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Hey guys. I have a question about guilt and trying to decipher if it's true self or not. My guilt I experienced a while back about a certain situation that was my responsibility but hadn't hurt anyone had actually led me back into the arms of my parents. I hadn't left them yet and I was about to but the guilt put my life on hold. I had to try to right the situation as much as I could. During that time period I was crying on my mother's shoulder and seeking comfort from both my parents. In all of your opinions, if the guilt I feel leads me to seek emotional comfort from those who abused me, is the guilt necessarily all true self then?

Hi all. I would appreciate some perspective from other virtue-minded people on an internal struggle I'm dealing with regarding an accident with a firearm. As a foreword to the topic, I've reported my incident in full to my local police and it carries with it no illegality. A year ago I had an accidental discharge with my carry pistol in my room and the projectile shot through my roof/wall and up into the night. It was at a 45 degree angle so it wasn't going to hit anything with full power, but where it came down is where it could have done damage. The minute it happened I got into my car and drove down into the area where it would have landed, and there was no commotion. What I should have done that night was contact the police immediately, but I didn't due to my fear of my father's anger and whatever consequences might accrue legally (again, the police now know and it carries no illegality). After a week or two I informed my parents about it and since no police came they decided to just seal up the hole. About 8 months passed and it hadn't crossed my mind. I'd landed a job and was building my assets up to finally move out. Everything was going great. One night after work I'd bought some strong alcohol (I don't drink) and the next morning I thought I had alcohol poisoning. I rushed myself to the ER and it turned out I would be fine. When I told my folks they seemed not to be too bothered by it. That night I had two dreams, one where I was late for work and was probably fired, told my parents, and they turned a cold shoulder to me saying I deserved it, causing me to have a meltdown. The second was where I was watching myself fire a rifle into my back woods accompanied by a friend I used to know. When I went from 3rd to 1st person I stopped in horror and rushed into the woods to make sure nobody was hurt. I emerged in a parking lot where cars and walls were riddled with holes and people were coming out all angry and yelling at me. I kept searching to make sure at least nobody was hit but crowds of angry people just swarmed me. From the minute I woke up I was overwhelmed with guilt and fear at what I'd done. After vigorously analyzing my two dreams and the circumstances surrounding, I decided to follow my gut which was telling me to report what happened and take full responsibility. I went to the cops, told them every detail, and all they did was make a report (since nobody reported anything). I thought the fear of the cops was what was bothering me, but after I cleared it up with them, the only thing that disappeared was the fear. The guilt still sticks and it feels like something is still wrong. I still feel it in the bottom of my stomach right now, though it's not debilitating. So... how do you perceive my guilt from an outsider's perspective? I would really really appreciate some help with this as I have nobody in my life right now I can really explore this with, and the one thing I want in life is to be a good person. This could be my true self pointing me in the direction of virtue, or historical trauma, and that's what I feel I need to figure out.

