Greetings from Amsterdam

[Macpath]

Hello everyone,

 

I am Patrick from Amsterdam and it's nice to meet you all here on the forum. 

 

I joined the forum only recently, though I have been listening to Stef on a daily/weekly basis for a few years now, always checking out his new podcasts and videos. 

 

In my free time I write dutch fiction ebooks (novels and poetry) and hope to find a publisher one day who believes in my talent. In my professional life I am a dutch copywriter and I have been working as a freelancer for the last five years, tho work is scarce at the moment.

 

I have defoo'd with my family, friends, relationships and bad business clients earlier this year, which was quite a stressful experience, but it provides me with a lot of clarity and inner space to express myself more creatively. It also inspired me to seek out more likeminded people, and it feels nice to find them here on the forum.

 

I'm looking forward to read and connect and get to know you all.

 

Best wishes,

Patrick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Timur]

Welcome to the forum Patrick!

 

You've gone through the most major defoo I've ever heard of! Did you do it while seeing a therapist? Were there any friends you kept? Did you have anybody you could talk to while going through it?

[Macpath]

Hi Timur,

 

thank you for taking the time to read and asking me further questions. 

 

The defoo from my parents definately caused a snowball effect in my life. It was like waking up to the matrix. I realised that I had surrounded myself with people who had the same unhealthy, blaming, abusive, exploitive patterns in their behaviour towards me as my parents had shown to me during my childhood and upbringing. They taught me to stay in unhealthy situations and with bad people rather than to stay clear of them. And once I defoo'd from the 'root of the evil', defooing from everyone else was like a walk in the park. 

 

The only one who I am still in contact with from my family is my younger brother, who has chosen to stay 'neutral', although he suffered and still suffers through some of my parents abuse even today. But he still has an emotional connection to them and also lives in a village nearby them, so he's still more under their influence (they still ask him to be their guilt-trip messenger to me) where as I have put some real distance between me and them. 

 

I have been very lucky to have had the full support of my girlfriend throughout this process, and she herself, also a loyal listener to Stef, is going through defoo'ing from her family as well at the moment.

 

Do you have had any defoo'ing experience in your own life as well?

 

Greetz,

Patrick

[NameName]

Welcome!

[Timur]

I have not separated from my parents and don't feel the need to. I think a lot about stepping up the honesty of our conversations these days and I can feel it happening slowly. But I have not identified my parents as a major problem. We will see if I have the same opinion once I start therapy in 1 month.

 

In have had some experiences of friction caused by honesty with some of my friends and I have even stopped talking to one guy who I would have once called my closest friend. I've also withdrawn from another whom at another time I would have called one of my closest friends. This withdrawal is the result of having gained certainty about the manipulative nature of the relationship. I learned to stop making excuses for their behaviour and also to learn that some people don't deserve honesty - those that have previously ignored your honesty and pretended it was never offered.

 

 

I'm interested in something you said in your first post "it provides me with a lot of clarity and inner space to express myself more creatively". Having made some progress toward a life of integrity myself I've felt more grounded and less anxious. I seem to be focussing better on my tasks and I think I'm sleeping better too!

 

Can you describe this "inner space". I understand that it may be hard.

[OzTrAlien]

Hi Patrick, 

 

with your parents did you find they didn't want to listen or accept your position or outlook when trying to preset it to them, or did you decide it was better if you just walked away and let them be as they are, for your own peace and strength to continue to develop?

 

am right with you about it being great to find a place where one can mingle with other of like mindedness.

 

Be Well 

[Macpath]

Clarity and inner space came once I noticed in myself I had a lot of unprocessed stuff still lingering in my inner basement. Once I started to confront and clean out the 'clutter', it provided me with so much freedom, space and time. I felt recharged like a formerly drained battery and creativity returned to me. And like you I also sleep better now. The stress has vanished. I feel more aligned.

 

I had ignored how people around me treated me for probably all my life. My (catholic) parents had always taught me 'forgive people who treat you badly and keep hanging around them so they can continue to treat you badly'. Then I listened to one of Stef's shows about reciprocity. Suddenly I discovered a pattern. 

