Stefan Molyneux
  • last year
"Hey Stefan I have been married to my wife for over a year and half and we have a 9 Month old child together. My primary issue is near constant fantasies of being with other woman and an overall feeling of being unattached from my wife and child. I mean I love them, I also feel like I could take them or leave them. Just to be clear I have taken zero steps towards any kind of cheating, no dating apps, no sending messages to woman or talking to other woman nothing of the sort. I do watch pornography which I am ashamed of, but I am unable to stop myself at this time. My wife tolerates the pornography use but obviously not thrilled about it. Our marriage has taken some hits this year, car wreck in Jan, I have changed jobs 3 times in the last year and a half. Our son was in the hospital for a week 2 of which was in the ICU. Yes, my wife has threatened to leave me and take my child and apart of me wants to tell her to just go ahead. She feels life with me is too unstable and I understand her reasoning. I am reaching out to open my childhood experiences and see if I can free myself and become the great husband and father I believe I am capable of. Thank you for your time."

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Transcript
00:00:00Hey, Steph. Hey, good morning. How you doing? Good morning. I'm alright, thank you.
00:00:06Excellent. Well, welcome to your call and if you want to just jump in, I'm all ears.
00:00:13How can I best help? Yeah, so I will start by reading what I wrote. Hey, Steph, I've
00:00:19been married to my wife for over a year and a half and we have a nine-month-old
00:00:22child together. My primary issue is near-constant fantasies of being with
00:00:27other women and an overall feeling of being unattached from my wife and child. I mean,
00:00:32I love them. I also feel like I could take them or leave them. Just to be clear, I have taken
00:00:37zero steps towards any kind of cheating, no dating apps, no sending messages to women or
00:00:41talking to other women, nothing of the sort. I do watch pornography, which I am ashamed of,
00:00:46but I am unable to stop myself at this time. My wife tolerates the pornography use,
00:00:51obviously not thrilled about it. Our marriage has taken some hits this year. I had a car wreck
00:00:58back in January of this year. I've changed jobs three times in the last year and a half. Our son
00:01:05was recently in the hospital for a week, two of which of those days was in the ICU. Yes,
00:01:12my wife has threatened to leave me and take my child. Part of me wants to tell her to just go
00:01:19ahead. She feels life with me is too unstable, and I understand her reasoning. I'm reaching out
00:01:24to open up my childhood experiences and see if I can free myself and become the great husband and
00:01:29father I believe I am capable of. Thank you for your time, Steph. I mean, I appreciate that. It's
00:01:35very frank, very honest, very open, and I'm sure we can do some good stuff with this topic. So,
00:01:44just what happened with the car crash, by the way? Yeah, so I was driving to work. Someone made a
00:01:51left turn right in front of me. I couldn't stop, and I slammed straight into their passenger side.
00:01:56It was an adult, a woman, and a child in the car, and the passenger side backseat, unfortunately.
00:02:04She was about 12. That girl might have some nightmares, but I'm okay for the most part.
00:02:11I went to physical therapy, did all that. I've got a lawyer, so I've got an open case and all
00:02:16that kind of good stuff. Sorry, open case, meaning that you might be charged?
00:02:21Open case in that a lawsuit, like a personal injury lawyer.
00:02:26Okay, and that's because you're concerned about being sued or because you are going to sue?
00:02:34Because I'm suing, I've had a number of car accidents, and I've learned over the years to
00:02:40just lawyer up, lawyer up, lawyer up. It's not legal advice. That's just what I've learned to
00:02:45do, just to make sure I get all my medical care taken care of and all that kind of stuff.
00:02:50Obviously, the woman who was turning left was the one at fault. She was turning into your lane?
00:02:55Yes, it was a male, and yes, I was in the farthest right lane. They were making a left
00:03:01into a plaza. They didn't see me, and they were making the left, and I t-boned them.
00:03:07Okay, and were people in the other car? What happened to them?
00:03:16Yeah, so there was a woman in her 20s, the male driver was in their 20s, and a girl that was about
00:03:2412 in the back seat, where is basically where I hit, was to where she was at, unfortunately.
00:03:31I think they were okay. All of us were able to get up and out of the car and talk to the police
00:03:35and ambulance and all that. I have prior injuries to my neck, though, from a previous accident,
00:03:41which is why I'm really worried, and why I went by ambulance to the ER, got a complete medical
00:03:48workup done and all that. Right. How many car accidents have you been in?
00:03:54Probably like 12, 13. No, come on, what do you mean?
00:04:02Really, with friends, yeah, friends and family.
00:04:08No, no, I mean, and not that you've been in, I guess, that you've been driving.
00:04:13Oh, and driving, like four or five that I've been driving.
00:04:19Hmm. All right, I bookmarked that, we'll come back later, okay.
00:04:26So, and are you in your 30s? I am mid-30s.
00:04:33Mid-30s, okay. All right, so I assume if you've been in 12 or 13 car accidents,
00:04:39there's a lot of chaos and dysfunction in your family and friends?
00:04:44Yes, to say the least. All right, lay it on me, hit me,
00:04:48give me your T-bone of history.
00:04:52Yeah, so I have five older brothers and sisters that are all half. I'm the half-breed.
00:05:03We all share the same mother, but we have a different-
00:05:05Sorry, by half-breed, what do you mean?
00:05:08So, we all share the same mother, but I have a different father.
00:05:15Okay.
00:05:16But you don't mean racially, you just mean in terms of family, right?
00:05:20Just in terms of family, yeah.
00:05:21Okay, I was just curious, go ahead.
00:05:24Well, I suppose that could also be classified as racially as well.
00:05:26We'll get more into that, good question.
00:05:28Sure.
00:05:30So, my five half-siblings are all 10 plus years older than me, and then
00:05:41my mother divorced that man. My sibling's father met my father after that. I don't know the exact
00:05:51timeline. My father at the time had just got done doing five years in the federal penitentiary
00:06:00for the selling, distribution, and manufacturing of cocaine. They met at a bar.
00:06:07Hard to put all the pieces together, but basically, they were together for eight years.
00:06:17I was born their sixth year of being together. They were never married.
00:06:24My father...
00:06:27So, they were together... I was born when they were together during their sixth year of their
00:06:33relationship, is my understanding. My parents split up when I was two years old. I was taken
00:06:41to go live with my grandmother. My father...
00:06:45And I'm sorry, how old is your daughter, or your child?
00:06:50My child is nine months old.
00:06:52Okay, sorry, go ahead.
00:06:54Yeah. So, my parents split when I was two, and I was taken by my grandmother
00:07:02out of the house. My father started using substances again, or maybe stopped using.
00:07:10My mother, I think, began drinking again. So, both of them felt it was not a stable place for
00:07:17any child. All those children, my siblings went to go live with their
00:07:21father. A couple of them were in college by that time, or had moved out of the house.
00:07:26I spent... I was raised mainly by my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my aunt
00:07:33from age two to about five or four. My mom would come and visit, or she'd see me on the weekends,
00:07:42or I'd go spend a weekend at her house here and there. My father was in and out during
00:07:48that time as well. He would come and visit, but then have to leave. I'm assuming because
00:07:54he was still participating in his drug abuse. So, I didn't really know my parents.
00:08:04And I feel like this weird only child slash adopted child.
00:08:11Eventually, it got so bad, I guess, for my dad that my dad called. We went to go pick up my dad
00:08:16in a different part of the state, bring him back to our house. My father lived with us.
00:08:25My father did not work. He would take me to school, pick me up from school.
00:08:32My father was a very angry person. Now, part of that could have been unbeknownst to me of him
00:08:38going on and coming off drugs. My father also had a bunch of weird beliefs, like aliens,
00:08:46Bigfoot. If stuff was disappearing, quote-unquote,
00:08:51disappearing or missed around the house, he'd go around saying at the house that it was a ghost,
00:08:56that a ghost was messing with him. So, that was weird to come up with, to say the least.
00:09:05A one incident of violence that I specifically remember... So, my dad didn't beat me. He had
00:09:11anger. But it would just be this face. He would pucker his lips. It would look like his
00:09:17eyes were going to bulge out of his head. And that was frightening. And it was frightening
00:09:22to everyone in the house. But there's a specific time where he was grabbing something out of the
00:09:30fridge. I had some grapes or something in my hand. And my dad does this back kick to me with
00:09:35his leg out of nowhere, completely random. I fly off my feet and slam my head into the
00:09:42kitchen counter. I fall down to the ground and I start crying. And my dad just starts laughing at
00:09:50me. He's like, get up, get up. I barely kicked you. And my dad thought it was the most hilarious
00:09:57thing in his entire life. And he would tell the story, he would tell it as,
00:10:07oh, I barely kicked you. You cried so hard. It was so funny. You were crying and you dropped
00:10:13your grapes. It was hilarious. Yeah, it's like typical addict thinking
00:10:18that all their pain is genuine, even though it's self-inflicted, but all the pain they inflict is
00:10:23exaggerated and not real. Yeah, that would describe my dad very well.
00:10:32And that was the only time I remember him being physical with me when I was younger.
00:10:39Now, we did get into a conflict when I was 16. There's a lot that happens before this,
00:10:44but I'm just trying to cover this direct violence, where my dad refused to take me to school.
00:10:52And the reason why he refused to take me to school was because I refused to help him get an
00:11:00item on a video game. I'm not even kidding. That is the exact stated reason, because the night before
00:11:08he wanted help to get the special item on a video game, I had gotten it on my save file.
00:11:13He hadn't gotten it. And he was upset about that, that I didn't help him.
00:11:17So the next morning, he refused to take me to school. And I told him,
00:11:21well, if you're not going to take me to school, then I'm going to leave. I'm out of here. I'm
00:11:24tired of this. I walk out of the house, out of our front door. He chases me down. He pushes me,
00:11:33or I push him. He doesn't hit me, but we're shoving back and forth. I call a friend to come
00:11:40take me to school. I go to school that day. While I'm at school, I call my mom to come pick me up
00:11:47that day. I pack up my clothes and stuff and trash bags, and I leave that house. And I didn't
00:11:54see my dad for a couple of years after that. Some other chaos points in my upbringing. At age
00:12:02nine, our house was raided for substances. Legit, I was there. A mailman or someone comes up to the
00:12:14house, knocks on the door. I open the door, and seven vans show up. There's police with guns
00:12:22drawn. They've got the drug dog sniffing through all our stuff, opening all our drawers. My dad's
00:12:29putting handcuffs, put out on this porch. I'm sitting there. I'm on the porch. I've got my
00:12:35hands behind my back. The cops tell me, don't move. Don't even breathe.
00:12:42Sorry, how old were you here?
00:12:44I'm about nine when the house gets raided
00:12:49by the police. I go with my dad to the jail. They're like, have you ever seen your dad use
00:12:59drugs? All that kind of stuff. No, I'd never actually seen him use anything. I'm completely
00:13:04unaware of it.
00:13:05Sorry, is there supposed to be a child advocate when you're talking with the police?
00:13:09No, there wasn't.
00:13:14Literally, the police are interrogating a nine-year-old for material evidence against
00:13:18his own father. Really? That's wild. I thought they had to have protective services. I thought
00:13:24they had to have a child advocate and all that. Wow.
00:13:29No, I don't remember that at all.
00:13:30Maybe that's just TV policing. I don't know. Sometimes not quite the same.
00:13:36That's how I remember it.
00:13:38I'm not doubting you. I'm just, wow, okay.
00:13:42I remember them like, what is this? What is that? You can relate to this a little bit. My dad was
00:13:49into gold mining. He would take me up to the canyon in our state to go gold mining and stuff
00:13:55like this.
00:13:57He would be there in the river with a shaker?
00:14:02Yeah, yeah, with a juice box, with panning. He taught me how to pan for gold and stuff like
00:14:07that.
00:14:08So not quite mining, I mean, unless he's digging, I guess, but all right.
00:14:15Digging with a shovel, if that counts.
00:14:18So do you know what happened to your dad after the raid when you were nine?
00:14:23Yeah, so he spent three days in jail. I think I helped him out because what they caught him on,
00:14:30which I don't know if he was ever officially charged, was he had these containers of mercury,
00:14:34the chemical of mercury, and he would use that to extract the gold out of copper wiring or
00:14:42something like that, or out of rocks, I guess. If you put mercury on, it extracts it.
00:14:48So they're like, why does he have all this mercury? And I told him,
00:14:51because that's what he had told me about the gold. And so he basically got off with no charges.
00:14:56Oh, and they didn't find any drugs, I guess.
00:14:58They didn't find any drugs, no.
00:14:59Wow.
00:14:59In the house. Yeah.
00:15:01Okay. So they had just been tracking his purchases of mercury or something.
00:15:06We don't know. So my aunt was also living with us at this time. So his half-sister, my aunt,
00:15:16whom he introduced to crystal meth, his aunt, or his sister, he introduced his own sister to
00:15:24crystal meth. She was using at the time, too. She was—
00:15:28I'm sorry, how do you know that your father introduced his sister to crystal meth?
00:15:34They both confirmed it with me later in life.
00:15:37Okay. Go ahead.
00:15:38Yeah. And his thought is that she called the cops on him. His thought is that one of
00:15:53someone he either knew called—or her thought was that he called the cops on her.
00:16:02His thought is that she called them on him. And so when we got back, when he got back,
00:16:08he was really upset with his sister. I remember them having a few different violent
00:16:14on the ground where he would push her down on the ground and just start swinging at her face.
00:16:20Hmm.
00:16:22Just over that. There's a lot of chaos here.
00:16:28And was your father—I mean, sorry, do you know if your father was dealing drugs at this
00:16:36period? I mean, how did—you know, I'm sorry to be all kinds of like, I guess,
00:16:41middle-class or whatever, but it's always my, like, how do people—I was always terrified
00:16:46of anything like that, like drugs and stuff, because it's like, I gotta pay bills. I gotta
00:16:50get to work. You know, so I've never quite understood, like, how do people have all of
00:16:54these crazy chaotic lives without ending up living under a bridge? I mean, I guess there's
00:16:59welfare and stuff that never really seemed like—and welfare never really seemed quite real
00:17:02to me when I was younger. Because, you know, as a male, you don't really—maybe for women,
00:17:09if you have kids or whatever, right? But so I guess, I mean, how did he—how is everyone living?
00:17:15How are they paying their bills and their taxes? Ah!
00:17:19Yeah, so my grandmother had a really good job, and my grandmother supported all of us.
00:17:27What did she do?
00:17:30I honestly don't know what she did. I know the company that she worked for was some financial
00:17:36institution. So my grandmother supported us all really, really well.
00:17:44Huh. Boy, that's quite an income.
00:17:48Yeah, I mean, there was nothing for want. I mean, my dad was also a smoker, and so like,
00:17:54you know, like a chain smoker. Like, two, two and a half packs a day. And so, buying cigarettes—
00:18:00Sorry, you say my dad was. I mean, I assume with that kind of life,
00:18:04this is all the past tense, is he dead?
00:18:07Yeah, so my father committed suicide when I was 19.
00:18:11All right. So you don't know if he was—I'm sorry, I would like to give you my condolences,
00:18:17but I can't really feel them. So do you know he was just living off your grandmother? Is that right?
00:18:26Yeah, he, you know, would have these occasional schemes, like the gold mining,
00:18:31was a scheme to make money.
00:18:32Gold panning, gold panning.
00:18:33Gold panning.
00:18:36Unless he's in Minecraft, it's not gold mining. Anyway, sorry, go on.
00:18:42That was a scheme. You know, he turned—he was also a hoarder. So like, our house,
00:18:49slash our room, I should say, was filled with like, random stuff that he'd swear he would fix
00:18:56up and sell. Our backyard, you know, i.e. my grandmother's backyard, had two sheds,
00:19:03like steel sheds, filled to the brim—you couldn't get in them—of just random stuff.
00:19:09We had two fridges, like, not working fridges in our backyard. Like, it was Beverly Hillbilly style.
00:19:18Oh, it's like that old joke about the Arkansas state application, you know, number of cars on
00:19:25bricks in the front yard, you know, three, four, other. There's no zero option. Okay.
00:19:31Right, yeah. He had bought like, a 1955 El Camino, because that was the year that he was born,
00:19:38swore up and down he was going to get it fixed. The thing would never stop catching fire,
00:19:44you know, whenever we'd go out to drive it. He'd have random people stay at the house.
00:19:49Remember, there's this homeless woman living in like, her car in our backyard for a while, too.
00:19:56You know, he'd have friends, I guess his druggie friends, come and stay,
00:20:00you know, on our couch and stuff like that, too. So, a lot of chaotic stuff.
00:20:06Me and my dad shared a room in a bunk bed, and that's where I got—
00:20:10You were locked up, in a sense, with a druggie?
00:20:13Oh, yeah.
00:20:14Oh, my God.
00:20:16And that's how I got exposed to pornography, probably at age like, six, seven.
