Has anyone here worked through deeply rooted traumas, like those tied to social anxiety?
From what I understand, you're supposed to identify the core issues like the internalized critical voices from your parents but I’m not sure what to do once I’ve recognized them. Am I supposed to challenge them with rational counterarguments, like debating a critic? Or are there other mental strategies to use, since these voices don’t exactly respond to logic?
Some examples: “You’re being a burden,” “You’re taking up too much time,” “You’re too slow,” “You’re too quiet/loud,” “You don’t look right,” “You should be more perfect.”
0:08 - Introduction to Traumas and Self-Criticism
18:49 - The Cycle of Parental Cruelty
25:55 - Breaking the Cycle with Courage
35:32 - The Dangers of Neglect
42:25 - Understanding Inner Voices and Self-Protection
In this episode, I delve into the complexities of dealing with deeply rooted traumas, particularly those linked to social anxiety. A listener posed an insightful question about recognizing the internalized critical voices originating from parental influences and what actionable steps one should take once these voices have been identified. We explore the nature of self-criticism and the psychological mechanisms that lead individuals to adopt harmful self-talk as a defense against external cruelty.
I begin by illustrating a metaphor of a hypothetical interaction with a cruel, giant bully. The choice between hitting oneself or facing an uncontrollable aggressor sheds light on the ways we internalize abuse for self-preservation. This self-attack can be understood as a form of masochism that arises from the need to appease a dominant, cruel figure, often a parent, who wields significant power over us during formative years. The discussion reveals how this cycle of internalizing pain can perpetuate itself, leading to a life marked by anxiety and self-criticism.
Throughout the episode, I emphasize the evolutionary perspective on these behaviors. The instinct to survive and please our caregivers, even at the cost of our own well-being, is a tragic aspect of child development. I stress that, while self-attack might seem like a safe option, it carries the risk of long-term emotional damage. I articulate how children often internalize their parents' voices as a means to mitigate further suffering, leading to profound feelings of unworthiness and resulting social anxiety.
As we progress, I share practical insights into addressing these internal struggles. The necessity of confronting and engaging in open conversations with parents to seek resolution is paramount. While it's crucial to approach these discussions with courage, I also warn listeners about the potential for resistance or denial from their parents, which can perpetuate the cycle of trauma. I discuss the critical role of working with a therapist, considering it an invaluable tool for navigating these complex family dynamics and fostering healing.
Furthermore, I propose a transformative strategy: rather than viewing our inner critics as adversaries, we should acknowledge them as protective elements that have developed to shield us from external threats. By reframing our internal dialogue and recognizing these voices for their original intent—self-protection—we open the door to a healthier self-relationship. This shift can aid in diminishing the negative internal monologue once external sources of criticism are removed.
Towards the conclusion, I reaffirm that healing from such traumas is possible through a tripartite approach: addressing the sources of external criticism, changing the narrative surrounding our inner voices, and cultivating an environment that fosters genuine self-kindness. I invite listeners to share their experiences and thoughts, encouraging them to pursue a path of understanding and healing from the limitations imposed by their past.
[0:00] Good morning, hope you're doing well. This is Stefan Molyneux, from Freedomain,
[0:04] and great question from a listener this morning.
[0:08] This is at the wonderful community at freedomain.locals.com. I hope you'll check it out. Has anyone here worked through deeply rooted traumas, like those tied to social anxiety? From what I understand, says the listener, you're supposed to identify the core issues, like the internalized critical voices from your parents, but I'm not sure what to do once I've recognized them. Am I supposed to challenge them with rational counter-arguments, like debating a critic? Or are there other mental strategies to use, since these voices don't exactly respond to logic? Some examples. Here are some quotes. You're being a burden. You're taking up too much time. You're too slow. You're too quiet slash You don't look right. You should be more perfect. Well, well, well. These are challenging and interesting issues and questions. So I've talked about this in various scattered podcasts. So I'm going to do a concentrated run through here about the philosophy of self-criticism, self-attack.
[1:22] So the first thing you need to understand is if you were cornered by some horrible bully who was huge, like some 300-pound tank of a man, and he said, Well, I can punch you, or you can punch yourself. What's it going to be? What would you say?
