0:00 - The Tale of a Mother's Madness
4:52 - Money, Motivation, and Family Dynamics
8:15 - The Source of Power and Dysfunction
18:10 - Insights on Attachment and Sensitivity
22:28 - Unveiling Early Signs of Dysfunction
47:19 - Sibling Conflicts
57:32 - The Myth of Sibling Conflict
1:05:57 - Reasons for Institutionalization
1:07:31 - Complexities of Conscience
1:17:55 - Confronting Family Dynamics
1:28:42 - Apologies and Actions
1:35:52 - Seeking Validation and Accountability
1:42:04 - Holding Accountability
1:46:20 - Motives Revealed
1:51:07 - Desire for Confession
2:01:04 - Demon of Abuse
2:04:56 - Act of Love
2:10:20 - Letting Go of Responsibility
2:11:00 - Christian Wisdom
2:12:40 - Reconnecting After Nine Years
2:19:17 - Financial Upbringing
2:28:42 - Financial Boundaries
2:37:13 - Protecting Your Children
2:44:29 - Healing and Boundaries
In this conversation, we delve into the caller's tumultuous relationship with her mother and the significant changes she has experienced over the last decade. She opens up about the emotional abuse and neglect she endured in her childhood, shining a light on her mother's volatile behavior and struggles with substance abuse. We also discuss the caller's father's passivity in dealing with her mother's temper and his role in enabling her destructive patterns. As we explore the dynamics within the caller's family, we unpack the complexities of their interactions and the deep-rooted issues that have shaped their relationships.
The dialogue shifts to the impact of dysfunctional parenting on mental health, with a focus on the potential link between parenting styles and conditions like schizophrenia. We examine the challenges of uncovering the truth when family members deceive themselves and others, and the caller expresses concerns about her siblings' past violence and lack of accountability. Together, we navigate the intricate dynamics within the caller's family, delving into her brother's struggles with anger issues, substance abuse, and academic performance, as well as the repercussions of childhood experiences on emotional regulation and decision-making.
We also touch on the power of choice in responding to trauma, emphasizing each individual's agency in navigating challenging circumstances. Drawing from personal anecdotes, we underscore the importance of actively addressing and healing from past wounds. The conversation takes a poignant turn as an anonymous caller shares experiences of abuse within their family, unveiling the enduring effects of childhood trauma on personal development. Themes of accountability, empathy, and growth emerge as we explore the multifaceted impacts of upbringing on individual trajectories.
We move on to discuss the complexities of seeking closure and accountability in the face of past trauma, highlighting the necessity of addressing emotional pain and confronting harsh truths. The caller recounts a distressing encounter with her mother, underscoring the emotional toll of financial dependency and abusive dynamics. As we navigate the caller's struggle to reconcile conflicting emotions and obligations, we unpack the layers of her familial relationships and the importance of addressing underlying issues with clarity and vulnerability.
Lastly, we reflect on the speaker's insights about the enduring impact of childhood trauma on parenting and relationships. By drawing parallels with a babysitter mistreating children, we underscore the significance of safeguarding oneself from harmful environments, even if it means navigating difficult family dynamics. The speaker cautions against engaging in emotionally manipulative relationships and emphasizes the paramount importance of setting boundaries to prioritize mental health and well-being. Ultimately, we stress the importance of healing from past trauma without compromising one's safety or well-being in the process.
[0:00] All right. So, gosh, what's going on with your mother? Oh, my gosh, what a tale.
[0:08] Yes. It's crazy. She's really crazy. It's intense.
[0:17] So, yeah, do you want to tell me the tale from the beginning or what works best for you?
[0:25] So, I've been thinking about this. I know you ask people where to start. I was kind of thinking I could start like 10 years ago. So in the timeline here, because that's when around the time I discovered FDR and just changed my life so much for the better. And like that was just a big turning point. And that's also like basically last time I saw her. Right. So because what was going on 10 years ago, I was miserable. I had actually been in therapy for years at that point, but it wasn't helping. I was in this terrible marriage. We were only married for about a year and a half, so it wasn't a long marriage, but it was a miserable one while it lasted. And let's see. So my father had died just a few years previous, and my mother was getting remarried. and she wanted me to be a bridesmaid, but she never asked me. She just sort of was like, you're going to be a bridesmaid. And for some reason, this was the thing that I got really hung up on and I didn't want to do it, right? I was just complaining. Literally everybody who would listen to me, I would just complain, oh, I have to do this thing and I don't want to. I can't believe she's making me do this. And finally, I was talking to a guy who listened to your show and he was like, well, don't do it.
[1:52] I have a radical thought, if you don't want to do it.
[1:55] It was truly radical for me at the time. It was my first big red pill moment, right? Where I was just like, wait, what? I don't have... do this right right and and i didn't and he sent me uh real-time relationships and i read very quickly read through rtr on truth and uh upb and then i finished all three of those and i was like wait this guy has all these podcasts too this is great does it never end does he ever.
[2:25] Stop talking and the answer is well eventually i'll be dead but not before then.
[2:28] Well yeah so i I got really into philosophy and, you know, when it was sort of like I was embracing personal responsibility, it was like, oh, I have a choice whether I need to be with this guy I was married to. And I was like, oh, thank God. No, thank you. I don't want to be in that relationship anymore. And yeah, and then I met my new husband on the old FDR boards. words and we've had, it really has been an incredible relationship. I didn't know like love could be like this and grow and change. It was just beautiful. So there are all these really beautiful things in my life. I have two amazing children and they're really incredible. And I'm a stay-at-home mom. Like it was just what I've wanted to be my whole life. And when I was a kid, I was a teenager and I telling my mom, I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom because I saw that having two working parents did not work very well. And she's like, well, you can't rely on a man to support you. You know, that sort of thing.
[3:33] But you can rely on the government, apparently. That's totally fine.
[3:37] Yeah. So, right. So I made all these beautiful changes. And yet there was still a part of me that still craved this relationship and this validation or something from my mom. And like, after all this time, I don't know, I felt like maybe I'd changed, you know, because I changed so much. Maybe I'd be able to like talk to her. Maybe she would have learned that like, uh, you know, that I could cut her off and that maybe she would be on like company behavior with me or something.
[4:16] She would be on the what behavior?
[4:18] Company behavior. It's a, it's a different kind of behavior that you have.
[4:23] Oh, when you're with company, like when other people are over.
[4:25] Yeah, when other people are over, we're nice to each other.
[4:30] Got it, got it. Okay.
[4:33] Sorry, I hope I'm making sense.
[4:35] No, no, it makes sense. I understand.
[4:37] Yeah, so that was 10 years ago to now. So like I said in my letter, there was a few other things motivating me, I think.
[4:53] one was money of course like my mom is very wealthy and it's kind of like i think there's been some things you said in the past podcast where you're like if someone gave you a million dollars like would you do this thing and it's like my parents were kind of offering me that in some ways and it's like well anyway um, Um.
[5:17] Uh, now do you feel a little, little jazzed in the convo here? Um, yeah, it's a tiny bit reckless. I totally understand that. And, uh, you are throwing a lot of, uh, giggle balls into this, uh, bowling alley. So I get that. I get that.
[5:33] I'm a little giddy.
[5:34] No, that's totally fine. I really appreciate that. I mean, it's, it's, it's serious stuff that we're talking about. Yeah. And do you want to talk, I mean, it's 10 years ago, and I'm glad to get that snapshot. I'm completely thrilled that you met your husband off the FDR boards. That's fantastic. How to type people into existence. But your childhood, I mean, that's got to be a lot going on. I mean, the mom sounds like just wild with regards to selfishness and all of that. So was that pretty evident from the beginning of your life?
[6:04] Yes so i had a my ace score is is a five um so that is emotional emotional abuse and emotional neglect for for sure and um also we had there was also physical neglect which is really shocking because my parents were very wealthy so it it's weird that there was like often no food in the house and I didn't have clean clothes and clothes that fit me properly, things like that. There was physical neglect because my parents just sort of expected us. I was the second youngest of four and they just kind of expected me to know how to do things. When I.
[6:53] Was taking my driver's test when I was 16. No one ever took me driving because it was sort of a very clear expectation. It was never spoken, but it was very clear. You never ask mom anything, right? You never ask her to take you a ride to a friend's house, anything like that. So I could never ask her to take me driving because that was just completely not in our family culture. But But even asking my dad was hard, too, because it stressed him out so much. It was such a burden to him. So no one ever taught me how to drive. My dad took me to the driver's test, and I failed because I'd barely been behind the wheel. And it was this source of great shame for me at the time that I had failed it. But no one taught me how to do it.
[7:42] But so then there was emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect. There was also mental illness in the household. And the substance abuse in the household is I'm the only one of my siblings who would say that's true because my mom is an alcoholic. Though she doesn't think she is and no one else seems to think she is. But she gets like blackout drunk and says the most cruel things you can imagine. and then claims not to remember any of it, you know.
[8:13] Right.
[8:13] So.
[8:15] How did they get their money? This may be a total prejudice of mine, but generally people end up with a lot of money because they have some level of competence somewhere, and it's kind of unusual to have that level of public competence, and then be that crazy at home. It could happen, but is it inherited money, or is it just like somebody had a magic touch with business?
[8:37] This or well they're both physicians so doctors so my mom my mom's you know her story is that she came from a very poor household and you know it was comparatively poor my dad did come from money so he has a lot of inherited money um or had he's passed away now but um he had inherited money my My mom came up from nothing in some ways, though I do wonder about her story because I think her dad was German, like first-generation German here in the United States. And I guess he was very miserly with money, and I think they had more than he kept them in sort of poverty or something like that. But anyway, it's, I question a lot of the things my mother says, but so she didn't, she, she had to, but she became a doc, became a doctor at a time when there weren't that many female doctors, you know, like a strong, strong, independent woman, like when she was, uh.
[9:44] Uh, applying to medical schools. She, it's a, one of the admissions officers there. So he said, well, we only take, you know, two women. If we don't, we don't find two that are good enough. We only find one. We won't take any, you know, that sort of thing. So, uh, you know, she worked really hard and she, you know, that was her every day when she got home from work. Cause by when I i was 10 my dad essentially retired and he became like a stay-at-home dad though he would never say that title and he sort of hated that title and would never you actually use it but he was and our lives really did become less chaotic when he was home all the time and able to and sorry how.
[10:27] Old was he when he retired did he retire for age reasons or were there other reasons.
[10:32] Well we uh i'm trying to remember how old he was an older dad you know he had me when he was 43. So I was, you know, and then he also had a younger child to meet as well. So he was an older dad.
[10:47] Yeah, but then he was only in his 50s when he retired.
[10:51] Yes. So it was essentially that my, they both had contracts with hospitals that were expiring at the same time. So mom kind of was freaking out that they would not, both not be employed anymore. So she went out and found this job where we had to move to to get this job it was a much higher paying job, more stress of course more hours you know she had to be on call it was a very high but and it was sort of this story in the family oh dad's going to find work eventually but he never did and he also he had a uh he had research that he did we didn't get paid for it but it was sort of a, uh a passion project of his that he was semi-famous for i mean in the medical world not really that famous but right he he thought if he lived he might win the nobel prize eventually but, uh anyway so he was kind of doing some work but not being paid for it and he still got money from property well he had four well we did have four kids so and my we had a younger brother who was five this is one of the things that my mom brought up in this conversation we had on the plane, when uh uh she she was like well none of the other kids have you know what about oh sorry i'm sorry to say that okay i'll remove that.
[12:10] Yeah no problem i.
[12:11] Can get rid of that go ahead so what about your younger brother he doesn't have any and like you know it was a red herrings i wanted to be like oh we're not talking about my brother we're talking about me and my experience but, He had a nanny until he was five years old, and she was very dedicated. She loved him, and they had a really strong connection, you know? So, but anyway, having four kids, like, it was so chaotic before dad retired. Like, I think he saw that, you know, working with all the kids, it was just not, it wasn't working, you know? know um but mom refused to see that because she she continued to feel resentment about it about this that he had stopped working like to this day she feels resentful about it and i actually brought it up when we talked about this i was like mom it was actually really helpful for us as kids that he wasn't working that we could call somebody if we were sick at school you know, um and she i don't think that had ever occurred to her so i mentioned it on the plane but um thinking about anyone but herself. Does that make sense?
[13:25] Still doesn't. I'm trying to sort of figure out. So he would retire in his mid-50s, and of course I'm sure he became like a sort of functional doctor in his 30s. So in 20 years, did he not like, I mean, how did he speak about his work? Did he not like being a doctor?
[13:41] I don't think he did. I don't think he liked it. I don't really think he liked working in general. I think he preferred to be a man of leisure, which wasn't good for my brothers, I don't think, seeing a man being so passive in his life. Well, hang on, hang on.
[14:01] But he was still working. I mean, you said he was – I'm not trying to catch you out. I just want to make sure I understand. So he was still working to some degree, right? I mean, he was doing his research.
[14:13] He was writing papers. papers um and he wasn't really doing any active research so he wasn't you know like in labs or anything like that but um he was keeping up with the medical research on his topic that um was his baby you know and was was continuing to write papers but of course this is like behind closed doors like we didn't really see his work he didn't have to he wasn't getting paid for it he wasn't getting up in the morning and, you know, going to work, anything like that.
[14:43] So, help me understand, and it's interesting what you said, and of course, it's your family, I'm not going to disagree with you about your family, but when you said it was not good for my brothers, so, you know, the argument could be made, well, he didn't have to work, he didn't like the job, so he did stay-at-home parenting, and obviously, you know, I'm a a stay-at-home dad, right? So I'm trying to think if he's... If he's not enjoying his work, and he doesn't need to work, and he's doing stuff that he enjoys, and he's parenting, why is that bad for your brothers? You said passive, and I'd like to know more about that, but I don't see passive coming out of just the choices he's made so far. It seems kind of active to walk away from something you don't like and do something more rewarding.
[15:40] I mean, that is a good point. Just, I mean, so he was definitely passive in other ways in his life. So maybe I'm universalizing that. So he, because 90% of the time with my mom, because my mom, of course, is this volatile sort of tyrant of the house, right? Like where she gets her way. She is very easily upset, right? Very reactive. effective and dad on the other hand was 90% of the time 90% of the time he was, conflict avoidant so he would do anything in his power and including lying and conspiring with the kids to lie to my mother to keep her from getting upset we can't upset mom you know kids be quiet she just got home from work she's stressed you know that sort of thing like very tense and.
[16:39] That was 90% of the time. The other 10%, he would blow up. So he would go for really, he wasn't as reactive as mom, where it wasn't like a daily thing where he could just blow up any time. It was like, over time, getting bullied and degraded by mom, you know, verbally. He eventually would just snap. And he would have, it would be more explosive than mom's tempers, where he would like throw things and get just physically violent. Of course, that stopped when he got older and he had strokes and he was very ill at the end of his life. So that did not continue into his old age. but um so that was the sort of behavior and passivity that he was acting under where he would just be really i mean it wasn't again you're right it's not passive i don't i keep using that term but it was an active thing where we would he would lie to mom all the time you know and and get me to lie and like not don't don't tell her this you know kind of thing she should should know and um does that make sense yeah that.
[17:52] Totally makes sense no because honestly i was just thinking when you said that obviously i don't make it more about me but uh i was just thinking that gee if i'd had a son and i sort of quit the corporate world and did something i enjoyed more and.
[18:03] Although i guess it's.
[18:04] Not exactly uh it's not passive really being a philosopher it's quite an active.
[18:08] Life in a yeah way but.
[18:11] Now i was just wondering if i'd had a son rather than a daughter, if that would have changed. But anyway, I mean, to make it about you. So I think that's interesting. So your mom can't be reasoned with, right?
[18:24] Right. That's correct.
[18:26] So for your father to say, you know, be quiet and don't upset mom, that makes sense because she can't be reasoned with, right? But my question is, what was the source of her power? Why did she have so much power?
[18:48] That's a really good question. Bullies have to have something.
[18:51] Right?