00:20:21Oh, so your dad introduces his sister to crystal meth, and his little boy to porn.
00:20:27Well, I don't think on purpose—well, the porn was probably not on purpose, but—
00:20:31You had to find—I mean, it doesn't just wander into your room and start playing on your screen,
00:20:36right?
00:20:37Well, I'd woken up in the middle of the night, and I'd seen pornography on the screen.
00:20:43My dad thought I was asleep, and from that point on, if my dad went to do whatever he did,
00:20:53and I stayed home sick from school, I would go through the room, find the pornography,
00:20:58and watch pornography while he was gone, and then put it back and all that stuff.
00:21:05You know, put the tapes back. So that's kind of where that starts, really.
00:21:10That and my dad in our room had posters of women in lingerie,
00:21:17women in thongs, things like that, in our room. So there was that as well.
00:21:24And you didn't have any contact with your mom, is that right?
00:21:27I'd see her on the weekends, so my mom would pick me up, so I would stay with her Friday night,
00:21:34Saturday night, and then she'd bring me home on Sunday.
00:21:39And my mom was clean at this time. My mom just had—my mom's issue, so my mom was married three
00:21:47times. Of course, the first to my sibling's father, after that to this guy I don't really
00:21:56remember too much, I think he was a cop, and then to—
00:22:00From druggie to cop, excellent.
00:22:03Yeah. And then finally, this guy who was a felon or an ex-felon, he was a pretty cool guy,
00:22:10though. He was clean before him and his mom got together. Him and my mom got together.
00:22:18They were in AA together, and that's where they met. He had a hell of a rap sheet, though,
00:22:25but at least the time I knew him, he was a good guy. What ended up happening is they were together
00:22:30for 10 years. They were married for 10 years. Because of his previous substance use, he got
00:22:37cancer and passed away. My mom had to have been 55 or so at the time, and so my mom hasn't remarried
00:22:49or dated or anything since. I think after that death, my mom really started to deteriorate
00:22:56on her own. Oh, the fun part about my mom is, though, is that she did have a 10-year history
00:23:03of embezzling money from the company that she worked for, like $1,000 here and there
00:23:11over a period of 10 years. What ended up happening is that the company went under, and—
00:23:18Oh, so she basically parasited that company into oblivion.
00:23:22...ish. She was part of the problem. The feds got involved. They went through all the records
00:23:30and all that stuff. They found this missing money, tied it to her. So my mom went to jail
00:23:37for a couple of weeks when I was 14. A couple of weeks?
00:23:41Yeah, because my stepdad spent a bunch of money on a lawyer to get her out and all that.
00:23:48So she steals for 10 years, and she goes to jail for a couple of weeks.
00:23:54Yeah.
00:23:54Wow.
00:23:55And on top of that, she sued that company for disability due to carpal tunnel syndrome.
00:24:02Oh, God.
00:24:03So she's still getting payments from that company that went over. So she stole from them,
00:24:08and she sued them, and is still continually getting payments from them.
00:24:13Now, you are laughing about this stuff. I mean, you've got a generally completely
00:24:18unemotional way of talking about this stuff, which is kind of disconcerting,
00:24:21just to be honest with you. Like, it's kind of alienating.
00:24:25Because, I mean, this is all just absolutely horrible stuff, right?
00:24:30Yeah, it is absolutely horrible. I feel that the weight of it is so strong that all they
00:24:38would do in this call is just cry, instead of being able to give you information.
00:24:43Okay, and what is wrong with... I mean, one of us is going to end up crying,
00:24:47it should be you, because it's your history, right?
00:24:51I mean, that makes sense. I've shed a lot of tears. Like, when my mom went to jail,
00:24:59I spent like a week or like two weeks crying. So I feel like I've grieved it already.
00:25:05Hang on, so why did you cry? And I'm not saying... nothing I'm saying here is going to be judging,
00:25:11and even me saying it's kind of weird to have all this unemotional conversation about these
00:25:16absolutely appalling things. You know, like, haha, my druggie dad believed in ghosts, and you know,
00:25:22haha, my mom sued the company she stole from, right? I mean, that's not a criticism,
00:25:27you understand, at all. I'm not like saying, oh, that's wrong, or bad. I don't mean that at all.
00:25:31And so when I asked, like, why did you cry when your mom went to jail?
00:25:35Was it her sadness? Was it your sadness? Like, what was going on? And I know it's
00:25:42hard to remember, probably hard to remember, but what were these tears for?
00:25:51Haven't I been through enough?
00:25:54Right.
00:25:57Okay.
00:25:57Like, really, mom? You couldn't just not steal? Like, that's...
00:26:04Okay, so it wasn't for your, my poor mother, and I'm not, again, just curious what your
00:26:09emotional experience was. So it wasn't like, oh, my poor mother, the jailbirds, or it was like,
00:26:14man, can't this ever stop? And it doesn't stop, right? It doesn't stop,
00:26:18because when you're down in this layer of society, there are no good people.
00:26:23Yeah.
00:26:23Right. It's all hell down. This is Trash Planet, right? I mean, I've sort of used that term before,
00:26:28but there's just no good people. And I mean, I get they're wounded people, this, that, and the
00:26:32other, but it's, you know, when they start really harming and messing up kids and dropkicking kids
00:26:38across the room, or whatever it is, then I run a little bit out of sympathy.
00:26:48Yeah, Trash Planet, born and raised, I mean, yeah.
00:26:52Well, yeah, not raised, born and survived, right? Nobody raises you there. You just
00:26:57try and find a way to survive, right?
00:27:00Yeah, more accurate, definitely.
00:27:02So it was kind of a matriarchy, as far as I understand it. There weren't, other than
00:27:08maybe some of your dad's druggy friends, there really weren't males around in this
00:27:12environment outside of your dad, because you're talking about your aunt, your grandmother,
00:27:16and so on, right? So...
00:27:18Yeah.
00:27:18Yes, so what, and your grandmother, I suppose, was somewhat functional, because she had this
00:27:22high-paying job or whatever, right? So what were they doing, locking you in a room, in a sense,
00:27:27with an insane drug guy, your dad? Like, what were they, why didn't they, you force him into
00:27:34rehab, or why, like, I'm trying to sort of understand, like, what the hell was the thinking
00:27:38with all of this, that you end up in a room with your dad? Like, for how long did you live
00:27:43in the room with your dad?
00:27:44Till in my teens, so until my aunt left, due to her substance use, my aunt left. I think a
00:27:54part of it is...
00:27:54Oh, this is the crystal meth.
00:27:57Yeah.
00:27:57Okay.
00:27:58I think a part of it... Well, first of all, I think there's a layer of denial from my
00:28:03grandmother. I don't think she could ever admit that her son, my father, had that deep
00:28:10of a problem.
00:28:14What? Oh, come on, I mean, there's denial, I get, I mean, I get that there's a denial
00:28:20aspect to life, but, I mean, that's, what? I mean, he's a hoarder, he's talking about
00:28:29Bigfoot and ghosts and demons and whatever the hell, like, he's doing drugs, he's, like,
00:28:36his car's catching on fire when he drives, like, I mean, that's not, I don't believe
00:28:42the denial thing. Honestly, I mean, I hate to sort of jump in with your memories, but
00:28:48like, there has to be plausible deniability. If you're going to claim denial, right? Like,
00:28:54let's say you have a guy, he's a high-functioning alcoholic, right? Like, he's the partner
00:28:59in a law firm and he makes half a million dollars a year or a million dollars a year,
00:29:04but, you know, he also drinks a bottle or two of wine every night. Okay, there's some
00:29:07denial there, right? Because it's plausible. But how on earth could, is it possible
00:29:15for denial to be operating with regards to your dad? That can't be denial.
00:29:28Denial has to have something to cling on to, right?
00:29:34Yeah, I mean,
00:29:39I'm kind of speechless. I don't know what was going through my grandmother's head. I think
00:29:48doing the best she could, I know that's totally a non-answer. I'm speechless. I haven't judged my,
00:29:55I mean, I'm not saying judged, but I haven't objectively taken a look at my grandmother.
00:30:00Okay, so why haven't you judged your grandmother?
00:30:04Because she's, like you said, the only high-functioning person.
00:30:08No, but that was a disaster.
00:30:13The fact that she was making a lot of money was a total disaster. It couldn't be worse.
00:30:22You know why, right?
00:30:28Give it to me, Steph.
00:30:29Well, she's paying for everyone.
00:30:36She's keeping people from getting rehab, from getting jobs, from, you know, like,
00:30:40what is it that cures addiction for a lot of people, or at least blunts addiction is,
00:30:45you got to get a job. You run out of money. You can't buy drugs.
00:30:54You're living under a bridge. You hit rock bottom.
00:30:59Right? I mean, if people who take drugs don't learn from the drugs, the cost,
00:31:08the damage they're inflicting on others, then how do they learn? Well, people only learn
00:31:15through reason or suffering. That's it. Reason or suffering. That's how people learn.
00:31:24Right? Some people are like, well, I got to maintain my health because X, Y, and Z. And
00:31:27some people are like, oh, I just had a heart attack. I suppose I'll clean up my diet.
00:31:32And by preventing suffering, you're preventing cure.
00:31:39Like, imagine if, you know, I don't know, someone's got some big problem with their heart
00:31:45and they get huge chest pains. Well, then they go to the ER. And now, imagine if there's,
00:31:55someone can wave a wand and that person doesn't feel any chest pains. Well, what happens? Well,
00:31:59eventually, I suppose the Widowmaker busts and their heart just explodes in their chest and
00:32:03they're dead. To numb negative feedback is to consign people to hell. I mean, one of the reasons
00:32:14I stayed away from any of this stuff, and it was around, like I've never taken any drugs.
00:32:19I mean, one of the reasons, it's like, it's just a basic rational calculation.
00:32:25Well, I got to get to work. And if I don't, if I start taking drugs,
00:32:32my expenses will go through the roof. And I'll have a tough time making money.
00:32:40And I didn't want to live on the streets. It's Canada. It's cold as a witch's tit, right?
00:32:46Half the year. So, because of that fear of consequences, because I never viewed welfare
00:32:56as a real thing. I've always viewed welfare, I mentioned this sort of earlier, and I'm sorry,
00:33:00I don't want to make this about me, but I sort of see it, welfare is like a female thing.
00:33:06Right? Because, I mean, all of the women who I knew,
00:33:10I'm sorry, all the people I knew on welfare were women. Right? The single moms and the people with,
00:33:17oh, you know, disabled, but they can still garden, you know, all this kind of stuff, right?
00:33:23So, welfare was just a girl thing. It was a female thing. And as a male, I just,
00:33:29I just, it never really crossed my mind. Oh, well, I can, you know, there's always welfare
00:33:34or whatever, right? So, because I didn't have access to, I don't know, free government money
00:33:40or whatever, right? And I had to get to work. And I was broke, because I was paying my own
00:33:46bills since I was 15. And I didn't have grandma throwing money at me. I had to keep my shit
00:33:52together. I couldn't wander off the path. I had to stay on the strict and narrow.
00:34:00That also meant I couldn't afford bad food.
00:34:05I couldn't go to McDonald's. I had to eat cheap. Eating cheap often means eating well.
00:34:14My friends would be out there getting a meal, and I'd have two bananas, right? So,
00:34:21your grandmother having all of this money was a complete catastrophe, because she
00:34:25handed out the money to drug addicts, which means she sabotaged the living shit out of her family.
00:34:34Here, drug addict, take some money. Oh, that's gonna go just great. That's straight up sabotage.
00:34:45And she knows that your father is a father.
00:34:50So, she's like, it's for you, right? What does she do? She's like, hey, you go live in the same
00:34:57room as a drug addict who's random and chaotic and God knows what, right?
00:35:04And watching porn with a kid in the room, bleh, right? So, she's like, I'm gonna pay for this drug
00:35:13addict to kind of be half locked up with his son,
00:35:22and he's not gonna have to worry about paying the bills, and he's not gonna have to worry about
00:35:25getting clean, and he's not gonna have to worry about living rough. I'll keep him comfortable.
00:35:33I won't have any standards for his behavior. I won't say, okay, I'll pay your bills, man,
00:35:39but you've got to do like weekly drug testing, and the moment you fail, you're out on your ass.
00:35:45And also, you've got to do work around the house. You've got to get a job.
00:35:49You've got to clean this hoarding shit up. You know, hey, I'll pay for therapy if that's what
00:35:54you need, but there's no standards here at all that I can tell. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
00:36:03You can certainly correct me, but your grandmother's money was a complete disaster,
00:36:10because that was the real drug. The real drug is giving free stuff to irresponsible people.
00:36:17No standards, no requirements. The real drug is the money.
00:36:23The illegal drugs are the effect. The cause is the money.
00:36:28Sorry for the long speech, but that's why your grandmother's money was like the worst thing in
00:36:34the world for your family. You guys would have been way better off if she had had any standards
00:36:42or requirements for all the free stuff. She was addicted, I assume, to
00:36:50I assume, to sabotaging her kids. When you shield people from consequences, you make them worse.
00:37:01I mean, look, it's good when this is the female impulse, right? The female impulse is to shield
00:37:05people from consequences, because babies can't learn by falling down the stairs,
00:37:12and toddlers can't learn by walking like tripping and falling into a fire.
00:37:17So, women are programmed to prevent consequences. This is why I was pointing out how all-female
00:37:24your environment was, right? So, women have an instinct to
00:37:31not have people suffer the consequences of their own bad choices, because women are designed
00:37:35for an endless cavalcade of babies and toddlers, right? They have a whole bunch of kids, and by
00:37:39the time they stop having kids, their kids have kids, and look at that, there's a new
00:37:43cavalcade of babies and toddlers, and that's how we evolved. For them to say,
00:37:49I'm not going to let you suffer the negative consequences of your own bad decisions, because
00:37:52you're three years old. But that instinct gets really pathological when you got druggies around.
00:38:01Well, I can't let them suffer the consequences of their own bad choices. Oh, and you know, that's
00:38:05the way they vote for the welfare state, the single moms, and oh, she didn't save her for
00:38:09her retirement. Let's give her Social Security, and oh, she had three kids by three different guys.
00:38:14Let's give her a lot of money. We can't let her suffer the consequences of her own bad choices.
00:38:17Oh, no, right? Because that's the female instinct, and I think it's great. There's no problem with
00:38:22that female instinct, except when it's combined with political power or with an income in this
00:38:29context, right? So, yeah, a complete catastrophe in my view. My view, right? Your family would
00:38:37have been infinitely better off if your grandmother had attached any requirements. But women generally
00:38:44have a tough time doing that, right? I mean, we all know this, right? That's why you need
00:38:49men around, right? You need men around so that women don't treat everyone like a toddler for
00:38:54their entire fucking lives. Yeah, and my mom is totally doing the same thing with my brother
00:39:01right now, like the exact same thing. Oh, she had three negative consequences, and it's nothing to do
00:39:06with love. It's just because the women feel kind of anxious and unhappy if people are suffering.
00:39:13And I get that. Again, babies and toddlers, yeah, you don't let the baby learn self-discipline
00:39:20by not feeding it, because the baby just dies, right? So, I get all of that, but it's got nothing
00:39:25to do with caring for others. I mean, outside of the baby and toddler context, it's got nothing to
00:39:30do with caring for others, right? You know, and do you understand this, like the moms are like,
00:39:37you know, wearing knee pads and elbow pads and helmets, and like, because the kid is, and it's
00:39:41like, nah, they'll fall. They'll be fine. They'll learn how to manage risk, and right, they're not going to die,
00:39:46right? So, anyway, we'll get to, was it your mom and your brother? Is that right? Yeah. Okay, do you want
00:39:56to start talking about a little bit, like, what happened with you and dating and teens? Because, I
00:40:01mean, there aren't exactly, and there's not a big overflow of quality women around, right? Or girls
00:40:06today. Yeah, I mean, so, I started drinking at age 14 with a friend of mine, going to parties,
00:40:17drinking, you know, by the bottle, basically. Okay, so now, I'm sorry to interrupt right after
00:40:25you've just started talking, but, okay, tell me, because you saw all the addiction around you, right?
00:40:32Yeah. And who was drinking in your environment? Your mom, right?
00:40:40Well, my mom had gotten sober close to, like, when I started being around her
00:40:46again. So, like, age three or four, she had been sober. But you saw a lot of addiction, right?
00:40:53I saw the consequences of. The only addiction I actually saw was, like, smoking, because everyone
00:41:00in the house, like, my father's house, my grandma's house. No, no, but you knew your father was a drug
00:41:05addict, right? No, I didn't learn this until later. He had hit it really well. Well, to a child, he had
00:41:12hit it really well. I don't know about to anyone else. This is all stuff he had told me before he
00:41:18passed when I was, like, 17. Okay. All right. So, you had no idea your dad was a drug addict?
