a very isolated and awkward, emotionally fragile household. I got bullied at school and often at home by my older sister. I was also often anxious, though rarely to the point of a panic attack. I was never taught a lot of basic skills and habits as a child and my anxiety carried into my adulthood as I awkwardly bumped my way through necessary social and adult life. I thought that I was pretty much doomed to a terrible life until I saw that Stef seemed genuinely happy. That was really strange and exciting for me, and I took his advice and got into therapy. Strange Pattern In therapy, I would often bring my anxieties and depression into the sessions with me (as you would expect), and I started to notice something that was very confusing for me. I call it "emotional amnesia", where I would completely forget about things I was previously excited about, or I would feel depressed in the present about something and my therapist would point out that the other day, that thing brought me joy and excitement. I was surprised that I had forgotten or that it had shifted by that much, but still I was depressed about it. It was kind of strange to me, but I didn't pay it much attention because it didn't seem to change anything that I remember feeling differently before. It was almost as if all my memories of my past and my hopes for the future were covered in a dark cloud. I hated everything and it was difficult to work with because I had little motivation to work through it. That was not the only reason, or the core reason I should say, as I later found out. The Theory I don't actually know that this is original to me. I probably picked it up from a bunch of different places. But what I've come to realize is that depression is an avoidance of anxiety and overwhelm. Which is why depression and anxiety are never far apart. Anxiety is terrible for the body. All that cortisol in your system can really fuck things up. And that's why depression is numbing. It's feeling disconnected from yourself, from your feelings because it's just so exhausting to feel so consistently anxious for long periods. And that's why it comes with lethargy. And aside from depression accompanying a lack of motivation and disappointment or dread about the future, it's also really hard to work through, because to work through it is to feel that anxiety and overwhelm again. And even if you aren't conscious of it, your body and unconscious know how bad anxiety is on the body (and the psyche for that matter). Caged animals start out really anxious, being at the whim of someone as they have to suddenly cope with a small space, not understanding what's going on. And then after a while that anxiety turns into depression. The anxiety is too much that they would rather adopt a strategy that could make them much easier prey, even welcoming death. Dealing With Depression is Important Depression is not any kind of cure for anxiety, obviously. It doesn't make anxiety go away, except insofar as the circumstances triggering your anxiety go away if you isolate yourself. If you are constantly bed ridden with some illness that won't go away because you keep getting exposed to the source of that illness, you are going to miss out on a lot of opportunities, not least of which: connecting with other people. What Changes? I think the most important thing that changes once you realize how depression works is that you know that you are disconnected and you can figure out why. The depression blocks two important things: the good and the bad. By feeling less anxiety and stress, it comes at the cost of forgetting the things for which you can genuinely feel grateful for. The solution that I've found extremely helpful is a combination of two things: First, that I consider what anxious situation I am primarily avoiding so that I can do something, anything to address it. I trust that I'm not just some crazy anxious mess of a person and that my anxiety is there to inform me. And in that anxiety I've found that it can tell me a whole lot about the situation I'm in, and even how to address it. Second, by remembering how far I've come, what opportunities are now available to me in my life now that I have philosophy and self knowledge. By realizing just how fortunate and lucky I am to be living in such a time as this, that I was not born in Saudi Arabia, that I'm not a dung beetle rather than a human! And it's true that it's amazing and wonderful and if you don't see it yet, you may well later. I think that both are equally important things. If you don't get that anxiety triggering thing out of your life, it's probably not going to go away on it's own, and if it does, it's probably not soon enough. Motivation Motivation is tricky. So many people want to tell themselves lies in order to motivate themselves. That's like the entire business model for people like Deepak Chopra. It's a thriving industry selling these people lies so that they can continue to live their own dissociated "lives". The temptation that I have, and has not worked out for me, is to say to myself "if I can only accomplish X, I will finally be happy", but what happens is that I accomplish X and if I feel happy about it, it's fleeting, at best. Because what's left to sustain it? It's always the next thing, and that next thing just isn't going to do it for me either. How could it? I am completely unconvinced that this strategy works anymore and instead I'm convinced that (assuming I'm not some evil guy) there is enough goodness and fortune in my life (if only the potential at this point) to create and sustain some level of gratitude. I am so incredibly fucking grateful that I found philosophy, oh my god! The reason I think that's important is that, in addition to being true, the stakes don't feel as high. I can make mistakes without feeling like it will mean I know nothing, or that I'm hopelessly incompetent, or that I'm a phony, or whatever other self loathing kinds of judgments about myself that I could make. Thank all powerful atheismo that I am not a farmer from the 16th century, knee deep in manure, waking up before the sun comes up to do tedious manual labor for 12 hours every single day. Or being a slave, or living during the inquisition, or losing my whole family to smallpox. Compared to that, my own anxieties don't seem like such a big deal. Dealing with depression is dealing with anxiety, which is dealing with the circumstances in your life. Anyway, that's what I think. What do you think? Am I totally off? Am I missing something important? Is this helpful?