Hi, sort of a long shot here but maybe someone will see this and it can be passed on to Josh directly, or to Stef and Mike so it can be brought up to others like Josh if they call in in the future. Josh described feeling very anxious, and was essentially unable to converse even though he had waited through several call in shows to do so. Mike tried to help him get started by relating his experience with anxiety, Mike said his original approach to this was to try to wargame or plot out conversations in advance prior to talking, so that he would not accidentally say the wrong thing. And of course, this is impossible. Years ago before I found this show, when I had almost no self awareness or self knowledge, I too suffered acute anxiety in public, like Mike said, even in checkout lines and such. Sometimes my reaction was so severe that I don't think I would have felt much differently if someone had been pointing a gun at me; difficulty breathing, high heart rate... I was spooled up to run away 110%. It was mostly triggered by women I found attractive or who found me attractive, or men who were big enough to win against me in a fight. When Mike related his experience I had to completely put down my tools and just listen... ( I was at work ) It was like he was telling my story. What I wanted to share is my synthesis of things I've learned about this... maybe it can help someone else too. If you have anxiety like that, check this out: #1 No one knows you better than yourself. #2 You believe you have flaws that make you unacceptable in conversation. While most people have room for improvement in conversation and you probably do too, you may be hearing an internalized critic that is unrealistic or abusively harsh. #3 Here is where things go awry - You believe you are a flawed and unacceptable person, and this can't be changed. And, if people really find out who you are, you will be rejected. #4 You decide to mitigate that with being fully conscious in conversation, using learned skills, such as "pick up artists" promote, reading books about conversational tactics, and planning beforehand. #5 You fail. The reason is, as Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink" points out, most mental processing is unconscious. To be 100% engaged in a conversation means to be using that narrow focus of conscious awareness, PLUS the broad awareness that occurs below decks, where you don't immediately even know its happening. You respond sometimes WITHOUT thinking... what some people might call "blurting" out responses. If you have learned to be 100% in the moment, in the way that Alan Watts or Ekhart Tolle might describe, what you say will sometimes even be a surprise to you! Almost like you are hearing someone else speak! You do not have to think of what to say next. It's almost like it is provided to you. You react without thinking, as a martial artist or expert dancer would do. When you try to fully consciously vet everything you say, you are missing all that below decks information and instinct, and so you are severely handicapped. That's no fun. You cannot waste time listening to what is being said to you... you have to think of what YOU are going to say next. This is stressful and impossible, for more than a few moments. Almost everyone will realize you are doing this after just a few verbal exchanges and be put off by it. So, why would you do that? Because you have unprocessed issues, and your unconscious is instinctively and sometimes brutally honest, and if you don't keep that monster in check with a conscious act , it will reveal to your fellow conversationalist who you really are. Like in Pink Floyd's The Wall, you will be "exposed before your peers". Oh no! And you believe these issues you have cannot be changed, that they are inherent and fundamental to you. This, my friend, would make anyone nervous. So I believe you will find, as I did, that spending a great deal of time conversing with yourself, and probably with a therapist too is the best place to start. Conversing in an environment where your unconscious self can safely participate without judgement. Give it a venue so you can hear what is in there. The truth is, you can improve and change fundamentally if you want to. Once you know yourself, and trust yourself, and love yourself, and are integrated, you can trust your unconscious self to join you in conversation with other people... nothing to hide, fully authentic. Then you will bring 100% of yourself to conversation and enjoy it. FWIW My experience now is that when I meet someone new and converse, shortly afterwards I realize I could have said something better, or I missed something, or some other reaction would have been more friendly. I'm still putting the proverbial foot in my mouth on a regular basis. But each time there is a lesson and an improvement that gets added to my set of reactions, and that is delightful to experience. The same forgiveness I extend to others for less than perfect conversation I extend to myself. Good luck Josh!

About 2 years ago, the twelfth of October 2014, I published my first non-fiction book on self-knowledge and self-therapy through keeping a journal. The response was incredible. I could never have imagined that I could move people in the way the told me I had moved them. It has been a humbling experience, knowing that I had had such an impact on people. I was given help with editing by several people, and one of those people was Steven Franssen, a fellow author and an INCREDIBLE human being. You can find his work on his YouTube-channel https://www.youtube.com/user/RedRightHunterand on his website http://www.nurturingtruth.com/ Now, Steven has made and published my e-book, as an audiobook on audible, with him as the narrator! You can find the audiobook version @ http://adbl.co/2dx7fgi You can also find the e-book version on https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/484220(free) If you find it valuable, then you can buy it on http://amzn.to/2dvczltto support me in writing more If you feel you got value out of it, but cannot afford to buy it, you can also leave a review on smashwords, amazon and audible. Of course, you can do both aswell And! If you want to support me AND FDR at the same time, use an FDR affiliate link and search for my book (search for ''Dear Self Erik Lugnet'') The affiliate link... for Americans: http://www.fdrurl.com/Amazon for Canadians: http://www.fdrurl.com/AmazonCanada for the UK and europeans: http://www.fdrurl.com/AmazonUK Thank you for your time, and I wish you a wonderful day! Erik Lugnet

I've been away from this community for a lot of time now since I last discovered FDR and some of you may recognize me from a couple of mouths ago (or something like that I'm not sure) and since then some things have happened with some FDR members that have been troubling me.... a lot, torturing me emotionally really and this is the reason why I have been away for so long. This topic is not about what happened in and of itself but the consequences that it has on my credibility in this community. Ok enough with the abstactions. I was in a Skype group with some FDR members and sometime after the formation of said group I did something extremelly inapropriate and dysfunctional (that I'm not confortable telling here) and some of the members deemed it evil (which now in insight I don't find it to be the case at all). After that I felt very disaproved off and some time after I got ostracized from said group. After these events the true nightmare began. In the midst of my thoughts and emotions an argument arose which has been haunting me: P1-The FDR community is based on reputation. P2-People with bad reputation or who did horrible things get ostracized. P3-I did a horrible thing. P4-FDR members know each other to the extent that they will tell each other to not engage with me. C1-I'm gonna get ostricized from the whole community P5-Generally people who are ostricized by the FDR community are bad people. C2-I'm a bad person. And this argument has made me very anxious and fearful of ever engaging with anyone other than zombies (almost becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy). Untill now. Sorry for the long post. I just wanted to get it of my chest. Comments, sugestions, thoughts, opinions... they are all very welcome. Thank you for your atention.