00:41:25No, I knew my dad didn't work. My dad constantly complained about back pains from, like, a previous
00:41:33back injury because he had fallen off some scaffolding or something like that. And, you know,
00:41:39the victim story of the day he was supposed to go to court for that lawsuit for his disability,
00:41:45his dad's funeral was that day, so he had to go to his dad's funeral and couldn't reschedule that
00:41:51court date. So, anyway, one of those victim stories, which I barely believe now that there
00:41:56was nothing he could do. Oh, yeah, of course. Listen, I mean, people miss court all the time.
00:42:01And courts are kind of loath to just go around arresting people. And if you've got your father's
00:42:06funeral, you just say to your lawyer, tell the court it's my father's funeral, and we'll have
00:42:10to reschedule, and the court would reschedule, I'm sure. Yeah, so, anyway, that was the story that I
00:42:15was told as to why my dad couldn't work. Okay, so you weren't around, you were around, I guess,
00:42:20heavy smokers, but you didn't see people drink, and you didn't see people do drugs? No, I didn't.
00:42:27Okay, got it. That is true. Okay, so that makes a bit more sense then. Okay, so then your friend
00:42:32is like, let's drink alcohol. Yeah, hey, let's do this party. Yeah, if you can stay off names,
00:42:39that would be excellent. I'll make a note of that. No problem. Okay, so you say you're 14,
00:42:45and you're like, yeah, drinking sounds good. Now, so did you, what was your thinking around the
00:42:52drinking? Right? Somebody says, let's drink, and did any part of you say, you know, life
00:42:58is not that great, I'm not sure drinking will help? No, I didn't have that instinct or thought
00:43:04whatsoever. It was, hey, let's try. And you're laughing about all this stuff, right?
00:43:10Like, you're kind of inviting him into a comedy, when this is a pretty murderous tragedy and horror
00:43:15show, right? And I just, I really, really need you to stop doing that, if you don't mind.
00:43:22Because it's really, really weird. Like, ha ha ha, I started drinking, I didn't have a sense
00:43:27of self-preservation. Like, that's not funny. I mean, I'm not trying to be mean at all, right?
00:43:31And I have great sympathy. But you can't do this. It's funny shit. Like, I just can't have
00:43:38that conversation at that level. And I mean, no, I'm not trying to criticize you at all. I'm just
00:43:45saying, I can't do that. Because that's incredibly disrespectful to the suffering you experienced
00:43:54as a child, to laugh at it. And again, I'm not trying to be heavy here. I'm not criticizing.
00:44:02I'm just saying, I can't have that conversation in that weird way.
00:44:14It's not that you're doing anything wrong, of course. And I don't mean to imply anything like
00:44:18that. I just can't do that. Like, I can't laugh at your suffering as a kid.
00:44:27And I really don't know how to go through it.
00:44:33I've heard other calls. And I know, you know, it's a rule, but it's not like a rule. It's a rule.
00:44:40No, it's just, it's an empathy thing. I can't laugh at the brutal
00:44:45abuse and suffering of a child. I can't laugh at it. Like, I can't.
00:44:52Yeah, I will try to do better.
00:44:55Okay, so you said, I don't know how. I mean, you've known we're going to do this call for a
00:44:58while, right?
00:45:00Yeah.
00:45:01So, did you, and again, none of this is a criticism. I'm genuinely curious. Did you say
00:45:07to yourself, well, you know, I'm going to have a real habit to giggle about this stuff, right?
00:45:13So how am I not going to do that? Or are you on automatic pilot over the course of this
00:45:18conversation?
00:45:20I'm on, I'm disassociated when I'm going into these memories.
00:45:26Okay, so do you think that's helpful or unhelpful?
00:45:30I think it's unhelpful.
00:45:30To our conversation. I'm sorry?
00:45:33It's unhelpful.
00:45:35Okay, and again, it's not a criticism, but
00:45:37but why wouldn't you say I should try and stay connected while talking about this stuff?
00:45:42Because I got one shot with Steph and I don't want to waste time with all this dissociative
00:45:47giggle lofty stuff, right?
00:45:49And again, not a criticism. I'm just curious what your planning was for the call. Or are
00:45:52you aware that you're doing it? And you're certainly aware that I don't like and won't
00:45:57giggle at a child's brutal abuse.
00:46:02So, I mean, we've been talking for like 50 minutes, right? Almost.
00:46:08And I've had to sort of do the please don't giggle stuff a bunch of times. Well, I think
00:46:15twice, right?
00:46:16So I suppose, what's the plan for our conversation?
00:46:23Are you going to stay this detached and dissociated?
00:46:28Because then we should probably reschedule for a time when that's not going to happen.
00:46:34Because you're an experienced listener and you kind of know that I'm not going to support
00:46:40that, right?
00:46:41I mean, it would just be horrible for me to join you in giggling at your massive and horrendous
00:46:46abuse.
00:46:48So, is your plan...
00:46:51And there is a plan, right?
00:46:52I mean, you're here on time and you know that the call's coming.
00:46:57So, if your plan is to stay this dissociated, we should probably reschedule until you can
00:47:05make a commitment to not.
00:47:06I'm not saying you've got to sob the whole time we're talking, but not this.
00:47:11Not this.
00:47:14So, if you can make a commitment to stop doing this.
00:47:20In the call, great.
00:47:21We can continue.
00:47:22If you can't, then we reschedule to a time when you can, because I'm not going to spend
00:47:29the next hour wrangling you out of freak-ass comedy land, because none of this is funny
00:47:36at all.
00:47:41I think if I slow down, it will help.
00:47:45Okay.
00:47:46Because what I need is the emotional content.
00:47:48I don't...
00:47:48I mean, the facts are the usual grim parade of fucked-up stuff, but the emotional content
00:47:56is where you and I can have a conversation about this, not in this speedrun of sick
00:48:01comedy.
00:48:06And again, I'm not in any way critical, and I'm not trying to nag you or anything like
00:48:11that.
00:48:12I'm just telling you what I need in order for me to help you.
00:48:22I think I'm just frightened, Steph.
00:48:25I know.
00:48:26I know.
00:48:27Of these events, and I've told myself, I've been to therapy, I've sobbed, I've lived
00:48:38I've been to therapy, I've sobbed, I've listened to you.
00:48:45Then you should be able to, if the emotions are resolved, then you should, and this isn't
00:48:51again like some moral thing, right?
00:48:53But if the emotions are resolved, you should be able to talk about things.
00:48:57You know, I mean, you hear me talk about my childhood, and I'm not trying to hold myself
00:49:00up as some kind of ideal here, but you've heard of me talk about my childhood.
00:49:04I don't make it funny, but I'm able to talk about it with a relatively clear, in a relatively
00:49:10clear, direct fashion.
00:49:10Now, you know, I'm more than 20 years older than you, so there's that as well, right?
00:49:16That's important.
00:49:18But if you have resolved some of the emotions, then this shouldn't be the Gigglefest speedrun,
00:49:26right?
00:49:28Especially because you know, I really don't like that and won't participate in it.
00:49:32And I already reminded you once, and again, I know this sounds like, if I've told you
00:49:36what, I don't mean, I just, this is how detached you are from the narrative, right?
00:49:40And again, with sympathy, I understand why, but no, I'm still not going to participate
00:49:45in it that way.
00:49:47So, tell me more, you're frightened of what?
00:49:50I'm frightened that it's just too much, if that makes sense.
00:50:06I'm frightened of not being able to change.
00:50:10I know you say we're not rocks rolling down a hill.
00:50:15I feel that my hill is so bumpy.
00:50:19So steep that the connections in my brain are already so deep.
00:50:28I don't know how to get out of this perpetual chaos.
00:50:34Okay, but it's not, the problem is that you're not connected in your brain.
00:50:38The problem is the avoidance.
00:50:40So, I'm going to just spend a minute or two here, because I really need to frame this
00:50:45for you in a way.
00:50:47So, there's a general theory which says, well, if I experience too much suffering, I'm just
00:50:52forever broken, right?
00:50:54Like, I went through too much, and my brain is broken, and my soul has fled my body, and
00:50:59I'm an NPC of, you know, comedy, tragedy, or whatever, right?
00:51:04My particular view is, I mean, assuming you live, there's no such thing as irrecoverable
00:51:14trauma, as long as you don't inflict it on others, and especially children.
00:51:20And again, we all make mistakes, and do things that are kind of mean, or whatever, right?
00:51:25But if you don't inflict it on others, and especially children, and again, we all make
00:51:31mistakes, and do things that are kind of mean, or whatever, right?
00:51:34But I'm, you know, like a big thing, like a consistent thing, right?
00:51:39So, to me, feeling dwarfed by your trauma is giving it too much power.
00:51:50The trauma is just right if you learn the lessons, right?
00:51:58So, what is the trauma here for?
00:52:00Like, why does it exist?
00:52:01Why does it exist?
00:52:03Well, the trauma exists to warn us of danger, right?
00:52:09I still remember when my mom, we went camping with one of my mom's boyfriends, I think it
00:52:15was at a camper or something, and I remember he had a propane lamp, and I needed to move
00:52:22it because I was reading a book, and I picked up the propane lamp at the base, not at the
00:52:26handle, and it burned my forefinger and my thumb, and I remember putting it in flour,
00:52:33and then butter, to ease the pain, but it hurt.
00:52:36I also remember when I was a very little kid, maybe like four or so, going on a hike in
00:52:40Ireland with my father and my aunts, and there was a nettle, and somebody said, that's a
00:52:45nettle, and I was curious.
00:52:46So, I put my two fingers on the nettle, and you know, it stung, and it hurt, and all of
00:52:52that.
00:52:53Now, you say, oh, that's trauma.
00:52:54Well, I mean, to trauma, what is it?
00:52:56It's a negative experience.
00:52:57But the trauma exists to warn you of danger.
00:53:03Now, when you laugh at the trauma, it can't warn you.
00:53:11You know, it's like the dream you have where you're trying to warn everyone that there's
00:53:16a big wave coming, or the city's on fire, and everyone just laughs and thinks you're
00:53:20joking, right?
00:53:22Because you're trying to warn people, and they're laughing at you, so you can't save
00:53:25them.
00:53:30So, the trauma, it's not like some embedded skeleton in your brain that you can't possibly
00:53:37dislodge without destroying your mind.
00:53:40The trauma is the path to safety.
00:53:44The trauma is, oh, my God, did we ever experience some deep evil?
00:53:52As children, we experienced some deep evil.
00:54:00Now, once the trauma has taught you how to be safe, the trauma relaxes.
00:54:13But as long as you are still in danger, the trauma will not relax.
00:54:17The trauma will not leave you alone, because its sole purpose is to lead you to safety.
00:54:24And if you stay in danger, the trauma cannot relax.
00:54:28You cannot relax if you won't connect.
00:54:30See, people think, oh, if I connect with the trauma, I'm going to be sad and tragic and
00:54:35sorrowful and go crazy, or like this, just madness, madness and horror, and it's going
00:54:40to eat me alive.
00:54:40And it's like, no, no, the trauma is just there to lead you out of hell.
00:54:48And if you laugh at the trauma, then there's someone trying to lead you out of hell, and
00:54:56you're laughing at them and burrowing deeper.
00:54:58Well, if your trauma didn't care about you, it would leave you be.
00:55:03But your trauma keeps coming back, saying, there's a way out, there's a way out, there's
00:55:12a way out, there's a way out.
00:55:15And you laugh, which I understand.
00:55:20You know, you learned how to deal with your trauma in many different ways, and these are
00:55:25all survival mechanisms as a child.
00:55:27But when your father kicked you across the room, you were very clear about that.
00:55:36Do you remember what you said about that?
00:55:37What was his perspective on kicking you across the room?
00:55:41He thought it was hilarious.
00:55:43It was the funniest thing ever, right?
00:55:47Now, what are you doing with your trauma?
00:55:53It's the funniest thing ever.
00:55:56It's the same as your dad, right?
00:55:58You had to ally with your dad, because you were locked in hell with a
00:56:04porn and drug-addicted, half-deranged whatever, right?
00:56:12Psycho, whose entire existence was an assault on your brain.
00:56:20Oh yeah, there's ghosts, man.
00:56:21Oh, Bigfoot.
00:56:22Aliens.
00:56:24Aliens stole my Buick.
00:56:27Right?
00:56:27This is all a direct assault on your reality processing, a direct assault on your brain.
00:56:33Demonically possessed dad was trying to disassemble your brain to match his broken state.
00:56:42And he couldn't escape his trauma, because he laughed at yours.
00:56:48And I won't have you do the same thing, because I don't want you to end up like your dad.
00:56:53Your dad laughed at your trauma, laughed at his own, and I won't.
00:56:59Because, you know, we both know what happened to your dad.
00:57:02I'm not saying it's going to happen to you, but it's a pretty bad end, right?
00:57:09Yeah.
00:57:10So, you can't, you say, because, and the reason I'm saying all of this is what you said.
00:57:19It's you, you said.
00:57:21It's you, you said, I'm trying to catch you, right?
00:57:23But what you said was, I'm indifferent to my wife and child.
00:57:27Stay, go, or whatever, right?
00:57:30So, you can't be closer to people than you are to your younger self.
00:57:34He's the barrier, right?
00:57:36If you're distant from your younger self, who can you be close to?
00:57:40If you reject yourself, how can you be close to others?
00:57:45If you're unimportant to yourself, how can other people be important to you?
00:57:48If you have no loyalty and bond with your younger self, how can you have a loyalty and
00:57:52bond to your family, your current family?
00:57:58Now, I understand why you would have this dissociation, of course.
00:58:07Because there's no, like, you can't connect with your trauma, since your trauma is designed
00:58:14to protect you.
00:58:15You can't connect with your trauma as a child, because you cannot be protected.
00:58:21Right?
00:58:22If you'd woken up to how absolutely horrifying and unbearable your life was as a child, you
00:58:27probably would have jumped off a bridge.
00:58:30So, you, when everything around you is horror, you detach in order to survive.
00:58:36I mean, it's called dissociation, right?
00:58:37I mean, there's a few people being tortured, like, I floated above myself, like, it's a
00:58:41way to drive your soul out of your body.
00:58:43If you can't protect yourself, you might as well dissociate.
00:58:47You have to.
00:58:49If you can't stop the pain, turn off the pain.
00:58:53But turning off the pain turns off a whole bunch of other things.
00:58:57It's like that master switch in the basement of a house.
00:59:00There's no individual switches.
00:59:01Oh, I'll just turn off the microwave and the upstairs bathroom lights.
00:59:05One big power thing.
00:59:05I turn off my connection.
00:59:07I turn off my trauma.
00:59:08I turn off my horror, because I can't be protected.
00:59:14So, you go into hibernation.
00:59:16You freeze your heart, waiting for spring, right?
00:59:20But the spring is sympathy.
00:59:27So, why would you accept your trauma, which is designed to get you to safety, when it
00:59:34is absolutely impossible to get to safety?
00:59:37Because you're a child and you can't escape.
00:59:39And no one's coming to save you.
00:59:40No one's coming to help you.
00:59:41No one's coming to help you.
00:59:42Nobody seems to notice.
00:59:43Nobody seems to care.
00:59:44I mean, you went to school.
00:59:45You had friends, relatives.
00:59:46Nobody gave a shit.
00:59:47Nobody helped you out.
00:59:48Nobody said, my God, you can't have this boy in with a drug addict father in the same room.
00:59:55Like, nobody said anything like that.
00:59:58Everybody's just chiseling and lying and stealing and embezzling and smoking and
01:00:07throwing money at screwed up people in order to screw them up even more.
01:00:12So, I truly understand why you'd end up laughing at your trauma.
01:00:21But when you laugh at your trauma, you're saying, I can never be safe.
01:00:27I can never be safe.
01:00:30And that's why I can't participate in the laughing at trauma, because then I'm saying
01:00:36the trauma, like the violence wins, the evil wins, there's no safety, there's no security.
01:00:42And you have to be a child locked in with a crazy psycho addict for the next 50 years
01:00:51until the day you die.
01:00:52And I won't.
01:00:54Your trauma can lead you to safety, but you got to start respecting it and listening to it,
01:00:59because it's there to help.
01:01:03Does that make sense?
01:01:04Yeah, that makes sense.
01:01:11I'm having difficult, like, I'm kind of stunned, I suppose.
01:01:16I think I'm just feeling the feelings now.
01:01:19Okay, and what are you feeling?
01:01:26You said something about the absolute horrific, what I had gone through.
01:01:34Mm-hmm.
01:01:36And I appreciate that level of acknowledgement.
01:01:48And I think one of my problems is, I think there's very few people out there that
01:01:58can empathize with that heavy of a load.
01:02:04You know, I've seen therapists, and no one's ever said,
01:02:08you are a child locked in a room with a drug addict.
01:02:14Like, no one's ever hit that before.
01:02:17Now, again, I'm sorry to interrupt, and I'll keep this very brief.