[18:52] And she has it over me, like, still, you know, like, I went to see her.
[18:59] Oh, we'll get to that.
[19:00] Yeah.
[19:01] Oh, that's on the list. Trust me.
[19:03] Yeah.
[19:03] That is on the list. So, but why with your, let's talk about with your father. So why did he, why did she have so much power?
[19:11] So I did a lot of investigation in this after, you know, it was after he died, so I couldn't really talk to him about it. But in terms of his childhood, he had a mother who was very volatile. She was a very serious alcoholic. This is what my father told me about her. He said, she was a wonderfully sweet woman. She was just such a lovely woman until five o'clock every day when she had her drink. And then she turned into this monster. And then was a monster until she woke up the next day. but of course my uncle his brother has a different story oh i don't want to call her a perfectly sweet lovely woman you know kind of thing um but anyways my uncle has a different story about that.
[20:02] But dad had this i think he believed that women were just like this that they were crazy you know And he had a first wife that he essentially knocked up when he was in college. He was 20. I took him to his 50th high school reunion, and they had this little game to see who had the youngest child and who had the oldest child. And dad won both. He was kind of proud of himself with that one. but um she they i think brent's the reason that they one of the reasons maybe that they got divorced was that she was too sane for him like it didn't it was boring to him how she wasn't like volatile and stuff and i went through before i, left so when i married my husband and you know defood essentially uh, Sorry, my second husband.
[21:00] Second husband.
[21:00] I married my second husband.
[21:01] Go ahead.
[21:02] My philosopher king husband. Right. Okay. Right. Yes. So before I did that, before I left that state, I went cross country to get away from my mother. I went through, dad took a lot of photos and he had lots of archives of letters and things. And I went through all his stuff, you know, without my mother's permission. She was out of town. So I just kind of had at it and scanned it. Anyway, I found this letter that he wrote to her this summer. I think it was like three months after they'd been married for three months. And he wrote this letter begging her to be nicer to him, basically. Like that her cruelty and her sometimes even hatred is what he said. Sometimes it seems that you even hate me. You know, this hatred that you spew at me, I can't stand it. And it's going to ruin our relationship. relationship that's what he said in this letter that he saved from all for all these years.
[21:58] And sorry when was this in the course of their marriage this.
[22:02] Was three months after they were married.
[22:04] Good lord so so he knew all about her cruelty from i mean we would assume before marriage but certainly very early right before you guys came along.
[22:12] Oh yeah yeah i think he hit i think she hid it from him until they were married i think.
[22:17] Uh that's no yeah sorry yeah sorry i mean sorry that that's that's on the level of your dad she was perfectly lovely until five o'clock right.
[22:27] Okay yes you're.
[22:28] Right uh you're right so because there would be signs right that there are always signs there are signs in past relationships there are signs in her relationship to her family there are always disagreements and so on and and somebody who masks disagreements, is manipulative right so let's say that she didn't fight with him but but you can't have normal disagreements with a crazy person either they are totally subservient like they're either at your feet or at your throat right they're either totally subservient or totally dominant so even if she didn't have any fights with him at all that would be a sign of dysfunction but given that his first wife was as you say too nice too normal too boring then he must have been drawn to the volatility of your mom right because he's like well she's she's fiery she's you know she's she's emphatic she she lives life to the max and and she's not like my other bland you know not not insane wife so so for sure he knew all of this stuff uh before right before getting it right.
[23:29] Well what happened in their their story of very shortly after that she got pregnant.
[23:38] After the letter I.
[23:40] Think so the timeline is a little confusing she might have even already been pregnant so they had their first child, It must have, it was 80, sorry, we don't need to, we don't need to say the exact date, but it was, I think it was a year after they, they were married. So it must have been around that time that he wrote that letter that they got pregnant. But the baby did not, did not live. She went, she, he had, she had a genetic issue where he only lived eight days. and then mom was very very sad after that dad said that she cried every day for a year after she lost that baby that's not true no that's.
[24:29] Not true tell.
[24:32] Me more I hate to be an annoyingly blunt guy but this is all just manipulative sentimentality because.
[24:40] Okay, so she was so sad about the baby who died because she cares so much for her children, you see. She's just all about the children and the mothering and the love and it broke her heart. And that's why, you see, after she lost a child, she treasured her remaining children so much more. Except that's the complete opposite of what happened, right?
[25:08] Yes.
[25:11] So she did not i mean if you don't care about your life children it's pretty hard to argue that you care so much about your dead children am i wrong i mean you know this situation but logically to me if someone you know abuses their their their actual children it's hard to say but they were just so heartbroken and it was so terrible and oh so awful because of the child's to die and of course the child who died is terribly terribly terribly sad but that's saying she has the capacity to love and bond and treasure the children who died unfortunately not the children who actually lived that she was supposed to parent right don't believe it for a moment she.
[25:57] Also just seems to love babies a lot more than she loves like once they actually get to to learn how to talk and you know talk.
[26:06] Back of course she does i mean all all cruel people have less problem with babies than they do with adults or children who can talk back because the babies don't challenge them.
[26:17] She got all the love for free well.
[26:19] Your babies are just it's a drug right the the babies will you mean you know you're a mother right they they bond and attach to you you don't have to earn it, right the the you know i mean you treat them decently and they'll light up when you come in the room and and and then you think that that's everything that you deserve and then what happens that that's a setup for turning on the kids when they get older right i mean the parents get mad at children because babies bond with them and give them all this dopamine so they feel like they're loved the parents feel like they're loved and then the at some point the kids are like there's something wrong with you up there you know something something's not right here and they begin to be skeptical and and and withdraw i mean my daughter's in her mid-teens right i mean 16 this year and she knows like down to the last atomic detail every one of my flaws and foibles.
[27:10] Like absolutely she could she could go on for you know a certain amount of time i guess we won't get into exactly how long but let's just say it's not totally totally short but no she knows all of my foibles and she knows all of my pettiness and all of my wing every single detail every single detail you can't avoid it particularly if you're a stay-at-home parent because there's nothing to hide no i mean we love each other and i know her foibles um i also know which ones i'm more more responsible for and also which ones she's more responsible for but uh you know knowing absolutely everything about the people in your life is the job of children and so when the kids get a little older they're like hmm yeah something's not quite right about all of this something not is not is not working and then uh they the the parents react the mothers often react with this in rage like no no no you're supposed to be a love me dopamine delivery mechanism and you're not doing your job. It's really quite unpleasant.
[28:12] There was a story about me as a baby that I was so attached to mom that when she, she tried to go to this workout class once a week and the second she left the house, I would start screaming and begging for mom and like I would wait by the back door and it went on so much that just drove dad crazy. He like forbid her from going to this workout class again. And she, she loved this story. She loved it. But how, you know, dad was like, oh, it was awful. But mom just, she just ate it up. She thought it was the best, right?
[28:43] Now, but you know, that's not healthy.
[28:46] Yeah.
[28:47] I mean, that's an, I'm no expert, right? But my understanding is that that's an insecure attachment. Like you're not trusting she's coming back. You're not trusting that things are going to work out, that you're just very anxious. So I'm not sure that's, I'm not sure that's like, she was so attached. It's like, you know, I mean, if you have a husband who like, puts a puts a gps tracker on your car and checks your cell phone and and all of that.
[29:16] That's not love that's kind of sorry i'm laughing because we my husband and i have we have the that on our phones we can stalk each other whenever we want no i get that but it's not out of emotional need right yeah i know of course i was like i wonder if he's almost home i can make did put dinner on the table yeah yeah right right so yeah.
[29:40] I mean that story is interesting but i do.
[29:43] Not think.
[29:43] That it is uh it is.
[29:46] Healthy my first memory when i look back is is of anxiety it's that's my very first memory i'm anxious you know um very fearful and you know as a child i was mom always oh you're too sensitive you know that was the story about me that i was just i was just way too sensitive, go on um well let's see uh why.
[30:17] Would she say that because oh because she hurt you and you were upset.
[30:21] Or i had i had needs like oh no, needs how selfish can you be i know like well as i grew up and into my teenage years i tried to be as needless as possible you know i didn't even ask to to learn how to drive because i just knew that it would stress them out and well it's like well i'll just figure it out i guess when i get there and lo and behold it didn't work yeah it was that was harder yeah to actually practice to learn how to drive um so so what about the.
[30:55] The needs thing um she.
[30:57] Would say you.
[30:58] Are um you are what you are too needy you are too sensitive you're too so yeah so brutal people right they harm you right and then.
[31:07] When you get upset.
[31:08] They say you're oversensitive right that's.
[31:10] Right everything.
[31:12] Everything to do with impossible people is putting you in an impossible situation, Mm-hmm. If you don't, you know, if you don't care about her, you don't give her what she wants, you don't do the things that are right by her. So to have needs and to not have needs is bad. To want things from your mother is bad. To complain about not getting them is bad. And what, so what would happen if you just didn't interact with her? Like if you stayed in your room or like you just say, okay, I'm not going to have any needs. Then what? What happened then?
[31:51] Well that was uh that was essentially the norm uh from so from 10 on she when she got home from work she went straight back to her room from when i was age 10 on that is um she would go straight back to her room after she got home from work sometimes like 17 hour days you know like really really crazy doctor hours. Um, and dad would like bring her, her meals in bed and, and enable that. And like, I would not see her like hardly ever. Um, and I would try to avoid her as much as possible.
[32:27] I did see the only time I ever really saw her and had any positive interaction. We would have a family vacation every year for two weeks and usually like a European vacation, you know, something very bougie. And, uh, you know, it was through nice trips. And mom was like, on the company behavior right she was really happy on these trips um that was the other reason i sort of deluded myself into this taking this trip with her i thought maybe she would just be really happy on the trip but uh anyway uh because that's how it was like she was i could actually like sort of talk to her not i mean not really talk to her but now that i think about it you know we talked about the things we were seeing and we know we didn't even talk then like it was we just barely talked ever you know um so i'm my memory from before i was 10 it's really hazy i mean i when my brother was born i was five when my younger brother was born so i got to be like the baby there's lots of benefits to being the baby and in the family so i got all the benefits until i was five and then i think it was actually sort of beneficial for me to stop getting the baby benefits and And, you know, grew up with it, whereas my younger brother was the baby until he was a grown man. Like, he's 30-something years old now, but he's still a baby.
[33:44] Yeah, I mean, a dysfunctional family just doesn't allow people to grow. It doesn't allow roles to change. It doesn't allow things to shift around. People are just assigned. It's like the army, right? The army is just one big dysfunctional family, so you have your rank. Although, I guess, at least with the army, you have the chance to improve or the chance to grow. But yeah, dysfunctional families, nobody can change their positions because there's no living in the moment, right? There's only living in stereotypes and habits and there's no sort of actual connection or conversations in the moment. So it's all not how it is now, but it's all how it evolved. And so, okay. So your, as far as discipline went, how did that go?
[34:26] It was more of a, so, okay. So no corporal punishment. like we were not dad was very felt very strongly about that that though i have even video like i when i went through all my dad's archives i i scan you know digitized all this all the home movies and there's even video of my mother like trying to spank my younger son my younger son my younger brother and um there there's like a video of me like talking about spanking and stuff So the story is that we were never spanked, but I have, it's just a sketchy memory. I don't fully believe that, you know what I mean? That we were never spanked, but I don't have like strong memories of it. I do. So it was mostly like we were just kind of with my sibling. I had four siblings, you know, or three siblings and a half sister too, but we didn't grow up with her. but it was kind of laissez-faire um you know there weren't really rules there weren't i mean there were unspoken rules of course um but my parents were just very absent it was like lord of the flies with my siblings and like they were my my parents weren't physically abusive my sibling my older siblings were not my younger sibling my two older siblings were physically abusive with me and uh and.
[35:49] What do you what's uh what do you mean by that.
[35:52] Hitting scratching indian burns do you know what an indian burn is i think.
[35:56] We used to call them just when you rotate your hand opposite ways we used to call.
[36:00] Them chinese burns.
[36:01] And uh yeah it really really messes up your skin.
[36:04] It's really painful yes it is older brother enjoyed giving me indian burns um and uh, though there was a lot of fights particularly between i was usually in between stuck in the middle between fights between my older brother and my older sister like I really idolized them and looked up to them so much I loved them both you know love and I was attached very attached to those I won't use the word love but I was extremely attached to both of them and um but they would get in these huge fights and I'd have to like pick a side you know and um, uh yeah there wasn't really a lot like the only discipline was just being yelled at you know it was just yelling and it was my parents that is um and just oh i don't understand you kids oh you know that kind of mother and how often how often.
[37:02] Would these sibling conflicts occur.
[37:05] Oh, daily.
[37:08] Oh, gosh.
[37:10] It was bad. It was really bad.
[37:12] Wow. Now, why do you think there was so much rage and violence and so on? And I used to think this is more because, you know, there's this story in society. Well, you know, the older sibling just resents the younger sibling because it's taking attention away from the parents. It's almost like this inevitability that is talked about with regards to sibling conflicts.
[37:35] And it's not true. It's absolutely, completely, and totally false. And I can say this with total certainty, because I know a lot of families with multiple siblings, many siblings, I know a family with three brothers, four brothers, and they're all peaceful parents, and the siblings get along really, really well. They encourage each other, they support each other, they're friendly with each other, they would never dream of attacking each other or hitting each other. So this, you know, the inevitability of sibling conflict turns out, hey it's just another piece of propaganda put out by abusive parents like oh we had to manage you guys your siblings fight you know they they fight and and we just tried to do our best to manage it it's like this but it's not true it's like the myth of the uh you know the contentious relationship and our relationships are working and there's going to be conflict and you gotta you gotta work it out and you gotta manage things and if you're not being challenged you're not growing and it's like, no, no, I have a job. I don't need two. I don't want a relationship that is a part-time career of anxiety and aggression management. Like, that's no fun. Well, you know this from, I guess, the two marriages, right? I mean, you're supposed to be a team getting along in life, not, you know, can you take this punch to the gut? You know, this sort of who's afraid of Virginia Woolf nonsense. So why do you think there was so much aggression and violence from your older brothers?
[38:59] So older brother and older sister.
[39:01] Sorry, older brother, older siblings, yeah.
[39:03] Yeah, older siblings. So... I mean, my older siblings, so being one of the younger, I actually didn't receive as much direct abuse as they did. They were more directly, verbally abused by both my parents, but particularly my mom towards my older sister, my dad towards my older brother. My mom sort of doted on the boys in this creepy, gross way. um and uh in there yeah yeah but she was very hard on my older sister um in terms of just, you know those when i was in fourth grade i had a science fair project it was a group project so we all took turns going to each other's houses we only went to my house once because oh everybody knows.
[39:56] The crazy house in school.
[39:57] Everybody knows.
[39:59] That i think let's do it somewhere else yeah.
[40:02] Yeah well the one day we did do it mom is like screaming at my sister to find them like find us like a we needed a pair of scissors and like or something and mom was just like she called her like a bitch like in front of my friends you know and like weren't you weren't you talking about company mom yeah i know it's not true okay so she wants to.
[40:25] Make sure that the kids don't stick around right so she wants to make sure that the kids don't want to come over okay.
[40:31] Right. So... So my older siblings had it, and they had more moms. So mom did take some time off of her work as a doctor.
[40:44] My dad's sister, my aunt, who I actually am close with to this now. I wasn't then, but I am now. I'm close with her. She's a stay-at-home mom. Also, we have a lot in common. And she was actually, there was things that I didn't like about my aunt growing up because I thought they were against my mom. But I'm realizing now that she was just on our side, on the kid's side. so like she made this comment like oh well are you going to have to go back to work you know to my mom my mom was like well of course you know i i spent all this all these years in medical school residency like of course i you know of course i'm going to work again and um so my but my older she took some years off when my older siblings were were young like i even i found her i'm such a snoop i found her journal from the 80s close to when i was born and i read i read it i still i stole it actually i stole her journal um and i have it and i reference it occasionally um anyway she was debating on even homeschooling my older sister which i was like really shocked by just to read that in her journal that she thought about homeschooling and like she taught my older sister started like how to read from like I guess she was reading at three years old or something ridiculous and she taught her how to play the piano and she was a very active mom with my older sister now my older brother.
