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Hey everyone, I think that it would be wise and valuable if we were to share what books have aided us in our pursuit of self-knowledge. I think that it would be nice to have a summary of the book and the relevant parts, and share what you have gained from reading the book. Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw Shame is such a powerful emotion. It is especially powerful when we do not realize that we are experiencing shame. Bradshaw talks about the difference between healthy shame--accepting one's natural limits--and toxic shame--believing that we are fundamentally unworthy of love, me-plus. He takes the theoretical model of a shame cycle--we feel bad, we cope, and then we feel bad because we have coped, so then we cope more to relieve our negative feelings--and applies to real people. The antidote to toxic shame is love, and so much of trauma and dysfunction is the result of not receiving the love that we needed when we needed it. Reading this book and understanding shame has helped me clear up a lot of self-attack and generalized negative self-beliefs. I have been able to recognize that when I cope, it is because I am seeking comfort and love, and that to attack myself is just to further the pattern that was my childhood, a traumatizing and dysfunctional pattern. I really recommend reading this book, because in my experience toxic shame has been such a challenging emotion to identify, and the moment that I have been able to identify it for what it is is the moment that I have been able to start making progress and healing.

A new article, where I comment on a response I got that argues yelling at your child is okay, even useful. In it, I explain why this is not the case, and analyze the response itself and how it reflects on the psyche of somebody who thinks this way. Response I received: "Not that I do not agree with any of this, but as a parent (and someone abused badly as a child--in most all ways), I can say some of it is ridiculous. I am sorry. Parents sometimes yell at their children. They get punished and disciplined as the situation dictates, and ALWAYS mine know why. The world is not going to be always empathetic to ones problems. There is not going to be people around to SOOTH them all their lives...sorry, but that is true. No, if my kid has a slight scrape I won't over indulge them (they are 10, 12, and 15) as they must learn to do it for themselves too. I am not abusive, but, as most parents will admit, I am not perfect. But, the world is not an empathetic place...by and large...they should not have to learn that the hard way. I do not beat, neglect, nor have scared my kids the way I have been. Seeing as I was abused, I do make en effort to do the best I can to not repeat. I agree everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, but, people piss people off...and one should be able to correct a wrong and be heard...if yelling is needed to be heard...so be it! " Read my analysis here: http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2016/04/q-i-yell-at-my-children-and-they-will.html

My newest article about figuring out if your therapy is actually working for you or not. "Today’s question is extremely popular: I’m in therapy, and some people [my spouse, or parent, or friend, or coworker, or partner] say that it’s not working for me. I’m confused. Is it true?" Read it here: http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2016/04/q-is-therapy-working-for-me.html

A new article, where I answer a very common question: should I talk to my parents about my painful childhood experiences? Link: http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2016/03/q-should-i-talk-to-my-parents-about-my.html

I finally finished editing a new video on the topic of toxic behavior in relationships. Eventually, I decided to divide it into two videos based on the topics discussed there. I am very pleased with the final product, and I can definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. In the first part, I talk about the origins and mechanism of toxic behavior in adult relationships. Questions explored here: How do most people choose their adult relationships? What are the traits they are looking for in others and why? Why do we sometimes treat our close ones worse than strangers? Why do we act out in our relationships in general? In part two, I look at the options available for someone who is in an abusive, unhappy, or dissatisfying relationship. How can a person resolve a situation where they are in such a relationship?

A very important message regarding a painfully common misconception about having psychoemotional struggles, feeling unsure, being "weak," and looking for help.

I finished a new video on fake versus real curiosity in relationships, where I talk about about the differences between real and false curiosity in relationships, how "curiosity" can be used as a tool of manipulation, and possible problems related to it.

In this short video, I introduce the concept of self-doubt, and talk about the origins of self-doubt, potential problems with it, and results when and if its resolved.

The second episode of our podcast is here! In it, I and my co-host Jackie talk about the concepts of hope, passivity, (self-)responsibility, boundaries, and more. Get cozy and join us for an hour of self-archeology.