01:02:22So it's not quite true that there are a few people who can sympathize with your load.
01:02:27The problem is, most people don't have philosophy.
01:02:31They don't have a commitment to truth.
01:02:33So they will follow your lead.
01:02:36So if you're laughing about it, they'll laugh about it.
01:02:39They don't have an independent way to evaluate what went on with you.
01:02:45So it's not that they just, well, I have to end up laughing,
01:02:49because nobody can carry the load.
01:02:50Because you laugh about it and turn it into a kind of comedy.
01:02:55And I'm not saying all of this, right?
01:02:56I mean, it wasn't all of it, right?
01:02:57But, you know, where it happens, right?
01:02:58And particularly when things get dark and you laugh.
01:03:02So most people don't have any standards by which they will communicate.
01:03:09They just follow other people's lead.
01:03:11Right?
01:03:12So if somebody's, you know, these typical stories, right?
01:03:16You know, hey, no really great stories ever started with, and I had a salad, right?
01:03:21So people are like, yeah, I started drinking on the, you know,
01:03:23and then this crazy stuff happened.
01:03:25And then we were fleeing from the cops.
01:03:27And then, you know, the car went into the lake.
01:03:29And, you know, like the people have all of these crazy stories
01:03:33that they are constantly inviting everyone else to laugh at, right?
01:03:38And you can see this in the sort of these dark stoner comedies.
01:03:42Like, yeah, isn't it really funny when you don't have a job or a future
01:03:44and you're an addict?
01:03:47Right?
01:03:48So it's not that.
01:03:50So I hear those kinds of stories.
01:03:52And I'm like, I'm like, well, how is this funny?
01:03:55I literally do that.
01:03:57This is why, this is why I stopped getting invited to parties.
01:04:00Thank God, right?
01:04:01When I was, because I'd be like, well, that's, wait, that's not funny.
01:04:04How is that funny?
01:04:06You wrecked a car, you put people in danger, you harmed your health.
01:04:12You know, like this guy I once knew,
01:04:16his big claim to fame was he fell asleep at a party holding a beer.
01:04:19Somebody tried to take the beer because it was tilting.
01:04:21And he woke up, hey, that's my beer.
01:04:23Right?
01:04:24And this was considered like, cool, you know?
01:04:26Look, he's just so focused on drinking.
01:04:30And I'm like, that's a sad story.
01:04:33Like, he's so desperate for a beer that he only wakes up if somebody tries to take his beer.
01:04:39Like, that's an addict.
01:04:41That's not funny.
01:04:43But if you point that out, everyone gets mad at you, right?
01:04:48Everyone's like, eh, you gotta know how to lighten up, man.
01:04:51You don't know how to have any fun.
01:04:53You know, these are cool stories.
01:04:56And it's like, no, they're sad stories.
01:04:57They're really sad stories.
01:05:00A cool story would be, yeah, I saw this woman screaming at her child,
01:05:03and I stepped in to help the child.
01:05:05That's a cool story.
01:05:06That's an edge case.
01:05:07That's dangerous stuff.
01:05:08That's exciting stuff.
01:05:12Not, I got so drunk, I threw up on a cop's shoes.
01:05:18That's not a cool story.
01:05:19I poisoned myself.
01:05:26So, it's not that people can't sympathize with you.
01:05:30It's just that most people would just follow your lead.
01:05:32And I'm not blaming you.
01:05:34It's just that, what do they know, right?
01:05:36They don't have any standard by which they'd say, oh, this is really sad.
01:05:40And they've got their own avoidances, right?
01:05:43So, if you have...
01:05:44This is the sad thing about life.
01:05:45If you have sympathy with yourself, a lot of people will have sympathy with you.
01:05:49If you laugh at yourself, people would just like, okay, I'll just laugh at it, right?
01:05:52They don't have any...
01:05:53They're programmed in a way by your approach to it, and they don't think of anything different.
01:05:58Does that make sense?
01:06:00It's not like the world is totally cold, and there's no sympathy.
01:06:02It's like, if you don't have sympathy for yourself, people would just follow that lead.
01:06:06Most people, if that makes sense.
01:06:10Yeah, that makes sense.
01:06:12And I think one thing I love about my wife is she has standards.
01:06:17And she knows about my past, and she's like, yeah, I don't think your mom should come live
01:06:24with us.
01:06:24Yeah, I don't think...
01:06:25You know, I'm sure if my dad was around, she'd be like that.
01:06:30When was your mom supposed to come live with you?
01:06:33It's just this idea being punted back and forth in my family.
01:06:39And sorry, how long have you listened to what I do?
01:06:43Since 2016 or so.
01:06:45All right.
01:06:45Look at that.
01:06:46Nice, cozy eight years.
01:06:47Okay.
01:06:48So tell me a little bit about your relationship with your mother.
01:06:54No, listen, it's almost like a growl that you got through your nose there.
01:07:03What's going on there?
01:07:05I've communicated to her how deeply hurt I was about her going to prison jail.
01:07:13What, the couple of weeks?
01:07:17Yeah.
01:07:18Well, that's one grain of sand on a whole fucking beach, isn't it?
01:07:23But sorry, go on.
01:07:24I'm interrupting you very rudely.
01:07:26My apologies.
01:07:26Sorry.
01:07:27Please go ahead with the rest of your...
01:07:29It's just I was surprised you stopped with that.
01:07:31But go on.
01:07:31And
01:07:45it's I didn't completely defoo, I kind of halfway.
01:07:51No, no, but you had a conversation.
01:07:53I'm sorry to interrupt you.
01:07:54You had a conversation with your mother about what happened to you as a kid.
01:07:58Yeah, you talked about her going to jail and what else?
01:08:03I think it was just focused on that.
01:08:06I think just getting on that, you know, she went into tears and hysterics, and I was like,
01:08:13this, this is not going to go anywhere.
01:08:17She did apologize.
01:08:17So you talked about your suffering, and she dissolved into self-pity and narcissistic,
01:08:23woe is me, right?
01:08:25Yeah, yeah.
01:08:26Okay.
01:08:27So nothing ever happened from that.
01:08:30And how long ago did you have that conversation?
01:08:35Six or so years ago.
01:08:37It's been a while.
01:08:39And you and none of this is a criticism, obviously.
01:08:42And I'm sorry to I don't want to sound like you're some sort of egg that's going to easily
01:08:45break.
01:08:46I just want to make when I'm asking questions.
01:08:48A lot of times it sounds accusatory, right?
01:08:51So you had one conversation with that, and your mother never brought it up again.
01:08:55And you never brought it up again.
01:08:58And then what happened with the relationship from there?
01:09:03I moved out a few years after that conversation.
01:09:08Oh, so you were living with your mother and into your 20s?
01:09:11Yeah, mid-20s.
01:09:13Late 20s.
01:09:14Okay.
01:09:15I was living with my mother, my brother.
01:09:17I was living with my mother, my brother, roommate in the same house.
01:09:24Perpetual chaos, you know?
01:09:27So is your mother still living off the carpal tunnel stuff?
01:09:31Or how does she pay her bills?
01:09:34You know, Social Security, carpal tunnel.
01:09:36My stepfather had a pension from the state job that he had.
01:09:41Oh, so she got money and carpal tunnel money from the company she'd stolen from for a decade.
01:09:49Oh, God.
01:09:51That's so corrupt.
01:09:52Anyway, okay.
01:09:53All right.
01:09:58And I had some health issues starting at age 20, like the severe chronic migraines that
01:10:07made it difficult to keep full-time employment.
01:10:12Oh, man, so much more is coming up.
01:10:14I'm sorry, this is in your early 20s?
01:10:17Yeah, I had these chronic, horrible migraines.
01:10:20We didn't talk much about what happened.
01:10:21And I'm sorry, this is my fault, not yours, because I went on a tangent.
01:10:24But, well, maybe not a tangent, hopefully not a tangent.
01:10:27But you started drinking at 14.
01:10:29And what happened with drinking and other stuff in your teenage years?
01:10:32So at age 16, I left my dad's house and went to go live with my mother.
01:10:46My brother introduced me to marijuana.
01:10:51So I started drinking and using marijuana at age 16.
01:10:58And my brother—
01:11:00Sorry, this is one of your half-brothers 10 years older, or was there something else?
01:11:04Yeah, this is my half-brother that's 10 years older, yeah.
01:11:10And then at age 17, he introduced me to ecstasy and ketamine.
01:11:20I went out to parties with him and started using harder drugs.
01:11:25And I was an addict myself from age 16 to age 30.
01:11:37I mean, off and on with different substances, but age...
01:11:41I just quit marijuana in 2022 as a condition of me and my wife getting married.
01:11:49She's like, you got to stop smoking weed.
01:11:52So I did, and I haven't looked back, but various experiences with various substances
01:12:01up until that point.
01:12:03When you talk about my grandmother's money being corruptive,
01:12:09when my grandmother passed away in 2007, my dad got her retirement 401k or whatever,
01:12:18and it was a lump sum.
01:12:21And he spent half of it on alcohol, drugs, women.
01:12:27Then he passes, and I get what's left of the money.
01:12:33It was about $60,000, and I gave—
01:12:41So, sorry, your dad burned through a couple of hundred thousand dollars
01:12:45before he killed himself?
01:12:47Probably about $20,000, $30,000, something like that, in a period of six months.
01:12:55And then it took me longer, like 10 years or so.
01:13:00I mean, part of that was spent on education, but I burned through another $60,000 or so,
01:13:07not working, doing drugs.
01:13:10I had a girlfriend that became my wife at the time, so this is my second marriage.
01:13:18And so, I just wanted to piggyback on that, my grandmother's money being corrosive,
01:13:30like it was from start to finish.
01:13:33My grandmother's money was corrosive.
01:13:37Right, okay.
01:13:38So, living with mom from age 16 up through, what got me out of there was, A, I got healthy.
01:13:49I had quit the harder substances, the harder drugs.
01:13:54I had stopped going to raves and parties.
01:13:58I got full-time employment.
01:14:03I did divorce my first wife.
01:14:06And it was fights with my brother, mainly.
01:14:13I just couldn't take his dysfunction, him abusing his kids, yelling at them.
01:14:20A lot of stuff parallels what I went through growing up.
01:14:24Sorry, this is the asshole who introduced you to marijuana and then harder drugs when
01:14:30you were in your mid-teens?
01:14:33Late teens.
01:14:34Late teens, so like 16, 17, yes.
01:14:37Well, 16 is mid.
01:14:39I mean, you're still a child, right?
01:14:40Okay, yeah.
01:14:42So, he handed over drugs and encouraged a child to take drugs.
01:14:50Yeah.
01:14:52Sorry, why is there a pause there?
01:14:57Feelings.
01:14:59And what are the feelings?
01:15:02Anger.
01:15:04Which I think is right, anger.
01:15:07He knew my parents' history.
01:15:12And yet, it's not like his life, he's a layabout, pretty much.
01:15:20A straight loser.
01:15:22So, what does he live on?
01:15:24Mom.
01:15:25He lives off mom.
01:15:27Oh, God.
01:15:28Okay.
01:15:30All right.
01:15:31I mean, to me, there's nothing bad enough that can happen to people who give drugs to kids.
01:15:41You know, like if you'd have said about this guy,
01:15:43oh yeah, no, he fell off a ladder and he's in chronic pain, I'd be like, good.
01:15:49Good, I hope it hurts.
01:15:50I hope it hurts more.
01:15:51I hope it gets worse.
01:15:55Excuse me.
01:15:56You know, my daughter is 16, right?
01:16:02My, sorry, my daughter is 15, which is, you know,
01:16:04a year shy of when this guy's getting you into drugs.
01:16:11Yeah, and he got many teenagers into drugs.
01:16:17Yeah, just an evil corrupting force.
01:16:28Sorry, I feel like I've gotten lost somewhere.
01:16:30No, no, I just wanted to find out what happened in your teens with the drinking.
01:16:35So, you spent, what, 14 years on drugs?
01:16:41Yeah, about there.
01:16:42I mean, I know you count it.
01:16:44So, yes, including the regular use of marijuana.
01:16:47Which is a drug.
01:16:49Yes.
01:16:49All right.
01:16:51And on the harder drugs, how long, 10?
01:16:5310 years?
01:16:54I'm sorry, I just wanted to make sure I get that roughly straight.
01:16:56It doesn't have to be perfect.
01:16:57Like, seven years or so on, you know, as far as like regular use.
01:17:04And then it would be like, you know, I'd go see a friend and he would have picked something up.
01:17:10So, I'd do like a couple of lines.
01:17:14And no work, right?
01:17:18I was going to college at the time.
01:17:22Through all this chaos, I did get a bachelor's degree and a master's degree
01:17:27through all this chaos.
01:17:29Psychology, of all things.
01:17:32Huh.
01:17:35Okay.
01:17:36And did you end up using it in any way?
01:17:39Yeah, I have done therapy with other people.
01:17:43I've run intensive outpatient groups.
01:17:46I've done intakes.
01:17:47Sorry, we don't have to get into details.
01:17:50Okay.
01:17:52Okay.
01:17:54So, I mean, you really have no excuse to be laughing into trauma, do you?
01:17:59No, it's the exact same thing I tell my clients.
01:18:01Okay, got it, got it.
01:18:03Tell me terrible, terrible things.
01:18:06Yeah.
01:18:07All right.
01:18:09So, but not a job, right?
01:18:11I say working, you say school.
01:18:13School is not working, right?
01:18:14Yeah, not a job.
01:18:16Yeah, there was a good 10 years there where I didn't work.
01:18:21I mean, I think I had one.
01:18:22What would you, I mean, just genuine curiosity, you know, like I have three shows today.
01:18:29I'll be working on the Peaceful Parenting book.
01:18:31I got a call with you.
01:18:31I got a call at one.
01:18:33I got a live stream at seven.
01:18:35And, you know, maybe I'm working a little too hard, but what do you do when you don't
01:18:41have a job?
01:18:42I assume you didn't have any big hobbies.
01:18:44What do you do with your day?
01:18:45Is it like video games and videos or what?
01:18:48Like, what do you do?
01:18:51I mean, I think, you know, me and my girlfriend who became my wife, you know, we'd go use
01:19:01some drugs, go hang out at the mall.
01:19:04We would go to like a party.
01:19:08We'd go to like over to a friend's house because like my friends didn't work either.
01:19:13So I had another friend that just so happened to come in some money because a relative of
01:19:18his died as well.
01:19:19So we would hang out all the time because both of us kind of felt like we had money
01:19:24and we could just not work and just kind of party.
01:19:32And my girlfriend at the time, she would work for her mom's business like some days too.
01:19:37So my girlfriend would work for most of the day.
01:19:42And then I would do like my school work.
01:19:46And a chaotic household does require a lot of work to keep clean, help nieces and nephews
01:19:55with homework, babysitting nieces and nephews, getting calls about my sister being in an
01:20:04argument with her boyfriend.
01:20:06So there's a lot of other chaotic stuff that keeps you busy.
01:20:11Right.
01:20:12Okay.
01:20:12Got it.
01:20:13Got it.
01:20:15Okay.
01:20:16So we were talking, there was some, sorry, there was a thread there that my brain will
01:20:25sort of scamper back and circle back to pick up shortly.
01:20:30But tell me about your relationship with your mother as you were moving through your
01:20:4620s and early 30s.
01:20:48A lot of me just not acknowledging how horrible she is.
01:20:55My stepfather would legit say, my mother is an evil woman, an evil, evil woman.
01:21:05He, when she didn't get her way, screamer, crier, cry bully, as you would say.
01:21:13Just completely unchained and then would fall apart into like depressions of just laying
01:21:23in bed or only playing like solitaire on the computer or these computer games, you know,
01:21:32and having dogs or pets that she would barely take care of.
01:21:37And just that, well, I've got to stay here because I'm not working.
01:21:45Yes, I have a bunch of money, but I don't have a job.
01:21:49So I'm smart enough not to commit to moving out, which in retrospect was actually a not
01:21:55intelligent decision.
01:21:56Sorry, she said, I didn't have a job, but what?
01:21:59So I'm smart enough not to commit to moving out, which in retrospect was actually a not
01:22:05intelligent decision.
01:22:05But what?
01:22:08I was talking about myself, about how I had money, but I didn't have income.
01:22:14So to me, you know, it's cheaper to stay here.
01:22:18And that's the sacrifice, you know, that's the price that I pay for staying there, right?
01:22:23And not taking that money and moving out.
01:22:26Oh, that was like the most expensive money of your life, right?
01:22:29It cost you like 10 years right away, right?
01:22:31Right.
01:22:32But good for you for getting the education, of course, right?
01:22:35Let's not forget that.
01:22:36I don't want to gloss over that.
01:22:38That's like half a decade, right?
01:22:41Yeah.
01:22:42So that's really saving my butt right now is me having my education actually.
01:22:51And why does your stepfather, what does he have complaints about with your mother that
01:22:57he says she's an evil woman?