Hi, I just had a thought about my cannabis usage over the past 5 years (with a 1 year break) that I began in my journal. I wanted to share it with you Cannabis can relieve anxiety in the moment, but if it breaks through, it will be more present. It will be more uncomfortable, and at times nearly unbearable. It will be a physical experience of anxiety without any limitation or method of managing it. What does this remind me of? My mother. I was not able to control my mother's anxiety. I was able to master this anxiety I felt by recreating my own mother in my head, and adhering to what I thought would make her more anxious, and by facilitating what I thought would make her less anxious. Many people experience uncontrollable anxiety when they first use cannabis. I did. Even now I sometimes do - often, in fact. Every smoking experience I've had over the past year has involved at least some anxiety while I've smoked. I think this is a sign of relative health compared to when I was able to smoke without any anxiety. What is the effect of cannabis overall on anxiety? It increases anxiety. This is because if cannabis is being used to manage anxiety, the user will not have to manage their anxiety with their foresight and frontal lobes, or an "inner parent" (not to be confused with an inner abuser). And the body will create more anxiety in response. When the body is then without cannabis, the person is left off unpracticed in managing their anxiety without cannabis. The more the cannabis use, the more frequent, the more well-timed, the more the person loses the ability to manage their anxiety without it. I think I used cannabis despite it making me more uncomfortable in my first uses because I felt insecure that there was not an uncontrollable source of anxiety in my life. I had spent my whole life managing anxiety from my mother, from the fact that I was afraid of being rejected and abandoned (another way of saying from my mother), from public school; that when I was living on my own at 19, doing well in a philosophy college course, I felt insecure by the relative lack of anxiety in my life, and I sought to create more. It was trauma-recreation to create an uncontrollable anxiety in my life that I would have to learn to master, and find ill-found joys in. It is no coincidence that my cannabis use began when I moved out of my mom's at 19, and that my anxiety management (in terms of alleviating it without cannabis) has worsened the more I've used weed. Thank you for reading and I hope this encourages you go avoid becoming addicted to cannabis, and to work to quit (with professional guidance if possible) if you are already addicted.

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.

Hi this may have triggers for certain people, it deals with sexual abuse and mental abuse and physical abuse. My name is Daniel I have an ACE score of 10. I am the only child of a black single mother. I have been to therapist after therapist and I have found them all to be quite destructive. I have seen many since I was very little, none of the child psychologist confronted my mother on anything but blamed me for my anger issues which was me just reacting to children in my class who were making fun of me for being overweight. I know I was medicated when I was very little but I don't know what drugs, my mother never gave them to me in pill form so I am guessing she crushed them up in my food. I found out about the drugs over hearings her talk about me throwing up all the time due to the side effects. My mother mollested me and made me take showers with her every morning until I was 11 or 12 until I refused to go into the shower with her. I was constantly bullied at school for my weight, no matter what the other kids did I was the one to get into trouble. I remember when I was in first grade defending this mentally handicapped boy in the school yard from about 5 other boys constantly fighting them and I was the one to get into trouble. Everyday when I came home I was beaten by my uncle , because the teachers complained about me, they knew he would do it and he joked openly with them about beating me and one time threatened to beat me in front of my class. I also had a cousin who is 5 years older and is very violent and hurt me a lot. My situation right now , as an adult I have been to 3 therapists and they have all been abusive in their own ways. My first one told me not to trust my feelings and to keep abusive and destructive relationships, he offered only crappy chit chat and was very manipulative to think at the end of each session I got something done. I ended things with him after he had my mother come and I confronted her just about my cousin who is violent and threatens and has tried to beat me up multiple times and why she lets him stay and she claimed no responsibility and then I kept asking and my therapist asked me why did I bring her here if I was just going to beat up on her. Right now I am still living with the violent crazies and I do fear for my life, I have constant anxiety attacks and I go into psychosis and I start to hide in closets and my mind goes to the times of when I was about to be beaten by my uncle. I have no friends to stay with, I do have a job but it's part time and I am trying to get a second one to help leave. I did used to go to a for meetup but I felt isolated and not wanted, little empathy, I did make one friend that I still talk to there though. I have emblem health insurance and I wanted to know if anyone knows any good therapists as good as Daniel mackler or nathiel Brandon that I can speak with or if anyone has any advice. It would be very much appreciated, I really desperately need help. I have read Daniel macllers last book, listened to hundreds of podcasts, I read about 1/3 of real time relationships and I read the psychology of self esteem and how to raise your self esteem by Nathiel Brandon. I just want to also say i will get through this and I will get better no matter what because that is my goal and I want to become a doctor and help research empathy and how we can grow it. I forgot to say I live in New York , queens New York. Also just to correct I have read Daniel mackler's book. To clarify I have been to more than 8 therapists throughout my life. After a while after the third therapist as an adult , I gave up on therapy for a while, thinking psychology the field was bullshit and that if medical doctors lol of ability was that of therapists lots of people would have died already. I still think very poorly of most therapists but I am not looking for most I am looking for a Nathaniel Brandon or a Daniel Mackler, a good therapist

