Philosopher Stefan Molyneux engages with a caller in his mid-30s who is grappling with a multitude of personal challenges stemming from a debilitating injury, a troubled family background, and an unsettling run-in with crime. The caller, who has emerged from years on welfare, shares his surprising ascent into the working world, only to confront the painful echoes of his past. Amidst his struggles to find stability, he recounts a harrowing incident where he faced an armed gang in front of his mother’s home, an event that he has come to recognize as a source of PTSD, triggering memories of past helplessness during his upbringing.
The conversation reflects a pivotal moment of vulnerability as the caller grapples with his emotions, specifically feeling ashamed and overwhelmed by circumstances beyond his control. After enduring significant back pain for over a decade due to an injury sustained during a move, he finally finds partial relief through physical therapy. Despite this triumph, the caller admits to being trapped in a cycle of doubt and regret, exacerbated by the complexities of his relationships with his family. His father's death—complicated by feelings of inadequacy regarding their estranged relationship—lingers heavily, with the caller longing for closure yet feeling conflicted over the emotional weight of grief.
As the discussion unfolds, Molyneux challenges the caller to unpack the layers of his self-perception and accountability. The caller reveals an underlying belief that his challenges are self-inflicted, particularly due to drug use, which he fears contributed to his injury. Stefan presses for clarity on the underlying themes of shame and indecision that seem to occupy the caller's mindset. Throughout, the tension of trying to establish a productive dialogue contrasts painfully with the caller's apparent avoidance behaviors, stemming from his ADHD and the weight of past traumas.
In a frank moment, Molyneux calls out the defensiveness that arises in response to probing questions, asserting that genuine growth often originates in discomfort. The therapist-like dynamic reveals the caller’s struggle to articulate his feelings, yielding insights into his reluctance to confront the reality of his failure to communicate effectively and his resistance to seeking help. As the conversation reaches its conclusion, both parties recognize the complexities inherent in their exchange. The caller's acknowledgment of his long-standing pain and mixed feelings culminates in a sense of urgency to improve his understanding of himself and his life choices.
As they wrap up, Molyneux emphasizes the importance of honesty and clarity in the pursuit of growth while extending sympathy for the caller's difficult journey. The discussion serves as an illuminating exploration of personal struggles, the weight of familial obligations, and the quest for identity amidst chaos—a conversation that echoes the broader human experience of grappling with the past, the present, and the fragile hope for the future.
0:02 - Introduction and Background
55:19 - Communication and Empathy
1:03:42 - Personal Relationships and Habits
1:05:38 - Teenage Relationships
1:06:33 - Heartbreak and Growth
1:06:55 - Returning to Work
1:08:03 - Self-Reflection and Manipulation
1:09:00 - Painful Past
1:12:32 - Life's Challenges
1:14:22 - Coping with Loss
1:29:16 - Discussing Father’s Death
1:33:02 - Seeking Closure
1:41:44 - Emotional Burdens
1:47:18 - Struggles with Communication
2:05:04 - Moving Forward
[0:00] Uh yes hi stefan sorry my volume is muted no.
[0:03] Problem no problem i had a bit of background noise there.
[0:05] Uh yes i can turn that down yeah.
[0:09] Just a background noise is not ideal.
[0:12] Okay gotcha sorry about that no no problem are we uh are we on are we recording uh.
[0:18] Let me just i'll get um a backup recording going and yeah it's a private it's a public call so just remember are no names and places please and we are uh all set yeah do you want to just tell me what the issues are that i can help you with.
[0:34] Well uh first i want to thank you for uh taking my call and also for returning to twitter x whatever i think it's uh quite a testament to um your skills what you've been doing uh with your life that uh your daughter was able to provide you some great reasons to to come back and uh talk to the people out there who um need your help um uh yes i suppose i could um, I could, uh, I could just jump into it. Um, this, uh, past year of my life has, um.
[1:11] Just been a year for me where I've been going through, um, a lot of, I've just been going through it. Um, I've, I've had like a lot of, um, just rapid changes, um, experiencing a lot of, new things for the first time. I think in my email to you, my basic, I kept it very brief. Obviously, I'm in my mid-30s. For over a decade, I was on welfare benefits due to injuring myself um in my early 20s and um uh i i finally managed to to come around and get healthy enough um to get back on my feet get into the workforce uh last year and um uh.
[2:08] It's uh it's you know i'm really going at it uh i'm i'm uh i'm working in a retail environment, within a very short period of time, thanks to, you know, the time I spent while I was injured, spent a lot of time listening to you, listening to other mentor-like people out there, trying to improve myself, improve my reasoning ability, stuff like that, learn philosophy. So thanks to that, I was able to excel quite quickly, learn the job quite quickly, pretty much end up being one of the um top associates uh working the store um at the entry level um, That being said, it's been very, very stressful.
[2:55] Earlier this year, right around my birthday, I had a very, very stressful week. I managed to actually, after finally entering the workforce, within six months, I would manage to pick up a second job. And so I was working like, you know, just you can imagine going from zero to, you know, working no jobs at all, zero hours a day to within like a six eight month period working like 60 hour weeks um between two different places trying to balance stuff and and you know get right sleep and stuff pretty stressful um during this one stressful week in particular i had a um uh a very close run-in with um, uh a gang of people that uh came to my house very very early in the morning um they stole, my mom's uh i'm still living with my with my mother uh which is you know we'll get into that i i imagine uh but this gang of people stole my mom's catalytic converter and um.
[4:09] And I confronted them. They were armed. They pulled a gun on me. And I managed to get away. I managed to make it through that. But I've been realizing, I've been trying to prepare myself for this conversation with you. Lots of things I'm going over are somewhat painful. So I didn't want to exhaust myself and dwell too much on it. I have been reading, I'm about halfway through Peaceful Parenting now. Excellent book. definitely worth checking out for any listeners out there who have not taken a look at it yet. Anyhow, going off on a tangent, yeah, I had a gun pulled on me. I managed to escape and survive, but having that situation being... These men ended up getting caught a couple months later.
[4:59] How long ago was this?
[5:01] This was earlier this year, about eight months ago.
[5:06] Okay, thanks.
[5:07] Yeah, yeah. so these gentlemen got caught they did end up killing a man before they were done on their spree apparently they'd been hitting neighborhoods stealing catalytic converters for about four months five months, yeah so just in being in that situation I, I'm suffering like PTSD I think and it's just brought up a lot of, memories of of things I've had to deal with in my childhood uh in situations where you know I was in um, uh yeah just in situations where i could not fight and i could not run and i just had to sit there and take it and um and yeah in my childhood also in my um in my 20s when i was uh injured very very terribly um and uh you know i i couldn't stand up for myself i pretty much just had to take, um abuse and helplessness and certain situations that you know i had no control over sorry.
[6:15] And And what was the injury that you had in your 20s?
[6:20] I injured my low back. And somehow or another, I'm not entirely sure what happened, how it happened. Never really got a formal diagnosis. I have some ideas. But that being said, the consequences of that injury, I had very, very terrible sciatica. um i could not sit upright for periods longer than um like 10 or 15 minutes without being in just you know completely agonizing pain and i could not walk very far distances either and um you know where i was attending um higher education you know i needed to walk you know a good two to five miles a day in order to you know attend my different classes and uh, yeah take care of uh different assignments things like that but.
[7:13] Uh i'm still not sure what happened though, Like, how did you get the injury?
[7:21] Yeah, well, I was, the idea that seems like most plausible, most possible, is that I was in the midst of moving from one apartment, one living situation into another. And so I was, you know, bending down, lifting heavy boxes of books and, you know, other things. and uh i just ended up fatiguing myself and um yeah causing some sort of um, some sort of injury to the the lower lumbar spine and.
[7:59] Did it come across slowly or i'm trying to what was the ideology of the.
[8:03] Illness or the yeah well i mean it was pretty it was pretty sudden, you know also like you lifted you know like yeah and and yeah my my whole muscle uh my lower back muscles just just went into spasm were super tight um yeah i could barely bend, uh i mean it was it was just awful wow i couldn't uh do much of anything that i'd been used to doing and uh you know i was uh away from my parents uh at at the time living alone, in just an in-law sort of unit. I had to, university was a very, very rough period of my life. I was definitely very, very unhappy during that time.
[8:51] I had to get away from- I don't want to jump all over. I still need to understand the injury. Okay, so- Right, okay. So you got this injury, you felt it at the time and sort of what happened then or what did you do from there? like you got this injury did you like, got to get to a doctor or got to get to like, how did, how did you deal with it?
[9:12] Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, uh, you know, when I first hurt myself, I pretty much just waited it out until the next day. And, uh, I, I went to an emergency room. Thankfully, uh, the way my health insurance worked out, the emergency room that I had coverage on was just up the street from me. So I was able to walk there, even though it was very, very painful for me to do that um they took some x-rays you know gave me some ibuprofen i forget if they gave me any um other painkillers um but uh you know they couldn't find anything they couldn't find anything and and so from i mean from that point uh it was pretty much just going to a doctor every week or two weeks saying i'm still in pain and i'm going hey you know we'll well, here's some physical therapy, you know, we, you know, we can do an MRI, investigate further, you know, they, they were never really able to find anything. Um, and, uh, it was very, um, it was pretty upsetting because, you know, I, I, uh, I was in a lot of pain and pretty much being told that it was all, um, in my head, uh, due to like anxiety or, you know, any other general diagnosis that the doctors tend to throw towards the patient's way because they.
[10:36] Don't have an explanation and aren't motivated to really figure it out.
[10:43] And what were the symptoms you were experiencing?
[10:48] Uh, right. Well, as I was saying sciatica.
[10:50] Yeah. I don't know what that means.
[10:52] Yeah. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. So sciatica is nerve pain.
[10:56] Okay.
[10:57] Um, it's, it's nerve root pain. It was, uh, wrapping around the left side of my hip into my groin. Like I felt like my balls were being pinched and then it was also running down my leg, um, my left leg stopping at the knee. It's like, like an inflamed pinched nerve sensation kind of like you're being stabbed and it burns a little bit and uh yeah okay.
[11:22] So they could the doctors could see they could see they couldn't see any any issues is that right.
[11:29] Yes okay and so what was their.
[11:33] Explanation as to why you were in pain if they couldn't see any pain nerve compression or any of those sorts of issues.