[42:10] The, there's been, I heard a theory of schizophrenia that it was, it was created with refrigerator moms, like the kind of moms.
[42:21] Oh, sorry. I thought you meant, sorry, did you continue? I just misunderstood. I thought there was a theory as to why your brother in particular, but yeah, the refrigerator moms. Yeah, I've heard of that. Sorry, go ahead.
[42:32] Well, my brother had a lot, has, has and had a lot of issues. And I even saw a schizophrenia diagnosis for him at one point. I don't know. So anyway, but I'd read that the refrigerator mom's like the mom who sets the kid up in the playpen or something and goes and does all of her activities and doesn't interact much with that child. It can create schizophrenia. And it was like disproven or like people thought supposedly disproven.
[43:06] Oh, there's so many battles about this.
[43:09] Right?
[43:09] Look, obviously, we wouldn't want to blame mothers for something that was biological, right? I mean, that would be like blaming moms for like, I don't know, epilepsy or something like that, or the people who said that it was stress that caused stomach ulcers when it was in fact a bacteria that could be treated with antibacterials. Now, maybe stress is related or whatever, but yeah, we don't want to... I mean, it's horribly unjust to blame people for that, which is biological. But on the other hand, refrigerator moms don't want to get blamed if they have something to do with it. So, you know, in mental health, there's this constant tug of, well, we want to be fair. We certainly don't want to blame moms for something that is genetic. And that, of course, is totally right. Of course we don't. That would be monstrous, right? Right. But at the same time, we have to understand that parenting has something to do with mental health. It has to. You know, maybe not 100%, but it has something to do with it. And we know that because dysfunctional parents are always saying that the reason they're dysfunctional was that they had hard childhoods.
[44:20] So so the parents the parents can't say well my parenting had nothing to do with it when they so often blame their own bad parenting when they were children as to why they made bad i had it hard going up and i'm you know my my father beat me and so yeah i it's good for anything is tough i mean are there is there genetic susceptibility in my view yes of course and i I think there's been some work done on that. But genetics doesn't mean manifestation, right? It's like people have a genetic susceptibility to damage from...
[44:55] From cigarettes, right? Because some people, you know, smoke and are fine. Some people have a, I assume it's a genetic susceptibility to damage from cigarettes, and some people don't, but that susceptibility to damage isn't activated if you don't smoke. And I remember this from the Balm of the Brain series that some kids with particular genes for aggression, if they're physically abused, like 100% of them become incredibly physically aggressive, but they still have to be physically abused. So, yeah, I don't know the answer, of course, to schizophrenia. I do know that there's some, I think it's a northern European country, maybe Denmark, that they have a sort of group and psychotherapy approach to schizophrenia that they claim has really good outcomes. But then, of course, there's also a lot of scams, right? I mean, I'm not saying this place is a scam, but just in the world where people are desperate, you know, like, we can cure autism or whatever they say, right? And so, yeah, it's a very complicated topic, but it doesn't really have any bearing on peaceful parenting, right? Because you should be a peaceful parent, right? Not just because maybe your kids have a susceptibility to mental illness, but because it's immoral to harm children. So, yeah, I've seen the articles back and forth on the refrigerator mom theory. And of course, again, if it's purely biological...
[46:19] And genetic, then it would be monstrous to blame the moms. On the other hand, you can be a crappy mom with an entirely biologically created schizophrenic child, right? I mean, your mom sounds like a pretty bad mom, regardless of the genetics of whatever might happen with her kids and mental illness, right?
[46:41] Right. Yes. Well, and I don't know. I've only heard that the schizophrenia thing once about my brother that that was like a diagnosis that someone put on him at some point sorry and you've heard about this.
[46:56] You didn't read the actual medical report or or the diagnosis.
[46:59] I and i i'm even trying to remember what the source was within my memory like how i have this but i mean asking my mom later i'm trying to remember exactly when i asked my mom too she was saying no it's not schizophrenia then a few years ago he was showing this like paranoid behavior and when he went off his meds.
[47:19] So the story with my brother, they put him on Ritalin at a very young age. And then when I was probably like eight years old, he was actually hospitalized for something we called, this is what I called it, you know, mad attacks is what we would call them, which sounds a lot like what my parents had too, but Matt.
[47:45] Oh, where he would just like have a tantrum and lose control, so to speak, of his temper?
[47:49] Yes. And I think it happened at school or something like that. I don't, I don't know, you know, I was so young. I don't know all the circumstances. I'm really curious, but you know, I don't, I don't know.
[48:00] Now, why are you, why are you curious?
[48:05] Well i i just want to know what happened um.
[48:09] Well i know that's just another way of saying curious why are you curious i want to know what happened synonym for curious why are you so are you curious because you're concerned about your own children if there's genetic issues involved.
[48:23] No that's not it didn't even occur to me.
[48:25] No no and i'm i'm perfectly sure that it's not to be just you know i'm i'm you know for whatever that's worth as a guy who doesn't have any training or expertise in these areas um i am not um i wouldn't i don't want to put a fear in your head i mean i'm sure your kids are great and of course you know both my parents mental health issues like you wouldn't believe and and both institutionalized and so on and, my my daughter is fantastic and great and you know so so uh that is that that to me that's That's environment, right?
[48:59] That's environment.
[49:00] I mean, I think my family have high-octane brains, which means they go really fast and they crash really spectacularly. Like, you go in, you know, 180 on the autobahn, you know, you get either from A to B really quickly, or you're just a flaming smudge in the eye of eternity or something, right? So... So, yeah. So why are you curious? Why do you want to know?
[49:26] Well, I think I mentioned in my letter about feeling gaslit. This was something that I didn't understand. I was so young and it was like not talked about in the family, right? Like it was something we just didn't talk about. And I wanted to know what happened. I wanted the truth. And, you know, I'm also a writer, and I've written some essays about my childhood. And when you write creative nonfiction, you have to get all the details correct, you know, if you want them to be published. And sometimes I— I'm sorry.
[50:06] How on earth are you going to get the details correct?
[50:11] I mean, going over source material— I mean, isn't your mom kind of a liar? Yeah, she is. And I mean, my dad was, too. He lied.
[50:19] Yeah, well, I want to get back to your dad. So I've got a little note here. We'll get back to your dad. But I'm trying to sort of figure out how are you going to get to the truth when everybody has an incentive to lie?
[50:35] It's a different story.
[50:37] Well, and everybody has incentive because you can't get the truth from people with a guilty conscience. You just can't. Because the reason they have a guilty conscience is because they lie to themselves and others. Right, so, I mean, my mother blames her violence and her dysfunction on the doctors who injected her with various ailments. Now, I can't possibly get the truth from her. I mean, I personally believe that the truth would be fatal. If you, I mean, the purpose of a bad conscience is to have you correct course. If you haven't corrected course for like 60 years or whatever, there's no course correction that's possible and you're just, you're in, like you're committed. I mean, the doubling down is all that's left, tripling down, quadrupling down. And that's what my mother did every time I talked to her about things. She just doubled, quadrupled, escalated. So, and your older siblings, your older brother and sister, have they ever taken ownership and apologized for the violence they've visited upon helpless children? Now, they themselves, as children in a bad environment, I get all of that, but there's still some responsibility.
[51:58] Sorry, to whom?
[51:59] Your older brother and sister who were violent towards their younger siblings and modeled that violence with each other, too.
[52:05] Hmm did have they ever apologized for that you said well.
[52:08] Taken ownership apologized made some kind of.
[52:11] Restitution anything like that uh my brother no he uh he's he's even his memory of it is very hazy like uh he he has issues with memory um yeah no no and i mean well.
[52:27] Sorry did he received some sort of brain injury and a diagnosis of brain problems?
[52:33] No. He's really smart. He's like genius level smart.
[52:36] Okay, so why on earth would you believe him when he says he can't remember things? Have you never seen someone on a witness stand? I don't recall. I bleep the fifth. I don't have any memory of that. I don't remember this. I don't remember that. I don't remember the other.
[52:52] Hmm. When? i uh i mean that's what he says.
[53:02] Okay but why would you believe him and i'm not you know i'm not saying he's a liar i don't know the guy, but if people have problems with their memories as a whole they tend to be homeless non-functional in society in care homes i assume none of that applies to him I mean.
[53:23] Not too far off. I mean, so he wasn't never homeless because he's lived off my parents, you know, but he's never had a job. He's older than me and, you know, pushing 40s.
[53:39] He's never had a job?
[53:42] I think maybe he had a job for like a week once.
[53:44] No, no. I mean, functionally, he's never had a job. I'm not going down to granular levels of specificity here. Yeah. Interesting. Okay.
[53:51] He's never been employed.
[53:51] Is this the one where the schizophrenia thing is floating around?
[53:56] Yes. So, and he's genius level smart. Like they did have, I never had my IQ tested as a kid, but his was, and I can't remember what the number was, but it was very high. He was proud of it. And he's studying, he's now not actually in a graduate program. He's taking like classes to get into the graduate program for physics. So he's, but there was many years where, you know, he just basically did nothing. He just did nothing all day.
[54:26] I mean, people got to do something.
[54:29] I don't know what he's doing. He had a house. My parents bought him a house, you know, with strings, of course. They owned some bit. Anyway, there's strings I'm involved with. I own property with my mom, too. It's a whole thing. Anyway.
[54:46] Oh, you still own property with your mom?
[54:48] Well, technically, I do. But last summer, she sold the property that I owned the most of. There's some LLCs that I'm a 2% owner at this point. But the one that I owned 50% of, she sold last year.
[55:04] And she gave you the money? or she.
[55:06] Gave me half.
[55:07] Okay yeah.
[55:07] She gave me she gave me my percentage of ownership.
[55:09] Okay um sorry so i understand that i want to make sure i don't get too many threads open here at once so um let's get back to your brother so why why does he do nothing throughout his 20s and 30s.
[55:24] Um i don't know i don't really know what.
[55:27] Well you do you do i do everybody tries this right Because he could.
[55:32] You know, I mean, he was being enabled to. So the story with him, so he was institutionalized when he was in grade school, essentially, for these mad attacks. And then when he was in high school, he dropped out of high school. He just stopped going. And he wouldn't even leave his room. and eventually the school sort of called and was like well he's missed enough enough days where you know we're gonna you guys are gonna get in trouble with the law here unless you do something about it so they had dad i mean they didn't have to do this but this is what they did dad called the police on him basically and the police came took him out of his room and took him to an institution for i don't know exactly how long he was in there but um not super long um like a month maybe right, and then so he dropped out of high school he got his ged he uh they bought him a house and, he like semi went to college for and he eventually got he did graduate from college but it took him a long time but um and.
[56:32] Was he i guess was he put on a bunch of psych meds.
[56:35] Mm-hmm. He was on those since he was a kid. He's been on Ritalin since he was very young, so he's been drugged his whole life. He got into a lot of—I don't know what kind of drugs he was doing, but I know he did drugs.
[56:49] Oh, like recreational drugs?
[56:51] Mm-hmm. Okay, well, that explains it.
[56:53] Yeah.
[56:53] Yeah, I know he did—both my brothers are very into weed. I don't really know. I think there was other drugs, too. I just don't know. Okay.
[57:06] So his memory works well enough that he can graduate from university. His memory works well enough that he's trying to get into grad school or working towards grad school. So his memory works well. Just, you know, any wrongs that he did are mysteriously absent.
[57:21] Oh, he drinks. He drinks. He's an alcoholic, too. He drinks so much. He was having, like, after a night of heavy drinking, he had, like, nerve damage in his hand or something. And, like, it's bad. He's a really sad person.
[57:33] Person so um and it's wild to me that that if he's having tantrums or rate you said rage attacks, it's it's wild to me and this is just sort of part of the sick aspect of the society we live in that people aren't like well he's got to have learned this rage from somewhere let's go talk to the parents let's go talk to the other siblings let's go find out and then maybe we can get some people some anger management counseling or some family counseling or nope drug them up.
[58:02] I know it's, it's so horrible. And it like, they were the one, my parents were the ones having the mad attacks on regular basis, like burglar basis. And they never were forced to go. And I guess when he was in this institution, when he was on grade school, like he was beaten by a child there, like would beat him every night or something. It was something really horrible. And it's, it's really sad. And I mean, that's, I just, part of why I wanted to know more, like, I just, Just how could this happen, you know? Hang on, hang on, hang on. Sorry.
[58:31] Why do you want to know more? That's supposed to go back to that question. I'm not, I'm not, it's not critical. Like, why on earth? I'm genuinely curious. Why do you want to know more?
[58:43] What's the purpose? I want to know how it happened, why it happened, you know?
[58:47] Why, with your brother?
[58:49] Yeah. And like, how, like, what the circumstances were, you know, that.
[58:56] So you're looking for determinism.
[59:00] No, I'm not a determinist, Stef.
[59:02] Well, it's a little bit here because you're looking for the environmental factors that caused your brother's behavior.
[59:08] And it was my parents. I know it was the parents.
[59:10] No, it's not the parents.
[59:13] No? No.
[59:16] Did you have mad attacks at school?
[59:19] No.
[59:20] Same environment. Same chaos. Same neglect. Same parents. so if you're going to say i need an environmental answer for my siblings you don't get one because you were part of that environment now i know everyone's environment, you know i mean you can look up the studies right and i think that there are cases of extreme neglect and abuse where this changes but environment over the long run doesn't have as much influence as people think.
[59:56] Hmm.
[59:59] Now, how old was your brother, if you remember, like when he was getting these rage attacks or whatever, right?
[1:00:07] It would have to have been around 10, somewhere around there.
[1:00:10] So 10 years old, and he's very intelligent, right?
[1:00:13] Yes, very.
[1:00:14] At the age of 10, is it physically possible to restrain your temper? Like, obviously, if you're three months old, you can't stop crying. This is not the time for that. Self-control is a stoicism you don't read from Marcus Aurelius for your baby, right? They physically can't. If you have epilepsy, then you physically cannot stop the seizure. You can't just will it away, right? So when you're 10 years old, right? You and I remember what it's like to be 10. When you're 10 years old, is it possible for you to restrain your temper?
[1:00:53] Yes.
[1:00:54] Yes, it is. and we know that because if you were to say to your brother i'll give you a giant bag of candy or i'll give you a thousand dollars if you don't have if you don't lose your temper today at school, he would be able to achieve that right right but if his eyes had been physically removed for some reason he wouldn't he wouldn't have the choice to see but he would have had an incentive, incentive, he could respond to an incentive with his temper, right?
[1:01:28] I think so. I assume so.
[1:01:32] Right. I mean, and the way that we would know that is, were there times where he did restrain his temper? In other words, if he was in a movie or at a party, I mean, you know, things chafe at us all the time in life, right? So, did he... have no control over his temper.
[1:01:55] I mean, that was kind of the story in the household, but I guess not. Well, I think he has some control.
[1:02:02] If you said he was two, you know, obviously, right? We would give him more of a break. But he has the chance to control his temper. I mean, I'm sure you can remember when you were a kid that there were times when you were angry.
[1:02:19] And.
[1:02:19] You were able to restrain your temper.
[1:02:22] Yes now.
[1:02:26] Of course i'm not blaming him you know like he was an adult or something like that so he was in a challenging environment but so were you and so was i right.
[1:02:35] And there is.
[1:02:37] A choice right so do you know i guess you did you ever see any of these rage attack.
[1:02:43] Yes yes and.
[1:02:45] So what would happen.
[1:02:46] Well he i guess he would break his pencil a lot like that was so he'd like to break things you know and uh um that's just you know sorry side note i don't know if i mentioned this yet but my dad also when he got really angry he would throw things you know yes you mentioned that glassware yes so you know not unlike dad so he would break his pencil or something. And there was one time I found this pencil at the school store or something, which was rubbery. You could bend it in half and it didn't actually break. And I was like, look, I got this for you. It can help you.