 

Since my childhood I had had friends who wanted me to do things for them. And however I never asked anything in return from them, I had always expected, assumed,  they would be there for me, when I ever needed help or a favor myself.

 

I'll paint a few examples, because they might be helpful and relevant to others as well. 

 

The person I considered to be my best friend during my highschool years, asked me to go with him to 'Open Door Day', to check out this military (I know this sounds bad) academy he was thinking about joining. I didn't feel like that at all, but he guilt-tripped me into it by saying: I am asking you this as your best friend. Will you do this for our friendship? I don't want to go alone and if you do this for me, I promise you I will come with you too when it's your turn to check out your university of choice. So how could I refuse this plee. I ended up going with him because we were friends. And perhaps you can guess already, that when it was time for me to remind him of his promise and join me on the Open Door Day of the university I wanted to check out, he came up with an excuse to not having to go with me. I think he said something along he didn't have time that day, but would definately be there on the next university open door day. But also the next one, there was of course another excuse.

 

One of my lifelong friends is now a lawyer. I helped him out during many occasions with all sorts of things friends help eachother out with. I helped him find a new place to live, helped him move, was there for him when his girlfriend broke up with him, when he had cancer, I was there for him. All this time, I never once asked anything back for our friendship. And I attended his wedding. He always said I would become his best man, but guess what, at the last moment he switched to someone else, I didn't even know the guy, which is at least strange if you're supposed to be best friends. Then later in life at some point I needed a lawyers advice. He said he didn't want to advise or help me, but as a favor to me, he would direct me to one of his interns with at most three months experience, where he had always boasted to be one of the top in his field.

 

This pattern of me doing stuff for people, thinking we have a great friendship, has haunted me throughout every social relationship or business contact I had. It even reflected back at me in my relationships. One example here too. When I was writing my final university paper, my girlfriend at the time also was writing hers. She struggled with it, and her struggle always was the talk of the day. I quit writing on mine, started to help her writing her paper. I listened patiently to her complaints, I dived into the material, read it and gave rewriting tips. When the thing was finished, she didn't even mention me in the People I'd Like To Thank section. Then, when I asked her to read my paper, which at that time had been delayed from helping her, she said she didn't care to read it.

 

Also a work example. I helped out a creative artist who needed texts written for his website, and brochures. Up front he had told me, his budget to pay me was really low. So i told him to keep his money, but make me an artwork instead as payment. I liked this free market quid pro quo solution. You want my texts, I want an artwork from you. He agreed happily. I spent over 100 hours on Skype with this man, interviewing him, then writing out all the texts, which was even more hours work and then he called me and asked me if I also could translate it for free for him from Dutch to English. Which I did, although I told him I wasn't an expert in English. But since I'd do it for free... he didn't care. In total we made 10 brochures for 10 artworks and he was extremely thrilled, happy and thankful. It took about three months work for me. Then I was eager to see the artwork he had promised me and told me he had been working on during this whole period. I couldn't see it of course, he said only the finished product. Then I didn't hear anything from him for several following months, and when I informed there were always excuses. He hit his head, his wife had a cold, he had another assignment in between, he had to go on a trip, etcetera. Short story, I never got the promised artwork and when he finally contacted me, it wasn't even about the artwork he owed me, but he boldly asked me if I could write some more texts for him. Which, I almost felt like doing, feeling my old habits kicking in from my parents: forgive this person and continue working for him. But thanks to Stef, this time I dodged these bullets matrix-style and will never work for this man again.

 

What I have learned is to look for reciprocity in the beginning of any new relationship. I also applied this to my parents (saving the best for last). From early (abusive) childhood on, they taught me to make myself invisible and when you're invisible you don't ask for things in return nor express any needs. They never took interest in me, never asked me questions, it was always about them and their religion and their needs. I felt more like an unwanted burden to them, except when they needed something from me. They talk in commandments: Help your Mother with the Dishes. Help your Father in the Garden. Send Money. Send More Money. Help with this PC Problem. They also talk in Don'ts: Don't quit your job (even if you're unhappy and exploited there). Don't date this girl (=less money for us). Don't start your own business. 