So, a few weeks ago, we recorded a podcast, which probably will become a regular thing. In the first episode of Self-Archeological Conversations, I and my lovely co-host Jackie share our thoughts and experiences on ageism, first impressions, preconceived notions, and the value of estimating people objectively. So grab a cup of your preferred beverage and let's settle in for an hour of self-archeology!

It was difficult for me to find a good way to word my question. I know there is no objective answer, but I want to explore it and get some feedback. From as early as I can remember until age 9, I was frequently and viciously beaten by my dad, and also by my mom. I was mostly beaten by my dad at the request of my mom, who requested these beatings for my questioning her authority or disobeying her orders. My memory of my entire childhood is very fuzzy because I was forced to be on the constant lookout for anything I might say or do which would get me beaten, and also because I was severely neglected. As early as age 6 my parents would leave me home alone for a day, and when my mom (labeled schizophrenic) moved across the country to a group home at age 9, I lost the only of the two parents which paid any attention to me whatsoever. My dad stayed on his computer or in his room and ignored me and my younger siblings and I only have two clear memories of him which don't involve him beating me. One major problem I still face because of all the abuse is that my nervous system still constantly prepares me for being physically attacked. In other words, it's extremely difficult for me to relax and take a deep breath. I have been in a state of non-stop stress ever since I can remember, because almost any interaction with other people has the potential to trigger an emotional flashback to childhood. It has improved since going no contact with my father and my extended family (it has been just over 4 months at this point), but there are still days when the whole day I am stuck in a state of physical and emotional pain, combined with an inability to feel physical or emotional pleasure. When I put my preferences over the other person's - especially if it's someone I don't know well or trust my fear response is activated. I am equally as prone to be triggered by positive events as I am with negative ones. Someone being very nice to me often triggers my fear that I'm being tricked somehow into letting my guard down so I can be hurt even more. This is especially true with women, which makes sense given the fact that my mom was capable of being very nice to me when she wasn't threatening me, brainwashing me, or keeping me from developing my own identity. I struggle with flashbacks at my customer service job. I was never able to develop my own identity with my mom around because she treated me as an object which she could showcase to her friends. Because I was smart, because she was so good at teaching me language skills (homeschool), and because she was a narcissist, I was something for her to show off to her friends in the church and the only way for me to gain her affection was to play the smart, obedient little boy to gain her status with her "friends". I was never able to develop my own identity around my father because he simply didn't interact with us in the home. In high school I started to use my constant anxiety and verbal skills to make people laugh and started to become very popular for this. I had 2 of my 4 closest friends move away and for various other reasons, I was unable to continue to use this strategy, which was a type of personality structure in reaction to my trauma. My personality changed to something akin to a paranoid schizoid, which I couldn't truly shake until I moved out of my dad's house and to a different city. This drastic change in my personality happened sometime between the end of 10th grade and the beginning of 11th grade. I never consciously decided to make either of these changes to my personality - they happened unconsciously, and because of my lack of social support, not a single person reached out to see to try to understand why I went from loud, popular guy to eating lunch in the bathrooms guy who couldn't make eye contact over the course of a few months. I believe the only reason I survived this period of my life without killing myself or becoming a monstrous sadist was because I was able to suppress (in the short-term) my impulses, feelings, and do whatever the people I was hanging out with me wanted to do. I am unable and/or unwilling to go back to either of those personality types. My ability to exist and express myself unconsciously was taken away from me, because I was filled with rage and hate yet smart enough to realize the social consequences of me acting out my rage on others (other than my siblings which I unfortunately was abusive to when I was a child). For me to "be real" in front of other people would have gotten me ostracized by anyone other than someone else who had their humanity stolen from them. It feels like I can't be real now (except in therapy and with my one good friend), because the real me is full of rage, sadness, and fear. I have been in therapy for 5 years now and have made tons of progress, but it's very disheartening how much I struggle each and every day. To me this is the most sinister part of child abuse combined with severe neglect. You are filling the child with rage and hateful, murderous impulses - which gives them one of two options: Either act out the impulses and face the consequences from others and society as a whole (probably prison), or constantly suppress those impulses which is to create one's own prison and erase one's identity. It's extremely difficult to be outgoing without being either a people-pleaser or letting my rage surface. I work at a gas station and I have been leaning towards the people-pleaser side because at least I get some positive reactions from people, but I can no longer keep that up and it makes me miserable to act this way. I know how to be nice, and I can tell which people deserve to be treated nicely, but I hate doing it because when they are nice to me it triggers me that this person is trying to lull me into a false sense of security and will send someone to torture me (the way my mom did). When they are mean to me it triggers me and my brain sends the signals to my body and mind to prepare for torture. Also, when I am nice when I don't want to be, it feels like a continuation of my survival strategy in my childhood environment. It takes so much work for me to get through each and every day having to constantly suppress the emotional roller-coaster that my brain and body go through even during what other people consider mundane social interactions. My brain is constantly going a mile a minute and telling my body to go a mile a minute, but I realize that these are impulses which don't need to be acted on, and if are acted on only serve to tighten the chains of my past around my neck. I feel trapped. Maybe my weariness with people-pleasing means I am finally strong enough to live without the positive opinions of people who I don't really care about, but the fact that lots and lots of people now know who I am and the way I usually act (practically everyone in my relatively small town comes into my gas station) makes being the real me even more difficult. I've stopped hanging out with two people I was spending a lot of time with and have hung out with for several years with because I recognized I was constantly engaged in people-pleasing with them. I think I'm already taking good steps to solve my problems but I could use some advice from anyone else who has struggled with similar issues. Sometimes it feels like I'm fighting an unwinnable battle and it feels like I've been fighting for a lifetime.