[11:38] Um you know i had mris done i showed some disc bulges but nothing serious um i mean their explanation was just you have anxiety um which uh never i never found satisfactory because my pain was they're saying your pain your anxiety is the cause of your pain the way i saw it the way i experienced things my um, Your anxiety is causing pain. The way I experience it, my pain is what was mostly causing my anxiety. I was dealing with anxiety years earlier when I was younger, and this was something else.
[12:22] Okay. All right. I know back stuff can be a bit voodoo, right? Some people don't really know what's going on. Obviously, sorry, but big sympathies. What happened from there?
[12:35] Um well it took me um from the date of my injury i was um still living around my university i had to take a leave of absence from my school uh to try and uh recover basically and then by the time um the leave ran out it was clear that you know i i was not recovered yet so um my parents did had to come and help me pack up my stuff and move back home.
[13:06] Okay, so when you said you weren't recovered, was the pain getting any better or worse, or how was that going?
[13:16] My pain remained pretty bad. I'd say, you know, if we're going for a scale here, it would be like 8 out of 10.
[13:27] Oh, God.
[13:27] 8 or 9 out of 10. It was pretty awful. I mean, I just hurt all over, all day. um the only uh relief i would get would be when i would fall asleep at night um so that that was the situation for about two years and um yeah were you on painkillers or no i i was refused painkillers um i've i you know at this point i still have chronic pain i went to a pain management doctor recently they're still refusing me painkillers which at this point it would be very Very, very helpful.
[14:01] Right. So they're concerned that you're just like a drug addict or something?
[14:04] Yes. Yes. I am. I'm pretty much, uh, I'm at, I'm at that, I fit that demographic of, you know, someone who would be drug seeking uh so it's understandable but it's it's very frustrating for me um that uh in the way i experience pain now i think you might find this interesting maybe some users might find this interesting um that i'm sure you have the experience of stubbing your toe um yeah in my experience when you stub your toe there's a brief instance like right at the point of when you stub your toe where you don't feel the physical pain in your toe but you feel this like flash this snap this explosion of like impending doom in your head and um for me because i've been in so much pain for so long i i pretty much i only feel that impending doom in my head the um physical sensations that would appear in my toe afterwards are are very subsided and subdued So a big part of it is an emotional thing for me now.
[15:07] Back then, it wasn't. To get to the point to answer your question, it was about two years before I got relief from the back pain. I ended up just one day, sort of miracle of social media, YouTube algorithms. This video got pushed to my feed of a physical therapist who lived just a couple states over from me. Um, and, uh, I, I managed to look him up, contact him, uh, set up a visit with him. And, uh, in about, um, 10, 20 seconds, he did some physical adjustments to my body and, um, pretty much undid, uh, at like 80 or 90% of the pain I was in.
[15:50] So one adjustment.
[15:52] Just, just one adjustment. Yeah. He was able to, he, um, uh, so I, one of the things I was experiencing is called sacroiliac joint dysfunction. My tailbone, my tailbone would float around my body and I could feel it subluxate and I could, um, you know, I was doing like some kind of stretching and yoga stuff as part of my physical therapy, uh, recovery. I could feel it float around and pop and crack and, and, uh, do all sorts of crazy things. So this guy, he was able to sort of reset that put it back in place which made me able to i was able to walk again like immediately after that i was sitting uh around after that in a chair for so long my butt began to hurt you know after two years of not being able to sit for longer than you know 20 minutes um and uh yeah yeah so that was that was uh great but uh you know it still took me a while, um that was in 2014 when he helped me out but it still took me a long long time to um, i was still not in working shape i had um i was still in you know just chronic physical pain aching all over um.
[17:06] Complicating that recovery from that injury, uh, I had, uh, I mean, throughout this whole time as well, I had numerous deaths in, uh, my family, um, starting as far back as, uh, 20, 2009, 2010, um, my, uh, my stepfather, or he wasn't really my stepfather.
[17:34] So, I mean, I noticed you were pretty wired when we first started talking. I was kind of hoping that that would calm down a little bit. You still sound very tense and wired. And I've just wanted to address that before we continue. How are you feeling in the conversation?
[17:49] I get that a lot.
[17:51] Sorry, you get what a lot?
[17:53] Yeah. People expressing what you're expressing, which is that I'm anxious.
[18:00] It's not a criticism at all.
[18:02] No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't feel criticized. I don't feel like you're judging me at all for it. I just, I'm okay. You know, I'm calling you. I'm just hoping you can help me generate some insight and wisdom.
[18:25] I'm trying to understand. I'm not saying you're not okay. I'm just trying to understand the emotional pressure. And of course, you know, you've had it very tough. And so I sympathize, but I want to make sure that I understand sort of the emotional pressure that's going on, for you in the background or in the backdrop, because if your feelings are there, but we're not talking about them, it's a little distracting, if that makes sense.
[18:46] Okay. Yeah, I just, I suppose, intuitively, the first answer I would give for you to, you know, like, indulge, unpack, is that I'm really, really ashamed of myself. That I've had to deal with these different problems And I feel like I haven't done enough To support myself, get myself help, get myself back on my feet. I don't know, something of that nature.
[19:28] Okay. So you feel ashamed of yourself. And I'm just wondering if we, because the backstory obviously very important, but I'm just wondering if that's a strong thing for you, then it might be worth trying to deal with that first so we can have a bit less of a sort of tense conversation, if that makes sense.
[19:47] Uh yeah it does um yeah i i suppose yet you can if you have some questions you you want me to like elaborate on as to why i might feel ashamed um uh.
[20:07] Sorry but you must.
[20:08] Have some idea.
[20:08] Why you would feel ashamed right.
[20:09] Um Um... Uh, not, not really. Um, I mean, I, I, I guess, uh, you know, a big part of it, I, is that, uh, I don't know, I suppose I sort of let myself, I feel like I let myself down. you know the last thing I ever wanted to do in my life as soon as I was able to get out of my parents house and head to university last thing I ever wanted to do is to, have to move back and deal with these people especially my mother.
[21:09] She's just Just the older I get, as I've been sort of tuning back into your show with your return to X, just the more I look back up at my family dynamic between my mother and my father, the way I was raised, the different things I had to deal with as a kid. it's just very very unsettling to me that I had to be I had to deal with those things and that, no one was willing to step up and help me and they more or less conditioned me to understand and to sort of accept the premise principle presupposition whatever you want to call it that It is my obligation to help myself, essentially, even if I don't have the skills or experience necessary to know what to do for myself. Right.
[22:10] This is all quite abstract. I'm not sure I quite follow that. So, what is it that you feel that you have done badly on or harmed yourself in some way?
[22:29] Um not not taking uh enough care of my body, i guess to to be good enough physical shape to not hurt my back i i don't i i honestly don't i don't know um well.
[22:53] It's it's it's tough to answer an objection that can't be expressed Right. Again, it's not a criticism. It's just sort of a fact. Right. So if you have sort of a sort of free floating. Badness about you, then it's pretty tough to figure out how to how to deal with that. Right.
[23:13] I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?
[23:16] Well, I don't know if you've ever read any Kafka, right? But Kafka, there's this sort of famous book called The Trial, where Franz K. is on trial, but he doesn't know for what. And it's never really explained to him as probably being white or something like that, right? But I guess that's sort of, it's hard to... It's hard to figure out how to address a criticism that is not expressed, if that makes sense.
[23:51] Okay. Yeah. Is there another example you could maybe give me? Like an analogy?
[24:02] Okay. Let me ask it this way. so you got injured and you spent two years uh in in great pain and you couldn't work and you were on uh you were on disability is that right um.
[24:16] At that time i was not.
[24:18] Okay got it took.
[24:20] Me yeah took me like four or five years before i was able to get um disability benefits.
[24:28] And help me understand okay so we'll drop that and come back to sort of the self-criticism about what you may have done so what was it what happened to your symptoms over time that you had this uh experience of it's kind of better because you you got the youtube thing and and it got better and then it wasn't better and so on so just sort of help me understand let's go with that journey and and so i can understand what happened over the course of um i guess because you said if i remember rightly in the original email it was something like 10 years that you felt uh and so i was trying to sort of figure out what's happened but the remaining eight i suppose yeah.
[25:10] Yeah well well that's the thing it wasn't after after i got like some relief.
[25:19] And they took it from an eight to a what uh.
[25:23] Maybe about like a four.
[25:27] Okay or.
[25:28] A five i don't know i was still uh i was still having like some trouble walking um still feeling stiff in different parts of my body.
[25:41] Um
[25:45] I mean, just part of what was complicating with my recovery was just the different deaths that I had to experience in my family.
[26:01] You had relatives who died, right?
[26:02] Yes.
[26:03] Okay.
[26:05] Yeah. um and and uh yeah i mean i mean short shortly before i uh i injured myself i think it was about two weeks beforehand uh my grandfather passed away uh i was i was very close to my grandfather uh growing up as a kid um and so uh just seeing him pass was pretty rough that that was uh and I'm sorry.
[26:33] How old was he?
[26:35] He was, I believe, 82, 84.
[26:40] Okay, so it wasn't like he was taken at some sort of prime of life or youthful thing. I guess grandfather wouldn't be youthful, but okay, got it.
[26:48] Um, uh, then, um, I think about a month and a half before I, uh, I managed to go out of state to see, uh, this physical therapist guy who managed to heal me up a little bit. Um, my uncle passed away. He, uh, he killed himself.
[27:10] Oh gosh.
[27:11] Um, shot himself with a gun. Yeah. Um, he had, uh, he was very, very unhappily married. Right. And, um, he, uh, he had, I guess, really, really bad insomnia. And, uh, so, so eventually it, it just got to a point where he, he just, um, decided to end his life. And, uh, so it was, um, uh, yeah, so it's, that happened a couple of, on, on my visit to, um, to this physical therapist guy out of state after he, he helped me out. I took a flight out of the state to visit my grandmother, who was now widowed with my grandfather and her son. My uncle now passed away. I went there for the funeral. For the burial is maybe a more accurate description.
[28:09] So there was that. um two years after that uh my my dad passed away um this was uh yeah so two years after four years after my injury two years after recovering at least somewhat moderately from my injury um my dad pretty much died uh, just a sort of a broken man without his family beside him. I was there with him. I was raised by my single mother.
[29:01] Sorry, but where did your father die of?