[1:03:20] Yeah, if you could just stay off the names.
[1:03:21] Oh, I'm sorry.
[1:03:22] No, that's fine.
[1:03:23] Oh, I'm so sorry. I was like, here, take this. It'll help you. And he went into one of these mad attacks. And his face got really red. He started hyperventilating and um so i was so young it's it's hard to and i, he but you were trying to he wanted right and i was trying to help yeah i'm you know, it's like this is a pencil that doesn't break you know you keep breaking these pencils this will help you know i don't um and he got he went to the mad attack where he he would just he He basically had like a tantrum, you know, and we're like, he looked very much out of control.
[1:04:09] Right. Okay. And how much older is he than you?
[1:04:14] Two and a half years.
[1:04:15] Right.
[1:04:16] Okay.
[1:04:17] And now I'm sure as a child, you know, I mean, we can say it's a boy girl thing, but you know, this is pre-puberty, right? So it's not like he's bathing in a sea of testosterone, right? But I'm sure there were times when you got angry and frustrated as a child. And you were able to manage it to some degree or in some way, right?
[1:04:38] Yeah. Yes. There was one time I would have feigning spells sometimes as a child. Like there was one time I got so distraught and that was out of my control. One time my older siblings played this trick on me. And when I discovered the betrayal, I was so distraught. I, like, I remember the whole world kind of blurring and I blacked out from just the betrayal, you know. Right. And that was out of my control, I think. I mean, but maybe not. I was five at the time when that happened.
[1:05:17] No, at five, I mean, at five, I think that's pretty hard, right? So, again, I'm no expert. This is just my gut instinct. But I think it's tough to say my brother got institutionalized because he broke pencils.
[1:05:31] I know. That sounds crazy, right? That's part of the reason why I'm like, what was happening that he was put in this institution? Right. I know. But I don't know. You see, that's part of it. I just don't know.
[1:05:43] Well, and you won't, right?
[1:05:46] Right.
[1:05:46] I mean, the records are long gone. The teachers are probably long dead and the principals. And your mother won't tell the truth, right? My dad's dead. Your dad's dead. And you probably don't find paperwork.
[1:05:57] But I think that children get institutionalized because they pose an imminent danger to themselves or others. Not pencils.
[1:06:08] Right, right.
[1:06:10] So that must mean that your brother, if that's the case, right, then he either attacked himself in a physically dangerous manner or attacked someone else in a physically significantly dangerous manner.
[1:06:23] Which that checks. I know he was having fights. Like, so they get getting beaten up. Like, I don't, you know, he might have been. I saw him actually somewhat recently, first time in a long time. And he was talking about getting into a fight in like middle school or something and like going after a bully and being like, I'm going to see you after school, you know, at the flagpole.
[1:06:47] If it was a bully, what we do know is that he was violent towards his younger siblings, right?
[1:06:53] Yes.
[1:06:54] So, you know, the idea that it's just some external bully and like they always will paint themselves, right? So they paint themselves as the victims and I was just protecting myself from a bully and so on, right? But, you know, for me, it's kind of hard to see someone who's as a victim when they're victimizing their little brothers and sisters or whatever, right? that's a little tough to follow, right? so he might have been a bully he might have been violent yes.
[1:07:28] I thought checks actually now you now you mention it.
[1:07:31] Right that's so in which case um then he did some significant wrong and harm now of course we can say but he had it rough at home and he did he absolutely did it. But what I try to figure out, and this is absent, you know, you can read Robert Whitaker's Mad in America book, I don't know if you've read that, but probably is quite important, because, people who are on these psych meds for a long time, there seem to be some challenges, to put it mildly. But the question is, if he did not have guilt, he would be more successful. I'm I'm not saying that's the only factor, but if he was genuinely a victim and was defending himself against the bully and was doing the right thing, his conscience wouldn't plague him.
[1:08:27] We have to listen to our conscience, especially when we disagree with it, because that's the most dangerous part, right? That's the most dangerous part. When our conscience is making us feel bad for something that we've done, then we have to listen to it. And we might not like what the conscience has to say. It doesn't really matter. We have to obey the conscience or suffer the price. Now, of course, I'm not saying that it's only because of the conscience or whatever. but when people say I was just a victim I believe them if they're living that way.
[1:09:12] Now if your brother is not succeeding, and has wasted his life and is self-medicating through recreational drugs then, he clearly does not just feel like a victim Because if you are genuinely a victim, then your conscience is clear. But when you victimize others and you have the choice not to, that's when you start to get into some serious, serious trouble.
[1:09:44] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[1:09:53] I mean, you were a victim as a child and you're happily married and raising children according to peaceful parenting. So you chose well. And your brother chose to deal with his emotional problems by assaulting and injuring his little siblings, right? And now, do you not think that there's a price to be paid for that?
[1:10:22] Yeah yes he's.
[1:10:26] And how is he going to control his temper at school when he has indulged his temper at home.
[1:10:33] Yeah and when you say indulge too like that was just part of the family culture dick he was he got got his way like with lots of things like there was certain movies that we saw like a lot because they were his favorite movies, you know, so we would just, and it worked. Yeah. And we would buy, you know, dad would buy him things and take them on special. It was a sort of special treatment for him because he was troubled. He was, you know, and again, like us, dad, you know, is that appeasement guy, you know, do everything.
[1:11:07] No, it's not appeasement. No, no, it's not appeasement. It is that your father, didn't want to find the source of your brother's upset.
[1:11:19] Of course.
[1:11:20] Because that leads directly to the mirror. It's not appeasement. It's a cover-up.
[1:11:23] Yeah. Right.
[1:11:26] You know, if I'm part of a criminal gang, right, and someone says, I'm going to the cops unless you give me $1,000, and I give them $1,000, I'm not appeasing. I'm just covering up.
[1:11:37] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[1:11:43] So, your brother used his anger to get what he wanted, right? And when he got what he wanted, I assume, he calmed down, right?
[1:11:54] Yes.
[1:11:55] Right.
[1:11:56] Yes. Right.
[1:12:01] And so, he could easily control his temper, and it's not an attack, right? Right. It's not an attack if it can be altered quickly. In other words, he's like, I want to watch my movie. I want to jump up and down, hold his breath, scream, throw things. And then he gets to watch this movie and he calms right down. That's not an attack. That's just a manipulation. It's not real. Not a genuine emotion.
[1:12:30] OK. Okay. Sorry, this is fascinating, and I'm seeing some behaviors in my own children that I maybe want to rethink here.
[1:12:42] No, all children, all children, because children are helpless. So what could they do? They can ask, threaten, lie, bully, manipulate. You know, when my daughter would want something, she would say, I really, really want that. I mean, we would direct, right? And I would work to facilitate it as best I could. And if not, we'd sort of talk about why and so on. And so, I mean, you know what it's like to be a kid. You desperately want stuff. I mean, I remember when I was in boarding school, we went to a county fair and I was I was desperate to try and throw a ball, knock over some cans, and get a coconut. Now, actually, in hindsight, I think those cans were welded to the ground, to the base, because, you know, it's a fair, which means that the toothless wanderers are ripping off kids. And I didn't have any money. Now, I knew that there was a certain amount of money that was given for spending money or pocket money or emergency money to the school, and I sort of begged and wheedled, and I really, really wanted to throw the coconut, throw the ball, knock over the cans, and get the coconut. And I couldn't achieve it. Which is one of the reasons why I started working at the age of 10, because, like, now I have, I don't have to beg. I don't have to beg. I'm going to rely on the goodwill of others. Now, I did actually finally get, I think it was, I don't know, three pennies or something like that. And I threw the ball and I didn't get the coconut. But, hey, at least it got my way. Right? Now, so your brother...
[1:14:10] Made the choice, and it is a choice. It is not inevitable. It is not genetics. It is not determinism. We have no choice but to react to trauma, but we have a choice in how we react to trauma. So your brother could have looked at your parents and said, well, that's terrible. Boy, what they're doing is just awful. I won't do that. I mean, when I was a kid, my mother was mystical and subjectivist and so on, a relativist, as were other family members. And I was like, well, that's terrible. So, you know, I got my hands on philosophy and was introduced to philosophy and just sort of pursued that, right? It's sort of like, you know, the old cliche of the guy, the two twins, right? One's a drunk, the other's not. And you say to the drunk kid, why do you drink? Well, my father was a drunk. And you say to the sober kid, why don't you drink? And he says, well, my father was a drunk. I saw how terrible it was. That's the Dr. Phil thing. His father, I think, was pretty hard into the sauce, and he doesn't touch alcohol. Yeah, good for him.
[1:15:25] So your brother made a choice. And I've talked to people who were mean as kids. I mean, I've had lots of these conversations. Now, this isn't science, I understand that, these are people who are calling in, but every single time, every single time, I've talked to people about this. Do you know what they say?
[1:15:54] That it was my environment no i knew it was oh what do they say oh i knew it was wrong i knew.
[1:16:02] I shouldn't i felt terrible afterwards i did it.
[1:16:05] Again well and that was my sister too my older sister she well i don't have a younger son my sister she she was such a bully she was more of a bully even than my older brother like um we had to sort of we didn't she's actually share a room but she had to walk through my room to get to her bedroom and so ever i would be sleeping anytime she walked by my bed if i was dozing she'd knock it with her knees you know yeah yeah no and that's actually a form of.
[1:16:33] Torture right i mean.
[1:16:34] Yeah it was it was torture yeah no no literally it's a sleep deprivation.
[1:16:38] Is a form of torture.
[1:16:40] Yeah i cry i'd beg her to stop doing it she just laughed she thought it was funny but a lot of times when she did make me cry because she was so cruel she She would feel bad, and then she'd make me laugh. She'd be funny, too. But she did write. So after I read RTR and started making big changes in my relationship, she did actually, after I cut her out, she wrote me this letter that was apologizing. It was a little bit of a BNAP, but she was saying she was in therapy, and she felt really bad. But I wasn't ready to talk to her at that point. So I haven't really.
[1:17:26] Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. So she wrote a letter saying she was sorry. And then I assume made some environmental excuses. And did she offer to make any restitution?
[1:17:38] No. Okay.
[1:17:40] So, you know, words are words, right?
[1:17:42] Yeah.
[1:17:43] And until words are matched by actions. you know, I mean, if you're a nutritionist and somebody's 350 pounds and they say, but I keep reading these diet books, where's this word?
[1:17:56] You have to change behavior. Yeah. I wasn't, I haven't been interested in, this year I've been, I have, I did see her though for the first time. It was the same thing, like not the same thing, the similar thing where I, I had dinner with her, um, and, uh, met her husband now and her two kids and, You know, we didn't actually talk about anything real, but.
[1:18:21] Okay, so hang on. How long between her writing the letter and you meeting her for dinner?
[1:18:28] It was like nine years.
[1:18:32] And the other thing, too, if somebody were to write me a letter, I'd be very skeptical.
[1:18:38] Yeah, I was. Right.
[1:18:40] And so how does somebody overcome that skepticism? What could your sister have done to overcome your skepticism and for you to believe that she truly was starting to empathize and truly interested in your sort of thoughts and feelings?
[1:18:59] You know, I don't know, because what was happening around the time when I stopped talking to her, it seemed like every time she would call me, she'd be crying. You know, it was just very, very emotional, very... extreme in her emotions you know and i know being emotional is not bad but it was just it was just so intense all the time with her and then we had this sort of group but what.
[1:19:27] Was she crying about.
[1:19:30] It was like we have different things like one time she one of the times it was a health issue she was having and um she was like pre-diabetic she's she's been overweight her whole life um She was pre-diabetic, and she called me crying over the diagnosis. And I was suggesting that maybe she should start walking because I had actually lost, when I found philosophy, I started walking a lot, like listening to podcasts. And I lost a ton of weight without even really trying. And I wasn't super overweight, but just, yeah, anyway. I lost a ton of weight, and so I just lost weight. And I was trying to tell her, well, let's go walking together. Let's do something. thing you know we can this is not like a death sentence here like let's be more proactive and if you lose the weight like maybe you know you can uh get that your blood work will be clean again kind of thing and she just was like well no i can't you know i'm not gonna do that or oh.
[1:20:25] You're you're such a nice young lady you are so nice well it's true that you did kick my bed and abuse me i would mean to be a cruel to me throughout my childhood but i'm gonna let's walk together for your health you're so nice i'm not sure it's entirely warranted, because that that would have been my response but you know that doesn't mean i'm right and you're wrong it's your your family and all of that my response would be like you can't why are you crying yeah like why are you crying it's.
[1:20:55] So ridiculous you.
[1:20:56] Eat like a pig i know you eat like a pig and now you're pre-diabetic i don't know why you're crying, you mean you enjoyed all the food i assume and and you don't like to walk around you don't you know the only weight you lift is a fork, yeah so i like sorry i'm a little i'm a little confused i mean you've known about the health risks for years everyone's told you about the health risks for years why are you crying i don't understand you chose this yeah.
[1:21:25] Yeah so it was a little it's pretty annoying for her to cry over that to me and.
[1:21:30] Well and also you know you're crying over bad behavior sorry you're crying over a health risk from bad behavior you utterly chose and you've never shed one tear for how you treated me as a kid this self-pity is is you know i'm gonna throw up for you right right no it's self pity right it's just oh i mean me i and and i'm so sad and and help me help me help me i.
[1:21:55] Gotta i gotta tell you this other thing around that time that we were having this group text between it was all my siblings and my mom and i was you know i know we shouldn't rtr over text is really bad and I was guilty.
[1:22:06] Of it. It's good. I think it's fine if other people are sort of trained versus inexperienced in it. I was a newbie. No, no, no. But if your siblings don't know what you're doing, then you might as well just type to them in Japanese. But anyway, sorry, go on.
[1:22:20] Right. Well, I was trying to suggest to mom that, let's see, I can't remember exactly how we said it. It was just something to get back to. I had criticisms about her behavior, you know, and I was like, mom, you know, like you read so many books. Have you ever picked up a parenting book thing? You know, channeling my inner stuff. She, you know, was basically, mom, I'll just cry. Oh, you're attacking me. And my sister, sorry, my sister, she sent me, I think it was a private message. And she's like, you can, oh, darn it. I said the name again.
[1:22:56] It's fine. You just, you give me some exciting labor down the road, but don't worry about it.
[1:23:00] I'm so sorry, Stef. I told myself, I was like.
[1:23:02] I'm going to be so good. Okay. Just keep going. Just keep going.
[1:23:06] So she was like, you can't talk to people about their parenting. I'm a teacher. I know. She, she took some classes. She was a substitute teacher at the time. She wasn't an actual teacher. She, she, and she had a degree in teaching, but she never actually was a full-time teacher. Anyway, I was like, hello, this is my own parent. You can't say it as a teacher to another parent, maybe, illegally or something, but I'm talking to my own parent. I can't talk about my own experience. And she just starts crying, you know, that sort of thing.
[1:23:37] Was she a mother at this point?
[1:23:39] No, no. She became a mom.
[1:23:42] Yeah, so she's just your mom's meat puppet, right? I mean, don't talk to mom. You're upsetting mom. Okay, the lessons of your dad. Okay, can we get back to your dad for a sec?
[1:23:51] Yes. Right.
[1:23:53] So you did say that your dad would blow up 10% of the time and sort of reactive and so on and be worse than your mom. And that seems sort of reactive and with your mom. Now with your brother, you mentioned that your dad was verbally abusive towards him. I think so. A little bit of your dad is like low up reactive, Mr. Magoo, distracted, academic, Einstein type, you know, messy office, innocent heart, you know, but I was really struck when you were talking about him, your father verbally abusing your brother. What do you mean by that?
[1:24:26] So, an example that comes to my mind, my brother.
[1:24:33] Right. I'll remove that too. Go ahead.
[1:24:37] My brother was, we had this sort of beach house that had three stories. On the top, we were, the kids were up on the top floor. In his room, there was a balcony. balcony he my father found him walking along the the railing balancing just walking along there dad how high was.