In this video I present a short concept of what does it mean to work on yourself, heal, and grow.

Part three in the series I'm doing on the fear of rejection: what you can do about it and what could be the result of that.

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

Part one in the series I started recently. It's on an issue almost all people I met or observed struggle—or have struggled—with. I plan to upload part two and three in the upcoming week.

I thought I would share this free ( for the moment ) resource I came across. Right now if you go to Amazon and search audible you will see a link for two free audiobooks if you sign up for a membership. You can cancel it of course but I encourage any who can afford it to really give the service a try [ http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=audible ]. I recommend Self Therapy by Jay Earley, I am only 1 chapter in and it is already amazing. I wish I had a tool like this when I began the journey of self-knowledge.Link for the audio-book:http://www.amazon.com/Self-Therapy-Transform-Yourself-Resources-Strength/dp/160407941X/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1412897014&sr=8-6&keywords=self+therapy+jay+earleyI would of course recommend and privide a link to FDR's amazon affiliate link but I am unsure if it'd do them any good on a free purchase.Thanks all

An interview about the mental health field and healing with a friend of mine, Daniel Mackler: http://madinamericainternationalfilmfestival.com/much-prefer-idea-humans-just-helping-humans-interview-daniel-mackler-open-dialogue-healing-homes/

Hello Everyone, I'm offering my services to any and all interested in seeking a counsellor. My journey into self-knowledge started four years ago when I was still living with my parents. During my journey, I have learned so much about myself, and now I'm ready to share what I've learned with others. I offer counselling over skype at a competive rate. You can send me a message through here or through my website if you're interested in a free 30 minute consultation. Thanks, -Drew Woods http://journeyinward.net/counselling-services/