[29:04] He, um, he was, well, first off, he died when, um, he was about 75 years old. He, you know, at that age where he's having problems with his prostate and, uh, you know, has, has other health issues as well. So he was told by his doctors that, um, he had a heart condition. He was told, we got to do the heart thing first, the heart surgery first before we help you out with your prostate.
[29:37] And he, you know, he made it out of surgery. He was doing okay. And then something happened and he flatlined. I think that happened twice.
[29:52] The hospital, I don't know what the hell they were doing. But they didn't follow proper protocols or something. He lost circulation to his feet and hands and arms. And it wasn't clear after he flatlined just how much brain function was there. And so it eventually got to the point where the hospital had to have a decision, had to have my stepmom make a decision whether or not they were going to amputate, his limbs and and keep him on life support or if if they were gonna take him off of life support, and uh it's so the the day before that decision had to be made uh i went into the hospital, to to visit my dad and uh while i was there i i realized that um, I, uh, I needed to spend the night there and not originally I was planning, I was going to go there, visit him, go back home and then come back the next day. Um, but I realized I had to spend the night there and, uh, just in case he didn't make it through the night.
[31:11] Right. And sorry, how long ago was this?
[31:16] This was about nine years ago.
[31:19] Gosh okay it's still it sounds still very raw emotionally which is not a criticism but it's just something i've kind.
[31:24] Of right yeah yeah um yeah well i mean uh uh he he didn't make it through the night is what ended up happening i was talking to him and uh i i gave him my i told him that he my permission to die.
[31:44] Wow.
[31:45] And, uh, that, uh, I was trying to tell him that, that, Hey, you know, uh, if you need help, we will help you tomorrow. But if you could do it on your own, um, it would be doing us all a favor.
[32:01] Huh.
[32:02] And, uh, so 10 minutes after that, he was gone.
[32:07] Okay.
[32:10] And, uh, yeah. So, I mean, that, I had a lot of depression after that.
[32:19] Tell me a little bit about your relationship with your father.
[32:24] Um... I mean, the sad thing is there's really not much to tell. He, I would see him once a week for breakfast. And then at Christmas, at holidays, I'd maybe spend a week, five days, ten days. um with him and my stepmom okay uh and uh but yeah i never really got to know him all that well he never really got to know me but you grew.
[33:12] Up together right i mean you said you were raised by a single mom but you had did you have much connection with your father at all.
[33:20] Uh i really did i mean just just i'd see him at at uh, Once a week for breakfast.
[33:30] Okay.
[33:32] Yeah, for about 40 minutes to an hour.
[33:34] Okay.
[33:34] And then he might take me to a sports game.
[33:37] Right.
[33:38] Okay. Yeah.
[33:46] I'm sorry, I don't know where to go from here about it. One of the things I've been doing over the past couple of days, I've been trying to age stamp, time stamp things, how old I am against how old my parents are or were, during different periods of my life. So, one of the things I was realizing the other day, I'm in my mid-30s. At my age now, my mom and dad, they were together for about seven years. My mom was in her early 30s when they started dating, and he was in his mid-40s. um and so i was just i'm now in my mid-30s so at my age they'd been dating for a couple of years and uh i just have no idea what to think of that relationship um if i were to come up to a girl my age and find out she's with you know a man who's 10 years 12 years older than her i, I'd have a lot of questions, and concerns.
[35:13] Okay, go ahead.
[35:14] Yeah. I was just thinking of that. I'm thinking now... You know, I obviously have a complicated, dysfunctional, for lack of a, that's not even lack of a better word, that's a pretty accurate word, I have a dysfunctional relationship with my parents. My mom as well has had a poor relationship with her own parents. My mom is now in her mid-70s. I'm comparing that against.
[35:49] My grandma and I was thinking the other day about I had a great relationship with my grandma and my grandfather they were a huge positive influence on my life I think, but I'm just comparing my mom's behavior and personality and where she's at in her life in her mid-70s to where my grandmother was at the time. At that period of time, I would have been in my teens, 14, 15. My grandparents ended up during that time taking me on a trip to Washington, D.C., which I didn't really appreciate at the time. I was a very, very moody teenager, but I managed to, many years later, talk to my grandma about it and tell her about all the different things we did there that I remember that had a profound that had a profound impact on the way i see the world uh but yeah uh going off on a tangent again my apologies but just my grandma very very classy very put together for her life in her mid-70s compared to my mom which uh with this grandmother on your mother's side yes yes sir so.
[36:58] How how how is it possible that you're i mean it could happen right but i'm i'm not sure how you understand how it's possible for your grandmother to be so classy and then you say your mother is not right.
[37:08] Yeah well at this same phase and and in life um, Yeah, I'm kind of losing track of where I was.
[37:27] Okay, let's back out a little bit because, again, there's a lot of details. But so what is it that you're looking to get out of the call? How would you know if the call that we have is successful? How would you know that?
[37:38] Right. I mean, the one thing I'm really sort of interested hoping to get out of the call is... uh a sense of direction of um you know uh yeah what i should do with my life where you know how i should uh handle the challenges that um, the traumas, tragedies, whatever you want to call it, that I've been faced with in a positive way. And yeah, be able to...
[38:20] Okay, that's very general. Obviously, I can't tell you what you should do with your life, but what is it that you can aim to get out of the call that I could sort of reasonably try to achieve, if that makes sense?
[38:36] Uh i mean this is the thing i don't know all i really know right now is that uh i'm very very desperate for help and to just no no i understand that and i want to help but i don't.
[38:45] Know what the help means right now it's a.
[38:47] Bunch of.
[38:47] Stories about your life which again interesting but i'm not sure that that gives us a solution or gives us a an approach that we can take that is going to be really helpful.
[38:59] Right um so.
[39:04] And what what are you desperate about.
[39:06] Well one of the things i'm desperate right now uh i had to because of the just the situation i was in earlier this year with uh getting a gun pulled on me i it's pretty clear to me that i have pretty bad ptsd i mean Why did.
[39:26] You approach these criminals?
[39:31] Uh, well, I, I heard something going on.
[39:33] No, no, no. I, but why, why would you approach them? I'm just trying to understand that. I mean, I didn't know what was happening.
[39:39] Yeah. I didn't know what was, what was happening. There was, there was loud noises outside of my.
[39:44] Okay. So then you saw the criminals and then what?
[39:48] Uh, I made eye contact. There was, um, there were two cars. There's one up further, the street with a, uh, I'm sure there was a driver in it. There was a driver and a spotter. And there was a car closer, closer to me down the street, driver in the spotter, my, my mom's car sandwiched in between them with a guy, uh, you know, trying to steal the catalytic converter, the spotter who was closest towards me made eye contact with me. Uh, he pulled out a gun from, uh, his, um, his jacket pocket.
[40:20] Okay.
[40:20] I couldn't see the shape of the gun. I could just see the glint of the floodlights from other houses on the metal.
[40:32] Sorry, I don't need the second-by-second stuff, although again, of course, great sympathy. But philosophy is not a PTSD thing, right? So I'm trying to think, and again, great sympathy, but I'm trying to figure out what it is that I can do to help you. I can't undo the terrible thing that happened with the criminals and so on. So that may be something for a therapist to work on. But again, I really want to know, like you wanted to contact me and you know what it is that I do. So I'm just trying to understand. And none of this is a criticism. I just want to make sure that I'm adding value. So what is it that.
[41:07] I can.
[41:07] Provide to you that would be the most help.
[41:09] Uh i mean this is the thing i just uh, right now i don't have much of a sense of purpose or or direction of uh what i want to do in my life and and um, i i'm just.
[41:33] Okay so so hang on so how would you know and again not disagreeing with you at all but how is it that you would know that you had a sense of direction in other words what's missing yeah that would be clear to you if you if you had it so ah now i have a sense of direction like what would that look like.
[41:48] Uh well well it seems to me uh like i i am very much struggling with uh formulating a like a healthy meaningful sense of identity and.
[42:03] I don't know what that you have to you have to hang on you have to just a lot of therapy speak so you have to be a little bit specific i don't know what it like how do i know that you have a sense of identity at the end of the call right i need something a bit more a bit more practical sorry to be annoying but i need something a bit like sense of identity is all very abstract uh i mean you know that you're a man you know that you're whatever right so so help me sort of understand a little bit more what it is that you are looking for so i can help yeah.
[42:30] Yeah well i mean that that's the thing i'm i'm qualifying that by not just like sense of identity but like meaningful.
[42:35] Okay meaningful it's not meaningful is not something i really understand either right.
[42:40] Right well um.
[42:41] I can't give you meaning right i wouldn't even know i wouldn't even know what that what that would mean so to speak right so.
[42:47] I i gotcha yeah uh it's just you say like you're a man like that um that's just like a superficial characteristic that.
[42:57] Okay so so okay let me let me let me i gotta take over here a little if you don't mind okay so so um do you want to get married i do okay do you want to have kids i do okay and what is your dating history.
[43:13] Uh well i mean non-existent for the past over the past 12 years i had a couple of girlfriends in high school. There were some girls that were expressed interest in university, but it didn't feel like we were very compatible. So...
[43:30] What do you mean by that?
[43:33] Just... They seemed very, very... naive and sort of uh juvenile unambitious um some of them uh unambitious yeah just others just like hang.
[43:48] On hang on unambitious yeah i mean you haven't done much over 12 years right.
[43:57] Well right well this was before i had injured myself this was uh when i was very i get all of that.
[44:04] But if the injury is a valid reason to not do anything, then I don't know what philosophy can do to help you. If on the other hand, you know, maybe the injury became a bit of an excuse or it's a way to hide out from the world, which, you know, I can understand if that's the case and so on. But, you know, if you say, well, you know, these women, they just weren't very ambitious and yet you succumbed to your injuries, right? In a sort of very foundational way. And again, lots of sympathy and all of that, but you succumbed to your injuries. Your injuries became something that you could not overcome. Now, I don't know because I don't know you. I don't know if you could have overcome them or something like that or not. I don't know any of that. But I do know that you succumbed to them, that they won.
[44:54] Well, for a long time, yes.
[44:57] Okay, 12 years?
[44:59] Yes.
[45:00] Okay, is that a long time?
[45:04] It's about a third of my life, so I should say so.