 

Whenever I tried reasoning with them, they get mad and blame me for everything. When I tell them all I want is them to listen to me and find out who I am, they make it about them. When I wrote my first novel, my father didn't even want to take the effort to read it, he said 'I don't have time, watching sports on TV is more important to me and there's always sports on TV'. My mother did read it, then said 'I am ashamed of this, what will the neighbours think. What will the people in the street think.' Later it all escalated in extreme shouting and threatening from their side and me finally deciding to defoo.

 

Timur,

you write that you haven't identified your parents as a major problem (yet), but at the same time you did feel the need to seek out therapy. I am wondering what made you decide that you need that? Can you tell me more on how you came to that decision?

 

OzTrAlien,

what helped me to walk away was a show in which Stef asks one of his listeners something along like 'If your father/mother wasn't family, would you go out for a nice coffee or drink with this person(s)?' Walking away was made easier when my parents blew up in my face about me telling them who I am and want to be. I said to them if you want a good relationship with me, you have to stop shouting and start listening to me and ask me questions.When I tried discussing the abusive in my childhood with them, they said 'this never happened'. We never hit you. We never shouted at you. And even if we did, that's only because our parents hit us and shouted at us too, and thats normal. In another show Stef mentions that its hard to convince a lifelong smoker to quit smoking and that it might be too late for that person. And I decided I don't want to spent the next twenty or so years pretending to be someone else and doing chit-chat when I'm with my parents. So that's what initialised my defoo. How is your relationship with your parents currently?

 

greetz,

Pat

[mthenke]

Awesome story---can definitely tell you're a writer!

 

I'm interested, how's your writing/publishing process coming? What avenues are you pursuing toward getting published?

 

I really want to write for a living, do you have any advice on how to do that?

[Macpath]

Mthenke,

 

usually everybody knows somebody they go to when stuff has to be written or edited. It's basically all about becoming that go-to person. Sometimes the way of becoming a writer is becoming a reader. For me reading was one of the few things my parents allowed me to do as a child, so I devoured every book I could find at home and later in the library. I started to write for the school newspaper. Short stories, poems. It was a good way to start. Later I upped it a notch by studying literature at university. I started entering in local writing contests and when I won one, that was a good confidence boost. Contests are a good way to get noticed. After I won I was approached by a local magazine that wanted to print my work. That got the ball rolling. To become good at writing is also very much about being willing to put in the hours. Look at texts people around you write, and think about how you would go about improving those texts. At some point I thought, if I want to become better, I have to find a writer who can teach me more. So I approached a few people and asked them if I could tag along with them. One person agreed. He was a writer of movie and art critiques for the local newspaper. And he took me with him on a few trips and interviews. Then he wrote the official piece and I wrote a shadow-piece. Afterwards we would compare our stories and he would go through mine sentence by sentence, showing me where I could improve. And that was really eye-opening for me. For example, I would just write everything that came to mind, streams of words, then afterwards tried to make sense of it all and in the end think of a title for my piece. He taught me to first think of the title. It can take some time to do that. But once you know what the title will be, you will write more coherently and structured. I also used to bring along a voicerecorder. Then took hours of re-listening, stop and play, and writing everything out. He told me to stop doing that. Pen and paper, old school. It forced me to really listen to people I was interviewing for an article, I paid more attention compared to before, when I was relying on the voicerecorder heavily to do the hard work for me. And by paying more attention (better listening) I managed to ask better questions, thus improving the quality of the content of the article. So if you want to be a copywriter you can look in your area who is offering those services, it could be a small company, it could be a freelancer. Approach them. If you want to be a novelist, entering contests, sending out your work to (online) magazines, or even your own website or blog, is a good way to start. Once you have been published in something, even if it's just small and local, you can put that on your resume. I send my work to publishers, but the waiting time is long, usually six months. So meanwhile I make my own ebooks and put them on my website. Some free, some for sale.  That way I keep control and don't have to invest any money upfront in one of the many parties who offer to print your books on demand for you, while they keep 90% of every booksale you make. I am currently looking into bitcoin bookstores as well.

 

I hope any of this has given you some ideas, feel free to let me know how it goes for you.

 

Greetz,

Pat

[OzTrAlien]

my relationship with my parents was and is nonexistent.