I hope this will be useful to you, it’s an example of applying the principles I'm learning from Nathaniel Branden and Alice Miller and Marshall Rosenberg: I bought a used phone last week and after fixing some parts I realized it was locked and I didn't know how to get past that. The next day while preparing lunch and thinking about this problem I felt like a flushing inside my whole body, intense fear, I almost fainted, I guess from blood getting sucked into the spleen in anticipation for a life-threatening blow. Facing the thought that I had made “a mistake" in not thinking ahead enough when making this purchase was overwhelming. Using Alice Miller's idea that this exaggerated fear is likely a reaction to events in my childhood, I thought of how I grew up being very careful not to get caught doing anything I might get in trouble for, and the link became clear. If as a child I had spent money on a useless locked phone my dad would have been very angry with me because I wouldn’t have been a son he could have been proud of, which I guess unconsciously triggered in him the fear he felt from his childhood when he needed to be a perfect son otherwise his dad would be angry, etc. in a repetition going back from parent to child possibly many generations. As a child I wasn't aware of being afraid, probably because allowing myself to feel this intense fear would have hampered me in doing whatever I needed to do to not get caught. As a result I learned to repress this fear along with most of the events associated with it. Until I read Alice Miller's books and articles (alice-miller.com) and until I tried to imagine myself as a child whenever I experienced one of these strong and puzzling reactions, I was surprised to not be able to remember how afraid I felt in the few instances I did remember being threathened or hit. Now the repression is lifting and the fear is gradually coming back. The next step was to do something about the fear. Realizing that the adult I am now wasn’t in immediate danger standing there in the kitchen brought some relief, but not enough. The fear had been replaced by feeling helpless and lonely, I still didn’t know how to get the phone to work and stop the thoughts of “I am no good”. I longed for comforting arms, someone to understand what I was feeling, who would support me through it. Again this brought me back to my first years, how I didn’t get this comfort and support, and how my reaction had been to put all of it out of my mind because these experiences of abandonment had been too painful (mostly my father getting angry at me and yelling and hitting, whereas I looked up to him for protection and guidance, and my mother who could barely protect us children from him and found it difficult to comfort me when I needed it). This next realization, that once more it was unmet needs from the past that were affecting the present and causing these feelings, brought some more relief and I was able to go through the rest of the day without being so hard on myself when thinking of what to do with this telephone. Looking online for information on the effects of abandonment and how to recover from them, I found http://abandonment.net/articles where I read that fear of abandonment is really the primal fear and it is part of being human, and so the problem isn’t so much having this fear, as how we handle it (although people who live through extreme abandonment such as losing a parent during early childhood can be affected much more than most and it can be much more difficult for them to train to reassure themselves). Laying sleepless at 5am the next night thinking through all this, things then fell into place (most of these past 3 years I've spent doing self-work, this didn't come to me easily). Here was the idea I had been missing in order to better understand Nathaniel Branden’s statement “Nobody is coming to save you” and Marshall Rosenberg’s “It’s our responsibility to meet our own needs”. I had been thinking that I needed someone else to get reassurance from, as a child I had expected this from my mother and because she hadn’t been able to give me this past my first year I think, from around 7 I turned to looking for reassurance from girlfriends. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be able to comfort and reassure myself. I am now training to give myself the security I need and so far it seems to be working, I am feeling more energy and more calm, less worrying and less confusion. So this is an example of how this process has been progressing for me, making sense of my past and understanding my needs and beginning to take steps to meet them. If you have any suggestions or comments I’m interested in hearing them. I want to express my gratitude to Nathaniel Branden and Alice Miller and Carl Rogers and Marshall Rosenberg, whose work helped me understand the importance of feelings and emotions (otherwise I wouldn’t have recognized it was fear and helpessness and loneliness that I felt, as I couldn’t recognize or admit to these feelings in myself, before), and how to think in terms of meeting universal human needs instead of thinking in terms of morally right and morally wrong, and to learn what self-esteem is and how to develop it. I am also grateful to Wes Bertrand for introducing me to this body of knowledge and for helping me make sense of it. And I also have immense gratitude for the friend who showed interest in helping me explore my childhood and reconnect with my feelings, instead of only having an intellectual understanding of them, and thus to unlock my empathy. (That’s why I had and I think most people today have very little empathy, because of this unconscious repression defense and not because we are “sociopaths” who have no capacity for empathy). Other friends have helped me as well, such as LovePrevails and Lens here on FDR. And recently I’ve been lucky to be able to trade with a student therapist who trains on me as a test client while I get an hour of support each week for free, which I’m very happy for because I would have trouble paying for that much therapy right now. A big Thank You to all! To give you an idea of how big a change this has been for me: before having children I spent a decade reading psychology and self-help books, and the best I could find were Virgina Satir’s books, which helped me some but didn’t help me understand the mechanisms at play. I did go to therapy as well, but the 2 therapists I saw apparently didn’t understand this either. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to come across all these important ideas and these high-empathy people in recent years, which in pre-internet times were even more difficult to chance upon, I would have kept on repressing all these feelings and memories, and upon seeing that the phone was blocked I would likely have found someone else to blame and got angry at them, such as my ex-wife, thinking it was her fault for having burdened me with trivialities that had thrown off my concentration and brought about this “mistake”. Or I would have gotten angry at my children. I used to go to any length to escape recognizing my part in any mishap, because I had this overwhelming fear that I was trying hard to not become aware of.