Greetings FDR Board Members, My name is Andrew. I have been engaged in the FDR podcasts for the past 5 months. I feel very anxious about participating in the forums, and in a deeper sense, I am afraid of feeling vulnerable. I have been gaining self-knowledge and it has led to a much more fulfilling relationship with my beautiful girlfriend and my self. I was spanked by my father when I was young. I got into a very tense argument with my parents about this atrocity a couple of months ago, and have started seeing a therapist since. I currently am avoiding seeing my parents so that I can gain the self-confidence to engage in a productive argument, at least on my end. I am 22 years old and work full-time as a butcher. I went to college for two and a half years, and dropped out on impulse to pursue my joy from drumming. This was before FDR. Now, I struggle to make long term professional goals that are more rooted in reality and my desire to help people find happiness. I love philosophy and communicating with others. I hope to start my own business one day which accepts Bitcoin. I am sorry for the rambling. I really want to be a productive member of this community and to meet lots of rational people. Thank you for reading, Andrew

Hello to my fellow board members. I'd first like to say I've been a long-time FDR fan and donater. I discovered Stefan's show through similar movements like those of Ayn Rand or Adam Kokesh, and have listened to - at least - one thousand of his podcasts by this point in time. This show has changed my life, and the relationships in it, for the best. So to Stefan, as well as all of you for your role in the show: thank you. I've learned recently, through the use of unrelenting curiosity and maturity in my conversations and reflections, that my parents are nihilists. I won't get into the details of the situation I experienced right now, nor the complexity of my childhood (which caused in me a severe anxiety disorder and teenage drug use). However, I would like to explain how, after applying RTR and philosophy to my life and relationships, the information learned from their use causes everything to slide and click into place. What I mean is that, after a particular conversation with my father, and through days of introspection and note-taking after the fact, I learned that my parents are somewhat sociopathic nihilists. What it was that "clicked into place," so-to-speak, was the devastating realization that my anxiety disorder takes the form of my nihilistic fathers voice, which eats and has eaten through my thoughts and motivations throughout everyday of my entire life. This leads me to the rather depressing issue at hand: for the past few weeks, occasionally, I've been experiencing severe depressive states generally followed by serious considerations of suicide. The problem: I DON'T WANT TO DIE... as of now my eyes have teared up and I feel pressure in my sinuses. I've promised myself that I would never take such an action, but I feel so afraid that my future self won't be able to handle the stresses of life and be driven to do this; and I feel nothing short of pure terror. So, from the folks on here, I ask simply for connection. For people who care about life, philosphy, and the future to have serious conversations with, to know that I'm not alone in the world; there are so few I can consider myself close to. I'd like to talk about my experience with anxiety, with life stresses, with my parents, as well as share some RTR success stories. I'm also new to the board as far as posting goes, and new to forums in general, so I ask for empathy in that regard. Glad to join the group, Mason

I notice that many times I'm at work, or working with client remotely, etc, I feel as if I should be doing something else. When I start doing something else, the same feeling comes up. I feel like I should be doing some other thing. I'm not sure why this is happening. Anyone have any insights?