[45:06] Okay, right. Okay. So do you think, looking back, do you think that there was any other way to deal with your injuries? Do you think that it was possible or could have been possible for you to do better or find some way to overcome these these injuries or do better with the issues as a whole?
[45:32] I would tentatively say yes that my inability to recover quicker, as quickly as would be desirable, preferable was due to a deficiency of willpower okay.
[45:53] So tell me a little bit about that.
[45:55] Uh Yeah, I just... I suppose I am, to a significant degree, have a tendency to give up on doing things that are difficult.
[46:21] Okay, go on.
[46:22] Yeah. I wish I could think of another example.
[46:29] Well, you don't need more. Or if the injuries had something to do with that, right, then you don't need more examples, if that makes sense.
[46:36] Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I just look back on what I was dealing with with my injury. I mean, it was just a very, very complicated situation I was in. So, you know, it was being injured on top of not receiving much help from doctors. not receiving much help from either of my parents, and just being depressed that you know, I had, The plans that I had originally had for myself in my life had pretty much gone by the wayside. And, you know, spent a lot of time, you know, just like playing video games, trying to distract myself rather than, you know, doing like exercise rehab stuff.
[47:35] Okay. Oh, so there were rehab exercises that you could have done that you did or didn't do enough of. Is that right?
[47:42] I i would say so yeah i mean if i were to give myself my own sort of critique, criticism whatever of things i wish i'd done better or that i could have done better in a particular situation that that would be one of them yes.
[47:58] Okay got it so then why would you say if of course you know like like all of us if you're injured like your number one thing is to get better right that that's generally the way that people approach these things so So if that's the case, why do you think that you were delayed in that? Why do you think that you took the path of not exercising as much or not doing the rehab exercises?
[48:27] Right. Well, this is one thing that I was thinking a little bit about. and um for what it's worth you know looking back on my childhood and the way i was treated by my parents uh you know the way i behave now and think of myself now i have a uh very very difficult time, uh thinking of myself considering my well-being my own life that has something that has value you know there was a, Lots of neglect, I would say, growing up as a kid. And if I were to describe sort of how I was raised, how I was treated by my parents, I was sort of treated as like a lifestyle accessory for the most part.
[49:29] And how did that look in terms of how would that show up in your life?
[49:34] Um... Just not much time, not much attention being spent on me. I can't recall either of my parents really fundamentally asking me what my needs were in school, who my different friends were. you know as I was getting older and looking at higher education you know where I wanted to go what I wanted to study, there was an absence of being taught many different like practical life skills.
[50:27] So you were.
[50:28] Sort of and tutored yeah yeah I was I was pretty much, lots of stuff I pretty much had to kind of learn on my own how to manage my own finances, how to do laundry how to cook meals, safely, stuff like that so it's maybe to a certain degree, been conditioned to just be like... taking care of myself, prioritizing different needs of mine are, you know, it's like an impossibility for me to conceptualize that because I don't have any value. So why would you be trying to, you know, focus energy on cultivating, preserving something that doesn't have any sort of value.
[51:37] Okay. So, I mean, lots of people, and again, not to diminish your suffering, but a lot of people do go through the issue where their parents don't seem to treat them as valuable. And why do you think it took for you so much?
[51:56] Um, could you maybe expand on that a little bit, uh, explain like what you mean?
[52:03] Well, um, so I, I've talked to a lot of people over the course of, you know, kind of doing what I do, and those people, uh, a lot of them have, have had parents who don't treat them as important and, uh, they are able, uh, to some degree, I mean, it always leaves a mark, right? But they're able to find a way to, move beyond that and say, well, okay, so my parents don't think I have value, but I'm going to find a way that I'm going to have value or something like that.
[52:38] Right. Well, I mean, yeah, that is, I suppose, something I am struggling with right now. It's figuring out, I mean, at least for myself, if there's anything that I value in myself, that I like about myself, and I just... I don't know.
[53:10] You don't know if you can find anything that you like in yourself?
[53:19] Yeah, I mean, at least, at the moment um yeah i i just i have i have a really really negative, self-concept even though i know that many other things i think about myself are not really all that true okay so what are the things that you think.
[53:44] About yourself that are not true.
[53:49] Um I feel like I'm very foolish, like, I'm maybe manipulative, that, I'm maybe very abrasive and aggressive, in ways that make other people feel uncomfortable, maybe unpredictable.
[54:31] Like you are unpredictable?
[54:32] Yeah.
[54:33] Okay.
[54:38] Yeah, I mean, I suppose that's a good starting point.
[54:42] Right, okay. Okay, and why do you think that... Sorry, let me ask. Sorry, let me ask you. a slightly different question what would you consider admirable if that makes sense like you say oh uh i i you know i i don't have traits in myself that i consider admirable which of course begs the question what are those traits that you would consider admirable i.
[55:10] I'm i'm pretty creative.
[55:13] No no that you're missing i.
[55:15] Would say the the admirable traits that that are missing.
[55:19] Yeah.
[55:29] Just being able to get along with other people and to interact, I guess, more gracefully, more smoothly.
[55:43] Sorry, that's actions, but what virtues or what would you need in the mind to be able to achieve that?
[55:54] Uh, probably better empathy, I suppose. Um, patience.
[56:03] But sorry, why would you need patience with people? Uh, I'm not disagreeing with you again. I just want to make sure I understand.
[56:12] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, you've, you've been, uh, fairly patient with me direct during this call. Uh, I thank you. Um. it's uh you're approaching like exercising that that virtue here i like as you can tell i'm kind of struggling to uh express certain things reason myself through um certain uh faults of mine and definitely in dealing with and interacting with other people um it would be good for me to just be more patient and uh.
[56:55] Sorry and i'm sorry to interrupt patients patients indicates superiority right right so if we say well i have to be patient with my child uh that would indicate that i'm superior and that my child is inferior like if i have to be patient with someone learning spanish it's because i speak spanish very well and they don't right yeah okay so so the patience would indicate a feeling of superiority. Does that make sense?
[57:27] Yes.
[57:28] Okay.
[57:28] I suppose.
[57:29] So the opposite of patience tends to be vanity, right?
[57:35] Okay.
[57:37] Sorry. It sounds like you're agreeing with me or saying that you agree with me, but I'm not sure if you do, but you don't have to agree with me. Of course, I'm just telling you that's my sort of thought about it.
[57:45] Yeah. Well, I, uh, I'm willing to indulge the, um, the argument, essentially.
[57:52] Okay. Uh, so in what, in what way do you disagree with the argument?
[57:57] Uh, yeah. Well, I would just, intuitively, I would think that the opposite of patience would be impatience.
[58:10] Well, but that's just an antonym exercise, right?
[58:13] Right.
[58:13] So we have to sort of figure out a little bit more than that, right? So, sorry, go ahead.
[58:20] Yeah, well, I just, could you just maybe elaborate on how vanity would be experienced? by, impatience?
[58:36] Well, so if I would need patience, if I'm vain about something, then one of the ways that we feel vain about things is we think that it's easy for everyone, we're just better, if that makes sense.
[58:53] Okay. Okay.
[58:57] So with, With impatience, it's like, well, people should be getting it, but damn it, they're just not getting it. They should understand it, but they're just not understanding it, if that makes sense.
[59:13] Okay. Gotcha. Yeah.
[59:21] I mean, because it would make sense. Sorry, go ahead.
[59:25] Yeah. Just a clarifying question. You said that patience implies a sense of superiority. Wouldn't the same be true for vanity, though?
[59:37] Well, sure. Yeah, no, patience is a form of vanity. Oh, sorry, impatience is a form of vanity.
[59:43] Okay. Okay.
[59:49] So, so let me ask you this. Do you feel, and that could be wrong, right? But do you feel, or do you go through the experience of feeling superior to people?
[1:00:01] Um, I don't, I don't think so. Uh, maybe subconsciously.
[1:00:09] Well, you don't feel it. You don't feel it. Right. I don't want to, I don't want to just make things up if that makes sense.
[1:00:14] Yeah yeah well i i you know i don't want to be dishonest and and uh say something that, maybe isn't entirely i don't want to be vain and you know and uh no but you also i mean just because i have a theory doesn't mean that.
[1:00:31] That it's true right so if if the theory doesn't match your experience so to speak then we wouldn't want to uh we wouldn't want to bend the experience to match the theory.
[1:00:40] Yeah uh just just what i experience with with the patient's issue is is that i get uh frustrated with with people um more easily than would be ideal um in their opinion in.
[1:01:01] Their opinion okay.
[1:01:01] So uh.
[1:01:02] Why do you get frustrated with people or give me a circumstance in which you get frustrated with people please.
[1:01:07] Um yeah well well in uh in in working in retail, uh it's one of the things i'm kind of going through here is because i have more or less been out of the workforce out of society for over a decade i'm now realizing that um.
[1:01:32] You know, at least where I'm living, there has been a very, very significant, hopefully you could even say radical, there's been a change in the culture. And, you know, the different kinds of people who are out there, I'm thinking that the models that I've had in my mind of the way people think are pretty far outdated. so so you know these different people come in and uh they want you know different products uh they want to purchase different products from the store and um, uh just there's some just like very basic things that uh.
[1:02:17] They don't understand you know they've had a cell phone for a number of years they don't know what charging cable they need for it uh you know they need to purchase um, yeah some batteries or whatever um you know they don't know what size battery they need uh you know they're not able these are all like easily like googleable questions uh, stuff you know written on the box of the product as they're buying it and uh you know it's of course it's it's it's the job to you know be graceful with these people and things like that But on occasion, just some of the questions that they ask are just, I'm just wondering how... How they managed to tie their shoes before they head out their home.
[1:03:15] Right.
[1:03:16] It's that shocking. Just how uninformed people are.
[1:03:24] Okay. Got it. All right. Okay. So let's hold off on the vanity thing or the impatience thing. So let's try and figure out the dating situation. So, uh, did you,
[1:03:41] I mean, was it pornography? Like, what is it that got you through like a fairly, a fairly monk-like dry spell, uh, over the course of 12 years?
[1:03:49] Um, yeah, yeah. I, um, I probably have a pretty bad, uh, habit, uh, looking at, uh, pornography.
[1:04:03] Okay. And what about in terms of, um, so you, you don't have any, sorry, you said that there were some girls who were interested in you when you were in your teenage years, right?
[1:04:16] Uh, yeah. Late teens, early twenties.