I got very emotional during the second call, as soon as the second caller did (who was talking about moral responsibility and how he tormented his sister). I started to feel defensive and angry when Stef attempted to uncover the caller's reason for tormenting his sister in the moment. One thought that came into my head was "That's not important, just blame the parents" - a particularly disturbing thought because I realize that that is likely exactly how his parents likely justified their abuse of him (though they are obviously far more culpable for torturing him as adults), and is one of the first excuses my dad made for his sadistic behavior towards me as a child (he was quick to deflect his abuse towards me with how his parents treated him). Also, a feeling of horror came over me as Stef empathized with his sister - it brought to mind all the images I have in my mind of me making my sister cry and yell, and all the times I mocked her and filled her so full of rage, she couldn't bear it and ran into her room, locked the door, and made gutteral sounds as a desperate attempt to get me to leave her alone - memories which I've tried in vain to disassociate from myself. I started crying when listening to the podcast and felt immense sadness and anger. I haven't even finished listening to the call, but I think for me the reason for seeking out and starting conflicts with her where I could cause her pain was obviously that I enjoyed causing suffering in others and was becoming a full-on sadist. As I'm typing this I'm getting even more angry at my parents and I want to yell at the top of my lungs "YOU TURNED ME INTO A SADISTIC MONSTER!" It is starting to make sense to me why I was so depressed from 11th grade onward - I no longer had anyone to unload my rage onto - I no longer had a helpless little sister and my brother became bigger than me (he is 2 years younger and she is 5 years younger) - I was one of the smallest kids at school. So I had a brain wired for sadism in an environment which I had no power in - which explains why I became so withdrawn and anti-social and fearful of strangers. My brain was telling me that the world was a win-lose environment, I was now in the lose category - the victim category, and so my actions reflected that of a victim. It seems (based on Stef's actions during the call, and during the call with the guy who put other kids in the hospital) that in order to heal from having inflicted harm on others, you must give yourself responsibility for the damage you've caused others, no matter how old you were, and no matter what was modeled for you which led to that behavior being seen as an feasible option. This is hard for me to accept emotionally, though obviously that has no bearing on the validity of that idea. I suspect that my father and mother are both full-blown sadists, though neither of them were ever diagnosed (though my mom has been taking medication for schizophrenia for a long time). I suspect that if I had been big and strong (I'm fully grown now and 5'8, 125lbs), I would have been a vicious and dangerous bully physically, like the second caller in "Shame-Based DNA Death," so it's hard for me to really look at myself as any different from him as I chose the means of sadism which I could get away with (verbal abuse, not just towards my sister, but towards a couple of easy targets at school) just as he chose the means of sadism which he could get away with. There have been plenty of times since I found out about this show (which was about 6 years ago) when I almost wished that I didn't have a conscience because it has been so unbelievably painful to uncover and explore the truth about my history and there have been so many times along the way when I've been unable or unwilling to face the truth about the things I've done and the things which have been done to me - thoughts came up of "How could this be true? How could my parents have been so evil? How could it have really been that bad? How could I have done that?" Even though I've done a lot of self-work through journaling and therapy so far, It seems like every time I explore an incident from my past, 10 more come to the surface and I push them away to a later date (I know this is not technically true, but I do feel overwhelmed by how much bullshit I have to slog through just to achieve a reasonable level of happiness, or at least not fearing punishment from others on a daily basis). I know that I've done a lot of work so far and made a lot of progress from when I started therapy, but I can't rid myself of the thought that I need to work even harder and give myself less leeway to spend time on other things. It's the same thing in therapy - every session I feel that I have to push important things to the