01:22:59Like, what is his experience?
01:23:05Like, just there was no reasoning with her.
01:23:11Again, like that matriarchy, just my mom ruled.
01:23:20I'm trying to think of a specific example.
01:23:25You know, my stepfather would like to go to like the swap meet and bring things home from
01:23:30the swap meet, you know, little trinkets or whatever.
01:23:32But, you know, my stepfather made the money, you know, that was like his hobby, you know,
01:23:37woodworking, guitar, playing music.
01:23:40Sorry, what is a swap meet?
01:23:42A swap meet is...
01:23:43I mean, I think I get it, but tell me more.
01:23:48It's usually take place like a high school parking lot or something where like little
01:23:54vendors have like little tents or like pop-up where it's just like a plastic table or like
01:24:01a lunch table where they're just selling, you know, they could sell clothes, they could
01:24:04sell shoes, they could sell jewelry if they wanted to like you rent space, you know, usually
01:24:12they're on like Saturdays.
01:24:13So you just go to the swap meet if you want something cheap, you know, back in the day
01:24:17when like bootleg DVDs were like a thing, you could go to the swap meet and just buy
01:24:22bootleg DVDs of whatever movies.
01:24:28Okay, got it, got it.
01:24:30And how long were they married for again?
01:24:3310 years.
01:24:34So they were married when I, yeah, about when I was age 10, they got married till I was
01:24:40about 20 when he passed.
01:24:46What did he die of?
01:24:47Cancer related to Hep C related to his intravenous drug use when he was younger.
01:25:01Okay, got it.
01:25:03Got it, got it, got it.
01:25:04All right, thank you.
01:25:07So you lived with your mom until what age?
01:25:1330, I think 30, yeah, 30.
01:25:16Okay, and you had at one point six or seven years ago, you had one conversation with her
01:25:21where she manipulated you into silence by all of this hysterical self-pity, right?
01:25:28Right.
01:25:29There's no genuine emotions there, right?
01:25:33I mean, sorry, I'm saying this like it's self-evident, right?
01:25:37But all of these tears and like, it's just, it's a mechanical form of manipulation.
01:25:41It's not any real emotion, right?
01:25:43I mean, this is why actors are considered so disreputable is that they're really good
01:25:47at faking emotions, but faking emotions comes from manipulating the shit out of children
01:25:51usually.
01:25:56Oh, he's such a good actor.
01:25:57It's like, yeah, he inherited the child abuse genes of bottomless manipulation by faking
01:26:01emotion.
01:26:06So she didn't have any genuine sorrow.
01:26:08She just like, oh, I'm going to have to try this strategy because looks like some truth
01:26:12has come in my way.
01:26:13Oh, good.
01:26:13I've chased it away and it continues to be chased away six to seven years later.
01:26:22Yeah, there's absolutely no emotional
01:26:27content.
01:26:28I don't know if that's the right word.
01:26:29But the truth is drowned in female tears a lot of times and male aggression and all of
01:26:37that.
01:26:37But so what's the status of your relationship with her now?
01:26:43I'd say it's a emotional.
01:26:47There's no emotional.
01:26:49It's contextual in that we mainly communicate through text.
01:26:58The occasional call my eldest sister is encouraging all of us siblings to contact mom once a week
01:27:06because she's starting to have early dementia signs.
01:27:14And so just checking on her, making sure she's taking her medications.
01:27:19Sorry, I'm just a little weird.
01:27:21As soon as we start talking about your mom, we go back into dissociation land.
01:27:27And I'll tell you why I think that I could be wrong.
01:27:29Of course, I'll tell you why I think that.
01:27:30So you said with regards to your mother, there's no real emotion, right?
01:27:35Mm hmm.
01:27:35As opposed to which of your relationships?
01:27:40What do you say with your wife and your daughter?
01:27:41There's no particular bond.
01:27:45Your younger self, you have no emotional connection to.
01:27:48Like you say, well, I don't have much of emotional connection with my mother compared to what?
01:28:03Damn, that hits hard stuff.
01:28:04Did you notice that at all?
01:28:06I mean, the whole first part of your email to me is like,
01:28:09I don't have any emotional connection with my family.
01:28:12I could take them or leave them.
01:28:14And then you say, well, but my mother, you know,
01:28:16there's no real emotional connection there.
01:28:17And like, yes, I know.
01:28:19But we just had to give you like 10 minutes speech on no emotional connection with your
01:28:25younger self, right?
01:28:28You know, when I wrote that and when you read it back to me,
01:28:32I don't translate that.
01:28:35I could take them or leave them as no emotional connection.
01:28:39As sad as that is.
01:28:43So you don't have emotional connection to you saying you have no emotional connection?
01:28:47Well, of course you don't, right?
01:28:53Right.
01:28:53If you're indifferent to people being there or not being there,
01:28:55there's a lack of emotional connection.
01:28:57Right.
01:28:57If I have a prized book, right?
01:29:01So I had many years ago, I had, I may still have it somewhere,
01:29:07a first print of The Fountainhead, right?
01:29:10I'm very prized.
01:29:11Now, if that got stolen, I'd be really upset, right?
01:29:16One of the big influential book in me and for me and all that, right?
01:29:20And so I have an emotional attachment to that book.
01:29:24If it was, you know, some places you go, they have like, you know,
01:29:27take a book, leave a book kind of thing.
01:29:29And I just pick up some book and I maybe at some point I'll get around to reading it.
01:29:33If someone steals that, I don't have an emotional connection.
01:29:35I, you know, may be mildly annoyed, but there's nothing, nothing big there, right?
01:29:43People die every day, right?
01:29:46Tens of thousands of people die around the world every day.
01:29:49It doesn't break my heart.
01:29:50I don't even know them.
01:29:50Someone close to me dies.
01:29:52That's a big deal, right?
01:30:01Yeah, and sorry, you say, yeah, like this is slightly debatable and, you know,
01:30:08we can debate it, I guess, but it seems kind of axiomatic that if you go,
01:30:12if you don't care whether people are there or not, you don't have a bond.
01:30:15You know, like these rabbits, like the rabbits are all feeding in the field.
01:30:19Some hawk comes and takes the rabbit.
01:30:21They all just look up, shrug, and go back to eating.
01:30:24Whereas if a baby elephant dies, the mother grieves for six months.
01:30:33Yeah, and I would be sad if my wife and child left.
01:30:39Yeah, and I would be sad if my wife and child left.
01:30:45I would absolutely be sad.
01:30:49All right, I'll have to go back to your message because I sure as heck
01:30:53don't want to get this part wrong.
01:30:55So let me just go back to your message.
01:30:58And I'm not trying to catch you out or, you know, well, you said this.
01:31:00I'm just, I just want to make sure if I have an inaccurate understanding, right?
01:31:06However, I will say you are still right.
01:31:09And the message still says true, because in my mind, I'm like,
01:31:14okay, if she does leave and take the kid, I will just go back to my addictions
01:31:21and disassociate.
01:31:23And in that, I will be okay.
01:31:28Now, do you know another reason?
01:31:30So, nine month old child together, overall feeling of being unattached from my wife
01:31:36and child.
01:31:36I mean, I love them.
01:31:37I also feel like I could take them or leave them.
01:31:45Right.
01:31:46And also, you said the child, not my child, just now.
01:31:52Take the kid, take the child, not my child, my daughter, my son.
01:31:56Yeah, I've.
01:31:57Yeah, I also feel like I could take them or leave them.
01:32:00Overall feeling of being unattached from my wife and child.
01:32:05Yeah, okay.
01:32:06I didn't have that wrong.
01:32:07So what are you doing?
01:32:08Like, why are you, why are we changing stories here?
01:32:16Because you're saying no emotional attachment, and I know I would be sad if they left.
01:32:23I know I would be sad if they left.
01:32:27All right.
01:32:28So.
01:32:31So this is quibbling, right?
01:32:34Okay.
01:32:35And the quibbling is you say, I don't have any real emotional attachment.
01:32:39And then I say, well, you have no emotional attachment.
01:32:41You're like, well, I have some.
01:32:42Well, of course you have some.
01:32:47But you're indifferent as to you could take them or leave them.
01:32:49They're here and they're not here.
01:32:50And there's not a huge difference in your heart.
01:32:52Now, just when I saying, do you have absolutely zero emotional, like zero, like the way that
01:32:58somebody in India dies, I don't even know them.
01:33:00Of course, I'm not saying that, but that's quibbling.
01:33:07Right.
01:33:07So I say no emotional attachment.
01:33:09You say, well, it's not none.
01:33:10And it's like, okay, so let's say it's 10% or 20%.
01:33:16So you're quibbling at the none, right?
01:33:18And saying, well, that's not technically accurate.
01:33:20It's like, well, of course, it's not technically accurate.
01:33:23How do we get technically accurate in the percentage of attachment?
01:33:27How many decimal places do we need to go to for it to be technically accurate?
01:33:38And I guarantee you, this was a habit of your mother's, right?
01:33:43So this is the female habit, right?
01:33:44And I'm not saying that you're female, obviously, right?
01:33:47But the female habit is you make a generalization and they say, well, it's not totally accurate.
01:33:55Women are shorter than men.
01:33:56I know a tall woman.
01:33:58Women tend not to go into STEM.
01:34:00I know a woman who went into STEM.
01:34:03So I'm making a generalized statement based upon what you said about a lack of attachment
01:34:09to your wife and child.
01:34:11And you're saying, well, it's not zero.
01:34:13And it's like, who cares?
01:34:15Of course, it's not zero.
01:34:17But it's a lack of attachment.
01:34:21I don't even know what zero would mean.
01:34:23Like, what does that even mean?
01:34:24You married a woman.
01:34:26You have a child with her.
01:34:27You've spent nine months with your child.
01:34:29And of course, I mean, you'd notice if they were gone, right?
01:34:34Of course, you'd have some emotions about them leaving.
01:34:37But you said, I can take them or leave them.
01:34:39You know, I can just go back into doing drugs.
01:34:43Yeah, and at least I won't have someone looking over my shoulder when I'm looking at porn.
01:34:47Or something, right?
01:34:49Right.
01:34:50So this is an annoying female defense.
01:34:57And again, men do it sometimes, too, I guess, as we can say.
01:34:59But generally, the habit comes from women.
01:35:01That they make a general statement.
01:35:02And then you take them on that general statement.
01:35:04And then they say, well, it's not a perfectly accurate general statement.
01:35:10And, well, of course.
01:35:13You know, if you say IQ is related to success, you say, well,
01:35:16I know high IQ people who aren't successful.
01:35:18It's like, yeah, I mean, it's just a way.
01:35:22It's a way of blocking the progress of the conversation.
01:35:25Because it's going somewhere you don't want it to go.
01:35:28Or to be more accurate, we're talking about you and your mom.
01:35:33And your mother does not want this line of conversation pursued.
01:35:37And so she's throwing up this, in your mind, right?
01:35:40She's throwing up these blocks to the conversation.
01:35:43So that we end up discussing what percentage of attachment you have.
01:35:45Rather than looking at what's going on with you and your mom.
01:35:48Does that make sense?
01:35:48Like, this is just your mom stepping in to block the conversation.
01:35:52Because she doesn't want it to go where it's going to go.
01:35:56And you don't either, to some degree, right?
01:36:01Yeah.
01:36:01I mean, that's a difficult thing to admit.
01:36:03That sucks.
01:36:05I mean, that's horrible.
01:36:06It's tragic.
01:36:07Sorry, what is?
01:36:09Me being not attached to my family.
01:36:12I mean, that's absolutely horrible.
01:36:13No, Judy, admit it.
01:36:15Right at the beginning of your email.
01:36:20That's not the problem.
01:36:22The problem is not your lack of attachment to your family.
01:36:25The problem is, we're starting to talk about you and your mom.
01:36:28And you start quibbling about inconsequentialities.
01:36:30Because you don't want this part of the conversation to go forward.
01:36:35Or rather, it's negative to your mom.
01:36:38And her interests.
01:36:40So you start quibbling with me.
01:36:42To annoy me.
01:36:43So to distract me from what's going on with your mom.
01:36:49I mean, do you follow what I'm saying?
01:36:51I'm not saying do you agree with it at all.
01:36:52But do you sort of follow the reasoning?
01:36:54Yeah, I do.
01:36:54I do follow the reasoning.
01:36:55You're now quibbling about something.
01:36:57You said, I can take him or leave him.
01:36:59And I say, well, there's no attachment.
01:37:00You say, well, it's not zero.
01:37:01Like, we get into this nonsense, right?
01:37:10And, you know, it's like going to the doctor.
01:37:11He says, you got a big, big tumor.
01:37:14And you're saying, well, I'm not an entire tumor.
01:37:16I'm not, my whole body's not a tumor.
01:37:18It's like, what the hell does that mean?
01:37:21Can we deal with the tumor?
01:37:25Now, if you don't want to talk about your mother, it's your call, man.
01:37:29I'm here to serve.
01:37:30If you don't want to talk about your mother.
01:37:35But every time you dissociate the most, you're talking about your mom.
01:37:40Oh, wow.
01:37:41That's okay.
01:37:48I always thought my dad was the bigger issue.
01:37:52Your dad's dead and has been for 14 years, 13 years, 15 plus, mid 30s, right?
01:37:59And died when you were, he killed himself when you were 19, right?
01:38:02And your dad is obvious.
01:38:05Your dad is obviously screwed up.
01:38:07And the danger is real, right?
01:38:10And vivid.
01:38:13But you are unprotected with your mother.
01:38:17Because you are neither honest with her.
01:38:20She has not apologized and made restitution.
01:38:22And you're still in contact with her.
01:38:25Which means you're still enslaved to her preferences, which is called dissociation.
01:38:32Dissociation is when we're hypnotized by somebody else's needs,
01:38:35because we're in a state of danger.
01:38:40All that schooling and psychology and no one ever hit that.
01:38:46Well, no, but I mean, I'm a moralist, right?
01:38:48So I'm looking at the moral stuff.
01:38:53Right?
01:38:53So your father, your stepfather referred to your mother as stone evil, right?
01:38:58Your mother is, as far as I can understand it, a criminal.
01:39:02And your mother is
01:39:04exploitive, and she won't take responsibility for the immorality that she enacted and enabled.
01:39:16She abandoned you to be locked into a room with a psycho drug addict.
01:39:22Right?
01:39:27She would say something else.
01:39:29Okay, good.
01:39:30Let's talk to her.
01:39:31Okay, so let's, you pretend to be her, because I think I need to meet this chick.
01:39:35So you pretend to be her.
01:39:37And I'd say, Mom, you know, we've really, you know, we had this one conversation like,
01:39:41I don't know, six or seven years ago about my childhood and how messed up it was.
01:39:45And I mean, we got to revisit this because, you know,
01:39:48I've got some severe problems in my marriage and my capacity to pair bond.
01:39:52And like, this is, you know, it was really, really messed up.
01:39:56So yeah, let's sit down and have a talk about it.
01:40:02Well, what do you want from me?
01:40:04I got sober soon after you were born.
01:40:08I'm sorry, I just told you what I want from you.
01:40:11And then your first question is, what do you want from me?
01:40:14I told you, I want to sit down and talk about my childhood.
01:40:17So when I say, I want to sit down, you know, it's like the waiter comes and you say,
01:40:21I want a burger.
01:40:22And he says, well, what do you want?
01:40:23It's like, I just told you, I want a burger.
01:40:25So I'm not sure why you'd say that.
01:40:27But the fact that you got sober, okay, that's fine.
01:40:30But you know that dad was a drug addict.
01:40:34I mean, you knew that before.
01:40:36A drug addict and a drug dealer, you knew that before
01:40:41you married him and had a child with him, right?
01:40:46So I need to just need you to, I just need to sort of understand
01:40:50what was going on and how, I mean, I ended up locked in the room with this,
01:40:54half locked in the room.
01:40:55I couldn't really leave, right?
01:40:57I was locked in the room with a guy who smoked two and a half packs a day.
01:41:01That has messed up my health.
01:41:03He was half insane, a drug addict and drug dealer, you know,
01:41:08watching pornography with a kid in the room.
01:41:11I mean, it was really messed up.
01:41:12And where were you?
01:41:14Why wasn't I taken out of that situation?
01:41:19Why didn't you ever ask me how it was going with the guy you couldn't stand to live with
01:41:23that I was locked in a room with?
01:41:25You couldn't stand to live with him.
01:41:27And you walked away for years, me being locked in a room with a guy
01:41:33you couldn't even stand to be in the same house with.
01:41:37Like, what happened?
01:41:44Well, in your early childhood, you know, we sent you over to your grandmother
01:41:50because I had to go to rehab again.
01:41:54Yeah, but not for years.
01:41:55You don't go to rehab for years.
01:41:59So rehab is not an answer.
01:42:00Rehab is, what, a month or two?
01:42:02So no.