[1:04:19] Okay. And what was the longest relationship that you had?
[1:04:23] Um, longest relationship was when I was in high school, my senior year of high school that lasted about a year.
[1:04:29] Okay. And, um, how did that end?
[1:04:36] Um uh suddenly i guess um i mean suddenly but not unexpected uh the girl i was dating was uh, a grade or two um under me and so i was heading off to university and uh she was gonna be in high school and uh you know we never really uh we were we were both very young so we didn't really know how to like uh talk to each other about uh you know things we needed things we wanted um, you know how to handle me leaving if we wanted to stay together and try a long distance thing but um eventually what ended up what ended up happening is uh she she caught feelings so to speak, for another guy and um you know and ended up breaking up with me over that okay.
[1:05:36] So she got interested in another guy okay got it.
[1:05:38] Yeah okay um but uh yeah that that was very um, heartbreaking for me as a young man um and.
[1:05:52] Sorry did you did you fight for her did you like i'll do anything, or how did it go in terms of the breakup?
[1:06:00] Um... You know, we talked a couple of times, and we continued talking a little bit when I was at university. But eventually it got to a point, I think she went to some party,
[1:06:28] got pretty drunk, and was sending me some text messages. I agreed to meet up with her and I don't know, it just didn't go so well, and I just realized that I had to I had to cut contact with her Okay Yeah, Sorry.
[1:06:56] You said you're in your 30s now, right? And how long have you been back in the workforce?
[1:07:02] Since last year Okay. In April.
[1:07:06] Got it. Okay. All right. All right. So I guess the question is, so when you first introduced yourself to me, you were talking about all of the sorrows that you had experienced, right?
[1:07:27] Yes.
[1:07:28] And why do you think you did that?
[1:07:33] Well, that's what has most been on my mind, In watching your shows, that's a superficial answer, I would say. And I think a more honest answer, as I was saying, I have a kind of a negative self-concept with me. I think it's manipulative.
[1:08:01] Okay, yeah, I got that sense too.
[1:08:03] I think I'm trying to manipulate you into having more sympathy for me than is actually deserved.
[1:08:11] Okay. All right. Okay. So tell me a little bit more about that.
[1:08:21] Um... Yeah, I just said, that's the way I feel. You know, I don't know why I do that. I don't know. I'm in this weird position where I feel like I'm in between a rock and a hard place.
[1:08:49] No, no, I don't want, please, God, don't give me any more analogies. Give me stuff that actually makes sense. I don't understand what you mean when you say you're between a rock. I mean, I understand the analogy,
[1:08:58] but it doesn't explain anything to me.
[1:09:00] Yeah. Well, I just, I feel like I don't like talking about the things I've been through because I feel like it's manipulative.
[1:09:10] You don't like talking about the things you've been through, but that's exactly what you talked about.
[1:09:16] Right. No, no. Well, I don't like doing it because I feel like it's manipulative to people. But, you know, these are things that are, in order to address whatever the underlying reason is for the manipulation, you know, I have to talk about them. Why?
[1:09:37] I don't understand. Why do you have to talk about them?
[1:09:45] Well, because they, um, I, I, they're very painful for me to deal with.
[1:09:56] No, come on. That's not true. Hang on. Hang on. How many years ago did your father die?
[1:10:03] Uh, about nine years ago.
[1:10:05] Yeah. So, you know, nine years ago, your father died and, uh, you know, but you're still like, oh God, it was so painful. And he wasn't, you met him once a week.
[1:10:16] Well yeah but i mean that's that's what's kind of painful about it, no
[1:10:23] No that means that his death would affect you less, that's that's what that means okay right, his death would affect you less because you weren't close.
[1:10:41] Yeah um uh uh, I don't know. I mean, even despite the fact that I wasn't so close to him, I mean, having him around was helpful for me. He's the one that, that assisted me in recovering from my injury, seeing the specialist. You know, he, I don't really have any other family members. that, um, I can reach out to and ask for help. And, and, you know, my dad was at least if I really, really needed help, uh, willing to, uh, step up and, and do things to help me.
[1:11:38] Okay. So did he ever say to you, you had two years of bad pain, you're gone from an eight to a five or a six, get off your ass and go and make something of yourself.
[1:11:48] Um, not, not.
[1:11:51] In particular for 12 years because you had a bad back.
[1:11:55] Right.
[1:11:56] Did he ever say that?
[1:11:59] Well, he was a man of a few words.
[1:12:01] Okay, I don't want excuses, man. Come on. Did he ever? I mean, he did. I don't know. Did he ever give you the tough love?
[1:12:10] No.
[1:12:11] Okay, why not?
[1:12:12] No.
[1:12:13] Because he was enabling this, right? Everybody who's part of your life was enabling this, right?
[1:12:20] Well, yeah. I mean, that's one word you could use.
[1:12:26] Well, was it possible? I mean, I thought I understood this. Maybe I didn't.
[1:12:29] I asked, was it possible for you to get off your ass sooner than you did? And I thought you said, yes, maybe I misunderstood.
[1:12:37] Um, I needed help.
[1:12:39] No, that's not what I asked. What you said, and you said, I thought you said, again, I'm sorry if I got things wrong. I asked, was it possible for you to have gotten off your ass earlier than you did? And my understanding was you said, yeah, yeah, yeah, right?
[1:12:53] Well, I mean... It's a matter of degrees, is the way I was thinking about that question.
[1:13:02] Okay, everything's a matter of degrees. Everything's a matter of degrees. That doesn't answer anything. Saying things are a matter of degrees is like saying, well, oxygen was involved. Yes, I understand.
[1:13:14] Things are a matter of degrees. I was unable to do anything with myself for about 12 years. So maybe if I take in your initiative.
[1:13:28] Hang on, slow your roll. Again, I'm sorry if I misunderstood something. We can't rewind live, right? But my understanding was that you had said that there were things that you could have done more so than what you did.
[1:13:45] Yes.
[1:13:46] Okay.
[1:13:46] That were within my own locus of control. I'm just saying, like, I don't, this is all speculation.
[1:13:54] So okay i can't i can't listen for the most part bro i can't do speculation because then you're saying well there are variables that i can't possibly tell you because it's all speculative okay well then i i can't there's nothing to talk about i need some facts right right if you go to the doctor and you say to the doctor i need some help right and he says well can you tell me where it hurts and you say i can only speculate where it hurts can the doctor help you okay.
[1:14:23] Right right no.
[1:14:24] Can the doctor help you if it's speculative no right no so i need things that are facts now i my understanding was and again i apologize if i got it wrong my understanding was that you had said that you could have done better with some of your issues you could have gotten out of bed or you could have gotten back into life you know with difficulties obviously and so on, but you could have gotten back into life sooner than you did.
[1:14:55] Well, I mean, that's at least, like, a feeling that I have, you know, a criticism that I could make of myself. I, you know, I honestly can't say for sure, because I had, I just had tons of different things going on. yeah in my life I mean COVID hit in 2020, you know yeah, I was going through some difficulties there.
[1:15:39] I can help you with bad decisions, right?
[1:15:41] Okay.
[1:15:42] I can help you with bad decisions, which we all make, right? No big issue, no big contempt or anything. We all make bad decisions, right? I can help you with bad decisions, right? Can I help you with chronic health issues?
[1:16:01] You cannot, no.
[1:16:02] I cannot, right? Right. So what I'm looking for is if you want me to help you, which I'm happy to try and do, if you want me to help you, you have to give me some bad decisions and then we can figure out, you know, why you made them and what premises you had that led you down the wrong path or something like that. Right. We agree with that?
[1:16:21] Yes.
[1:16:21] Okay. So I thought that there was a bad decision and the bad decision was that after two years, you went from an eight to a five or six in terms of pain but you spent much more than two years in bed so to speak or or crippled or or, underperforming or underachieving or something like that right does that make sense right.
[1:16:44] Yeah yeah well i mean i you know it's not like i um was doing nothing uh.
[1:16:53] I did okay so if you were but if you were doing everything you could do then you would you would we would have great sympathy but you wouldn't have a negative self-view the negative self-view's got to come from somewhere right right.
[1:17:08] Right yeah yeah.
[1:17:08] Okay so i thought and again my understanding was i mean i'm not crazy right do you remember saying that you could have got out of bed earlier you could have gotten life going a bit more sooner uh.
[1:17:21] Yes yeah yes i i, if I had had better discipline and willpower to exercise me.
[1:17:33] Yeah, because I think that might have been you you didn't do the the the right exercises, right?
[1:17:39] Yeah.
[1:17:40] Okay. Pretty much. All right. So so that was a bad decision, right?
[1:17:47] Uh, yes, yes.
[1:17:49] Sorry. Why is that? Why is that? Why is that doubtful?
[1:17:55] Uh it's not doubtful i i we can call it a bad decision i i might use just a different word to characterize it that would be more charitable towards me.
[1:18:06] Well but if you were if you hang on but if you feel i'm being too harsh by saying it was a bad decision then why would you have all this negative self-view or this negative view of yourself if you didn't make a bad decision I mean, you're not just sadistic to yourself for no reason, right? Like, if you got hit by some, you know, bus out of nowhere, it wasn't your fault, you didn't do anything wrong, and you had this terrible injury, then, you know, to say, well, I'm really mad at myself wouldn't make much sense, right?
[1:18:41] Right.
[1:18:46] So you see where I'm going, right? Your negative self-view has to come from something that you could have done better. Does that make sense?
[1:18:59] Yeah, yeah.
[1:19:01] Okay, so I'm trying to identify what you could have done better. Or I'm trying to help you sort of understand what you could have done better. Make sense?
[1:19:11] Yeah, yeah. No, I gotcha.
[1:19:13] Okay, great, great. Okay. So then if I say, here's what we can work on and things that you could have done better, right? And then you say, well, gee, there's really nothing I could have done better, then we're kind of at an impasse, right? Or we need to find, because if you have a negative self-view, then there must be something that you could have improved, right?
[1:19:35] Yes.
[1:19:36] So let's say that when I was in my, I was 30, right? Let's say that the perfect woman for me was in... dubai or russia or someplace i wasn't right would i say oh my god i can't believe i didn't ask her out like i didn't even know she existed right but if there was some great girl that was like next door that i didn't ask out i would then say gee i should have asked her out right like i have to have had some decision that i did that was negative in order to have a negative self-view i have to have done something i could have done something better does that make sense.