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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?

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.

My life has been shaped largely by social anxiety and the resulting behavior habits that have resulted. I have found the podcasts on this topic useful in sorting out this problem for me, but I was thinking it might be useful for others to have a compilation list of all of these shows. I know it is a huge problem with people drawn to these ideas, and it is something that will hold back these ideas. Some may need to be cropped from larger call in shows. I think I will edit this original post with the list. Add known episodes. Include times if known of relavant conversations.

Hello everyone! I had some thoughts that I wanted to share. Since I started pursuing self-knowledge last year, I have had the thought in the back of my mind, that if I just get enough self-knowledge, if I just get over x obstacles in my mind, if I just put the right amount of blame on this parent, it will all work out on it's own. That I won't really have to do anything, that all my anxieties, all my pain will go away. That I'll emerge a superhero from the smoking rubble of my childhood. That's the thought I have had in my mind since day 1 of self-knowledge. I am asking myself, and you incredibly kind and intelligent people, is this fantasy? Is there, in fact, no point in self-knowledge, where you can feel free from your anxieties? Free from your pain? That no matter how much you grieve, how much you cry out in anger, you will never really be free from your anxieties. That instead, self-knowledge and grieving makes you understand, that you are not a defenseless child at the mercy of cruel parents anymore. And that you simply need to grit your teeth through your everyday anxieties. Because living like you hadn't been abused, is the only thing you can do. That turned out way more depressing than I intended. What I mean to say is, is perhaps one of the biggest parts of self-knowledge, to trust yourself to know, that your anxieties where useful in the past, but just something you have to challenge to get through your life, in the present? To take a strong stand for yourself in the face of your past traumas. Or am I wrong? Is there a real light at the end of the tunnel? Or is that something one has to imagine there being, to push on through life? I feel like I am calling people liars when I am writing this... I am sorry if that is indeed the case, I don't think people would lie about something like that... Maybe it's because I am feeling down at the moment. I didn't even realise that until now. If what I am saying is correct, that you just have to march on despite feeling anxious about things, maybe that personal responsability is just really hitting me now. Maybe that's why I feel down. I don't mean any harm with what I just wrote. But, if there is harm in it, please let me know! Any comment would be highly appriciated, as always.

I read an article a year two ago about a study that had been done that helped victims of child abuse overcome some of the emotional trauma from their abuse by writing about it. I guess I didn't think much of it at the time, or thought they were just talking about journaling or whatever. But reading it again recently I realized it might actually be pretty helpful. I recall some years ago trying to put together a story of my childhood to help me recall things that had happened and dramatic events traumatic events. I didn't get very far with the project partially because I type very slowly and partially because I couldn't emotionally connect with anything I was writing about. According to research that they have done at the University of Texas writing provides a means to externalize traumatic experience and make it less overwhelming. So this evening with the help of this article I wrote about some traumatic experiences from my childhood. One of being very scared by my father telling me about the boogie man when I was about three and then having a fever dream and seeing the boogie man's footprints on the ceiling. And another experience of being abandoned and lost at about the same age in a park when I was out walking with my parents. It really amazed me how much those experiences still triggered genuine emotions even though they happens nearly 30 years ago. I think that writing about the feelings that you had about traumatic events in your childhood and how you feel about them now can be immensely helpful. I'm now thinking that I will continue this project until I can get a firm grasp on much of the traumatic events that happened in my childhood. There's only so far that abstract understanding can get you. I've often wondered where Stef gets such clarity on the traumatic events of his childhood, and it's no doubts because he did a lot of therapy and journaling. I mean just this evening I've discovered that my father is a sadist or at least leans in that direction because he thinks it's a good idea or funny to tell a three-year-old about the boogie man who is going to come and get him. I have a daughter who is almost 3, and I would never tell her a malicious story of that kind. But beyond that I also realize that there are some things that will scare a child that's the parent cannot control. So for instance my wife brought home some live crabs and tried to cook them. Being inexperienced with live crabs she let them escape the pot and they ran all over the kitchen and scared my daughter when she saw them. My daughter was scared for weeks afterwards and had bad dreams about the crabs. Even now many months later she was very scared by a crab toy and we had to show her that it was just a toy and not scary. The points in telling that story is that my daughter was scared of the crabs but because she had caring and empathetic parents she has been able to deal with that, and we have not tried cooking more live crabs in the house so we are not re-inflict in any kind of scares on her. But with parents who delight in the idea of telling a child that a scary monster is coming to get them I had no one to help me process my fear or to help me feel safe. Anyhow that was a fairly long-winded way of saying that you should really look into writing about your traumatic experiences if you are having trouble processing them or if you want to gain some more self-knowledge.