01:42:03Let's try that one again.
01:42:04But, you know, please, just I'm begging you, tell me the truth.
01:42:06Like, don't insult us both with this nonsense, right?
01:42:09Just tell me the truth.
01:42:10That's all I'm asking, right?
01:42:11Just tell me the truth.
01:42:13But don't give me these silly excuses which don't make any sense, right?
01:42:16Is that okay?
01:42:16I think my mom would just start crying at that point.
01:42:20Okay.
01:42:20So then I say, okay, that's fine.
01:42:21You can take a breath, take a moment.
01:42:24But, you know, I do need you to actually focus on me and listen to me, right?
01:42:29So, you know, I just say, you know, a couple of deep breaths, get a glass of water.
01:42:33You might need some rehydration with all of these crocodile tears.
01:42:36No, I wouldn't say that.
01:42:37It'd be a bit inflammatory.
01:42:38Fake tears are costly on the salt system.
01:42:40So I'd say, okay, a couple of deep breaths.
01:42:43All right, so you, let's continue, right?
01:42:46Because I'm the one who's upset, right?
01:42:48So if I'm upset and you start crying, you're, it's selfish, right?
01:42:52You're making it all about you.
01:42:55Now, the reason that I would say, okay, yeah, have your tears and let's get back to the
01:42:59conversation is what would happen next if I, if I did that as you.
01:43:04She would most likely just shut down.
01:43:07She wouldn't take the deep breaths.
01:43:10Become inconsolable.
01:43:13Really.
01:43:14Okay.
01:43:15Then I would say, so I'm suffering, and you're only focused on your own suffering.
01:43:19You know, I'd literally would snap my fingers in front of her face, like, come on, come
01:43:23back, come back.
01:43:23It's not about you.
01:43:24This is about me.
01:43:25This is about me.
01:43:25I'm the one who's upset.
01:43:26I'm the one who's complaining.
01:43:28I'm the one who's making you feel bad.
01:43:30I'm the one who's making you feel bad.
01:43:31Come back.
01:43:32Come back.
01:43:33It's not about you.
01:43:34It's about me.
01:43:35It's about me.
01:43:36Come on.
01:43:37Focus on me.
01:43:38Come on.
01:43:39I'm up.
01:43:40I'm up here.
01:43:41Up here.
01:43:42Stop falling into yourself.
01:43:43It's about me.
01:43:44Not about you."
01:43:45And I would just keep doing that.
01:43:46And then what would happen?
01:43:53She'd probably say, oh, well, I have to go walk the dogs.
01:43:57I'd say, no, no, I need you to stay here and talk to me.
01:44:01Dogs can wait.
01:44:02Dogs can wait.
01:44:03So just stay here.
01:44:05Take a deep breath, and I'll continue, right?
01:44:10And then what?
01:44:13I think it's just more and more excuses to not come.
01:44:21It's more and more excuses.
01:44:22Okay, and you just broke a record, right?
01:44:24No, I need you to stay with me.
01:44:26Come on.
01:44:27I'm right here.
01:44:28Take a deep breath.
01:44:29I need you to come back to the conversation, right?
01:44:33I mean, if I'm supposed to survive dad for years, you can survive a half-hour conversation,
01:44:40right?
01:44:41Because you abandoned me to dad for years, which means clearly you think that kids can
01:44:44handle being locked up with a psycho drug addict for years.
01:44:48So if you think that kids are that tough and that strong, surely you can handle a conversation
01:44:53for half an hour, right?
01:44:54Because your premise is people are strong.
01:44:56You treated me as if I was like, I don't know, bulletproof or something.
01:45:00And so, you know, since you believe that people are so strong and so tough that I didn't need
01:45:05to be taken care of as a kid and I could be abandoned to a chain-smoking psycho, then
01:45:10you can, you know, you accept that people are strong.
01:45:13I was strong as a kid.
01:45:14And if I could handle this at the age of eight, you can handle 20 minutes, a half-hour of
01:45:17a challenging conversation now that you're an adult, or you've been an adult for a while,
01:45:22I guess.
01:45:23But yeah, okay.
01:45:24So deep breath.
01:45:26And then what?
01:45:33Well, I had your brother and your sister that I was helping out too, and I was in a one-bedroom
01:45:42apartment.
01:45:43I had to rent out a room to make rent.
01:45:48There was really, really no place for you.
01:45:52What do you mean there was no place for me?
01:45:54Did you ask?
01:45:56Did you say, hey, you know, maybe you can just come sleep on a couch or we can get some,
01:46:00a little air mattress or, you know, from one of these swap meets and, you know, we'll find
01:46:05a place.
01:46:06Because, you know, did you ever ask me what I wanted?
01:46:08Did you ever?
01:46:09I don't remember you ever saying, how's it going with your dad?
01:46:12Or this is a difficult situation.
01:46:13What would you prefer?
01:46:14What would you like?
01:46:15What would be best for you?
01:46:16I don't remember you doing a goddamn thing to ask me what I wanted.
01:46:21Because if you had, I'd have said, get me out of this six-by-twelve insane asylum, right?
01:46:28So you didn't ask me.
01:46:31You never inquired as to how I was doing or what I needed.
01:46:35Why not?
01:46:36Well, I hated having you over there.
01:46:40I knew how bad it was.
01:46:43Your grandmother, you know, she had the guardianship over you.
01:46:47She wouldn't let me do anything.
01:46:49What do you mean she wouldn't let you do anything?
01:46:52Mom, you sued a company you stole from.
01:46:55Are you saying you couldn't contact a lawyer to try and get some custody with me?
01:47:00Wouldn't it be the easiest thing in the world to come and take some photographs of the room
01:47:05I was living in and get custody?
01:47:08What do you mean you couldn't do anything?
01:47:10You sued someone you stole from and you're still living off that money.
01:47:14So you know how to work the legal system.
01:47:16What are you talking about?
01:47:18Now you're all rubberbones and helpless?
01:47:23You think a court would say, yeah, no, that kid living with the chain-smoking drug addict
01:47:28who's showing him or watching porn, yeah, that's great.
01:47:31Yeah, that's totally fit.
01:47:33Totally fine.
01:47:35Of course a court would have helped.
01:47:39Or even just give me some relief and have me over more.
01:47:43Or at least just ask me how I'm doing.
01:47:47Show some care.
01:47:49Show that I matter.
01:47:52Show that you think of me.
01:47:55Which you didn't do.
01:47:57Well, when I would ask how you're doing, you would just be silent, or you just wanted to
01:48:06play video games.
01:48:08You know, me and your stepdad took you out, you know, we went to amusement parks, we went
01:48:14to the movies.
01:48:16Sorry, mom, are you trying to tell me that it's my fault?
01:48:22That you asked me once or twice, I didn't say much, and therefore it's my fault?
01:48:29Like whose fault is it to get information out of a child?
01:48:32Whose responsibility is it to get information out of a child?
01:48:36And you shouldn't even have had to ask.
01:48:39Because you already told me, you just told me if you remember, you told me I knew how
01:48:44bad it was for you.
01:48:46And then you're saying, well, you never told me, right?
01:48:48You understand those two things are completely contradictory, right?
01:48:50They can't both be true.
01:48:53If you say, I knew how bad it was for you, then you can't also say, well, I didn't know
01:48:57because you didn't tell me.
01:48:58So which is it?
01:49:01Because one of those is a lie.
01:49:10I knew it was bad, and I knew not to ask questions.
01:49:17I know...
01:49:18Okay, so hang on, so you just lied to me.
01:49:22Because you said you did ask questions, but I didn't answer.
01:49:25And now you say, I knew not to ask questions.
01:49:27So mom, I need you to not lie to me, okay?
01:49:30And I also need you to apologize to lying for me.
01:49:33You just lied to me.
01:49:36And put the blame on me for not telling you.
01:49:40And then I need you to apologize for that, because that's bad behavior.
01:49:42It's bad to lie to someone and blame them for the abuse they suffered as a child, right?
01:49:47When you're the mother, you're in charge.
01:49:49So you do recognize that you lied to me, right?
01:49:53Just now.
01:49:54About something really important.
01:49:58You know how your dad could get.
01:50:00I didn't want to make it worse for you.
01:50:02Okay, back up.
01:50:04Did you hear what I said?
01:50:05What did I just want?
01:50:10There's no way my mom would apologize.
01:50:13What would she say?
01:50:19I'm not sorry for that.
01:50:26I feel I have the right reasons, and I cleaned up the way that I did.
01:50:31Sorry, I don't know, but the clean up stuff is not what I was talking about.
01:50:35Okay, do you remember, like, literally 10, 15 seconds ago, I told you what you lied about.
01:50:40Do you remember what I said?
01:50:43No, give it to me again.
01:50:48Sorry, do you not remember because you weren't listening?
01:50:52Because if you're not listening, hey, look, if you don't want to have the conversation,
01:50:54I mean, I understand it's difficult.
01:50:56If you're just not going to listen to me, I'm not going to pretend to have a conversation.
01:50:59You know, like if you put your hands in your ears like a toddler and said, la la la la,
01:51:02I'm not listening, then I wouldn't have the conversation.
01:51:06So if you're not listening, that's, you know, just tell me, tell me, so you say, I have
01:51:11no intention of listening to you.
01:51:12I'm just going to lie and make things up and blame you.
01:51:16And that's fine if you're going to tell me that, because I don't know how it's possible
01:51:20that I just said something 10 seconds ago, and you have no idea what I said.
01:51:26No, I'm not going to listen to this.
01:51:31We should be past this.
01:51:32That was a long time ago.
01:51:34Well, your carpal tunnel was a long time ago.
01:51:37You're still taking the money.
01:51:39So I don't know about that.
01:51:41So okay, so you're saying to me that you're not going to listen?
01:51:46Yeah, if you're going to blame me for things and say that things are my fault, or I should
01:51:52have done this, or I should have done that.
01:51:54I'm sorry, when it comes to the parent and the child, do you think the parent is more
01:51:58responsible or is the child more responsible?
01:52:01I mean, just out of curiosity, we don't have to go in depth in my circumstance, but just,
01:52:06you know, philosophically in general, do you think that I at the age of six was more responsible
01:52:12than you were at the age of 36?
01:52:15It's just in general, like who is responsible for, did I have a lot of choice and agency
01:52:22at the age of six?
01:52:25Is that your theory?
01:52:28Yeah, she'd shut it down.
01:52:32Okay, what would you say?
01:52:38I'm not doing this, you know, with tears and everything, of course, but I'm not doing this.
01:52:44I did the best I could.
01:52:47What more can you want from me?
01:52:49Look, you're stepdad.
01:52:50Hang on, hang on.
01:52:51Do you feel like you're doing the best you possibly can in this conversation?
01:52:59Like you're lying to me, you're blaming me, you won't take any responsibility, you keep
01:53:02dissolving into tears of self-pity, you won't listen to me.
01:53:05Like do you feel, sorry to make you laugh, because it's not funny, but it is a little
01:53:08funny to me in a way.
01:53:10Do you feel like you're doing the very best you can in this conversation when I'm pleading
01:53:15for some facts about my childhood, and you're lying to me and blaming me?
01:53:26Could you do better?
01:53:27Could you actually listen and show some sympathy?
01:53:32Take some responsibility.
01:53:39I don't know how to continue in the roleplay with that stuff.
01:53:42Well, I can tell you what we have.
01:53:44Okay.
01:53:45She would explode in rage.
01:53:47Yeah.
01:53:48Right?
01:53:49Isn't that the powder keg that's at the bottom of all of this bullshit?
01:53:53Yeah.
01:53:54Right?
01:53:55She would just explode in rage.
01:53:57Again, I don't want to tell you, of course, that I know for certain, but this personality
01:54:02structure I've seen about a million times before, and if you are patient and persistent
01:54:07and not abusive, they will just explode in rage.
01:54:13Because you hit the hot wire of their conscience, which they can't stand.
01:54:26So and even if she didn't, if she just kept denying, right, and she got up to walk the
01:54:31dogs, I'd say, okay, listen, obviously no problem.
01:54:35Then we'll pick this up the next time we talk.
01:54:38And we will continue to pick this up the next time we talk until you either talk to
01:54:41me or I just stop talking to you.
01:54:45Like just so you know, I'm having this conversation with you and you can go walk the dogs and
01:54:50then when you come back, we'll pick up the conversation and you can storm out of the
01:54:54house and you can not call me for a week.
01:54:56And then when you text me, I'll start this conversation up again.
01:55:00Like the only way you can escape this conversation is to never talk to me again, because I'm
01:55:03having this conversation with you if we're in contact and the only way to not have this
01:55:08conversation is to avoid all contact with me because I deserve the truth and I deserve
01:55:12some respect and I certainly deserve some honesty and I deserve not to be manipulated
01:55:17and I deserve to have you focus on my feelings because you did a lot of harm as a parent.
01:55:23So this conversation is going to happen or no conversations are going to happen, just
01:55:27so you're aware.
01:55:29Are you threatening me?
01:55:32No, I'm just telling you the consequences.
01:55:34I'm going to have this conversation or I'm not going to have a conversation.
01:55:40No hate, no.
01:55:41I'm just telling you that's a fact.
01:55:44And then she'd, you know, storm out and then she'd try pretending nothing happened and
01:55:47you just broken record.
01:55:48Okay, great.
01:55:49Now we're back in conversation, let's talk more about my childhood and then she'd storm
01:55:52out again and then she texts you like nothing happened and, you know, you just broken record,
01:55:56right?
01:55:57Okay, great.
01:55:58Let's pick up this conversation, all right?
01:56:11And then what?
01:56:13Would she rather stop talking to you than have an honest conversation about you're talented?
01:56:25Probably stop talking to me.
01:56:27So you don't matter to her.
01:56:30And that's the price of being in contact with your mother, is her coldness infects
01:56:33every relationship you pretend to have.
01:56:37Her selfishness, her coldness, her indifference to the suffering of others, infects you.
01:56:44And kills your bond with your wife and child.
01:56:50I would have a lot of words about my mother, but coldness wouldn't be it, but in retrospect...
01:56:56Oh no, she's cold, man.
01:56:57In retrospect...
01:56:58No, no, no.
01:56:59Absolutely.
01:57:00I got that coldness right out of this role play.
01:57:01Because she's only thinking about herself, she's completely indifferent to your suffering,
01:57:04she's only thinking about how to maneuver and win in the moment.
01:57:08That's cold, right?
01:57:11So I, as you, was saying, I'm really suffering, and she didn't care, right?
01:57:17She didn't care.
01:57:19She only cared about protecting her own ego and her own narrative and, right, shutting
01:57:24down the conversation.
01:57:25Didn't care about you.
01:57:26How is that?
01:57:27So they're cold.
01:57:28Just because somebody is hyper-emotional, or uses emotions as a bully mechanism, that
01:57:29doesn't mean that they're not cold.
01:57:30Somebody can be sobbing and crying tears of blood, they're still stone-cold.
01:57:31So, I'm not cold.
01:57:32I'm not cold.
01:57:33I'm not cold.
01:57:34I'm not cold.
01:57:35I'm not cold.
01:57:36I'm not cold.
01:57:37I'm not cold.
01:57:38I'm not cold.
01:57:39I'm not cold.
01:57:40I'm not cold.
01:57:41I'm not cold.
01:57:42I'm not cold.
01:57:43I'm not cold.
01:57:44I'm not cold.
01:57:45I'm not cold.
01:57:46I'm not cold.
01:57:47I'm not cold.
01:57:48I'm not cold.
01:57:49I'm not cold.
01:57:50I'm not cold.
01:57:51I'm not cold.
01:57:55I'm not cold.
01:57:56I'm not cold.
01:57:57I'm not cold.
01:57:58I'm not cold.
01:57:59I'm not cold.
01:58:00I'm not cold.
01:58:01I'm not cold.
01:58:02I'm not cold.
01:58:03I'm not cold.
01:58:04I'm not cold.
01:58:05I'm not cold.
01:58:06I'm not cold.
01:58:07I'm not cold.
01:58:08I'm not cold.
01:58:09I'm not cold.
01:58:10I'm not cold.
01:58:11I'm not cold.
01:58:12I'm not cold.
01:58:13I'm not cold.
01:58:14I'm not cold.
01:58:15I'm not cold.
01:58:16I'm not cold.
01:58:17I'm not cold.
01:58:18I'm not cold.
01:58:19I'm not cold.
01:58:20I'm not cold.
01:58:21I'm not cold.
01:58:22I'm not cold.
01:58:23I'm not cold.
01:58:24I'm not cold.
01:58:25I'm not cold.
01:58:26I'm not cold.
01:58:27I'm not cold.
01:58:28I'm not cold.
01:58:29I'm not cold.
01:58:30I'm not cold.
01:58:31I'm not cold.
01:58:32I'm not cold.
01:58:33I'm not cold.
01:58:34I'm not cold.