[1:25:02] He off the ground.
[1:25:02] Three stories up okay kind of.
[1:25:06] A death wish yeah.
[1:25:06] Yeah yeah it was scary and how old.
[1:25:10] Was your brother at this point.
[1:25:13] Um eight nine okay uh, maybe even a little young, maybe even seven. I'm not totally sure. So we, between seven and nine. Anyway, dad yanks him in and just screams at him. And I don't really know all that happened, but afterwards the room was like, the lamp was knocked over. It looked like, you know, there had been a, like in those crime scene movies you know all between two.
[1:25:48] Wrestlers or whatever right.
[1:25:49] Yes all right so i don't know all the scope of what happened and i mean he was it was over safety issues dad would get very explosive once when i was maybe six seven i was playing with my younger brother who was you know toddler at the time and, We were right by the door, and I noticed, I actually noticed it, that his fingers could get caught in the door with the doors opening and closing. So I decided to close the door so it wouldn't be, while I was aware of my younger brother's, his phalanges, you know, his fingers, you know, making sure he was safe. And I closed the door to just remove that as a risk, right?
[1:26:29] Yeah.
[1:26:30] Dad saw this, and he completely blew up. like he i remember him grabbing me by the hair down on the i had me like against the floor screaming in my face about how dangerous it was and he grabbed this like little sorry dangerous what was that my longer brother's fingers could have gotten hurt in the door oh.
[1:26:52] But you were closing it to prevent that.
[1:26:54] I was and he did not ask he didn't understand he thought i was closing it without protecting him or you know i wasn't saying that's what i was doing but he couldn't read my mind, but he assumed that I was putting him, the younger brother, at risk.
[1:27:08] Sorry, my apologies if just back up for a sec. Where were your phalange tracking? Where was your younger brother's fingers when you were closing the door?
[1:27:16] They were well away.
[1:27:17] Yeah, they weren't in the door, right? I mean, that would be cool.
[1:27:19] Right? I was making sure they were away while I was closing it, and I knew that dad would be worried about the fingers, because he always talked about fingers getting hurt indoors a lot.
[1:27:29] Well, I mean, I'm a doctor, right? So you've got to keep your fingers. fingers right so okay so you were closing a door and your father freaked out he even even though you were doing it to protect your brother because he thought that somehow your brother could what like rubber man stick his fingers in the door from across the room or or what well.
[1:27:49] He was nearby you know but.
[1:27:51] I i.
[1:27:51] Was just making sure he wasn't his fingers weren't there while i was closing it but But then dad took this little plastic soap holder thing, and he's like, this is what can happen. And he puts it in the door, and he slams the door as hard as he could, and it shatters and goes everywhere.
[1:28:07] God.
[1:28:08] It was really terrifying.
[1:28:11] That's pretty psycho. I'm so sorry.
[1:28:13] Yeah, that's the level of explosiveness, which was so different. I told my aunt this. This is his younger sister. She almost didn't believe me. She was like, you're fucked. father did that because he was so mild most of the time.
[1:28:28] Sorry why why would you believe her, why would you believe her have you never watched dr house everybody likes so why would you believe her.
[1:28:41] Um are you.
[1:28:43] Saying that your she grew up with your father right.
[1:28:46] Well there was a big age gap huge age gap like like nine year age gap so she she also means she would have babysat him too right actually it was 12 years actually it was 12 years age gap between that it was yeah uh the other brother was nine okay so hang on so.
[1:29:03] Your aunt grew up in the same household as your father Right. Where his mother was this raging drunk who got possessed by the demons of alcohol from 5 p.m. till the next morning. Right.
[1:29:16] Yeah.
[1:29:17] So your aunt grew up and I assume there was this explosive rage and all of this dysfunction and mass and chaos and aggression and maybe violence, probably violence and verbal abuse and so on. Right. So she would have grown up in that household. Right.
[1:29:33] She did she had a different she just had a different experience than the brothers because being the baby girl she didn't get a lot of the direct abuse you know boys are did she.
[1:29:47] Not know her mother was an alcoholic or had her mother cured her alcoholism by this point.
[1:29:52] No she was she was still an alcoholic okay she the aunt would like lived with her grandparents for some time or she was removed from its sight more so than my than her brother's.
[1:30:03] Okay, so I'm trying to figure out how she's surprised that a house that was so dangerous, aggressive and violent, that she had to be removed, that this might have an effect on your father.
[1:30:20] Yeah, I don't, that doesn't make sense now you mention it.
[1:30:23] But that's why I'm, so why would she say, I had absolutely no idea? dear again she also conscience hmm, She knew that your father had been raised in a chaotic, violent, neglectful, and abusive, and addiction-laced household, right?
[1:30:47] Mm-hmm.
[1:30:48] So, if you know that, what should you do? When your brother wants to get married and have a family.
[1:31:04] Oh, I'm sorry. Hi, I'm sorry.
[1:31:06] What should you do?
[1:31:07] What should I do? No, no. Oh, right, hurt, sorry.
[1:31:11] So what should your aunt do, knowing that your father was raised in an abusive, neglectful, and chaotic, and violent manner, and he says, I'm going to get married and have kids and all of that, what should you do?
[1:31:24] Vet the fiancé.
[1:31:27] Well, maybe, but you certainly should say to your brother, listen, you've got to deal with some stuff, because the household was so bad, I got pulled out of it. but God knows what happened when I wasn't there, but I assume it was pretty terrible. So, listen, before you become a dad, I mean, you've got to deal with some stuff. And if he doesn't listen, then you check in with his kids, and you say, kids, how are things going, right? Because, I mean, dad went through some serious chaos and aggression and neglect as a kid, right? So, she would check in with you, and she would, you know, make sure, because she was around the family, right?
[1:32:06] She had a guilty conscience because she also saw my mom's treatment. And she actually tried to say thanks something a few times. That's why mom hated her so much.
[1:32:20] Okay, so when somebody who's had decades of exposure to the chaos that defined your father to some degree because he let it happen, right? Let it define. So if she... She doesn't talk to him, doesn't try and deal with anything, because she was the one who got it easiest in the family, so it would be easiest for her to deal with the family issues, right? So, she was in a privileged position of having received the least harm, which means that she had some responsibility in dealing with the family trauma, right?
[1:32:52] Mm-hmm.
[1:32:53] And so, it really, I'm telling you, it bothers me at a foundational level, which doesn't mean that I'm right. I'm just being honest about my sort of emotional experience. when these little Pollyannas who've neglected to protect their nieces and nephews, and neglected to take a stand for the protection of the children in the environment and then when one of those children as an adult comes and says dad had a vicious temper oh no I never saw such a thing I had no idea oh man come on give me a break, like just stop lying.
[1:33:26] She has a heart she doesn't even she has this thing where she doesn't want to say anything negative about anyone, you know, and she doesn't use the word.
[1:33:33] She's a coward. I get that. But then say, say, I'm a coward.
[1:33:38] She doesn't use the word bitch.
[1:33:39] Say, I don't like your friends. You know, man, I knew your kids were, you know, I saw your mom and I knew your kids were getting abused and neglected.
[1:33:47] She has a code word.
[1:33:49] I don't, you know.
[1:33:50] Okay, sorry.
[1:33:51] Yeah, I didn't do anything. I didn't lift a finger because I'm a nervous nally and so on. So, yeah, sorry about that, man. I failed you guys. but instead she's like, I never saw... It's like, oh my gosh, it's just a lie. It's just a lie. And it's, sorry to say, from the outside, I get from the inside, right? But from the outside, it's just an embarrassingly obvious lie.
[1:34:15] Right, right.
[1:34:17] I mean, she saw your father getting ripped on by your mom, and she didn't think that might have any kind of effect on his parenting. Well, I can't imagine your father so meek. It's like, oh, come on. Now you're literally gaslighting the children you failed to protect. That's scummy beyond words.
[1:34:36] Right.
[1:34:40] Like i'm sorry and and i i just think it's terrible don't gaslight children you fail to protect now you're just continuing the abuse right right because then she's also saying well your father you see had perfect control over his temper because i never once in 40 years ever saw any temper it's like oh come on oh come on he.
[1:35:07] Was particularly but i've heard some crazy stories from when he was in his 20s because his that was when i said you know that's when aggression and men is right at that peak or.
[1:35:15] Right and.
[1:35:16] It was it was.
[1:35:17] Right so so she knew she knew she knew she knew she knew she knew now maybe she doesn't want to say i was a gutless coward who abandoned the children i was supposed to protect and i feel a real urge to lie to you about it now but i don't want to do any further harm to you by gaslighting you after i let you get abused by your your dad then she can just shut up oh do you tell me more like just be sympathetic like but at least don't gaslight if you don't want to tell the truth at least don't gaslight the children who are begging for the truth.
[1:35:46] Right yeah that's what i've been doing begging people to tell me like what happened right.
[1:35:52] So my question is and we're back to that right why what are you aiming to gain and I'm not saying there's nothing to gain. This is not me being skeptical, like, why on earth would you go crazy? You're going to the desert for water. I'm not asking that. I'm genuinely curious, because maybe there's things that are important and things that you can achieve and so on. But what are you trying to gain, from your family of origin? Because all of this comes at the expense of who?
[1:36:28] My children.
[1:36:29] That's right. Right. So why are you doing that line from the great Gatsby, you know, born back against the current, born ceaselessly into the past? Why are you mucking about the gravestones of your childhood rather than further nurturing the flowering life of your future?
[1:36:54] You well i mean first thing that comes to my mind is like i want i want proof that what they did was wrong you know and that i have all these anxieties and the mental health issues that i've been through in my life like their fault you know they did this to me and um i want proof of that and i want, them to be held accountable or um, and as a mom like, It's really hard not having family to help, you know. Both my husband and I are not close with our families, you know. We're far away from them. And, you know, I wouldn't obviously say I wouldn't want my mother around my children ever.
[1:37:53] No, but you'd want a mother who would be helpful.
[1:37:55] I know. Like, I long for that. And I feel so jealous of these people. Like, my aunt, you know, my dad's sister, who I talk to very regularly. Right. She, I have cousins who are close to my age, and they have kids. Well, one of them has kids. And my aunt is so, so helpful. It's possible that that's also maybe too much, you know. But she, it's like almost every day, they get free babysitting, you know.
[1:38:27] This is the aunt who said she didn't know about your father's temper?
[1:38:32] Yeah she's she's very dedicated mom and grandma you know she's a stay-at-home grandma now you know and like i and like i feel so envious like these people who can just go on like romantic, weekends with their spouse you know like um because i could just send the kids to grandma's or grandpa's for a week or something you know and like so envious and also the people who get like get divorced and then they go on, they're only part-time parents now. So then they can go off with their new lover or whatever and have a romantic weekend. I'm like, I want a romantic weekend with my husband. But we can't do that. We can't spend a night away because we don't have anyone to watch our kids. Even hiring a babysitter is so expensive. I just feel pissed off. I'm I'm really angry and, like, frustrated and... I just, um, anyway. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
[1:39:37] I appreciate that. Now, were you raised Christian?
[1:39:42] No.
[1:39:43] Have you made any moves towards Christianity as an adult?
[1:39:49] No, I did go to church, like the Bible study group, like the moms groups, just to, you know, connect with the moms. Pre-pandemic.
[1:39:58] So you're not a believer, right?
[1:40:01] No.
[1:40:02] Okay, can I give you a mental exercise here?
[1:40:05] Yeah, sure.
[1:40:06] Now, if you were a believer, what happens in general, generic Christianity, what happens to child abusers after they die?
[1:40:19] They go to hell?
[1:40:20] They do.
[1:40:21] Yeah. And you can leave it up to God to, just give it up to God, right? That's the phrase.
[1:40:28] Well, the punishment is handled for you. Your parents did you great wrong, and I'm really sorry. It's terrifying. And your siblings did you great wrong. I hold your parents primarily accountable, but your siblings are also, to some obviously smaller degree, accountable. Or at least that's what their conscience is telling them. So, yeah. if your father was being punished, now, if it's an eternity in hell, or maybe it's just limbo, or, you know, it's just some punishment after death. If you genuinely believed that those who did evil were punished, how would you feel about your family of origin and your involvement with them? If the punishment was out of your hands.
[1:41:31] Hmm. I'm not, I'm not sure. Okay, just try it.
[1:41:35] Try it on for, I'm not trying to convert you to Christianity. I'm just, try it on for size as a mental exercise. You don't have to lift a finger. It's up to the priest, their conscience, and God himself. You can pray for them. You can suggest that they pray and talk to a priest, but it's out of your hands.
[1:41:57] There's relief there for sure so tell.
[1:42:01] Me about the relief.
[1:42:04] Um that it's it's not my responsibility to um, hold them accountable that they um and bargain a little bit right here but um.
[1:42:31] It would be relief yeah.
[1:42:36] They would get what's coming to them and.
[1:42:39] What they.
[1:42:40] Would get what's coming to them.
[1:42:41] Yes that's not very christian no no hang on hang on that is very christian oh yeah no that is so one of the reasons that christians can be all about forgiveness is god's gonna get them hey i forgive give you but god's gonna get you right right you know how like in all these mafia movies there's always this soft-spoken charismatic mafia guy and you know like the don corleone and and so on right like the guy uh it was in true romance uh the christian walking guy walking guy so so there's always this soft-spoken but but the reason it's so intense is he's got these three thugs with guns behind him right right so he could say well i'll forgive you and you know and so on and then his thugs will blow you away right right so if my.
[1:43:34] Hands are clean you know.
[1:43:35] Yeah yeah and and i can be soft-spoken and i can be nice and funny even because right because the thugs will the thugs So, Christians can be forgiving, right? I forgive you to let go and move on, but the forgiveness of the Christian does not generate forgiveness from God.
[1:43:59] Right.
[1:44:01] So if your father was punished, I suspect, though of course I don't want to tell you what you feel, if your father was punished, and let's say it wasn't an eternity in a lake of boiling fire or whatever it is, right?
[1:44:17] I don't want him to hurt him too bad.
[1:44:19] I'm sorry?
[1:44:20] I don't want him to hurt him too bad.
[1:44:21] Right, right. But some appropriate level of punishment, right?
[1:44:25] Right, right.
[1:44:28] Without punishment, there is no closure. Like, how many times have you, I don't know, are you a true crime person? Do you ever watch or listen? I did when I was younger.
[1:44:40] I can't take it anymore.
[1:44:42] What's that old meme? It's like, I don't know why I had so much anxiety, said the woman who just had three espressos and two murder crime podcasts or whatever, right?
[1:44:50] Yeah, I can't do it anymore. But when I was younger, yeah.
[1:44:53] So in... In so many true murder, true crime stories, there's a criminal who kills or rapes or whatever, right? And the family pursues justice, right? They can even hire private investigators if they feel the police aren't doing their job. The family pursues justice. And then the family gets the killer of their kid or their mother locked up for the rest of his life. And they say, now that's closure. i got him right there was a story i once read about this woman who was this she was a um a landlady and she turns out to have been convicted of killing and getting the social security checks of some people uh and and years before there was a suspicion that she had poisoned this guy's mother and there was no proof uh all the records were gone and and so on he felt and And he was like, there's no closure.
[1:45:53] Right?
[1:45:54] So even though she's in prison for murder, she's not in prison for my mother's murder. And you know how, I've never quite understood this, but people believe it that, you know, well, if I can't find the body, you know, I can't, there's no closure. I can't have a funeral. I can't, you know, without a body, it's very hard to get a conviction for murder. And right. So the closure is the punishment. Right.
[1:46:21] so i think and listen i could be completely wrong about any and all of this right so i'm not ever going to try and tell you your experience and this is why i sort of made a joke about how you're a very nice young lady and you are and it's a very great pleasure to chat with you, but i think you may be misinterpreting your motives that you just want the truth I don't think that's true. I think you want them to hurt for what they did to you. And if you get them to admit and you hold their faces to the wrongs they did, that they will suffer. And then some of that suffering will transmit from you to them. You carry this burden. I'm sick of it.