[1:20:17] Yes yes i i.
[1:20:18] Suppose yes here i want to make sure i'm making sense i.
[1:20:24] No no it it it does it makes sense um.
[1:20:32] Uh yeah no the pauses though and yeah i obviously want to make sure that i'm i am making sense and also that i'm being fair and reasonable because if we don't agree on this then we can take another you're making sense.
[1:20:43] No no i i got it um i guess uh one of the um compounding uh factors to my injury that I've been, um, somewhat concerned with, uh, I think might've played a role, uh, is drug use. Um, I was using, uh, at this time, at the time of my injury, I was using a lot of a lot of cannabis and.
[1:21:14] Um, at the time of your injury. Okay. Sorry. This is vaguely right.
[1:21:19] Yeah. Yeah. No, no.
[1:21:20] Why have we been talking for an hour and a half or an hour 20 and I'm getting new information about cannabis um you hear a lot about well i've said my dad died and stuff like that yeah but i'm yeah well i mean.
[1:21:33] I'm um yeah no no i i gotcha i'm just i'm i'm very very, ashamed uh.
[1:21:42] Okay that's fine but then why call me up and say i want help but then not give me the facts um i mean if you go to it's like going to the doctor and saying no it's not this elbow that hurts it's this elbow that hurts right.
[1:21:59] Well i i just can't i mean where i'm at in my life right now i don't think it's that important um, Yeah, just at the time.
[1:22:18] Okay, I don't know what we're talking about. Something happened. Then why are you bringing it up?
[1:22:24] I'm trying to answer your question about negative self-concept. And so if my drug use was causal to my injury, even if it was unintentional.
[1:22:37] Are you bringing up something that you don't think is a factor?
[1:22:41] I don't know. what i vaguely remember is uh using cannabis and um and then experiencing excruciating pain um in my low back uh i'm i there is a family history of kidney stones it might have been a kidney stone i don't know uh what like i don't know if using the cannabis my blood pressure or something i just i don't know what happened bro bro yeah sorry what.
[1:23:15] The fuck are you talking about i don't understand any of this and i'm sorry if i'm missing something my apologies but.
[1:23:20] No no you're talking.
[1:23:21] Like are we talking about kidney stones now what are we talking about kidney stones for i thought you injured your back uh lifting something something.
[1:23:27] I don't i don't know i mean all of these things were happening uh but they would have tested you.
[1:23:34] For these things, wouldn't they?
[1:23:38] Yeah, I was told no kidney stone.
[1:23:41] Okay, so if there's no... Again, I'm really confused. Like, if there's no kidney stone, there's no kidney stone.
[1:23:48] Uh, you know, I, I did actually, um, I'm pretty sure I passed some kidney stones, um, a couple of years ago.
[1:23:57] I can't help you with that. I know. I know. I don't know. I don't know if you've passed a kidney stone or not. I'm not a fucking doctor. I'm not supposed to help with that.
[1:24:08] I, I, well, I got, I'm just, I'm telling you, I, I have not had, I've been dealing with doctors trying to get my pain addressed for you know over a decade now and uh they pretty much shrug their shoulders and and pat me on the back okay so again i can't.
[1:24:23] I can't do anything about the doctors okay.
[1:24:26] No no i got you i got you so what i'm looking for hang.
[1:24:29] On hang on.
[1:24:30] Yeah what.
[1:24:31] Bad decisions do you think you might have made that give you a negative self-view that's all i'm trying to figure out.
[1:24:37] Yeah yeah well i i was trying to give you one um no maybe i.
[1:24:44] Passed a kidney stone it's not a.
[1:24:46] Negative decision yeah okay okay yeah uh why i just i blame myself for my injury it is i think i did things okay okay so you blame.
[1:25:01] Yourself for your injury And what do.
[1:25:04] You think.
[1:25:05] You might have done to cause your injury? Is this marijuana thing?
[1:25:10] The cannabis use. Yeah.
[1:25:12] Okay. So you think that you might have, um, uh, injured yourself because you were using cannabis. essentially yes i don't know what you mean okay so so that's your negative so your self view your negative self view is that you might have uh caused your own injury by using cannabis yeah okay got it got it okay i appreciate that all right and do you feel that that is uh quite likely or not likely as a whole.
[1:25:45] Uh well i would say quite likely.
[1:25:50] Okay so how is it that again not disagreeing with you just want to make sure i understand how is it that cannabis use caused your injury um.
[1:26:02] Well it was um i mean it's a drug it has all sorts of different effects on different people uh.
[1:26:11] Okay i need i need i have no more patience for generic shit okay okay i am aware that cannabis is a drug you don't need to tell me that i'm aware that it has a different effect different people you cannot you cannot give me this stuff and expect me to stay in the conversation i need some facts yes.
[1:26:27] Uh okay uh it messed up my proprioception my ability to uh recognize my um what i was doing with my muscles engage my muscles properly i i think it might have raised my blood pressure and and caused me to release a kidney stone, maybe i i don't.
[1:26:48] Know sorry hang on i i'm not a doctor so just be patient while i try and figure out what the hell's going on okay so you see hang on i'm still talking no please please God. I'm trying to be patient here, right? Okay. So you feel that, or you think it's possible that, the marijuana caused you to release a kidney stone, and that may have been some source or issue with regards to your back. Is that right?
[1:27:23] Yes.
[1:27:24] Okay. And have you ever asked the doctor this or looked this up or tried to sort of sort this out as to whether this may be the case?
[1:27:35] Uh not really that i that i recall um i mean i did some some very very preliminary, superficial research uh when it first happened years and years ago there's some people you know uh, what what cannabis can cause like adrenal surges you know which are of course right above the kidneys so it can cause low back pain it does all sorts of stuff okay uh one thing it was doing after after i injured myself i continued to use cannabis and it would aggravate my sciatica, but i was doing it anyway because i was very very depressed from the amount of pain i was in and uh just a number of things and cannabis would help me out with that okay it's better so that the antidepressants that I was put on. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. I had been put on antidepressants before. They made me like angry and suicidal. So I was using cannabis instead.
[1:28:31] Okay. Okay. So is it that you have negative self-regard because you feel that you did something to cause your own injury by using drugs?
[1:28:47] I'm definitely part of it.
[1:28:51] Okay. So if that's, and when did you first think that perhaps it was the drugs that had caused the, um, the injury?
[1:29:03] Uh, definitely when it, when it first happened.
[1:29:06] Ah, okay. So when it first happened. Okay. And that is a theory that has remained within you, right?
[1:29:15] More or less. Yeah.
[1:29:16] Okay. Everything's more or less. So again, I, these caveats mean that like, there's no answer to anything right okay yeah all right so, when did you not or when did you go through the process of not doing the necessary exercises to most help with your injury.
[1:29:44] I would say maybe two or three years after injuring myself, I don't know. It's hard to say.
[1:29:57] Well, no, because you got some improvement, right?
[1:30:01] Yeah.
[1:30:03] Okay, so you got some improvement. And so maybe in the process of that improvement, you were able to do more exercises, right?
[1:30:13] Yes.
[1:30:14] Okay, so you got some improvement. You started to be able to do more exercises, but then you didn't do the exercises. And why do you think you didn't do the exercises?
[1:30:31] Yeah, well, I was, you know, very devastated when my father passed away.
[1:30:39] Okay, I don't understand why that would have for you not to exercises.
[1:30:48] Um, I just, uh... I, I, well, um, I don't know. You know, one of the things I was telling him as he passed away was that I didn't want him worrying about me because I was still in a state where, you know, I wasn't working. I wasn't sure that I would ever be able to work. I was still in a lot of pain. and I don't know just even though I wasn't very close with my dad, seeing him pass away in that way, and I guess him feeling like we were close enough that you know he could just relax, uh it did just really deeply disturb me sorry.
[1:32:02] So i'm not disagreeing i want to make sure i understand so you said.
[1:32:06] Seeing him.
[1:32:06] Pass away in that way and what else in seeing him relax tell me what that means.
[1:32:12] Yeah yeah well just uh whatever relationship i did have with him, you know when I gave him when I told him he had my permission to die you know he yeah seemed like that's all he needed to sorry.
[1:32:36] What does that mean that's all he needed.
[1:32:42] I don't know I suppose it doesn't mean anything it's just a cliche it.
[1:32:46] Means something to you so I just want to make sure i understand.
[1:32:48] Like you gave him permission.
[1:32:50] To die i don't know what that means.
[1:32:53] I mean i i i told him i i used those words when i was talking to him yeah but death is not.
[1:33:02] Yours to give or take, Is it? I mean, you're not Thanos, right?
[1:33:14] Yeah, I'd been looking up some videos on YouTube, you know, the weeks before, or the days before, while he was on life support. And just one of them mentioned that it's sometimes something you can do to help people in that state. And just, I mean, the thing for me is because he had flatlined, it wasn't clear how much brain function he had.
[1:33:41] Right.
[1:33:42] So I just, I was not expecting anything to happen.
[1:33:47] What do you mean?
[1:33:48] After I said that to him. I was just expecting to say that and that, yeah. I mean, his blood pressure just started falling like five minutes, ten minutes after that. And, yeah, I wasn't expecting that to happen.
[1:34:13] I'm sorry, you weren't expecting him to die when he was dying?
[1:34:19] I wasn't expecting him to die after I told him that he had my...
[1:34:23] Okay, but that wasn't why he died. right? I mean, come on. That wasn't why he died. He died because he was dying.
[1:34:38] Yeah.
[1:34:42] It's a coincidence.
[1:34:44] You think it's coincidence?
[1:34:45] Of course. You don't have the power of life and death. You don't.
[1:34:52] Okay.
[1:34:52] Neither do I.
[1:34:54] Okay.
[1:34:55] I mean, I'm not saying that there's nothing in people's minds. I get all of that, right? But, I mean, you said he was kind of half brain dead, wasn't he?
[1:35:06] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:35:08] So, I mean, there's not even any brain there to hear.
[1:35:12] Well, that's what I was thinking to myself.
[1:35:14] Right.
[1:35:15] At the time. I just, I struggled. I don't know. I just, you know, if I hadn't said that, I just, I wonder if he would have been, if he would have made it through the night. And, you know, other family wanted to come and see him before we took him off of life support.