01:58:35I'm not cold.
01:58:36I'm not cold.
01:58:37I'm not cold.
01:58:38I'm not cold.
01:58:39I'm not cold.
01:58:40I'm not cold.
01:58:41I'm not cold.
01:58:42I'm not cold.
01:58:43I'm not cold.
01:58:44I'm not cold.
01:58:45I'm not cold.
01:58:46I'm not cold.
01:58:47I'm not cold.
01:58:48I'm not cold.
01:58:49I'm not cold.
01:58:50I'm not cold.
01:58:51I'm not cold.
01:58:52I'm not cold.
01:58:53I'm not cold.
01:58:54I'm not cold.
01:58:55I'm not cold.
01:58:56I'm not cold.
01:58:57I'm not cold.
01:58:58I'm not cold.
01:58:59I'm not cold.
01:59:00I'm not cold.
01:59:01I'm not cold.
01:59:02I'm not cold.
01:59:03I'm not cold.
01:59:04I'm not cold.
01:59:05I'm not cold.
01:59:06I'm not cold.
01:59:07I'm not cold.
01:59:08I'm not cold.
01:59:09I'm not cold.
01:59:10I'm not cold.
01:59:11I'm not cold.
01:59:12I'm not cold.
01:59:13I'm not cold.
01:59:14I'm not cold.
01:59:15I'm not cold.
01:59:16I'm not cold.
01:59:17I'm not cold.
01:59:18I'm not cold.
01:59:19I'm not cold.
01:59:20I'm not cold.
01:59:21I'm not cold.
01:59:22I'm not cold.
01:59:23I'm not cold.
01:59:24I'm not cold.
01:59:25I'm not cold.
01:59:26I'm not cold.
01:59:27I'm not cold.
01:59:28I'm not cold.
01:59:29I'm not cold.
01:59:30I'm not cold.
01:59:31I'm not cold.
01:59:32I'm not cold.
01:59:33I'm not cold.
01:59:34I'm not cold.
01:59:35I'm not cold.
01:59:36I'm not cold.
01:59:37I'm not cold.
01:59:38I'm not cold.
01:59:39I'm not cold.
01:59:40I'm not cold.
01:59:41I'm not cold.
01:59:42I'm not cold.
01:59:43I'm not cold.
01:59:44I'm not cold.
01:59:45I'm not cold.
01:59:46I'm not cold.
01:59:47I'm not cold.
01:59:48I'm not cold.
01:59:49I'm not cold.
01:59:50I'm not cold.
01:59:51I'm not cold.
01:59:52I'm not cold.
01:59:53I'm not cold.
01:59:54I'm not cold.
01:59:55I'm not cold.
01:59:56I'm not cold.
01:59:57I'm not cold.
01:59:58I'm not cold.
01:59:59I'm not cold.
02:00:00I'm not cold.
02:00:01I'm not cold.
02:00:02I'm not cold.
02:00:03I'm not cold.
02:00:04I'm not cold.
02:00:05I'm not cold.
02:00:06I'm not cold.
02:00:07I'm not cold.
02:00:08I'm not cold.
02:00:09I'm not cold.
02:00:10I'm not cold.
02:00:11I'm not cold.
02:00:12I'm not cold.
02:00:13I'm not cold.
02:00:14I'm not cold.
02:00:15I'm not cold.
02:00:16I'm not cold.
02:00:17I'm not cold.
02:00:18I'm not cold.
02:00:19I'm not cold.
02:00:20So we're in different states.
02:00:22She has not even met my child.
02:00:29And your mother is aging out of her mental acuity, as far as I understand it, based upon
02:00:38what you said, right?
02:00:43Was it Alzheimer's?
02:00:49It's leading in that direction.
02:00:51The doctors are kind of leading it more towards her other mental health issues.
02:00:58The result is the same, though.
02:00:59Sorry, what are her other mental health issues?
02:01:04Officially diagnosed bipolar, schizoaffective, OCD, obsessive-compulsive.
02:01:15Is she a hoarder, too?
02:01:17No, not a hoarder, no.
02:01:22So if she has all of this stuff going wrong with her brain, then her defenses should cease
02:01:26to operate at times, right?
02:01:29But they don't.
02:01:30Her defenses operate perfectly.
02:01:36She never accidentally shows empathy or whatever, right?
02:01:39Like when we were having that role play, her defenses worked perfectly.
02:01:44They were impenetrable, right?
02:01:47So it's hard for me to say somebody has a really broken brain when the defenses are
02:01:50all perfectly efficient.
02:01:52It's like saying my car doesn't work and then taking it on a road trip for six months
02:01:59with no problems.
02:02:01If the defenses are perfect, the mind is not broken.
02:02:05You see what I mean?
02:02:12If people say, well, I can't remember, it was so long ago, it's like, okay, well then
02:02:17you shouldn't remember your defenses.
02:02:18But if you remember all of your defenses, then you can't claim to lack memory.
02:02:30So she's... and the prognosis is what, roughly?
02:02:35You don't have to give me the medical stuff, but she's not getting better, right?
02:02:43I mean, no, I don't think so.
02:02:47Some of it has to do with her taking better care of herself, eating better, getting her sleep.
02:02:56Okay, is she doing anything?
02:02:58I don't know.
02:02:59I haven't...
02:03:00I'm not at the house and I don't talk to my brother who's normally with her.
02:03:07So I'm unaware.
02:03:11So you don't... but you said you talk once a week, right?
02:03:16Me and my mother, yes, through text.
02:03:19Lately it's been about the taxes, because I had her do mine and my wife's, our family's
02:03:25taxes.
02:03:27What?
02:03:29Your mom's doing your taxes?
02:03:32Yeah.
02:03:33Then can't she work?
02:03:36Oh, wait, she's got significant mental issues, but she can do your taxes?
02:03:43Yeah.
02:03:44Hey, look at that, you saved a little bit of money.
02:03:48Yeah.
02:03:49Oh my god, man.
02:03:52Ugh.
02:03:56But doesn't her Coppelt-Tunnel Syndrome prevent her from doing the taxes?
02:04:01She had the surgeries.
02:04:04Oh, so then she should have informed the company that's paying her that she's fixed.
02:04:10Otherwise she's just stealing again.
02:04:13Again, I'm no lawyer, but isn't that kind of how it works?
02:04:19I'm...
02:04:20I'm guess...
02:04:21I don't know.
02:04:22This gets into, like, legal...
02:04:23No, but okay, let's just forget the legal.
02:04:25What about the moral thing?
02:04:26You say, give me money because of this injury.
02:04:28You take some of that money, you use it for surgery, that fixes the injury.
02:04:34You should at least inform them, right?
02:04:39My assumption is their agreement is for all suffering, or...
02:04:47I don't know how it works out.
02:04:49Okay, well let me just ask you this, because of course neither of us are lawyers, right?
02:04:53Yeah.
02:04:54Is your opinion that the money that your mother is getting, is it moral?
02:05:00No.
02:05:01Okay.
02:05:02So then, if it's not moral, then she's, in your view, right, your opinion, she's stealing.
02:05:12That is correct, yeah.
02:05:13Okay, again, we're not talking about any legal matters, we're just talking about your personal opinion, right?
02:05:19In the little that I know, that doesn't seem like a crazy opinion to me.
02:05:28Okay.
02:05:30So, what's the plus of your mother in your life?
02:05:34What's the benefit?
02:05:35And I'm not saying there isn't any, I'm genuinely curious, right?
02:05:40But what's the plus?
02:05:49I'm going to try and word this the best way that I can.
02:05:59The last attachment to my past and my father, because my siblings aren't blood, you know,
02:06:11were related through my mother, but not through my father.
02:06:18And that horrible experience, I don't, I'm grasping at straws here.
02:06:29So, blood and connection is important, right?
02:06:34Okay.
02:06:37So, if blood and connection is so important, why are you less connected to your daughter?
02:06:41I mean, she's your blood, isn't she?
02:06:43And she's also your blood who's never hurt a hair on your head.
02:06:47Just one correction, it's a son.
02:06:49Son, okay, sorry.
02:06:50Yeah, it's okay.
02:06:51So, even more, then, same, same, same sex.
02:06:54Okay.
02:06:55So, if blood is important, then why are you somewhat indifferent to your son?
02:07:07Because, I mean, your mother, in my view, treated you horribly.
02:07:12And your son has never hurt you at all.
02:07:16So, why would you have more loyalty to someone who abused you or neglected you,
02:07:22as opposed to your son, who you share just as much genetics with,
02:07:28who's never hurt you at all?
02:07:30In fact, probably worships and adores you.
02:07:42I do not want to infect him with my...
02:07:45No, no, answer the question.
02:07:46Don't, don't, don't pull a mom and ignore the question completely.
02:07:50It's so weird.
02:07:51I don't know why people do that.
02:07:52Why do you do that?
02:07:54I just made a case here, and you just completely ignored it, like I didn't exist.
02:08:02I apologize.
02:08:03In my mind, I felt like I was answering the question.
02:08:07But there is no answer to the question.
02:08:11So, every answer you give is false.
02:08:14There is no answer as to why you would have more loyalty to the woman who abused,
02:08:18neglected you for decades, than the child who never hurt you at all,
02:08:21if what's important is blood and family.
02:08:25There's no...
02:08:26I mean, you...
02:08:27We know there's no answer to that, right?
02:08:28There's no rational answer to that.
02:08:30I want to remain connected to the harmful past rather than the loving future.
02:08:40Come on.
02:08:41I mean, there's no answer to that.
02:08:42There's no answer to that.
02:08:49So, are you saying that that's not me?
02:08:53That's my mother that wants me to be disconnected from my family?
02:09:00Well, I don't know.
02:09:01I don't think your mother has any desires other than her own preferences in the moment.
02:09:06But the question is, what's the price?
02:09:11What's the price of lying to your mother?
02:09:15Because you're lying to your mother, right?
02:09:17Every time you don't have a real conversation about stuff that's on your mind,
02:09:20you're lying to her, right?
02:09:26So, lying, pretending, falsifying, for what?
02:09:30Help me understand.
02:09:31What is the benefit to you?
02:09:35I understand the benefit to your mother if she gets to pretend like things weren't so bad.
02:09:38She gets her son's resources and attention and future loyalty.
02:09:43So, for your mom, it's a good deal.
02:09:44I'm just trying to figure out the deal for you.
02:09:49What do you get out of it?
02:09:50And you say, oh, blood and loyalty.
02:09:52It's like, but you told me that you don't have much connection with your wife and son.
02:09:56So, all this loyalty doesn't make...
02:09:58The whole problem is a lack of loyalty.
02:10:00So, you can't suddenly claim loyalty.
02:10:03So, what's the benefit?
02:10:10I'm not getting a benefit.
02:10:13Occasional tax prep.
02:10:17Okay.
02:10:18So, it saves you a couple hundred bucks a year, right?
02:10:21I apologize for that laughter right there.
02:10:24No, I understand.
02:10:25This is kind of like a wake-up laughter, right?
02:10:27Like, what the hell?
02:10:28This is coming out of a daze, right?
02:10:30Yeah.
02:10:31Okay.
02:10:32So, there's no...
02:10:35I mean, that's not a real benefit, right?
02:10:37So, there's no benefit really, right?
02:10:41And I'm not sure that you want to give a manipulative woman who sues people she steals from
02:10:48access to all the details of your finances.
02:10:58Do you not get any sense of caution about that?
02:11:06I...
02:11:08You know, I use it to my advantage.
02:11:12I mean, I'm hoping she will do everything legally and lawfully.
02:11:16No, no.
02:11:17That's not what I'm talking about.
02:11:19Your mother, who sues people and takes money in what you describe as an immoral fashion,
02:11:27now knows every single detail about your costs, liabilities, assets, and income.
02:11:41I'm putting myself in danger financially by having her do that.
02:11:46Well, aren't you doing kind of the best of everyone?
02:11:52Aren't you making the most money?
02:11:54I mean, you said your half-brothers are layabouts, right?
02:11:59My eldest sister is doing better than I, but she does not have mother to do the taxes.
02:12:07Okay.
02:12:08Okay.
02:12:09I'm just saying I personally would not feel comfortable handing over financial details
02:12:15to somebody who'd been relentlessly abusive and neglectful in the past.
02:12:27She knows exactly what you can afford, and do you not think she'll use that knowledge at some point?
02:12:39I would hope not.
02:12:40I know hope's not a plan.
02:12:42That's just a side note.
02:12:43That's just a side note.
02:12:44Yeah.
02:12:45Okay.
02:12:46So you get a couple of hours of tax prep a year, which is beneficial but also costly,
02:12:53because then it means she can work, right?
02:12:55And then she's not, right?
02:12:57So that's a plus and also a big minus, right?
02:13:02And so there's no particular plus, and what are the negatives?
02:13:08This disattachment, this probably overcleaning of the past, or at least excusing my mother in the events.
02:13:33Boy, that's some abstract shit right there, brother.
02:13:35Can you feel yourself groping on the limits of the galaxy there for a little bit of nebula?
02:13:44What are the costs?
02:13:49I don't get to feel love.
02:13:51I don't get to feel attached.
02:13:52I don't get to feel present.
02:13:54Right.
02:13:55I mean, the costs of what you're writing about.
02:13:57What are you writing about?
02:14:04I'm going to tell you something personal.
02:14:13You steadfastly rejected my advice for eight years, right?
02:14:22Regarding family.
02:14:27I say, if you have significant problems with your family, say parents in this situation, what have I always said?
02:14:35Sit down, have conversations with them.
02:14:37Try and work it out.
02:14:38Try and get some empathy.
02:14:39Try and get some sympathy, right?
02:14:41Keep having those conversations until you break through or you don't want to talk anymore.
02:14:46And then if you don't want to talk anymore, you're under no moral obligation to continue to spend time with people who continue to reject and abuse you, right?
02:14:54You've heard that a million times in my show, right?
02:14:58So, what do you think it's like for me when you do the opposite of what I recommend?
02:15:10And what is the right behavior in terms of self-protection and in particular protection for your wife and children or your child, your son?
02:15:18So, what do you think it's like for me when I get a panic message that disaster is imminent without any acknowledgement in the entire call that you've done the opposite of what I've recommended and what is the right thing to do for eight years straight?
02:15:37And you haven't said I'm having trouble doing the right thing, you didn't do a call-in before, but you only call me when disaster strikes, when your marriage is on the verge of collapse, right?
02:15:47I would imagine that you feel like people aren't listening or that I wasn't listening, that you're wasting your breath.
02:16:05No, no, you were listening. You absolutely were. You've been listening for eight years, right?
02:16:08You know, it's kind of like, imagine if you had a beloved uncle who kept smoking. I guess you probably did, right, or aren't, right?
02:16:21You had a beloved uncle who kept smoking and for eight years you're begging him to stop smoking, right?
02:16:25And then he completely laughs at you, scorns you, ignores you, whatever, right? But he certainly doesn't quit smoking, right? In fact, he smokes more.
02:16:40And then he's like, hey man, I need to come and move in with you because I'm really sick from smoking.
02:16:47And he never references at all the fact that you begged him to quit smoking for eight years straight.
02:16:53What would you think?
02:17:03Why should I help you now? You've had all this time to try or make...
02:17:11No, not you had all this time I begged you to quit smoking.
02:17:14Did I beg you to be honest with your family of origin for eight years?
02:17:22Yes, that's your message.
02:17:27Did I write an entire book, Real Time Relationships, about how to be honest?
02:17:32You certainly did.
02:17:37So, you understand your mother is in the avoidance.
02:17:43Like if your uncle says, oh man, you know, I didn't listen, I'm really sorry, you know, I really need your help now.
02:17:50And I need your help precisely because I didn't listen to you and I know it's going to be tough to provide, but I really didn't follow your advice.
02:17:56I didn't listen to your good counsel and now I'm really screwed.
02:17:59Like, no acknowledgement of any of this. It's weird.
02:18:04You know, Steph, I wasn't honest with my family. I didn't follow your good advice. I didn't do the right thing.
02:18:10I listened to you for eight years and now I'm really screwed.
02:18:17Because, I mean, your email comes in. I mean, I look at these emails with the depth and clarity that is sort of second nature to me, right?
02:18:24So, look at your email, right?
02:18:31And I'm like, okay, so he still has...
02:18:36He's still enmeshed in destructive relationships. He hasn't listened.
02:18:40And he doesn't even seem to acknowledge that he hasn't listened.
02:18:43He's done the exact opposite of what I recommend as the right and moral thing and now he desperately wants my help.
02:18:49But he won't admit fault at all.
02:18:53Just like mommy.
02:18:57Mommy won't take responsibility for her bad choices.
02:19:01Do you? In contacting me.
02:19:05That's the real mom.
02:19:08That's the cost.
02:19:16This part is a little critical, by the way. Just the other part wasn't. This part is.
02:19:21But you see, you don't take responsibility and say, Steph, I did the exact opposite of the right thing for eight years.