[1:47:11] We haven't even gotten to the conversation i had with my mom on the trip.
[1:47:14] Oh i know we've got some time but no but because we're looking as to the reasons why right why do you want that conversation, someone is going to suffer for your childhood because where there is wrongdoing there also so is their suffering. That's how we know, to some degree, that it's wrongdoing. So there is suffering. There is a demon that is created through abuse. And that demon sits where? Generally, it sits in the hearts of the children because they have to take responsibility to imagine they have some control. And then, when they get older, some madcap philosopher in Canada says, the demon belongs to your parents. And then what we do is we say, I'm going to sit down with my parents, I'm going to give them this demon, because it's their fucking demon. And we call that, I just want the truth. But it's not. I want them to suffer for what they did, because the alternative is me continuing to suffer. And if someone's going to suffer, shouldn't it be the evildoers? Not the innocent?
[1:48:40] And I think you feel that if you have the truth, then you can dislodge the demon and give it back to its rightful owner, your mother maybe a little bit of your elder siblings but this thing's got to go somewhere you can't will it out of existence because you can't will the suffering out of existence, where does the demon go and I think you're around your family so you can give that thing back and get it off your chest and off your neck and off your shoulders and off weighing you down.
[1:49:31] That's been a... I've had chronic pain issues, and that was some... There was a forgiveness section, like about forgiving really hard time this part of the sorry there's this app that i i did that was all you know trying to work through sorry did you say app or yeah it's an app i'm sorry my daughter's very big on the term yapping.
[1:49:53] These days it's too.
[1:49:54] Painful for me.
[1:49:55] To go into the context in which she uses it but.
[1:49:58] She's very keen on the.
[1:49:59] Phrase yapping i just yapping.
[1:50:00] And so i wasn't.
[1:50:01] Sure if you said this is yap or app.
[1:50:03] No it's an app like about help it's called curable for anyone out there who has chronic pain. It's a very good app, but it's to help process and release, you know, sort of trauma and pain from your body. Like, that's... Anyway, there was a section on forgiveness and I had a really hard time with that stuff. Of course. Yeah.
[1:50:26] Because forgiveness, if no one is suffering, forgiveness stays with the victim. Sorry, I misspoke. Let me fix that. If there is forgiveness without suffering, the demon stays with the victim. Because the demon is suffering, and if your parents aren't suffering, and the people who harmed you aren't suffering, the suffering stays with you. So I think you want them to confess their sins, so you can vomit up the demon and put it back on them, and they can wrestle with that son of a bitch.
[1:51:08] Mm-hmm. There was something really partly satisfying about having that conversation with my mother, where I felt like, for a lot of the conversation, I felt like in this power position.
[1:51:24] Sure.
[1:51:25] Because like, because she, you know, all of the things she said were just such bullshit and like, just so easy to untangle her manipulative and bullshit, irrational things she was saying. And it made me feel powerful, you know, to be in that position and just.
[1:51:45] But you're still powerless, I think, because, which is why it's unsatisfying in the long run, because you're still relying upon her to feel bad and she can wave it all away. And even if you make her feel bad in the moment, she'll rationalize it later, and the pain will go away.
[1:52:00] That's what she kept saying. You're attacking me. You're attacking me right now.
[1:52:04] You're bashing me and attacking me, and you're so mean. Yeah, yeah, I get all of that. Yeah, of course, of course.
[1:52:09] And I asked her, I said, oh, really, Mom, do you think this is, you know, I'm talking in a completely level voice. I'm not yelling. I'm not cursing. Do you think this is more scary for you being attacked this way or for me as a child as you were screaming at me?
[1:52:24] Right.
[1:52:25] In the face, you know, and cursing. And she's like, well, what did you do to make me scream at you?
[1:52:31] Right, right. And then you can say, well, clearly you did something to make me be upset with you. So sit back and take it the way I was supposed to.
[1:52:42] When I was able to bring up the act that, the one, the incident I was thinking of was when I was sick and it was really inconvenient for her that I was sick, you know? And so I, she was screaming at me and I actually fainted. I think I told you I had fainting spells a lot as a kid. I fainted during a screaming session. And when I came to from blacking out, nose hurting from falling on my face, she was still screaming stuff. Like it was ridiculous. Like she didn't cease when I was unconscious.
[1:53:11] That's wonderful in a way. And obviously terrible that it happened. But the wonderful thing is it doesn't even matter if you're conscious. It doesn't matter if you're there. It has nothing to do with you. You're just a piece of flesh in the room for her to scratch at.
[1:53:24] Mm-hmm.
[1:53:25] Or claw. Okay, so... we get frustrated so i don't know if you've ever had a relationship like this, but uh seinfeld the the tv show from i guess decades ago now uh you know this woman would be like i think i think we should break up and he's like okay right right and she's like well you're not upset no steven steven another girl will come along right so if there's a breakup up and one person is indifferent and not upset they're perceived to be in a power position, and the other person who is upset is shocked and appalled that the person is not upset right so the typical thing is uh you know let's say the woman says she's going to break up with the guy and the guy's like yeah you know oh yeah probably right that's fine and he's no maybe they've been together for a year or two or whatever and he's just you know he's completely blasé about it yeah Yeah, I can send you your stuff back. It's fine. And she's like crying and retching and, you know, like upset and so on. And she's enraged, right? She's incredibly frustrated because he's not suffering. And sometimes this is why women want to make men suffer, because they want to feel that they meant something.
[1:54:43] So I think your perception is my mother will not admit fault she does not experience the pain of what she did and therefore she has escaped suffering, and therefore I have to hold the demon this is not true but it's easily mistaken for being true now i want you to picture something, your pain stops completely tomorrow emotional, physical psychological whatever, and you feel nothing no happiness, no sadness, no pain, no pleasure right, you don't food, sex, nothing, And you go to the doctor, and the doctor says, oh, yeah, you've lost the ability to feel pain. Now, this would be an indication of a severe problem with your body, wouldn't it?
[1:55:57] Mm-hmm, yeah.
[1:55:58] That'd be bad news, you know? Like, there's this old video game where, you know, people are shooting each other with rockets, and occasionally some guy screams, I can't feel my legs! Right? I can't feel my legs. Pain is a symptom of health. Numbness is a symptom of extraordinary bad things with the body.
[1:56:22] Right?
[1:56:23] You know, you're in some bad car crash and the doctor tickles your feet and says, can you feel this? And if you say, nope, that's not good.
[1:56:29] Yeah.
[1:56:34] So, if you don't feel pain, you're in for a very difficult life, because you don't know, right? Did you scratch yourself? Did you bruise yourself? Did you cut yourself? You can't feel if you have eaten too much, you can't tell if you're thirsty, like, it's just really complicated and unpleasant. You have no motivation. You have no way to guide your day, what you want to do, what you don't want to do. You're a machine, an NPC, right? Now, the people who do wrong, and don't feel bad, and I think that's the case with your mother, and it sounds like it was the the case with your father, that the only tears they would ever cry was of self-pity, not of empathy. I can't believe how badly I treated you. It haunts me. I can't sleep. They're fine. They're fine.
[1:57:43] Now, what I want to tell you is you think you need to put them in hell. Oh, no, my friend. They're already there. I'm going to speak to your father as if he's still alive. I'm aware he's not. They're already there. My mother never admitted fault for the wrongs she did. Neither have other family members. And not one of them has a life that I wouldn't pay just about everything to not live.
[1:58:09] Mm-hmm.
[1:58:15] Your mother is already punished more than you can imagine. Because without a conscience that you're aware of, without feeling, without empathy, there's no bond. There's no love. There's no connection. There's no honesty. There's no intimacy. There's no trust. There's nothing. Other than this stupid staccato dance of desperate manipulation and superiority in the moment. All that you find that makes life worthwhile, self-respect, love, connection, virtue, pride, courage, none of these things exist in your parents. if you were to live one minute in their mind you would claw to escape it, and you would give up almost everything if somebody put me in my mother's mind and said you can live here for the next 20 years, or you can come back to your life but you can't use your legs I would choose to come back to my life and not use my legs hmm hmm.
[1:59:32] How much you have to give up when you lose the fight to retain your conscience, when your conscience turns against you, when your conscience blocks off all human intimacy and love, affection, spontaneity, laughter, fun, joy, all of it is gone. And you think you need to make people suffer, but their lack of suffering is their punishment, because you become a better person because you suffer and you think well if I make them suffer A. I'll feel some relief and B. maybe they have a chance to be better people but that's like torturing someone, who's paralyzed and numb.
[2:00:22] Right.
[2:00:23] Like, no feeling below their waist, and someone's down there with a little knife or something, and they don't feel it.
[2:00:32] Punching the stomach and it's nothing.
[2:00:36] Yeah, I mean, if they feel nothing from the neck down, then torturing them is like, no. So you are guided by positive and negative emotions. They are not guided by any of that. Your desire to punish them is because you think they're like you. But they are punished by being nothing like you.
[2:01:04] Everything that you take for granted in your life that gives it happiness and meaning, your love for your children and your husband, your pleasure and surrender, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, trust, and all the difficulties that come along with that. And I understand that. And I'm not trying to say, oh, it's all just a ride of bliss and joy. But everything that makes life worthwhile does not exist in the mind of unrepentant child abusers. If you could live for 30 seconds and there's a skull, you'd come back and you'd say, I don't live to lift a finger. It's hell in there. In the same way that even with our bodies, aches and pains, if we had to live 30 seconds in the mind of someone completely numb from the neck down, we'd say, oh my God, that's horrifying. I'll come back to my aches and pains. Thank you very much.
[2:02:03] If they will suffer, then I am relieved but you can't make them suffer any more than you can hurt someone, who's paralyzed and numb from the neck down I mean I guess you could flick their ear or something but you know you can't hurt their body and that's the hell look they're immune from torture they're immune from everything, and so and you're certainly younger than me considerably and I'm telling you from the vantage point of the last third of my life I have not seen one person get away with anything.
[2:02:49] The people who mocked and scorned me for my focus on philosophy and self-knowledge and this that and the other they all had terrible relationships relationships, they all had unsatisfying careers, they all ended up distant from their children. Many of them are divorced, many of them never got married. No one got away. No one escaped punishment. And the worst punishment of all was numbness. And I'm trying to give you that relief of, sister, you do not need to lift a finger, for them to suffer. It is their lack of suffering that is the worst punishment of all. Just as it's the worst sign for your spinal cord if you can't feel anything below your neck.
[2:03:45] Mm-hmm.
[2:03:47] And part of the torture that you have is you want them to suffer because of their coldness and their callousness and their lack of compassion and empathy and their lack of suffering, you think, well, I must make them suffer, to gain relief. And that's perfectly understandable. But the mistake is that because they don't appear to suffer, you think they got away. And part of the search for truth is to hold them up to the horror show of their lives and have them suffer and change. It is partly an act of love. It is partly an act of love.
[2:04:27] Tell me more about that.
[2:04:30] If they suffer, they can change.
[2:04:33] Oh, right, right, right, okay.
[2:04:35] I want my mother to get better. I want my mother to be back in my life. And the only way that I can get my mother to be better, have compassion, have empathy, is to get her to feel, to get her to confront her conscience, to get her to admit she did bad things. And that way she can change. She can go to therapy, right?
[2:04:50] Mm-hmm.
[2:04:56] Which is why it's sort of tied into other people have their grandparents and they can have their romantic weekends away with their husbands and so on. Right. So part of it is an act of love and part of it is an act of vengeance. And I'm just here to tell you, the people who don't have empathy, seem to be doing really well.
[2:05:22] Like the.
[2:05:23] People who take drugs they seem quite happy for a short.
[2:05:26] Amount of time right right but.
[2:05:29] Nobody's getting away with anything out here.
[2:05:36] Because my mom has all these markers of achievement right she even got yeah she's like been presented awards and gets standing ovations for her performances and like um A brilliant and talented woman.
[2:05:50] I have no doubt.
[2:05:52] Right.
[2:05:54] Right.
[2:05:57] And that's the only thing she has, you know? That's it.
[2:06:01] Well, does she? I mean, doesn't she still have, to some degree, contact with your siblings and so on?
[2:06:08] Oh, yeah.
[2:06:08] So she's got family, except for you.
[2:06:11] Mm-hmm. As Mom said. No, the other children have these complaints. Why are you like this?
[2:06:19] Right, right, right. Now, of course, you're a mother, I'm a father, and if we did something inadvertently to hurt our children, we'd be wretched, right?
[2:06:31] Mm-hmm. I apologize. Of course. You do the repair work.
[2:06:36] Of course. Of course you do. Absolutely.
[2:06:41] Yeah. Absolutely.
[2:06:44] And people who don't have a conscience and who don't have empathy, and when I say don't have a conscience, I mean they have no functional access to their conscience. the conscience will still punish them because the problem with not having access to your conscience is that the effect is bottomless hypocrisy right how dare you upset me says your mother who screamed at you throughout your childhood right that's that's so bottomlessly hypocritical it's hard to imagine like my mother's shock at me using any of my physical strength to protect me from her after she'd beaten me black and blue for, you know, 13 years. I mean, she was just appalled at the use of force. Like, I mean, it's so unbelievably hypocritical. And you require integrity in order to be loved.
[2:07:34] Integrity is tough, right? It's hard. A lot of punishment. Social punishment for integrity. The reward is someone can actually love you because integrity means that you have consistent behavior and therefore can be trusted and therefore someone can give you their heart and you won't just throw it in a blender whenever you feel like it. so the problem with not having any access to your conscience is you just make up bullshit in the moment to win in the moment which means you can't ever be trusted and you can't ever be loved, and the sad thing is they don't know what they're missing and so we want them oh you got to know what you're missing but they never will and that's the punishment.
[2:08:15] And yes, the world will absolutely give people prizes and awards and all of that, right? Apparently Brad Pitt was such a bad father that his son has stopped using his name and has written public letters about how terrible a person he was. He'll still get paid $10 million a movie.
[2:08:35] People don't care.
[2:08:37] And your mother will still get standing ovations and awards. And that's what people get. And my mother, who was slender and attractive for most of her life, got lots of male attention and never was loved once. And now has spent 20 years alone. And it's hell. There's nothing you need to do. the conscience has taken care of all the punishment that you could inflict and done it for you.
[2:09:27] Because people who do evil, particularly to children, have to lie to themselves perpetually and lie to others and make things up and will continue to do it. So your mother, playing the victim and accusing you of being a bad person, is continuing to abuse you. Now why you would want to go back and put yourself in a situation of being abused again is because you want her to take the demon. But she can't take the demon because she is the demon.
[2:10:02] The demon is you not giving full responsibility to your mother, which means she can't change, she won't change, she doesn't have any capacity to change because she's numb from the neck down.
[2:10:20] you don't say to a paralyzed person dance better that's kind of cruel right, she's done decades of wrong many decades of wrong to your father and to her children and she continues to gaslight and lie right, her punishment is herself self. There's nothing you need to inflict at all.
[2:11:00] This is why the Christians have it right.
[2:11:04] Right?
[2:11:04] No, the Christians have it right, that you do not need to inflict vengeance. Now, if it's direct criminality and so on, and of course, in a free society, what your parents did to you guys as children would be direct criminality. If it was direct criminality, I have no problem with people, you know, putting murderers in jail because otherwise they go out and kill other people.
[2:11:24] Right.
[2:11:28] Now your siblings, if they have kids and they're letting your mom around the kids, that's a problem, but it's not your problem.
[2:11:36] Right.
[2:11:37] My mother's life is not my problem. I tried to help. She rejected help. it's not your problem. This is why I was sort of struck when your sister's pre-diabetic and you're like, I'll make this my problem.
[2:11:52] Right. Right.
[2:11:54] And it didn't work.
[2:11:56] No.
[2:11:57] And you've tried to make your mother's conscience your problem. I'm going to tell you the truth. Maybe you just don't remember. Maybe you just don't get it. I'll just explain it again.