[1:35:42] Okay, hang on. Sorry. Sorry. I want to make sure I understand. Are you mystical? In other words, do you think that there was a father in there that was doing his thing, even though he was kind of brain dead, that there was a father in there somewhere who was able to be conscious? Is it mystical that way? Again, I'm not trying to criticize. I'm just trying to understand your thinking.
[1:36:08] Yeah, no, no, no. I guess yes, yes. I would have to say yes, that that might be where my conscious is at over that event.
[1:36:23] Okay, so you were speaking to his soul or something?
[1:36:30] To just whatever the very base part of the brain is.
[1:36:35] Soul or something there's no base part right he's brain dead or close to it right so what what who were you talking to um.
[1:36:51] Well, I mean, I didn't think I was talking to anyone when I was saying these things.
[1:36:57] No, but that's how you describe it. I gave him, like, there's no him there. He's a brainstem.
[1:37:04] Yeah.
[1:37:06] Right?
[1:37:07] Right. Well, I mean, I didn't think anything was going to happen by saying those things. I didn't think anyone was there. I was just kind of saying this, these things performatively on the offhand chance that something might happen and that someone might still be there. Um, you know, but I mean, I guess it could just be coincidence. It still disturbs me though.
[1:37:41] But there's some, there's something going on because I mean, you're still emotional about this guy. who was barely a father who died nine years ago. Like, holy Hamlet, Batman.
[1:37:51] Yeah. i i well i mean i don't know why um i mean part of the thing for me is it it's it's upsetting for me that uh you know i mean one of one of the few benefits i had with with my dad was being able to talk to him about, um, uh, about what I was dealing with from, from my mom at home. And, you know, I, I mean, that was a benefit in some ways, in some ways it would make me very, very angry because he was very well aware of, uh, what my mom was like. And, you know, it was an environment that he refused himself to live in.
[1:38:43] And.
[1:38:44] Uh you know but he would let me uh he totally allowed me to be raised by uh that person.
[1:38:54] Yeah so your dad was not a good father.
[1:38:57] I i would agree yeah.
[1:38:59] Okay so what's all this sentimentality stuff i don't quite understand, i mean if he was a big if he was a good kind loving father and and you know made your life a better place and you know then i can understand the grieving but not like nine years later yeah i mean do you think your dad would be happy that you were still grieving him nine years later, i i'd be pissed if my daughter was still grieving me nine years after i died yeah.
[1:39:24] No no i i i gotcha um, yeah i i just i i don't i don't know what what to think about it, um i i did uh spend some time um some years ago i i wrote a post i put it on reddit uh about all the different memories i had of my dad it took me a long time uh i had to keep going back and adding things to it i mean it was quite horrifying uh the different things i i thought up uh just memories i had of him not being that great of a father right um, but uh, i i don't know it, it's just it was very it's still very hard for me to, that the relationship I have with my dad is I don't know I haven't you talking to me about how that situation is probably just all coincidental.
[1:40:47] Well look I mean.
[1:40:49] Especially if he's.
[1:40:50] A brainstem him.
[1:40:51] Yeah right yeah yeah well i mean i mean this is the thing is uh it wasn't clear, really at the time okay was he conscious, not not that you have a conversation with him no okay so.
[1:41:13] Then he didn't hear.
[1:41:17] Right yeah okay And.
[1:41:20] You don't have the power to release people From blah blah blah right People just die.
[1:41:25] That's what happens they just fucking die Okay.
[1:41:33] Because it's not giving you any emotional closure, right?
[1:41:40] I guess not. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's not a guess. It's very clearly not.
[1:41:45] It's very clearly not.
[1:41:54] What would I... Is there any advice you could... Do you think you'd be able to give me to get emotional closure?
[1:42:03] With your dad from nine years ago?
[1:42:05] Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt. I should let you know, you know, one of the things my dad did as sort of a side gig, he was involved in the pyrotechnics industry. So since I recently got back on my feet, I have started doing fireworks shows again.
[1:42:33] Okay. Let me ask, because this conversation is just so all over the place.
[1:42:39] Yeah.
[1:42:40] Are you still doing drugs?
[1:42:44] Uh...
[1:42:48] Come on, this is not a complicated question.
[1:42:50] Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[1:42:52] Okay.
[1:42:52] I started using drugs again recently because of the amount of chronic pain I've been experiencing from my job.
[1:43:02] Okay. And when did you last do drugs, be honest?
[1:43:08] This morning.
[1:43:10] Okay.
[1:43:11] Yeah.
[1:43:11] Right. And you did marijuana?
[1:43:15] Yes.
[1:43:17] Okay. And how long does marijuana generally last in the system?
[1:43:31] Well, the effects, I find, last only maybe like two hours. But, I mean, the THC, cannabinoids, whatever, they can stay in the system for what, like months on end? depending on how much you use.
[1:43:49] Yeah, days to months. Okay. All right. And so how often have you been doing marijuana lately?
[1:43:59] Maybe about once a day for the past week and a half.
[1:44:01] Okay. And how long did you take a break before that?
[1:44:10] I would say about three years, maybe more.
[1:44:15] And so, what's the total number of years of your life that you've been using drugs?
[1:44:23] Um...
[1:44:28] Adult life, like 18 or whatever.
[1:44:30] No, no, no. I got you. I got you. I'd say maybe about five years spaced out over the past 15.
[1:44:44] Okay. And how often are you in regular conversation with people?
[1:44:51] Well, I mean, that's the thing. Due to my injury, I haven't. had much exposure to other people and.
[1:45:01] Aren't there injury groups that you can talk about and discuss things with though i mean people who've gone through similar difficulties yeah.
[1:45:08] Yeah i i was a part of um you know a a group uh years ago um after my dad passed away this was a local group at a church immense group uh i i did that for maybe about six months.
[1:45:26] Okay um, yeah uh because you're way out of practice having conversations oh.
[1:45:34] Oh for sure yeah yeah yeah no no i i uh i i agree with you.
[1:45:38] Okay so so hang on would you say that i am fairly good at having conversations uh.
[1:45:44] That would be an understatement yes.
[1:45:46] Okay so this is part of the impatience of vanity thing right so if and i say this with all sympathy right so if you're out of practice having conversations and you did drugs this morning why are you fighting me when i try to lead the conversation um because every time i try to take a particular direction you you go in some other direction you tell me i'm wrong you're like so so why why do you if if i'm an expert and you're calling me for help, why so resistant to coaching or feedback or any kind of direction that I can take?
[1:46:31] It just makes me uncomfortable talking about this stuff. I just feel really ashamed about it.
[1:46:37] Hang on. But you've listened to these call-in shows before, right?
[1:46:40] Yeah.
[1:46:41] Okay. So you know that discomfort is necessary, right?
[1:46:45] Absolutely.
[1:46:45] Okay. So why on earth would you send messages to me saying you want a call-in show and then not surrender to any coaching because you feel uncomfortable when you know that's a requirement? Okay.
[1:47:02] I guess it's a vanity thing.
[1:47:04] It's like, I've got a toothache. I want to go to the dentist, but you can't look in my mouth.
[1:47:08] Yeah.
[1:47:09] Well, why go to the dentist? You can't look at your mouth, right?
[1:47:13] Right. Right, yeah. I guess it's maybe a vanity thing.
[1:47:19] Well, I don't know. But that doesn't answer anything. so what would it cost you to have me take charge of the conversation since you've called me you've called me up for my expertise why would it be so wrong to let me try and, take charge of the conversation because it's really kind of like wrestling with trying to get a direction going in the conversation yeah.
[1:47:46] Yeah i i um i got you i i don't know uh maybe i lose more self lose more respect for myself.
[1:47:55] Well um do you think that calling me up and then dragging me all over hell's half acre with every story and resisting any attempts that i try to put to get the conversation in a particular direction let's say that the conversation fails right do you think that your self-esteem or self-respect will be higher or lower, if you resist any kind of coaching in this kind of call.
[1:48:26] Um, I think I'd be indifferent to it, to be perfectly honest.
[1:48:33] Oh, so you're indifferent as to whether the course succeeds or fails or whether you get anything useful.
[1:48:40] Uh.
[1:48:41] Okay, well, then I'm not sure why we're talking. I'm sorry, I'm not sure why we're talking then.
[1:48:47] No, well, I mean, I'd be disappointed. I just, I don't know.
[1:48:51] Hang on, hang on, hang on. You said you would be indifferent. Yeah. whether the call succeeded or failed to.
[1:49:02] The way i i view myself.
[1:49:05] Well would you concerning my own if you had an opportunity like if you have some respect for me and you yeah okay okay so there's a thing that you're doing which is you're talking in my ear every time i try to fucking say something do you know how annoying that is yeah i apologize can you please stop doing that? Because it's really distracting. It's another way of interfering with any kind of progress I might try and make in this call. Okay? Begging you, because we don't have much time left, right? So I asked if your self-esteem would be higher or lower if the call failed. And you said, I'm indifferent. So you're saying that you would have neither a higher nor lower view of yourself if you kind of fumbled the call by being kind of bossy and not taking any coaching. Is that right?
[1:50:04] Yes.
[1:50:05] Okay. So you're indifferent. Your self-esteem or your self-respect you're indifferent to the outcome of the call.
[1:50:20] I think I might be, yes.
[1:50:23] Okay. And are you indifferent to the outcome of the call as a whole? I mean, you've listened to a lot of call-in shows. Do you think that this one is going the way that most of them go?
[1:50:38] It is not.
[1:50:39] Okay. And why do you think that is?
[1:50:47] Uh because i i am very um, reserved i guess you could say i'm hiding things.
[1:50:57] Right okay so um, why why is that something you're doing i mean you know that you need to be honest and direct and, so on right because i mean we probably wasted half an hour because yeah my at least right because my understanding was that you said that you felt that you could have done better with your injury, and then you said no circumstances and said about father dying, so you change stories right i.
[1:51:30] Well i um, i i i if i suppose you could say yes uh.
[1:51:40] See this is exactly the issue i suppose you could say yes was it is it is it confusing from the outside as to whether you have a viewpoint on whether you could have handled your injury better or not.
[1:51:55] Yes.
[1:51:56] That is confusing on the outside, right?
[1:52:00] Yes.