02:19:28Now, I'm really fucked.
02:19:31Help me. I know it's tough to help, you know, because I didn't listen, right?
02:19:41You know, somebody you love.
02:19:44They're fat. They don't exercise.
02:19:47You tell the man, you gotta eat well, you gotta exercise.
02:19:51You could have a stroke or a heart attack or diabetes or something.
02:19:54And then they contact you saying, man, I need your help. I gotta move in with you.
02:20:00I had a stroke and I have diabetes.
02:20:03And they don't reference anything about the good advice you gave them for close to a decade.
02:20:09You would be played, right? You would be being played.
02:20:15They would be hoping that you would follow them down this line of unreality.
02:20:22And just pretend, oh, wow, this thing happened to you. Gosh, let me help.
02:20:25They would be fogging out and playing you. And you're trying to play me. I'm not saying consciously.
02:20:34But you understand, you're trying to play me.
02:20:38Because you haven't once referenced the fact that you did the opposite of the right thing that I beg people to do.
02:20:49You haven't referenced that once.
02:20:51I'm sorry I left it so late. I'm sorry I didn't listen to your good advice. I get it now.
02:20:57Nope. None of that.
02:21:06Do you see where I'm coming from?
02:21:10Yeah.
02:21:11You literally listened to probably hundreds of call-in shows where I'm on my knees begging people to tell the truth to those in the audience.
02:21:19I'm on my knees begging people to tell the truth to those in their lives, right?
02:21:22And you've seen the effects of when people don't, right?
02:21:27And you're still like, well, screw that. I don't need to do it.
02:21:30And then when disaster hits, I'm going to call up making no reference to the fact that I've known better for close to a decade and haven't done it.
02:21:41And it's fine. Don't do it. That's your choice.
02:21:44But then when disaster strikes, you've got to reference it.
02:21:53Because otherwise, that's really bizarre, right?
02:22:05Your mother won't take responsibility for her past bad choices.
02:22:09And you're not either.
02:22:11And your mother won't apologize.
02:22:12And you won't either.
02:22:14Your mother won't take ownership.
02:22:15And you won't either.
02:22:19And that self-avoidance, this is the essence of why you cannot connect with people, my friend.
02:22:25Because you can't connect with your own self-ownership.
02:22:28You can't connect with your own choices.
02:22:30And your choices are who you are.
02:22:33If you can't connect with your choices, if you can't take responsibility, you can't connect with anyone because you're not really there.
02:22:42In the same way that your mother is just defenses and avoidance and minimization and gaslighting.
02:22:49This whole conversation, I've been like, well, I'm sure he's going to mention at some point that he didn't take my good advice for eight years.
02:22:57I'm sure he's going to take some ownership for being the author of his own problems.
02:23:03Right?
02:23:05I mean, you've known this stuff since your mid to late 20s.
02:23:10You're in your mid 30s.
02:23:13And you're calling me up like you never heard any good advice.
02:23:16And I've just got to help you.
02:23:18And there's no acknowledgment of the fact that I've been trying to help you for years and years and years and years and years and years and years.
02:23:26And you have refused to listen and you're not taking responsibility for that.
02:23:34And the path to connection has to go through self-ownership.
02:23:40Because other people in your life have to have someone to connect to.
02:23:45And if you don't take responsibility for your choices and your avoidances.
02:23:51And we all have them.
02:23:52I have them.
02:23:53You have them.
02:23:54Everybody has them.
02:23:55So I'm not perfect, of course, in this way.
02:23:59But if you can't take responsibility for your choices, there's no person to connect to.
02:24:05Because there's just avoidance.
02:24:06You can't connect with avoidance.
02:24:08It's like trying to push two opposing magnets together.
02:24:10You just can't do it.
02:24:14So I would say that the real price is this infectious avoidance of responsibility that's showing up throughout the entire length of this call.
02:24:26Because, look, the fact that you did the opposite of what I recommend and it's the right thing.
02:24:30Honesty is the right thing and you've known this for years and you've listened to it role-played and you've listened to call-in shows and you've read the books and everything is pointing towards honesty.
02:24:41The fact that you didn't do it, you've got to own that.
02:24:44You made the choice to not be honest.
02:24:46You took the easy route to avoid talking honestly with your mother or other people.
02:24:52You didn't talk about whether you have talked about your older brother who introduced you to drugs when you were a child.
02:25:02No confrontation there, which is fine.
02:25:05No confrontation with your mother.
02:25:06No honesty with the people around you.
02:25:12And now you're saying to me, well, strangely enough, when I keep avoiding facts, reality, truth and honesty and directness,
02:25:19I find I can't connect with people.
02:25:21Well, no shit, Sherlock!
02:25:25That's exactly why I say don't do that!
02:25:30And there's no acknowledgement of that.
02:25:32And that's the price.
02:25:33And again, I say this with some sympathy, but that's the price.
02:25:38And I honestly don't know what therapists are doing if they're not saying just go be truthful and honest with people.
02:25:42I don't know what they're doing, but that's a topic for another time.
02:25:46But that's the price.
02:25:47You have to take ownership for every choice you make as an adult.
02:25:52Otherwise, nobody can connect with you because you're not really there.
02:25:55You're just like a hall of mirrors.
02:25:57Just avoidance and manipulation and lack of self-ownership and lack of responsibility.
02:26:03You became like a ghost, like your father felt, right?
02:26:06That's why he felt the house was full of ghosts, because it was.
02:26:09Because if you don't own yourself, you're not material.
02:26:12So that's the funny thing, for me.
02:26:15That's the odd thing.
02:26:16And I think that's the real price, if that makes sense.
02:26:23It's kind of odd that you'd hope I wouldn't notice that, you know what I mean?
02:26:31Yeah, I had many thoughts about this conversation, and that was not one of them.
02:26:37None of it?
02:26:38None of it?
02:26:39Not in that email?
02:26:40I mean, I almost didn't take it for that reason, because I'm like, what?
02:26:45This guy's obviously still enmeshed in terrible relationships.
02:26:50But you know what?
02:26:51Sounds like a long-term listener.
02:26:53I'm sure he'll call up and say, Steph, I need your help, because I didn't follow your advice.
02:26:58And, you know, it's kind of tough, because now it's an emergency, right?
02:27:01Eight years ago, you could have prevented it.
02:27:03And now, you're like, what?
02:27:05Now it's an emergency, right?
02:27:06Eight years ago, you could have prevented all of this stuff.
02:27:08Or five years ago, or maybe even two years ago.
02:27:12But you're enmeshed in bad relationships.
02:27:14You decide to get married and have a child.
02:27:16And then you only call me when things are falling apart, right?
02:27:20And I was, you know, because I've always said, like, I'm a nutritionist.
02:27:22I'm there about prevention, not cure.
02:27:24Right?
02:27:25So if you don't follow your nutritionist's advice for eight years, and you end up having a heart attack,
02:27:29you don't call the nutritionist, right?
02:27:32If you call the nutritionist, the nutritionist says,
02:27:34oh, no, maybe you could have solved this ten years ago, but now you've got to call ER.
02:27:39You've got to get an ambulance, right?
02:27:40You've got to call 911.
02:27:43So you're calling 911, but I'm a nutritionist.
02:27:47And part of me is like, okay, but it's going to be too startling for him.
02:27:52It's going to be too unsettling for him.
02:27:55But that's the price.
02:27:56That's the price.
02:27:57The price of being in pretend relationships is you're kind of pretending to exist.
02:28:04And if you're kind of pretending to exist, who can connect with you?
02:28:09Because we only exist in the responsibility that we take and the truth that we speak.
02:28:15That's the only existence we have for others is the responsibility we take and the truth that we speak.
02:28:22And when I was role-playing with you as your mother, she took no responsibility,
02:28:26which means she doesn't exist.
02:28:27All that exists are avoidance and defenses.
02:28:30And that always comes at the expense of erasing other people in your mind and your heart,
02:28:35which is why I called her cold.
02:28:42And if you had that uncle who said, hey, man, I've got to come live with you
02:28:45because I've got emphysema and lung cancer,
02:28:48and he never once references the fact that you told him to stop smoking
02:28:54and apologize for that, man, I know I'm putting a real burden on you,
02:28:57but, I mean, I didn't listen to your advice and now if the grace of your heart
02:29:01and I'm so sorry and now this is a burden on you and...
02:29:05Right? Then he's playing you.
02:29:12He's just pretending that he deserves all of your kindness and consideration
02:29:19without having to pay the price of saying, I'm sorry, I didn't listen to your good advice.
02:29:25And again, that's the price, right?
02:29:32Because you're surrounded by people who don't take responsibility,
02:29:35don't take good advice. Your parents ever take good advice?
02:29:42Did they?
02:29:44No.
02:29:46Did you take good advice?
02:29:50No. No, I didn't.
02:29:53Did your parents ever apologize or admit that they didn't take good advice?
02:29:58No, they didn't.
02:29:59You? With me?
02:30:02No.
02:30:04And again, I say this with sympathy, I really do.
02:30:06I mean, I get it, it's mildly annoying, but that's fine, right?
02:30:09But I say this with sympathy, it's like that's the price, right?
02:30:12You can't take self-ownership.
02:30:15To this extent.
02:30:17You can't be direct and honest.
02:30:19And you can't apologize.
02:30:25Because you were raised by some very, very selfish and defensive people.
02:30:30And defenses are always defenses against connection.
02:30:33That's all defenses are, because otherwise you have this direct connection, right?
02:30:38And I'm sure this has...
02:30:41This is sort of at the root of what you talk about, your lack of connection,
02:30:4518.49% connection with your wife and your son.
02:30:52You're indifferent to them being there because you've yet to show up in a way.
02:31:00Because you've lied to your mother by omission and commission,
02:31:05by not being honest with her.
02:31:08And you kind of falsified things with me by not being honest about not taking good advice
02:31:13and needing help after you ignore eight years of good advice.
02:31:19So when you start taking real responsibility and learn how to apologize,
02:31:27then you can connect with your wife and your son.
02:31:30I think.
02:31:32But not till then.
02:31:38I mean, this is sort of back to when I was talking about your lack of responsibility in,
02:31:43and this is before I even knew that you are a mental health professional
02:31:46who tells people don't laugh about trauma, right?
02:31:51So, you know, that's a temptation.
02:31:53You know that I really find it disconcerting and upsetting, right?
02:31:58When people laugh about the trauma and you just for half an hour,
02:32:01you're off and on giggling about your trauma.
02:32:03And I'm the one who has to stop you and point it out.
02:32:05When you actually give this.
02:32:07And that's just the level of, and that's also the price, right?
02:32:11Of being in contact with NPCs, defensive non-empathetic NPCs.
02:32:23So, you know, maybe you get a couple of hours of, you know,
02:32:29So, you know, maybe you get a couple of hours of tax prep,
02:32:35but I think the price tag is infinite.
02:32:46And in that way, the price tag could be your current family.
02:32:49And, you know, you don't have the right, like you chose to have a kid, right?
02:32:52Your wife is with you by choice, your son is not, right?
02:32:54You chose to have a kid.
02:32:56So now you have to clean up your relationships
02:32:59and you have to be honest, direct and connect with people.
02:33:01Like you have no choice about that anymore because you chose to have a kid.
02:33:04And now you're responsible for all of that.
02:33:06And, you know, if you were still single, okay, whatever.
02:33:09If you just had a girlfriend or maybe even a wife, she's still there by choice.
02:33:12But you've now invited this child into your life by choice.
02:33:15You don't have the fucking right to not bond.
02:33:20Because you know what it's like.
02:33:21You in particular know what it's like to grow up without a bond.
02:33:25You know how awful it is.
02:33:27And you chose to have a child.
02:33:29You owe that child everything.
02:33:31And if everything means the cost of your whatever bullshit you've got going on with your mother,
02:33:37too bad, pay it.
02:33:39If the cost means confronting people and have them blow up at you
02:33:42till you figure out that they're bad people, pay that price.
02:33:46Because everything about this conversation, for me, is your son.
02:33:51Is to do with your son.
02:33:53You cannot be indifferent to his presence or absence.
02:33:55You cannot be indifferent to his mother's presence or absence.
02:33:58Because then you're just recreating the trash planet you were born into.
02:34:02And you don't have the right to do that.
02:34:04Because you're a mental health professional.
02:34:06You've done therapy.
02:34:07You've listened to me.
02:34:09You've listened to hundreds of shows, philosophical conversations about all of this.
02:34:14You have, I mean, you could say your parents were in a kind of a state of nature.
02:34:17They didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
02:34:19But you know all of this stuff.
02:34:21So you have absolute, complete and total responsibility to connect.
02:34:25Which means get rid of all of the avoidant bullshit non-connections in your life.
02:34:28So that you can connect with your son.
02:34:30That's your job.
02:34:32And you have to do it.
02:34:33This is not a choice.
02:34:34This is not an option.
02:34:36You must connect with your son.
02:34:38Which means connecting with his mother.
02:34:40Whatever's in the way of that is absolutely disposable.
02:34:44Everything in the way of you connecting with the family you chose and the child you chose to create is expendable.
02:34:58You know, if you had a demon in your little finger that was blocking you from connecting with your son
02:35:02and you couldn't get it out any other way, I'd say go get the shears.
02:35:05Go get the shears.
02:35:12Everything that is between your heart and your son's heart is expendable.
02:35:20And it's not a choice.
02:35:25Because he deserves everything that you didn't get.
02:35:28And you have full responsibility because you know everything you need to know.
02:35:33Does that make sense?
02:35:36Yeah.
02:35:37I mean, owe it to him is not even a strong enough phrase.
02:35:41It must be done.
02:35:43It must be done.
02:35:44This is what I must do.
02:35:46Yeah.
02:35:47You've got to clean up with your family of origin.
02:35:48You've got to talk to whoever you talk to.
02:35:50Break through.
02:35:51Break out.
02:35:52Like, whatever is causing you to fog out and dissociate.
02:35:54I assume it's your mother.
02:35:55It could be your half-brothers.
02:35:56It could be, I don't know.
02:35:57But whatever's between you and your son?
02:36:01I don't care.
02:36:02If you make a metaphorical flamethrower, you get that shit out of the way.
02:36:05You connect with your son.
02:36:10Or he is going to be a curse on your conscience.
02:36:15And your choices will be a curse on your conscience.
02:36:17And literally it's now or never because he's already nine months old.
02:36:20So his personality is being formed as we speak.
02:36:23So this is like five alarm fucking fire emergency make ten phone calls today.
02:36:29Get this shit cleared away.
02:36:31Break through.
02:36:32Break out.
02:36:33I don't care.
02:36:34Don't have dissociative people in your life.
02:36:36Find a way to connect with them or throw them out.
02:36:42Because everything that is between you and your son must go.
02:36:47I don't care if it's your illusions.
02:36:49I don't care if it's your mother's preferences.
02:36:51I don't care if it's your sister's vanity.
02:36:53I don't care if it's your half-brother's insecurities.
02:36:56I don't care.
02:36:57Because all that matters is the person not here by choice.
02:37:00Your son.
02:37:01And that's how you redeem.
02:37:05Your childhood is you don't re-inflict it on your son.
02:37:09And that's how.
02:37:10Like the reason you're not connecting with your son is because when you connect with your son
02:37:14it will be finally revealed to you how bad the people were to you in your childhood.
02:37:18You're still able to hover around this shit by dissociating.
02:37:20You connect with your son, you will realize like I didn't get my mother's evil
02:37:26until I became a father.
02:37:28I didn't get my mother's evil until I became a father and truly connect with
02:37:32and genuinely and deeply enjoy the company of my daughter.
02:37:36And love her beyond life and without reservation.
02:37:41Then I get how cold you have to be to do the opposite of that.
02:37:44Then I get how stony-hearted you have to be.
02:37:47I would tear through a mountainside to protect my daughter and your mother can't even show up
02:37:53when you're locked in a cage with an addict.
02:38:01You are protecting your mother by being distant from your son
02:38:05because when you connect with your son
02:38:09what your mother is like will become completely clear to you.
02:38:12What your mother is like will become completely clear to you.
02:38:24Does that make sense?
02:38:29Yeah, that's...
02:38:32Yeah, it's...
02:38:35I've got...
02:38:37Yeah, I've got phone calls to make.
02:38:39I've got letters to write.
02:38:41Good.
02:38:42All right.
02:38:43Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
02:38:47Yeah, Steph, thank you.
02:38:48It's been an absolute pleasure.
02:38:50I don't know if it matters at this point,
02:38:52but I do apologize for not following your advice for eight years.
02:38:57I appreciate that.
02:38:58And I hope that you will listen now that you know what the stakes are.
02:39:03All right. Well, listen, keep in touch and I wish you the very best.
02:39:05And I really do appreciate the call.
02:39:07Thank you, Steph.
02:39:08Take care, brother.
02:39:09Bye.