[2:12:06] Mm-hmm.
[2:12:08] I will become real to somebody who's that selfish is like saying, I'll tickle someone who's numb from the nectar. And especially when they've been paralyzed and numb for decades, trying to give them massages to restore their feeling is not healthy, right? That would be crazy.
[2:12:40] So, I know we've talked for a long time, but if you want to tell me more about your conversation with your mother, or what led you to... Because it's been nine years, right?
[2:12:49] Yeah, it's been nine years. um well last summer you know like i think i mentioned she'd sold that property and uh, it was i actually did talk on talk to her on the phone for the first time in eight years and she was horrible like she cursed me out and screamed at me um i was crying did.
[2:13:14] You talk to To her for the money?
[2:13:16] Yeah, so she was like, did you get the transfer, basically, you know, and...
[2:13:22] Oh, so you'd already gotten the money?
[2:13:24] Yeah, I'd already gotten the money, and she was, like, calling and texting and, like, trying to, like, see if I'd gotten it, you know, making sure they went through and...
[2:13:32] No, but she can get confirmation. She can get confirmation of that from her bank, right?
[2:13:36] Yeah, I know. But I finally, like, she had called several times, and I just...
[2:13:39] Sorry, why didn't you block her number? I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't have. I'm just curious why.
[2:13:45] Well um with being like business partners on the property and stuff it was uh, i don't know i don't know why i didn't block it what did your husband say, um he he didn't want me talking to her um right so why didn't you yeah whenever i got him why Why didn't you defer to your husband?
[2:14:12] Is he more objective?
[2:14:15] He is. He's so wise, Stef. I should have listened to him.
[2:14:18] He's not that wise, though. You should have listened to him.
[2:14:20] I know. Okay, so this thing was happening with me where I had deep food. I had gotten these people out of my life. But I was feeling almost trapped. This was the perception. And I know it's not true. True, it was all my own choices, but I was getting into this, like, trapped feeling where, like, I wasn't, like, allowed, quote, unquote, like, to talk to them. And, like, I would send my mom, I'd really delve into, like, family, really interested in family history. And, like, I've sent her texts where she'll answer family history questions and about.
[2:14:55] Sorry, so you were in contact with her.
[2:14:59] Via text. And it was, yeah.
[2:15:01] Hang on, hang on. Hang on, young lady.
[2:15:04] Yeah.
[2:15:05] Oh, the phone. Hold on. So you said you weren't in touch with them for nine years, but you were via text.
[2:15:16] Yes.
[2:15:17] That's a little weaselly.
[2:15:19] Yeah. Sorry about that.
[2:15:21] Yes, I was in contact.
[2:15:25] Yeah, I guess it wasn't a, yeah, it wasn't a full defu. It was, she also, she would send money sometimes. I know it's really, I'm ashamed of this, but.
[2:15:39] Sorry, why are you ashamed of it?
[2:15:41] And, well, it's like, I'm mad at my siblings for continuing to live off of her. And I don't live off of her anymore. more but occasionally getting like a check from her like okay so i mean okay so but why.
[2:15:59] Why does let's say you cash the check why does that mean you have to be in touch with her.
[2:16:05] Well she would send it um through like a phone like the like the machine my number to like send and i would get like a text anyway okay and then yeah that.
[2:16:18] Doesn't answer my question though.
[2:16:19] Uh Uh, sorry, what was the question? I'm sorry.
[2:16:24] So, so she sends you money. It comes into your bank account. Why, why would you need to be in touch with her?
[2:16:30] Hmm. I don't know.
[2:16:33] Well, unless she's like, did you get the money? I need to know if you got, in which case she's sending you the money to pay you to text her.
[2:16:38] Right. Okay. Right.
[2:16:41] And was it a lot of money? Please tell me you sold for a lot of money. You don't have to tell me the amount, but was it a lot of money?
[2:16:51] It was enough to pay for getting our house painted, which we needed desperately. Our house really needed to be painted, and our AC broke, had just broken. It was such a relief to get that money from that house.
[2:17:04] You're a stay-at-home mother, right?
[2:17:06] Yes.
[2:17:07] Why are you emasculating your husband? Which is not good for your marriage, I'll be frank with you, as a man. because as a man if it's like well the woman who brutalized my wife is sending us money we'll take it did your husband want the money, well did your husband want the money yes.
[2:17:38] And no can that be an answer.
[2:17:39] Well it's i mean it's all with With yes and no, but if you take it, that's a yes.
[2:17:44] Yeah, we accepted it. We didn't, like, send it back or anything.
[2:17:48] Okay, so why did your husband want the money from the woman who was an unapologetic child abuser of the love of his life?
[2:17:59] Um... it paid it paid for we needed we needed things like we you know we had this a few years of like some financial just there was like a lot of you know emergency kind of things that came up where like we okay so what we weren't what should we hang on.
[2:18:20] Of course there are always.
[2:18:22] Emergencies that come up and the pandemic we had to go economically i mean i.
[2:18:25] Got deplatformed i understand that the income can can go down considerably okay.
[2:18:29] Yeah so.
[2:18:31] By taking the money what is being prevented? Because you then have an answer. Well, we need money. Okay, we'll take money from the child abuser. But what is being prevented?
[2:18:45] Making more money on...
[2:18:47] Making more money, cutting your expenses, doing whatever you need to do to make the ends meet, right?
[2:18:51] Right. Right. But with two small children, you know, we've made a conscious choice that we don't want him working like i.
[2:19:03] Didn't want okay so i get it so the argument is that well we have to do what's best for our children right yeah yeah where am i going you know where i'm going that.
[2:19:15] Being in contact with this abusive woman is not best for our children.
[2:19:18] Right so don't you can't sell me on the oh my kids i i had to take money from a child abuser because children don't don't use kids as a shield like don't do that it's not their fault it's not the that's your choice right and it's it's at their expense right because you're distracted you're stressed you're upset you're worried you're you're waiting for the phone to ping you're like you're dissociated right, yes so please don't it's for the best of my children that i trauma re-traumatize myself for a couple of grand right so it's not for the children so what's it for.
[2:20:00] That's for my own anxiety.
[2:20:03] Well, no, it's not helping your anxiety, is it?
[2:20:06] I know. I don't know. I feel crippled in terms of money because of how... You've talked about, I think in a show before, about how it would feel to have a bottomless bank account. I kind of had that in my 20s.
[2:20:22] Yeah, well, I kept my life before kids. I get it. Okay, so what? Kids are money holes. Yeah, I get it.
[2:20:28] I didn't have to work for it because my my dad would just just i not only got in a line like they didn't want me to work you know like so you you.
[2:20:36] Were hanging off daddy's wallet.
[2:20:40] I was and my parents like didn't want me working while i was in school and so then i had like who paid for i did i was the my parents yeah um wait wait did they pay for Private school.
[2:20:55] Did they pay for everything? You mean university, right?
[2:20:59] University, yeah.
[2:21:00] Did they pay living expenses, books, dental, medical, tuition? Did they pay for everything?
[2:21:08] Absolutely everything.
[2:21:09] And did they give you extra spending money?
[2:21:12] Yes. Okay.
[2:21:13] And after school, what happened?
[2:21:16] They continued to support me financially. And I don't know why. Oh, they wanted me to go to grad school. I didn't want to go to grad school. I didn't, there was nothing I wanted to study. I did. I, you know, I floundered around with the applications for a while. And I was like, you know, like I mentioned my brother not doing anything for a few years. That was me. I traveled with the money they gave me for a few years. Like I was, I was a mess and it didn't make sense for me to even get a job because like, I got, I made more money with my allowance and. At what age?
[2:21:52] When did this allowance start? When did this allowance end?
[2:21:56] When my dad died, basically.
[2:21:59] Which was a few years ago? No. How long?
[2:22:01] No, it was, so he died in 2013.
[2:22:07] You don't have to tell me your exact age, of course, but was this in your 20s?
[2:22:11] Mid-20s, yeah. Mid-20s, yeah.
[2:22:14] Mid-20s. And then the money just cut off?
[2:22:18] Uh kind of yeah i don't know what that means so yeah driving so i had i had a uh gas card up until then like where it was paid all my gas was paid anything my gas was all paid for and on the drive back from his funeral it was out of state that his funeral was the gas card stopped working, um wait you had to actually.
[2:22:42] Pay for your own gas in your mid.
[2:22:44] To late i know can you can you believe it no yeah i was i was offered some.
[2:22:49] Money from my father's estate.
[2:22:50] I understand the temptation yeah and i.
[2:22:54] Said no of course but anyway go on.
[2:22:56] Right she my mother's continued we were maybe my siblings we were on, just found these llcs for like distributions and stuff and yeah we don't have to get into the technical legalities of it but sorry so i would still get money from so.
[2:23:14] You were still getting money from your mother.
[2:23:16] Yeah until my like well into my late you know 20s and then i now i still am like even though i i cut her off like every once in a while but you also how did.
[2:23:27] You end up with half ownership of this property did you well i guess you didn't put your own money into it right.
[2:23:32] No okay so she's just.
[2:23:34] Giving you hundreds of thousands of dollars and money's flowing, and so you haven't learned the value of money, you haven't learned budgeting, you haven't learned income expenses, you haven't, I mean, you just, you've been living in this, like, surreal sea of free money.
[2:23:50] Yes, and I don't, I feel so anxious about the money, too, like, I don't know, like, it's hard for me to feel...
[2:23:55] Sorry, what do you mean anxious about the money? That's a very, very open statement. What do you mean?
[2:24:00] So, I don't have a concept of Of what a good emergency fund looks like, what...
[2:24:07] No, that's not true. No, you're, look, you're a very, very intelligent woman. You know exactly, I mean, come on, you just look that up, right?
[2:24:15] Right.
[2:24:16] Right. You say, six months to a year, right? Everybody says six months income to a year income, right? Depending on reliability of income, right? So the idea that, you know, I was considering grad school, but I can't look up how much money I might need in the bank. That's not even remotely believable. Sorry.
[2:24:32] Okay.
[2:24:34] And does your husband come from money?
[2:24:37] No, no.
[2:24:38] Does he know he was marrying into fantasy fiat money princess planet?
[2:24:45] Uh yes yeah we talked about.
[2:24:47] Okay so you chose to be a stay-at-home mother right yes which means that, your husband is responsible for making many core financial decisions right, yeah so your father your husband's ambition has been blunted by the free money because everyone Everyone thinks, well, if I'm getting $5,000 or $10,000 a year, if I don't get that money, boy, I'll just be down money. And it's like, no, you won't. You'll be up ambition. You'll be up hard work. You'll be up concentration. You'll be up creativity. You know, if my donations go down, I don't sit there and say, oh, well, I guess donations are down. I have to adjust everything. I'll be like, no, I've got to figure out how to make some more money. and and that i mean you know you know that right i mean your husband should know it because he didn't grow up with money right at least he's a kind of money self-made man he okay done so good so he knows as a self-made man that if income goes down creativity goes up.
[2:26:03] He has on his wedding ring it says creativity and commitment.
[2:26:08] Right Right. So, why are you taking the money from the child abuser? Now, obviously, because it's easier, but you know it's not, right? You've been listening to this show. You know there's a price for everything, right? You've been listening to this show for a decade. So, why are you taking the money? so usually in a couple right one person wants something more and it's up to the other person to either concede or to argue or get them to not take it right mhm, So who wants the money more?
[2:26:54] Me. Okay.
[2:26:57] So why do you want the money? Now, again, as often, it pays bills, blah, blah, blah. But, I mean, you know the price, right? This is not a shock that you're anxious and stomach issues and pain issues. And I don't know if it's all related, right? But it could be, right? It's certainly a risk, right? I mean, this is the most traumatizing human being who's ever lived on your planet, and you're financially enmeshed with her. Tell me that's not going to have an effect on you, right? so why do you want the money.
[2:27:28] Owed me staff it's owed me like i put up with all her abuse for so many years right like, and like.
[2:27:38] When she died no no but that but you're continuing it right right so, i'm owed more abuse because of the prior abuse right right i think that's not the answer because it's just not logical right in order because i was the my my my reward for being traumatized is more trauma it's not that doesn't make sense right so why do you want the money.
[2:28:02] I've i have had his like i've been approaching this and trying to to deal with it like my status like things around status that seduce me you know um but.
[2:28:13] You know how hollow status is because you saw it from the inside right absolutely yeah so it's not that i I notice when I'm doing it and I try to not. It's not that. What is it?
[2:28:23] Do you know why, Stan?
[2:28:24] I do.
[2:28:24] I know why. You know? Can you tell me?
[2:28:27] Sure.
[2:28:27] Okay. Okay.
[2:28:28] So let's play this out. So you block your mother. You don't take any money. You block her on every conceivable thing. You change your phone number, whatever. Let's say, I don't know, you move. Like, not that you would, right? But let's just say your mother can't contact you.
[2:28:43] Okay.
[2:28:43] What happens? What happens?
[2:28:48] Uh, she can't. She can't.
[2:28:53] Oh, at least it's hard for her to contact you. I mean, she can find you probably, right?
[2:28:57] Right.
[2:28:57] So what happens, right?
[2:29:03] Um.
[2:29:04] What happens when your mother doesn't get her way and her will? What happens when her mother can't bribe you? What happens when your mother can't send you money? What happens when she feels rejected?
[2:29:13] She freaks out. She.
[2:29:14] She escalates.
[2:29:15] She escalates, yeah.
[2:29:17] Right. And then you're in an unknown situation.
[2:29:20] Yes.
[2:29:21] Cars pass the driveway, people at work, at the playground. You're scared, right?
[2:29:27] Yes.
[2:29:28] You take the money to prevent escalation.
[2:29:32] Right.
[2:29:36] Which is fine, but just be honest about it. That's why when you said, I feel so ashamed, it's so terrible, it's like, I don't know that. that maybe this is a minimization strategy i'm not going to argue with you about it you know your mother infinitely better than i do but you take the money so that you keep her in view, and she's not escalating right, now again i'm you know maybe that's a strategy you can talk about with your husband and say look i I mean, you know, we'll take some money, you know, hell, we'll give it to charity. It doesn't like, but if we take the money, we have to know why we're doing it. Now, the reason I said it's emasculating for your husband is that if your husband, who's supposed to protect your family, is having significant bills paid by his wife's child abuser, who's unrepentant, then you are crippling his ability to protect the family. Now, right on the other hand, you say, well, I'm taking this money because if I don't, it's going to really escalate and it is protecting the family to take this money. That's a different matter, right?
[2:30:46] Right.
[2:30:56] And maybe it reduces the stress, and it's more clear if you say, yeah, I'm going to take the money, right? Yeah, I'll take the money.
[2:31:02] Right. And that's kind of this- You know.
[2:31:05] If you have some shady, you know, soprano mafia uncle who insists that you take some money, you take the money. Right. You don't want to offend the guy and have his goons, you know, set fire to your house or something, right?
[2:31:22] Right.
[2:31:22] So it's like, yeah, okay. Right.
[2:31:25] Hmm. So there was the money aspect of why I went, that was definitely, something was there with that, that, um, with appeasement and, but I, I felt a sort of trapped feeling too around, um, like that. That I felt that I was being like philosophically inconsistent. I mean, that I wasn't allowed to talk to them, to like my sister and my mom. Like I felt there was like a feeling I wasn't allowed to do that or something. So, and it has come up over the years of my marriage, especially when I was like pregnant and like emotional. Like I would kind of like want my mommy sort of thing. but you know my husband and I always talked about it and like no no no that's not right you don't want to do that right now, she's terrible but this time it was sort of a, almost like a rebelling against my own you know pseudo defu I know it wasn't a full defu since I still was in contact with her um.
[2:32:48] I don't know if this makes any sense at all. I just, I felt like I wanted to push back against that own sort of, it felt like I was in a cage or something, like I wasn't allowed to. And I forgot, I was like forgetting how terrible she was. And then like the gaslighting thing was happening. Like I wrote this essay all about her, her abuse. And I shared it with my half sister and my half sister.