I De-FOOed earlier this year (like 4-5 months ago). I had realised that my parents we abusive and emotionally distant, and that there was nothing that could change that now. They won't change. So I sent my mother a message, telling her I don't want to hear from them anymore, and that I never want to see them again (my parents that is). Last time I saw my brother was last summer, but I havn't spoken to him in almost 2 years. Yesterday, I took up something I have thought of doing for a long time, but put of: To write a letter to my brother, explaining my De-FOO, that I was cruel to him when we were younger, and that if he wants to talk to me (he doesn't have to). To give him a hand, so that maybe he could leave that terrible family behind and start to heal as I have. I am open to it. It was very painful, thinking that this could very well be my farewell letter to him. When I came home today, I saw that someone had written to me on Facebook. It was my brother. He said he was sorry that he had been ignoring me for so long, and the reason was that he had been depressed for 2 years and had shut people out, but that he felt better now that he is going to university. It was very emotional to read this. I was on the verge of abandoning hope of ever having the chance to connect to my brother and here he was, reaching out to me! I told him that I was happy for him that he is feeling better, and told him that I had been depressed too and had concluded that it came from our home. He then told me that I should reestablish contact with our mother, because she has become depressed aswell. The reason? Because I broke of contact with her, and now she is afraid that my brother will do the same. I haven't said anything about this yet in my replies to him. Now, the question is, do I just say it? Or is it to much to early yet? To tell him that our childhood was horrible, and that I have no moral obligation to ease her depression? That I don't owe her anything?

An impromptu video I recorded yesterday when testing my new microphone; on a quote by Alice Miller and on the delicate subject of suicide in general.

I feel empty most of the time. I have been this way ever since i first quit college 2 years ago.. I was on focal-in and i almost never slept and when i did i had nightmares, and when i wasn't sleeping i had nightmares. The nightmares were consistent, they were of my uncle beating me and my cousin torturing me and attacking me. They did do these things in real life, my uncle when i was younger and my cousin from when i was younger until i left. My father was never in my life much, one of the few memories i have of him was when i was around 12 and he hit me so hard i flew across the room, i think he was drunk. He came to my house saying he was the police at 12;30 am, i was up late doing homework. He was a brutal person he is 6'5 and i was less than 5 feet tall. My mother didn't really care and i remember when i was in kindergarten she used to get my uncle to beat me for "misbehaving" when i was just defending myself because i was getting picked on for being overweight, they always told me to defend myself ,but when i did they would hurt me for it. When ever i confronted my mother about the beatings, she would act like they never happened by i kept on pressuring her and then she told me to get over it, it was a long time ago, basically telling that it did happen and that she was trying to make me feel crazy for knowing it happened and confronting her on it. Throughout my life my mother would do things to sabotage me , like go on walks with me for exercise and then right after buy me a double cheese burger, with fries, 20pc chicken nuggets and a milkshake, but sometimes she didn't get the milkshake, because that was fattening. After the first time leaving college i applied again and i wanted to go back and she made it her goal to destroy me before i got there, she let my cousin come back to live with us and he tortured me everyday to the point where i couldn't sleep., i was having constant panic attacks and i was just overall losing my mind. I was seeing a counselor btw, he was shit. I was trying to put logic and honesty and just me into my relationships and when they would go sour, because the other person didn't care about me, he would talk me into staying friends with them. He would also tell me to forgive my mom, or if she came in too, if i talked about the things she did to me, he would say" why did you bring her in? Just to beat up on her?" If i didn't have him in my life, i would have been able to recover like i was doing before, but that crap really messed up my head. I stopped seeing him maybe 4 months ago after he was saying maybe i should get medication and when i told him i felt stuck, he recommended me to join the military. The second time i went to school , i think my mom mastered how to make me go insane, she said wouldn't give me the money for my books unless i gave her the full pricing for everything, so that took a week of finding out if i had to buy new or not and pricing from the school store and amazon, then she kept on giving me excuses and stuff, this was until like the 3rd week of school me without all my books, i got some during that period ,but i had so much homework i couldn't do because i needed a new book with a code to do it. Every time i asked her the new book she would scream at me blaming me for the prices of the books, saying if we bought them sooner they would be cheaper and if i bought them used and she just went on and on. I was crying over the phone asking her to stop and just to give me the money for the books. This wasn't a money problem, there are other instances in my life , where i needed something and she would do this to hurt me. I remember wanting a new bike after my cousin stole the parts from my old one, while i was still learning to ride it and she would go off about not having any money, but when i asked for multiple games she would just buy them ,but not a bike, which i wanted to use for exercise. btw she never bought me that bike. I ended up writing her telling her this pattern and what she was doing to me and she made herself out to be the victim and me the abuser, and then i mentioned her blaming me for the price of books over the phone and she told me to get over it, and at that moment i punched my computer and i lost it. I spent several days in a haze. I think that was the first time i felt the wall, that i feel everyday now. it started with showering, then i couldn't study math and then for my timed English essays i had constant panic attacks during , i remember putting all my strength into typing, just one word at a time, i could usually finish them in time, but the essays were a mess, the most i got was 90 at the start of the year and it went downhill to me getting a 65. I ended up failing math and another class. I had two final papers to do and i spent 3 weeks, days and nights trying to write them, having panic attacks and fighting that wall and all i managed to get was a page done , i even got extra time from my teachers and i still wasn't able to finish those papers and pass those classes. As of right now, the wall is gone, but it comes back after doing something else ,and each thing i do is a battle and i lose most of the time, i spent 2 hours on my bed prepping myself to write this. Right now i am currently unemployed ,im 21 and i live with my abusive and sabotaging mother. Every time i try to fill out a job application i feel that wall, and i just cant get past it. I really want to get out of this situation and get my own place, go back to school so i can do neuropsychology and work in a lab setting helping with studies to help people lead better lives. If anyone is in or has been in a similar situation, i would love for advice and if there is anyone who can just help me in some way with advice that will be welcomed