[1:52:00] Okay, got it. So then when you say, I suppose you could say so, yes, why is it just not, why is it so hard to just say yes? I'm trying to understand why the, it's almost like a mirror of the call ahead last night. Why is it tough to just have an absolute? So the way that I wanted the conversation to go, and it's interesting that it didn't, right? It's not a huge problem. I mean, it's interesting either way. So, the way that I wanted to take the conversation was that you said that you had anger or frustration with yourself. And I said, well, do you think you could have done better with your injury? And you said, well, yes, right? And then you told me about the exercises that you didn't do to solve or deal with the injury and stuff like that. Do you remember that? yes okay so then i was going to start asking you as to why.
[1:53:01] You may have used the injury to kind of hide out from life a little bit, but we didn't get there because then you were telling me that you couldn't have done better with your injury and then i sort of asked why and we got into your father and you get all emotional about your father which is manipulative and bullshit i just got to be frank with you that's just manipulative bullshit okay your distant father died nine years ago, jesus christ to still be teary-eyed is just manipulative because you're not.
[1:53:33] I'm pretty good at knowing genuine emotion when i hear it okay it's the same thing that you do with the wobbly anxious voice.
[1:53:44] Well part of that is uh, a function of my injury i i think i have um a bunch of pinched nerves in my neck and arthritis in my neck and uh.
[1:53:56] Well that's not what you're talking hang on that's not hang on hang on hang on hang on sorry to interrupt but that's not what you told me at the beginning of the call, it's always just new information new information right every time i come up with something, it's like oh no no it's because of the injury oh no it's because oh my father died oh you know because i said this to my father when he was dying and he was the only guy to protect me from my mother and blah blah blah right so okay so so somehow from the injury in your back or the kidney stone or whatever you have pinched nerves in your neck is that right i.
[1:54:34] Mean my whole body is all fucked up uh if you'll excuse my language.
[1:54:39] No it's fine it's fine um okay so because you could have told me that at the beginning when i said you know you sound kind are tense and anxious, right? You could have said, no, it's just the physical effect of the injury. Because the whole call, I've been thinking you're tense and anxious, right? And so I pointed it out at the beginning, and you didn't tell me anything about the pinched nerves. It's a shifting landscape. Do you understand? It's like you're dialing the physics up and down, and I'm trying to play volleyball. You're dialing gravity up and down, right? Sorry, go ahead.
[1:55:14] Yeah. Yeah. I guess maybe another difficulty I have, I don't like the idea of things... not being within the locus of my control so i like i you know i imagine i i could uh if if i, really had the um determination the willpower uh work on my vocal control so that my voice isn't as shaky because it does get shaky and you know other people comment about that as well because i as you were saying i don't have much practice uh having conversations with people that does having conversations with people especially ones of a personal nature like this make me very very nervous um so i mean that is part of it but i i'm sorry sorry is it is it.
[1:56:08] Nervousness or pinched control a pinched nerve.
[1:56:11] It's both it's both okay yeah it is what i'm saying but i could make a if i had more willpower and determination i could maybe work on my book i don't know, you know all i know it is as you were saying earlier uh you're not a doctor you can't fix the pinched nerves in my neck you can only yeah.
[1:56:34] All i can.
[1:56:35] Help you with this bad.
[1:56:37] Decisions but we can't get to the bad decisions like they're.
[1:56:42] They're beyond.
[1:56:42] This impenetrable wall of defenses like i can't get to the bad decisions and talk about them and and listen it's not like you're unique in making bad decisions i've made bad decisions and so on.
[1:56:53] And.
[1:56:53] So uh you know but but we have to sort of be, the only thing I can help you with is the thinking that leads to bad decisions. That's all I can do. I can help you with thinking. I can't help you with anything physical, right?
[1:57:05] Right.
[1:57:06] So when you say, I gave permission for my father to die, I'm like, no, you didn't. No, you didn't.
[1:57:12] Yeah, yeah.
[1:57:13] Right, so that's bad thinking, right?
[1:57:15] Okay.
[1:57:18] Because if you have the ability to give or not give people permission to die, you'd be in great demand at hospitals, wouldn't you?
[1:57:28] Right, right.
[1:57:33] And I don't believe that nine years later, that there's still, you know, wobbly, tearful stuff to do with your dad. I think it's a way that you gain sympathy. And again, I understand it. I mean, you've had a tough life. Like, please don't, I mean, you know, whether it had to do with the drugs that you were taking when you were lifting and hauling. i mean even if it was somehow to do with the drugs i mean that's still a crazy bad bit of luck and a crazy bad uh punishment and and all of that so you know but but all i can do is i can't help you with the injury i can't help you i can't undo the drugs thing i can't do any of that right but all i can do is if you used the injury to hide out from the world a little bit which is a temptation I completely understand, then we could have tried to figure out why.
[1:58:26] Okay.
[1:58:27] Right? But we can't because I can't get any facts.
[1:58:35] I mean, to answer your question, I don't really feel like I use the injury as an excuse to hide out from the world.
[1:58:49] Yes, but everything you think is wrong in this area, because if it wasn't wrong, you would have solved it and you wouldn't be calling me. Do you understand? This is the humility. The humility in calling me is Stef, for 12 years I've been dealing with these injuries This problem, this issue, And I've got a porn addiction I use drugs I don't date Don't have any friendships Right? I get annoyed at people at work I mean.
[1:59:24] I do have a couple of friendships But I don't know.
[1:59:30] Okay Let's go back And this is the problem, right? Is you just say stuff. Okay, why do you think, I think you don't have a lot of friendships? Why do I have that perspective? Let's try the empathy thing. Why do I have that perspective?
[1:59:43] Well, because I'm not good at conversation.
[1:59:46] No, because I asked you. I asked you, not 15 minutes ago.
[1:59:55] Earlier about friendships? I do not.
[2:00:05] Okay.
[2:00:06] I'm sorry.
[2:00:06] I must have a lapse of attention. Are you out of practice with conversations? And you said, oh, God, yeah.
[2:00:13] Yes.
[2:00:14] I don't really talk to people. And I said, well, did you join a group? Yes, for about six months I joined a group for the pain And the back injury Do you remember that? Yes Did you mention any friendships?
[2:00:33] I did not, I didn't realize that that would be Something to bring up.
[2:00:44] Don't lie to me, bro No, I don't I'm close to ending the conversation, but I'm certainly not going to continue the conversation if you just lie to me. Suffice it, you're out of practice with conversation, and you don't think to mention friendships, but you mentioned some group that you joined. When did you join the support group?
[2:01:04] That was in 2016.
[2:01:10] Okay, so almost 10 years ago, you joined a support group for six months to talk about conversation stuff, but you wouldn't think to mention friendships.
[2:01:18] Uh well i mean at at that time i didn't really have many friendships going on i i was able to reconnect with some friends a couple years later i had one friend um uh that that i was getting together with regularly to um make music with uh i i was spending you know some time, taking a couple of classes at a community college. You know, I mean, it's not like my...
[2:01:53] Uh um okay so when you said when i said you're out of practice with with with communication with conversation and you agreed with me do you remember that yes okay yes great fantastic, okay so i i mean honestly i i really do appreciate the call it has been really interesting, unfortunately things just go round and round yeah no i try to establish things and then i'm just told the opposite and i try and get to the truth and then i'm told it's it's it's unimportant to you and right so i'll just have to like for whatever reason and i'm not saying this has anything to do with your fault or anything you've done wrong or bad but we're just not able to make progress yeah.
[2:02:38] No i um i i totally understand um.
[2:02:41] It may just be whatever some some odd compatibility thing it may be just we have different rhythms of speaking it could be any number of things but i don't know what i mean i've been i'm not beating my head against the wall that's a bit dramatic but i i have been trying for like hang on see now i did ask you for that one thing which is they're not talking to my ear when i'm trying to make a point right now i know i've interrupted you a couple of times too but that's when i feel like we're going off on some other tangent, so uh i think i i don't know what else to do and i feel a certain amount of like uh a weirdness or something like that and and the weirdness again it's not a fault of yours it's not anything big negative that you've done, but I just don't know where to take the conversation, if that makes sense.
[2:03:25] Uh sorry for interrupting i was i wanted to express some sympathy empathy for that um uh for what you're saying uh you know one of the other issues i have to deal with is uh adhd and it does really really scramble uh my ability to think clearly my cognition is much much slower than it was when I was younger. Generally speaking, the way I manage my ADHD is I have to keep moving around. I'm standing in front of my computer here, not moving much. I don't know what that's worth.
[2:04:09] Sorry to interrupt. Sorry to interrupt. I just think I get the idea. So I experience it as defensiveness and avoidance. But again, if you have been diagnosed with ADHD or you're an ADHD meds or something like that, then my experience of it being avoidance and, defenses may be, of course, completely wrong and invalid, in which case maybe the HD is interfering with the conversation. And my experience of avoidance and defensiveness is invalid. So I think we'll just have to chalk it up to couldn't quite connect.
[2:04:45] I got thank you for your time, Stefan. Yeah, I suppose if I'm going to try again, I'll do a private call. I will pay you for your time. That way I have a vested interest in it going well.
[2:05:00] Well, yeah. And listen, don't feel bad. I mean, sometimes the connection doesn't quite happen. And for whatever reason, if the drugs are lingering, if your pain is high, if the ADHD is kicking in in some manner, then it's just going to be tough to have that kind of connection. so yeah don't feel bad sometimes you know just doesn't quite quite work out but i really do appreciate the call and i did find it very interesting and listen i also wanted to say my gosh massive sympathies for like 12 years of pain i can't eat i i'm not even good with a headache right so 12 years of pain i just wanted to say i have nothing but enormous and deep and visceral bone marrow kind of sympathy for that and i really hope that you'll do the exercises that you need if they're going to help and I hope that you'll continue to pursue some remediation for this because yeah it is a very very difficult life and you have my eternal sympathy for that.
[2:05:53] Uh thank you for saying that um yeah I I will continue to listen and um I think I'm going to do some journaling and uh yeah maybe try try and structure my thoughts better if uh.
[2:06:11] Yeah just i mean if you want to call me up and i i mean if we're going to do this again i think you just have to try and let me take the lead uh and not to sort of tell me that every direction is is incorrect because i'm pretty good at this but of course not perfect all right thanks a mil uh thanks a mil uh have yourself a great night all right appreciate the conversation.
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