[2:33:14] No, this is true. I appreciate the speech, but this is easy to solve. This one's not complicated.
[2:33:21] Okay. Good.
[2:33:24] But it's not going to be fun. All right. So you have two kids, right? Yes. Okay. How old is your oldest?
[2:33:34] Six. Okay.
[2:33:35] So let's say that... You get a babysitter for your children, and obviously someone you've vetted and so on, right? Seems to be reliable. And you go away for your romantic weekend with your husband, right? And you have security cameras on your house, right? As most people do. And you see your babysitter doing to your children what your mother did to you. Screaming at them, shaking them, threatening them. your children, would you have any ambivalence about your future relationship with that babysitter would you be like well you know she is cheaper than the others, no she'd be out of here I mean she's never admitted fault in fact when I criticized her for screaming at and shaking my children and terrifying my children In fact, she screamed at my daughter so much, my daughter fainted and she continued to scream at her. And she doesn't admit fault. She says it was my children's fault. It's my children's fault. They pushed me to my limit. It's their fault. Would you hire that babysitter again?
[2:35:01] No way. No. Nope. Never.
[2:35:04] So why are your children worthy of protection for something that happens once or twice? and you're not worthy of protection for something that happens hundreds of times. You were your children. You understand that, right? Do you really get that deep down? You were the same size and same vulnerability and same helplessness and same defensiveness as your children. And your parents abused and neglected you. What if you came home and the babysitter just hadn't fed your children? And they'd just kind of foraged and eaten stuff they found in the fridge and tried to do their best, but she'd never bothered to make them any food.
[2:35:48] Yeah, that would be horrible.
[2:35:50] So why are your children special and precious and you're not? Why would you never allow an unrepentant child abuser around your children, but you will around you? See, that's what I can't understand, especially now that you're a mother. You were your children. I was your children, and younger and more helpless. You were them. And you'd never allow an abuser around your children, would you? If they kept abusing your children, and they would beg and plead and say, please, mommy, please don't have her come babysit us. She's terrifying. You're like, shut up.
[2:36:43] Kids.
[2:36:45] Daddy and I are horny.
[2:36:46] Oh.
[2:36:48] You wouldn't do it in a million years, would you?
[2:36:51] No.
[2:36:53] Now, what if the babysitter said, hey, man, I miss your kids. I'll give you 500 bucks. You don't even have to pay me. I miss screaming at them. I miss shaking them. I miss frightening them. It's great fun for me. Here's 500 bucks. Sell me your children.
[2:37:10] Yeah. No, no way. But it's 500 bucks.
[2:37:13] Okay. 5,000 bucks. $50,000! What is the price to let people abuse your children?
[2:37:25] There's no price.
[2:37:26] There's no price.
[2:37:27] I wouldn't let that.
[2:37:28] So what's the price for you being abused? And this is your husband's conversation. There's no price. Oh, air conditioning? Well, guess what? Our ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years with no air conditioning at all. I'm not going to take air conditioning at the expense of your mental health. right i mean if you had the babysitter let's really extend this analogy right your babysitter becomes an expert at repairing air conditioning and she says hey man i'll come recovery air conditioning but you gotta let me scream at your children and shake them would you say yeah that seems yeah okay yeah i'm hot man i got i'm sweating yeah you come abuse my kids but just fix my air conditioning. Would you make that deal?
[2:38:24] No.
[2:38:25] And your kids traumatized, frightened, shaking, crying, passing out. I say, mommy, why did you do that? You say, it was hot. Kids, you have to suffer because I was, you know, I was sweating. Would they say, oh yeah, mommy, that makes sense. Yeah, okay, we'll do it again if you need to.
[2:38:51] Your children, okay so here I'm stronger like I'm an adult I've been going to therapy I've been learning you know so many strategies for assertiveness and, I felt like I would be able to handle, I know handling abuse is not I thought I could handle it I thought I was so different now that I could handle talking to her, talking about these things.
[2:39:27] Okay. What signs did you have that the conversation would work? I mean, if I run off a cliff and say I saw a Flintstones cartoon, I was pretty sure I could fly, people would say, well, you have no evidence for that. So what evidence did you have that you were not going to be re-traumatizing yourself by trying to get your mother to see the truth when she would just lie to you and gaslight you?
[2:40:01] Yeah.
[2:40:01] So what evidence did you have? Right. We don't just act blindly. Right.
[2:40:06] Right.
[2:40:07] We don't say, you know, I'll try driving with my eyes closed and see what happens. I'll try putting my hand in a blender. We think ahead of time, right? So what evidence did you have that your mother had changed?
[2:40:26] Well, she wasn't a grandparent when I last saw her. And she's expressed over the years, you know, wanting to see the kids, wanting to have a relationship with them.
[2:40:45] Okay, that's not evidence of any change. What evidence have you had that she owned the wrongs that she did and wishes to make amends?
[2:40:54] I had no evidence.
[2:40:55] No evidence.
[2:40:56] Okay. I had no evidence.
[2:40:57] You had no evidence. Now, do you know what the most traumatic thing that you did was? It was not being yelled at by your mother or being gaslit by your mother. The most traumatic thing you did was making it your fault and your responsibility to fix this relationship. that's what your mother managed to do you understand she's putting the demon back on you, because you said i'm going to go and have a successful relationship with my mother or a successful conversation with my mother and that means that you believe it's possible now if something is possible and you fail at it that's on you right so by seeing your mother you are saying I am now taking on the responsibility to have a good relationship with my mother. It's my responsibility. It's my fault. It's my doing. It's on me. And what that means is you are now setting yourself up for total failure.
[2:41:58] Yeah. That's not the first time. Of course it's not.
[2:42:02] Because your mother wants you, your mother wants you to do that. And she's very clear about that. if there's bad things in the relationship honey it's your fault if i screamed at you and yelled at you and hit you it's you did something it's your fault right so you are replaying that it's your fault your mother is a violent and abusive and neglectful mother you're saying it's my fault if i approach the conversation this way or that way or i do this or you know i've got i've got 500 keys one of them's going to open this lock i'm going to sit here until they do oh shoot i've I've gone through all five. I must have missed one. I'll start again.
[2:42:35] Yeah. before I read our real-time relationships, I'd actually had tried to have a... I used non-violent communication in VC. I tried that method with her. That failed too. That was awful.
[2:42:52] There's no lock.
[2:42:53] There's no key.
[2:42:54] You're just... You're grinding imagination into a brick wall, thinking you can make a door.
[2:43:04] Now, the reason why I'm bringing all of this up and bringing your children into it is because I think, my friend, that you have the belief that, you know, when I said, oh, if there's a babysitter who's cruel to your children, you'd say, well, no, I wouldn't have anyone harm my children. Now, you understand that your mother is getting to your children through you, and you're letting it happen. In fact, you're making it happen. because your parenting is less when you're screwed up about your mom. You're less emotionally available. You're less relaxed. You're less spontaneous. You're less fun. You're less engaged. You're less playful. So your mother is causing your children to suffer, but you're choosing that. This is self-indulgent bullshit, my friend. you cannot do it because it comes at the expense of your children. You cannot indulge your fantasy of fixing your mother because it harms your children. You are still inviting the babysitter into your house over and over and over again. And you have to stop.
[2:44:29] It's not your fault. Your mother is not your fault. Your mother was broken beyond repair by choice and circumstance long before you ever showed up. You're like a surgeon trying to resuscitate a corpse that is Roman.
[2:44:52] It is a fantasy that is your mother's fantasy, not yours. And this possession is because of a lack of boundaries. the sign that your mother, might be worth talking to is she initiates the healing process, talks to a therapist tries to figure things out goes through this makes it about you tells me tells you to tell her more about what happened and is open to you and empathetic to you and wants to know about your experience and your thoughts, and that is never going to happen Yeah.
[2:45:29] Never.
[2:45:30] It's like expecting somebody to hit their head and wake up speaking Japanese who's never been exposed to Japanese. It's not going to happen. And you are still indulging the fantasy that you're responsible for this, and you can fix it. You're not, and you can't. You are trying to talk your mother into regrowing her arms, like if she had no arms, right?
[2:46:01] Right.
[2:46:03] She cannot recognize your separate existence, because if she could, she wouldn't have abused you, right? You recognize your children's separate existence, right?
[2:46:12] Yes.
[2:46:13] Do you abuse them?
[2:46:15] No.
[2:46:16] Of course not, because you love them.
[2:46:19] Yes.
[2:46:20] Now, I know it's hard to imagine, but if you screamed at and shook and terrified and hit your children for 20 years, do you think you could just flip and care for them?
[2:46:39] No i mean i do.
[2:46:40] You'd be hollowed out there'd be nothing left inside like it would be absolutely impossible yeah asking your mother to grow a conscience is like asking her to be five again, well if i just talk to her about how great being five is she can be five again time goes one way and evil doing scours the personality and destroys any vestigial capacity for empathy, your mother would probably rather die than admit fault. She has no observing ego anyway, because otherwise she would have at some point said, holy crap, I'm really not doing right by these kids. But she never has, right? She has no observing ego, no conscience that's functional. She will never see you. She will never change. And you're still taking this ownership. And you're still taking this responsibility. And you're still saying, I can fix this. Like, you know, there's this joke on the internet, right? That some woman is arrested for all these terrible things, but she's pretty. And what do the guys joke about?
[2:47:56] That she gets away with it because she's...
[2:47:59] No.
[2:48:00] Oh, sorry.
[2:48:01] They say, I can fix her.
[2:48:05] Oh, right.
[2:48:08] I mean, it's true. She did beat three puppies to death. but she's pretty I can fix her right and of course you've heard all of these, you've heard enough call in shows right and all these stories of the men who, try to fix their wives their girlfriends right never happens never works right, and those are chosen relationships your mother is not a chosen relationship you never chose to have her in your life, Now, your husband is probably a very nice man as well, right?
[2:48:48] He is. Okay.
[2:48:50] Niceness is lovely.
[2:48:53] It really is.
[2:48:54] I like, it's nice to be nice to the nice. That's my mantra. It's nice to be nice to the nice.
[2:49:00] Yeah.
[2:49:01] The people who aren't nice get zero protection from me and zero consideration. Like, you've got to earn this stuff, right?
[2:49:11] Mm-hmm.
[2:49:14] I'm in a monogamous relationship with virtuous people. I don't cheat on them by being nice to corrupt people.
[2:49:21] Yeah.
[2:49:26] So, you... Okay, tell me, how frank do you want me to be here at the end?
[2:49:33] Play it on me, Stef.
[2:49:34] I can take it. You, my friend, inherited the bad habit of playing on your husband's sympathy by being sad. But I want to be in touch with my mother. It makes me sad. I need my mother. Oh, and by the way, maybe we can go and have romantic relationships away. I'll appeal to your testicles. Maybe we can have more sex. But I'm really sad again. Oh, come on.
[2:49:58] Yeah.
[2:49:59] Come on. Tell me that's not happening.
[2:50:02] Okay. Yeah, yeah.
[2:50:06] And he's a nice guy, right? So he wants you to not be sad, and he also might want a romantic weekend away or whatever, right?
[2:50:12] Yeah, we definitely want a romantic weekend away.
[2:50:16] I get that, I get that. So you play him to get what he wants.
[2:50:21] Yeah.
[2:50:25] Now he should be of course hey i'm sorry that you said but the answer is not, to to hang with your mom and try and fix your mom yeah right so so you're relying on his niceness and his consideration for your feelings to get what you want i'm not saying 100 but this i think there's that in him.
[2:50:45] Yeah oh yeah there is.
[2:50:47] So yeah i mean listen this is not this is not to you that your husband can listen to this right yeah don't let him do that don't be played because here's the thing um her father was played right and so you don't want to be in the category of the woman's father right in general right but in particular if the father was weak and you viewed your father as weak right because he was like to explode in rage after suppressing and conforming that Neither of those is strong, right?
[2:51:18] Yes, yeah.
[2:51:19] So don't be anywhere near the category of her father. Now, her mother uses emotions and fake tears and crying and this and that and the other. And I'm not saying you're the same as your mother. I understand that, right?
[2:51:32] Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[2:51:34] But this is how do women get what they want sometimes. Well, they're upset knowing full well that the men who love them will do almost anything to stop them from being upset, right?
[2:51:49] Yeah.
[2:51:53] And don't use that.
[2:51:56] Yes, sir.
[2:51:57] Don't use that. I'll be good. Because that's a great way to have that consideration dry up. And if the man ever feels like, wait a minute, I just got played based upon my care for this woman's unhappiness and sadness. Oh my, like there's this moment of existential horror where it's like, oh my God, I got played based upon my caring. Because it's not helping you. You are stressed. You are distracted. You are stressed. less emotionally available yeah you are sad it's not helping and because your husband is a very nice guy which again i appreciate and you know that's that's a strength but can be a weakness he'd be like hey you know what we tried it and it's not working, but i but i'm sad it's like yeah well and yeah okay so, so be sad yeah.
[2:53:03] Feel the emotions yeah.
[2:53:07] But we don't wallpaper over your sadness by having you be in touch with you know this this woman who makes our family's life worse, right it's not best for your kids.
[2:53:24] Yes.
[2:53:25] And that's all you need to know.
[2:53:28] Thank you so much, Stef, for this. This was a really helpful call. Thank you so much.
[2:53:32] And, you know, A, you're welcome. And B, you know, I'm saying this in jest because I obviously don't, you're not in the same category as your mother by a million miles, but we all have some of these bad habits.
[2:53:46] Yeah, I definitely have bad habits.
[2:53:48] I do too. I do too. I can be a little grumpy at times and a lot because I know people are very sensitive to that. And I just have to watch myself. I mean, so this, you know, I'm not obviously, oh my God, he's just like, he says, it's just like my mom. No, I mean, it's a million, million miles of difference. But because I was trying to figure out, like, why would your husband not just say, well, this was all a bad idea. So let's stop that. Right. And it's like, because I'm sad. It's like, so yeah, don't, yeah, don't do that.
[2:54:14] Okay.
[2:54:15] Is that a good place? I think we should probably stop, right? Long, long old chat.
[2:54:20] Yeah. Thank you so much for the call, Stef. It was very helpful.
[2:54:23] You are very welcome. Listen, lots of big hugs and love to you and your family. Congratulations, a millionfold. I do love hearing it when the show is produced, families. And please, please, please keep me posted about how it's going, all right?
[2:54:37] I will. Thank you so much.
[2:54:38] And if there's anything I can do again, just let me know, all right?
[2:54:40] Sounds good. Thank you. Bye. You too. Bye.
[2:54:44] All right. I just wanted to say something here at the end before I forget. yet so this lovely and fine young lady she was saying well i've gone through therapy and and therefore i should be able to be around my mother right uh that's not the purpose of i don't want to say therapy like therapy therapy but like healing the purpose of healing is to deal with the trauma not to put you back into it right so if some guy's been at war for years right and and And blood, death, guts, murder, horror, sleeplessness. The purpose of dealing with his PTSD is not so that he can go back to war, but so that he can live in peace. The purpose of healing is so that you can live with the damage, not that you put yourself back into damaging situations. If you break your arm, the purpose of getting your arm healed is so your arm is fixed and whole. It's not so you can go back and re-break your arm.
[2:55:46] Right like i remember many years ago when i cracked my forearm falling off a bike i went to the doctors and i'm a pretty good patient right he said do this do that do the other and i did all of it and i healed pretty quick but when i was there he was talking to some other patient and this guy was like my arm keeps hurting and it's like well what happened well i went skydiving and the doctor was just yelling at him like don't come to me to fix your arm and then go skydiving right so So the purpose of healing is to make you whole, not to put you back into a state of re-trauma. So I'm so bulletproof now, I can go get shot again. It's like, no, you got shot and you heal it, but not so you can go get shot again, right? That's not the purpose. I just want to mention that. And again, really appreciate this lady's conversation. It was great.
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