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.

Hello. I wanted to share this with the board, in the hopes of someone might have advice they could share with me. Be warned though, this could very likely be a very messy post, because my thoughts are all over the place. My situation today: I am in collage, studying at the moment two REALLY easy courses, which gives me in a sense, all the free-time in the world. This has been the case for a month now. My weeks have looked like this basically: Go to the gym 3-4 times a week, listen to pod-casts on FDR, work as a volunteer at my union's union-house as a chef's apprentice and as personal when there are night-clubs, go to parties with my friends, work within my fraternity, hang with my two closest friends in my dorm. However, the last week or so, I have noticed something that consumes enormous amounts of my time: Sitting in front of the computer, doing practically nothing. Basically pressing F5 while on facebook. And for the last few days, my mood has deteriorated. I have felt apathetic, powerless. Imprisoned within my own room, and I am my own guard. Or, my anxieties are my guards. Well, that's a hypothesis I have at least. Could be wrong of course. What I mean by that is, that I am running short on money. I am, for the first time in my life, approaching a situation where I MUST find myself a job to pay the rent and put food on my table. Problem is, I have extreme anxiety around the prospect of applying for a job. Essentially paralyzing me when I for example, try to write a resume. Today, just 20 minutes ago, I took out my camera, and recorded myself for 30 minutes straight (I used to do my journaling text, but now I am trying out video-journaling and I find it easier actually), just blurting out stuff. Stuff like ''Alright, I am really frustrated because I want something to do! But not just something to pass the time, but something I have a passion for! Something that I can devote almost all my time to, make a living out of, have as my life-goal! I want a purpose! I want meaning!'' My mind was racing at this point, I wasn't sitting down recording, but pacing about, starting to breathe like I had been running for 30 minutes as a not-so-fit-person (basically, I hadn't done anything physically that would make me breathe like that). I would stop talking during that time and start to sing instead, that I didn't know what to do with my life. I also noticed a few thoughts pop up in my mind, which did not make sense to me. Thoughts like ''Your life is over, it's to late to achieve anything, you had your chance but you passed it up!''. Even though, intellectually, I know that I still have time. I am only 21 years old, and I have passion! I have good health! But I don't know where to put all my potential! I don't know what to do with my life. Sigh. I am sorry if it is all over the place.

Ah, where shall I begin... I dove head first into Stefan' videos about a week and a half ago. Something clicked. I'm here to learn because I'm at a(nother) crossroads in life, unable to continue cycling through my same patterns of dysfunction anymore and having difficulty determining what direction to go in. I went from an anxious overachiever in my youth to a depressed, directionless and drifting divorcee' all before the tender age of 27. I got lost in the rabbit hole while trying to decondition myself from my Catholic, nationalistic, athletic, and tribal indoctrinations of my youth. Mr. Molyneux's rational, humbling, and personally applicable insight is helping me to see through my missteps without constantly beating up on myself. I finally feel a step closer to the self-trust that I can barely remember what it feels like to have. Thanks for your support, and I will do my best to return it. fitzpatrick

Hello, I have an idea I want to share. Today I wanted to listen back to the Call-In show I had the other day, and I saw that it had been posted on Youtube recently. If you didn't get to listen in, I was calling about my lack of motivation in the activities I take part in. It was hard for me(anxiety provoking) to get on the show and expose myself to big chatty forehead, as he is kind of a supermodel of philosophy for me, and I always value his insights. I think Stefan helped me gain a clearer picture of my problem and what I could do to gain passion and start to really live. Now, I went to the Youtube page for the show, and I decided to look at the comments before starting the video. The first comment was someone saying, and I quote: ''Why even continue talking to people like Emmanuel when he's clearly operating on half a brain cell? There are a lot of callers like that. Sometimes I wonder if they are just trolls?''. As I read that, I felt hurt, sad and ashamed. I started to self-attack and ask myself if I was really that deficient, and if I was somehow wasting everyone's time with my issues. I really don't feel well after this, and it sort of shifted my entire mindset that I had before, when I wanted to look back at what someone I highly respect had to say to me. I don't know why I felt that strongly about that person's comment, but I did and I don't think it's a good thing for me to be so sensitive to others, especially if they are abusive. I was also wondering why someone would say something like that, don't they know that it hurts(especially coming from someone who watches FDR)? I just feel down right now and I'm unsure of what to do from now on, to get my ambition back. It's really sad that it can go away like that, with one snarky comment on Youtube. Thanks a lot, and I await your responses. Emanuel