side for the sake of time for the things which I perceive to be even more important (which has its benefits but obviously drawbacks as well). I only have a couple of memories of my dad playing with me when I was a child, the other memories consist of him ignoring me, mocking me, and denying me the attention I needed from him and hitting me with on the bare-ass with wooden spoons, metal spatchulas, and a plastic pasta-stirring spoon with spikes. My mom hit me with the same items, frequently sicked my dad on me because he could hit harder, and though she was not neglectful in the sense that she spent a lot of time with me in early childhood (stay-at-home mom who homeschooled me), I can see very clearly now that she was trying to turn me into her subservient little pet and only gave me affection for doing what she wanted me to do and the threat of punishment was ALWAYS there if I openly expressed disagreement or argued with her, whether that punishment was physical (hitting, washing my mouth out with soap, making me eat too much hot sauce) or withdrawal of affection. She was unable to cope with reality by the time I was 9, and she now lives in a group home across the country, heavily medicated past the point of having humanity - she may as well be dead in my opinion. My parents heavily indoctrinated me with fundamentalist Christianity and punished me very frequently for supposed immorality, so according to the argument Stef made in this podcast as I interpreted it, they hold a very high degree of moral responsibility for what they did to me and how it affected me (please feel free to correct me if I misunderstood or misinterpreted Stef). Hopefully it is clear to anyone reading this why it is so emotionally hard for me to take responsibility for the way I treated my sister for YEARS, I'm talking 6 or 7 years of making her life hell, even though I logically accept it to a certain extent (I think my parents are even more to blame than I am). I felt angry when Stef said he couldn't understand why other children in abusive environments don't stick up for each other. The first thought that came to mind was, "Because you (meaning me) didn't side with your sister over your abusers, you are/were evil or at least morally inferior to Stef - who faced lots of abuse and neglect and was a good enough person to not hurt others when he knew how much he hated being hurt." On the other hand, I also have the thought that "If I was morally inferior, it was the fault of my parents, and my childhood must have been worse and/or at least I must have had some genetic predisposition towards sadism which Stef did not have." I later had the thought that "Comparing how good of a person you are to how good of a person Stef is is not productive or useful - how you deal with your wrongdoings moving forward is the only thing that matters." I'm a bit lost on how to reconcile these thoughts into some kind of emotional clarity, and I also suspect the caller may have been dealing with the same types of thoughts. Though, now that I've kept listening to the podcast, I can see that the alternative to me taking my anger out on my sister was probably worse - likely killing my parents or going on a shooting spree (something I've had a fantasy about doing several times in my life), or killing myself. That gives me some comfort, but it doesn't change the fact that I did those things and have to live with those memories which is still horrible. I apologize for the wayward nature of this post, but I fear that if I don't write this now, it will be a LONG time before these thoughts return to my mind and desperately want some discussion with rational and empathetic people about what I've written here.

Part 2 on the struggles of setting personal boundaries, especially with toxic people. The main theme here is learned dependency. Setting Boundaries with Toxic People (Part 2): Learned Dependency

New video in the series on self-esteem: the development of self-esteem. What is important to the development—or misdevelopment—of one's self-esteem and to one's mental health in general. It's probably the most important video in the series so far.

My newest article on the difficulties and consequences of being raised in a controlling environment: http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2014/04/the-burden-of-being-over-controlled-as.html

Yesterday, Daniel Mackler has announced that all four of his movies are now available for FREE on YouTube (including all subtitled versions). Highly recommended!More information can be found here: http://wildtruth.net/my-films-are-now-free-on-youtube/

The third video on self-esteem: What are the signs of high self-esteem, or what are the signs of a healthy, fulfilled, and self-realized human being.