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For a while now I've been trying to understand and connect with my fear of not having support from others while taking risks. So today I focused on my experience of isolation in the past and how this contributed to believing myself inferior. I tried to connect with this emotionally by writing to myself. I still want more connections in my life and to become more secure in reaching out to others and I believe this is a big reason behind why I want to share this with this community. This is what I wrote: Born and lacking protection. Exposed to many who mock and hurt me. Isolated and disconnected from those who were supposed to be there for me. I shy away from people and remain silent for fear of attack but this does not keep me safe. My silence is seen as weakness, and to most people I am around I now appear as a weak animal expected to be eaten by it's own kind. Often I am left unprotected by the ones who gave me life until they return at an unknown time. I don't want to live in this savage dark prison any longer. Beasts come every time I seek a way out. They mock me, they look at me with disdain, and worst of all they tell me I will always be alone. They tell me it is hopeless that there is no end to this prison. They say that everyone that claims to have left this place and found one better are liars, people who are more wicked and cruel than they. I'm afraid but I don't want to stay. I can feel myself slowly dying. I don't know where to go. People have come for me. I believe they're strong and kind. They show interest in me and best of all they're telling me that they know how to get out. With pride and bitterness they explain to me how far along they are compared to others and that while I am also far behind I have the potential to catch up. I am excited that people believe in me and that I now know the way out, but I am filled with shame for being lesser than they. I soon realize it's not safe for me to show that I am wounded because I'm afraid I'll be abandoned as I was before. They treat the wounded as inferior and do not equally share their lives with me as I do with them. They show little respect for the cautious behavior of one who has been betrayed by their own and left to suffer. They expect immediate vulnerability and trust, and I fear to offer it. I am punished for resistance with implicit threats of what scares me the most, isolation. So I offer my vulnerability, again and again, in hopes that this will bring me closer to them, until the day I'm told that I offered too much. that I need too much, and that I'm just too damaged. Now I realize I'm alone again and that they cannot help me further. The beasts laugh at me and how foolish I was to believe that I might belong with them. I believe what they say is true and can no longer move. The pain is unbearable. The beasts appear more alive and vicious then ever. Over and over one of them repeats how disgusting I am to have clung onto others. This is what they've waited for...they're going to devour me. I do not know if I can keep going or if I should just give up but...I don't want to die. This lack of internal unity eats away at my will, my energy drains and I become starved for anything that will give me energy to move again. Eventually I find what I need, but only crumbs, little bits of strength that I savor. For a moment I can think of nothing else but how sweet the taste. The beasts notice my movement and I see their faces twist into a mix of fear and rage as they realize their job is not done and that they must remain alert. I'm too exhausted to fear any possible attacks. I start to wonder who has left these crumbs behind and why, if they have had so much to eat to have only left so little behind, do they not come not for me. Perhaps they mistake me for one who is already dead and cannot see me among the bodies. I think of the beasts near me and remember the fear I saw in their faces when I began to move. What are they afraid of? What will happen to them if I keep looking for a way out? I look harder at the beasts and notice for the first time that they appear as ghostly figures. I realize that these beasts have never physically attacked me, unlike the ones long ago. Do these beasts even exist? Who do they serve and what is their purpose? Are they creations of my mind? Are they me? Am I no longer stuck in a physical prison but now a mental one? I must answer these questions. If they are me then I want to understand them. To attack them is to attack myself, and to do that is to never be free. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shame on those who mistreat the wounded out of fear of being reminded that they themselves are not free of injury. Praise the brave heroes who get out and are able to face that it was done not without a price. Thanks to all who see strength and not weakness when looking at those who work towards a better life filled with integrity and emotional honesty.