Part one: are popular methods like various exposure and cognitive techniques, "just do it," "use your willpower," "ignore your fear," etc. sufficient when dealing with difficult problems?Part two: a more in-depth look at the incredible value of deep self-work and the enormous complexity of human problems.

Hello board! I am a longtime lurker, first time poster, not feeling so good at the moment. To keep the post efficient, I'll keep it short and concise. I spoke with a girl yesterday. We go to the same acting course (amateur). After the course, I accompanied her for a while (she lived in another part of the city I live in). So yeah, we talked a bit, and I felt that the conversation ran really smoothly. I got the feeling that she was genuinely interested in talking to me. Anyway, we parted ways, and being energized by our little conversation, I was thinking ''Wow, I really enjoyed that! I want to get to know this girl a little more! I'll contact her and see if she is interested in meeting up sometime!''. This mental state lasted for an hour or so. It became replaced with ''She was just being friendly/polite, she's most likely in a relationship already, she'll think you are weird'', things like that. I decided however, that I would write to her on facebook anyway, despite me thinking I already knew what the outcome would be. So, I wrote to her on facebook the morning after, and asked her if she wanted to meet up some day. Went to school, didn't think about while I was in school. When I came home however, and approached the door to my room, I started to feel confined, Trapped. I started my computer, loaded up facebook, saw that the girl had responded to me. And I couldn't open up the chat to see what she had written. I felt extreme anxiety, shut down facebook and started to pace around in my room for a little while. I have calmed down a notch now. I still feel very anxious when I think about her response to me, but I can at least think now. I haven't read the girls response to me yet. Where could this anxiety come from? Because I understand that is not healthy. Because being rejected by practically a stranger shouldn't be such a big deal really. At least, that's how I rationalize. But it seems I cannot understand this emotionally. I'd appreciate any help/different perspective. Sincerely Yeravos

I do not know how many people have as much difficulty with this as I do. It seems that society has me backed into a corner where I can never hope for things to happen unless I make the first move. It would be easier if I had a little success in the past to draw on when I decide that I want to ask someone out. I am twenty-six years old and I have only been on one date and that only happened because I was asked out. There are a number of things that make it difficult and I only really want to focus on one of them in this thread. Whenever I try to ask someone out, I start to think that it will only annoy the person I am asking. One of my sisters has told me several times that whenever she is asked out that it is one of the worst things that she has to deal with. The amount of time she has put into telling me how she does not want to be asked out and that she then dreads seeing the people who have asked her out, has me worrying about being judged harshly just for asking a simple question. Now the stories were of men who would ask her out several times even though she keeps saying no, but there was never a story of her being asked out and wanting to be asked out. So that leaves me thinking that when I approach a woman that she will never want me to ask her out even though that is not likely. What I am asking for is for some of the women on this board to tell me a story about a time when you wanted to be asked out. I think if I can add some positive stories of when women want to be asked out I can then jump over this hurdle. Like I said before there is more to it than this, but this is one of the sticking points that I am not moving past. How often do you want to be asked out but then are not asked? If you do not want to be asked out, does it ruin your day?

So basically I have social anxiety and ADHD, and this has hindered me for a while at getting a job. I was able to land a job at a call in center recently, but frankly I find this kind of job very stressful and anxiety provoking, just the constant being yelled at and so on. I also did not pay 100% attention during the training and for that reason I am sort of fumbling around my systems and asking for help a lot. I'm wondering if it's worth it, or a good idea to put myself in a job like this. I've heard stef talk about how doing such a thing could be kind of unhealthy for someone who's been through a lot of emotional abuse, which I have. I don't know, what do you guys think ? Part of me thinks I should take the money that I have now and use it to move somewhere where I can find a better job. What do you guys think ?