Search the Community

Dear Stephan, Mike, and additional crew: I just listened to both "YouTube Almost Banned Me" (Episode 4168) and "I Beat Cancer" (Episode 4167) and am very moved (as usual) and inspired. Today, my birthday, my husband and I would have gone out to a very nice dinner, which we do only on special occasions. We would have spent, including tip, (in California) about $185. I cannot think of a more worthy way to spend this money than to send it instead to Freedomain to help out in some small way. Allow me to take this opportunity to express my great appreciation, Stephan, for your voice, your courage, your compassion on the call-in shows, and your ongoing inspiration to both my husband and I. We gladly donate monthly but it is a small amount compared to what we derive from your podcasts, videos, and the additional inspirational people that we become exposed to. If I missed my birthday "feast", it is very small indeed compared to the "feast" of words and truth you deliver each day. Sincerely, SW

I just got in a fight with my boyfriend and wanted to write out my thoughts and perhaps ask some of y'all for your input. So here goes: My boyfriend has a lot more money than me and thus pays for a lot of the "extra" things we do together, such as dinners, concert tickets, and even vacations. We just got in a fight about how he thinks I don't express enough gratitude for the things he does for me, which I suppose is true. I know that he's very generous with me and that I should be grateful, but I guess I have a hard time expressing it. Either that, or perhaps I really am spoiled and ungrateful :-( Anyway, I feel like the root of the problem, of course, goes back to my childhood. My dad and I had a lot of conflicts surrounding my supposed lack of gratitude. Even though I thought I felt grateful for the presents my relatives would send me for my birthday, Christmas, etc., I'd always procrastinate on thank-you notes, and my dad would nag and nag me about it. Once when I was 16, I guess I'd waited way too long to write the notes, and he came over to my mom's house (they're divorced, no surprise there) in a rage and took "his" car (he made sure I knew that the car I got to drive around was really HIS car that he was generously letting me borrow) away from me, probably for at least a week or two. Taking away my his car was his go-to punishment for various offenses such as ingratitude, disrespect, and the couple of times I got caught drinking. It's probably a slight exaggeration, but I feel like I must have been without the car my dad had ostensibly bought for me to use about half of my junior year. Although my mom usually went along with my dad's various punishments as to appear like a united parenting team, the thank-you note situation was when she'd finally had enough and started to let me use my grandpa's 20-year-old and probably unsafe to drive beater whenever my dad took away the other car. The conflicts with my dad continued into about my sophomore year of college, but this time it was about me being ungrateful for my dad paying for my college as well as my being disrespectful. I don't remember the exact details, but I know he threatened to not start/stop paying for college several times in between the application process and sophomore year. I'd also planned to bring the aforementioned car to college sophomore year, but we got into a fight a couple weeks before I planned to leave, and so he decided not to let me take it, even though having a car at school was something I'd been looking forward to for a long time. The actual catalyst for the fight was something small, but to him it was the straw that broke the camel's back, since apparently I'd been disrespectful and ungrateful all summer. After that fight, which culminated in me running out of the house in a rainstorm and sitting in the park across from our house sobbing, I actually told him I didn't want to talk to him again unless it was in a therapists office. He told me that he'd already spent enough on therapists with my mom and I (their marriage counseling 18 years prior and the one visit we'd made to a family therapist about a couple years prior to this). So we didn't talk for the entire semester. My mom ended up buying me a car to take to college, since she again thought what my dad did was unfair. He continued to pay for school that semester, since I think he had already done so when the fight happened, but I was very depressed the entire time and my grades reflected it. We reconciled during winter break but without really discussing in-depth what had happened. It was more like, "Ok well it's Christmas and I should start talking to my daughter again," and, "Ok I guess I'll forgive my dad because I love him and it's Christmas." After that he pretty much mellowed out didn't threaten to stop paying for school again and I suppose our relationship seemed to improve, although it's not like we're close or anything now. I'm now 26 and have yet to really discuss my feelings about my treatment as a teenager with my dad, even though I know I should. I guess these are my questions: 1) I don't know how I should feel about the car being taken away thing. I know Stef says children's property rights should be respected and I pretty much agree, but how about for a expensive and dangerous thing like a car? If parents get a 16-year old a car, should it just then be his property, to do with as he pleases? I know that the way my dad handled the situation can't be correct, but I guess I'm looking for positive example of what a peaceful-parent / teenage driver situation would look like. 2) Does it seem like a stretch to think that my dad's constantly forcing me to be grateful as a teenager would make me not as able to spontaneously express gratitude today? And if so, what do I do about it? I'm even starting to resent that my boyfriend seems to be putting me in the exact same situation that I was as a teenager, but I don't want to just say, "Well I'm not grateful because of my childhood and therefore you just have to deal with it!" because I know it must suck for him to feel unappreciated. I know the simple solution would be just to force myself to do it, but I don't want it to feel forced, I just want to be a somewhat normal person. :-/

I think I just had a revelation just now, one dealing with knowing myself. I live in a dorm, and it seems this evening one of the other people in my dorm had brought some people over. And I could hear two of them talk. And when one in particular talked, something happened. I was filled with dread. Like, extreme fear filled my soul. God, it was so horrible. I was really terrified. And then it hit me. I recognize this. I have felt this before. It was a long time ago, but I have had this happen before on several occasions. This dread, this hellish fear that filled me, used to erupt when I saw people that bullied me when I was in elementary school. What is interesting, is that while I had this fear (have still), everything. EVERYTHING in my life, just feel so much harder. So frightening. When I know, on an intellectual level, that their not. Almost like the fear kind of spread to other parts of my psyche? I got so frightened. After a few minutes, something else came up: Anger. Intense hate. I just wanted him, and all others like him, dead. Just all dead. I didn't care how, just as long they were killed. After that anger and rage, I realized that I was familiar with that intense fear. And actually, now that I am writing this, I remember something else: That rage I felt. That intense hate. I felt that too, those years when I was bullied. It's really dark, that hate. It's very violent (mentally), very detailed. And honestly, they feel really good. Sadistically good. Anyways, the revelation: I have a hypothesis. All my years of being bullied (all of elementary, 9 years), I have sort of developed a hyper-sensitive ''radar'' for detecting people with bullying tendencies. Something else I realized, with the help of chatting with a friend just now: I have made some efforts to not think, and remember about my bullies. About how badly they treated me, how the humiliated me and threatened me. And now, when I am starting to do some true-self excavating, I think it could serve me to dredge up those memories, and study them. Because, maybe by turning away from that completely, I am missing vital information that could help me in my healing process. This was perhaps 30 minutes ago, and I can still feel the shock-waves inside me. God. it was so terrible. But I am really excited about this revelation, and my hypothesis, if it is correct. And, if it is not, what can be learned from this? Exciting. Excitement in the aftershock of intense fear. Its interesting I think. I can't express how good it felt to get this out of my system. I just thought and felt something. I love this forum. I love this community. I love the kind, honest, gentle, sympathetic in this part of the Internet. Just started chatting on the chat a few days ago, and I love the open, thought-provoking conversations there. Yes. You guys are great.