This post was written during the worst period of time after the most traumatic events of my entire life. I have redacted it, and apologize to those who read it for sharing this experience here. On the bright side, I have been in therapy for ~2 years and am happier, healthier, and wiser than ever before. Peace

If exposure to power, parenting, and conditions while growing up have psychological effects that make people project, split, dissociate, suppress, repress various things to ultimately support and justify a state irrationally and emotionally at an unconscious level...then can a parallel effect occur for pushing a person towards anarchy/libertarianism... BESIDES rational objective philosophy? In other words, what childhood experiences contribute to a person being more inclined or open towards an/lib?______________________________ warning: long personal family background dump I grew up very shy, bullied, not very popular with the girls, plagued by unachievable standards of morality which had a strong effect on me because I wanted to follow the rules, to be good, and to strive for perfection just naturally and not as a defense mechanism. I am still struggling with timidness today, although I am much much better. But I upon deep examination, I still have a lot of limiting factors, that the fear is still there, holding me back, not letting me fully go for what I want... etc. I have gotten so good at self-denial that I become complacent. Perhaps that's not correct. PErhaps it's my fear giving me an excuse and falsely attributing it to the virtue of self-denial. Anyway, I haven't had serious relationship to date, and I am really trying to break through currently. I have broken through a lot in the past few months, but I see there is still a lot more. I come back to the same feeling as when I moved in 2nd grade and felt shy and scared and lonely. I guess because I never dealt with it, and for the majority of my life suppressed those emotional challenges, it's just coming back up in the present. There is a lot of fear conquering I have to do.My impression of my dad is irrational, bullying. He would always have to get involved, get mad, lay down whatever he thought was right, pronounce judgement to me and my other family member who I happened to be arguing with. Sometimes he would blow things up that weren't and wouldn't have been big if he would have just stayed out of it. Perhaps I this contributes to the way I view the state: stop meddling - gtfo. you're irrational. you're contrdictory. You're self-righteous and blind to your own faults. I disctintly remember when he would overpower me verbally, impose irrationality, that I would hate him forever. I had that many times, but of course it always went away with time. To this day today, when a disagreement or an opportunity to clarify comes along, I feel like he raises his voice ad escalates things way too prematurely for an unwarranted reason. Conversations blow up way too easily with him. He is always right, always has a comeback, always makes me feel bad. Wow, as i'm writing this, I had the urge to write "I fucking hate his guts". We stay apart most of the time now, but i still see him. I've been contemplating, and avoiding confronting him and being vulnerable about everything as Stefan recommends doing. I also really dislike the image of my dad. and I hate it when I seem like him. I HATE IT.My mom and grandmother gave me very fucking poisonous, meek, terrible fucking advice for life. As I mentioned, I am very principle-oriented, and really adopted every standard I heard to achieve them. My exposure to things wasn't so various, so I only slowly discovered contradictory standards, rather than sooner. I get really easiliy annoyed by my mom. I find myself acting badly taht I wouldn't towards others. It is a combination of already knowing, what she's like and what she will do, as well as the fact that she stubbornly always does the things I object to. She doesn't learn. And the things are like offering me food. supposedly it's for me, so initially, i guilt trip myself for rejecting and saying to stop giving me food. But over time, it's just ridiculous. It's even silly that she keeps doing it "to benefit me", when I'm the one who gets to decide whether it benefits me or not. She actually is quite exasperating, stubborn, and takes very little feedback. Even more frustrating is that she will never be open or explain or respond to my questions or objections or reasoning when i critique her behavior. Why are you doing this? Don't I get to decide if I want it or not? What does it benefit you to offer me food? (She's a terrible terrible cook, literally the worst I've ever encountered - not taking feedback and sturbbornly doing her thing is part of the reason why she is such a bad cook too). She doesn't answer, and keeps things to herself,I know she has thoughts but she won't ever really say. This is all influenced by my overwhelming dad who beats down objections with his self-righteousness and his overwhelming anger and persona (there just are those types of people who can reach into your heart and strike that fear in you... my dad is one of them... my drill seargeant is another. But there are those who don't, no matter how much their words and actions go. But others can just give you that look, use that tone, and really get that into you. IDK if it's a general thing, or if certain people with certain issues are susceptible to certain queues from others). I feel bad about treating my mom that way, but I do think there is legitimate reason to get frustrated at her - she is quite an annoying person. But I KNOW I am in the wrong too. Over time, I see her insecurity grow, which I know I have contributed to. Simultaneously, had i not been assertive (and i know domineering and yelling is different from assertive, but i grew to be like this after a really horribly mentally devastating time in high school. It was and would have been very hard for me to be assertive without also doing wrong under such duress, stress. It was a time i felt all my efforts were in vain, that all of the ideals i've been taught were so wrong, that no one was there to help me, that i was being ignored under all this hardship, that my dad was a worthless body who never taught me anything or had any solutions for me, and would always end up illiciting blame, incompetence, and just generally bad feelings whenever i asked for help. Also, as a teen you really dont go to your parents for help, especially when you think they're the ones who let you down, let alone the whole coolness and feeling like a failure aspect of going to mommy and daddy. ______________________________ Anyway, it's all kind of a random vomit of my family background here. I kind of do see some parallels of my outlook towards govenrment and my family, especially my dad. But I always find psychology and the unconscdious really counterintuitive and confusing. I have a lot of blindspots when it comes to my own. When people make statements like whatever is repressed will be recreated, and whatever is suppressed will be spread, and the state is a projection of your family exprience.s... like.. they don't ring true. I can't see the logical steps with my intuition to see that they're true. They're really unrelated claims that I am seeking to bridge the gap between. Listening to more podcasts helped me understand some of those logical steps, but I find whenever Stefan makes those statements, they aren't in every instance backed up by logical steps. I suppose it's something that rings true with Stefan, and it just comes out as a more emphatic reiteration of the claim, rather than backing htem up logically. He does in other podcasts, but not always. So I'm just pointing out my struggle to understand psychological concepts like those, not necessarily say that Stefan is wrong. I'm sure those statements could be quite reasonable, and perhaps very established in the field of psychology. I am not in the slightest arguing that those statements aren't true. I want to understand how and why they are. So if you guys see things in the limited way I described my family background here, please do share your insights.