I thought I'd share some thoughts I have had these last days. Perhaps there are others out there that feel, may feel, or have felt the way I am feeling now. Just want to let you know, if that person is you: There is hope. And I think you know it, deep down. Last thursday, I went out to jog in the spring sun for a while. After about 15 minutes into my run, I sort of had a series of revelations hitting me. I realized that most of the things I am doing in my life at the moment, are not things I want to be doing. Instead of doing things I want to do, or not do anything at all. I felt like I wanted a total do-over with my life (the parts I had power over, not my childhood). Like, fake my death, have a fresh start. Not know the people in my life, so I could get away from all the responsabilities I have, without having angry glances shot at me, without people talking behind my back as the guy who dropped it all and made it uncomfortable for others. Now that I just wrote that, I got this thought that maybe I am mistaking my now adult relationships with my childhood ones. That perhaps, I won't be attacked for quitting the things I don't want to do. Even if I get attacked, so what?, is another thought. Most of the people I know that theoretically would attack me are not people I like that much anyway. I find our interactions dull, lifeless, shallow. What I have gotten from the relationships I have today at college is 98% of what I thought I wanted when I was a child, when I was a prisoner in school: Recognition for ability, respect because of my position, social status. Things that I now think I realize aren't virtous, aren't important. That what I am doing is what most other people do around me: Hide from the past, or adhere to it, revere it. I only got one shot. One life. One pinball. And I have to make what's best of it, not wasting time with dead people, doing things I don't want to do. Yesterday, I felt really terrible during the evening. I thought ''What is a life without conflicts? What does that feel like? I don't think I can imagine what that is like. I feel scared. I don't know what to do with my life. The world is a dark place. Everything feels empty, like a black void. Is there a meaning to anything?'' And then I thought: Maybe this is my soul, tugging at it's chains. Struggling to break free, fighting tooth and nail against the mindlessness, the black hole the people around me worship? Maybe I am seeing more clearly now, that I am again, seeing the world for the dark place it can be. Or perhaps it's me self-attacking in some way, because I am going to give up the things I don't like doing, and that my inner-critic sees this as laziness? I am not sure. Maybe that's what I have been doing, mimicing my father by taking on several projects at once, saying that we love being busy, while I know that both him and I are trembling beneath the stress, hating it because the people around us do so little in comparison, which I have seen make my father turn bitter. And lately, I have felt bitterness for that same reason too. And all of this gets us what? Recieve the shallow gratitude of others, for being ''the guy that works really hard!'' or ''that man that get's things done!''. ''You work so hard! That's really impressive of you!'' And if that's the case, is my father also trying to hide from attacks from his inner-critic, for not doing things? For the fear of being called lazy? I still feel this emptiness inside. That all the things that I used to enjoy, or thought I enjoyed, were nothing but escapes from my past pain. That the only thing they did was to please my inner-critic, to do what I was supposed to do: Become my father. Be that hardworking, no resting kind of guy! Take on the burdens of others, because dammit, someone has got to sacrifice themselves on that altar, and that someone must be me! It is my purpose! It's what I deserve! I may not rest! And really savor the bitterness that follows, because other people arn't up to pair, and life isn't supposed to be fun! It's about sacrifice. At least, that's my hypothesis, as to why I feel the way I feel. But, underneath this emptiness, I can feel a sliver of hope. That lantern of self-knowledge I lit more than a year ago isn't dead. I take all these feelings and thoughts as evidence that I am on the path to something big regarding myself. That my feelings are trying to tell me something, that they are trying to steer me somewhere. So, all I can do now, is really try and listen to myself, and dig even deeper than before. To strike that vein of self-knowledge gold.To break out of the patterns of childhood. I can actually see bars infront of my inner eye of sorts. It's hard to explain. But, I am standing behind bars, finally, really, with my whole being, realizing that I am behind bars. Rays of sunlight find their way through the gaps in my prison cell, dazzling me. And I know I want out. I just don't know how. At least I know I am in a prison now.

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.