[1:43] Well, you would say, of course, like all of us would, you would say, I would rather punch myself. Because if you punch yourself, then you can control how much damage you do. You can fake it, you can pretend. So it's much safer to punch yourself than have someone else punch you. Because if you've got some big old sadist who wants to see you get hurt, then giving you the opportunity to hurt yourself is deeply satisfying to the sadist. On two levels. One, he gets to see you in pain, even if you're kind of faking it. But number two, if he can get you to hit yourself.
[2:26] Attack yourself, then he's even more satisfied in the sadism because he's causing psychological pain and self-attack, which will then continue. It's a humiliation ritual to get you to unch yourself. So think of sadism, this kind of cruelty, as a virus. And a virus wants to get in you and continue to replicate. So the sadist wants to get the sadism into you and to self-replicate. And the way that sadism self-replicates is it starts with masochism, and then the masochism becomes unbearable and then it switches out to the sadism. This is like a woman who cuts herself because she's masochistic or has been attacked usually by a sadist. She cuts herself and then what happens is she cheats on her boyfriend and causes him pain or something like that, right?
[3:26] So, the sadist gets you to self-attack, turning you into a masochist, and then, at some point, the masochism becomes unbearable, and you start to become cruel towards others, and that's how sadism, or cruelty, replicates. From the practical standpoint, punching yourself is safer, in the short run, of course, than being punched.
[3:52] So, if you have a cruel person, person in who has power of you, let's just say it's a father, so take the typical example of a cruel and sadistic father, then he is going to threaten you with assault as a child. And there really is never a strong enough word for what violence or how to characterize violence from a parent to a child, because there's really no adult equivalent. As a child, you are trapped, helpless, no economic, political, or legal independence. Of course, you can't leave. And your parents have absolute power and control over you. And they are, let's see, if you start off like as a toddler, you know, they can easily be 10 to 15 times your weight, and therefore size. There really is no equivalent. I mean, as an adult, it would be like, if you're six foot tall.
[5:00] Trapped in a castle in a remote location by a giant who was cruel and sadistic, who was 60 to 90 feet tall, or who weighed 2,000 to 3,000 pounds, if you were a 200-pound man, and whose voice could split your ears in two. You're trapped in a castle in a remote location, can't get out, you're in a dungeon, and the beast that has captured you, the person, the giant, is 10 to 15 times your weight. So, that would be completely terrifying, and you would be helpless. And of course, if the giant, who was 10 to 15 times your size, said, well, I can punch you, or you can punch yourself, you would choose to punch yourself. Because your fear would be that the giant would kill you. We have evolved as children to please our parents no matter what, because we cannot provide our own safety and sustenance.
[6:10] Toddlers are death magnets. I mean, the example that I use, which I'm sure you've seen, if you've been online at all, is the little kids leaning up against the glass of the giant, tiger enclosure at a zoo, and the tigers stalk them and want to eat them. I'm sure they're tasty finger food kibbles and timbits for the giant felines. And so, you need to be valuable to your parent. You need to provide a service to your parent. You need to be important to your parent so that your parent will give you enough food to survive and protect you from danger and keep you warm. So you need to provide, in a sense, a service to your parent. If your parent, who's, you know, healthy and happy and virtuous, takes delight in your presence and your thoughts, then you are just yourself. You are in a relaxed state of being who you are.
[7:03] And you don't need to be anything different. So, the service that you provide, so to speak, the pleasure or happiness that you provide to your parent is in your own identity, existence, thoughts, feelings, and interactions. If you have a cruel and sadistic parent, then the question is, how can I provide value to my parent? And if your parent, in their cruelty and sadism, and I'm not saying this is common, but it happens. If your parent, in his cruelty and sadism, wishes to assault you, to beat you, to slap you, to, or even just verbally abuse you, then that, tragically, sadly, and immorally, is the service that you have to provide your parents in order to survive. If your parent wishes to use you as a sort of punching bag to relieve their own negative feelings, then we are programmed to survive, which means we are programmed to provide value to our parents no matter how corrupt and immoral the required quote service is.
[8:11] So we don't cause them any trouble, or we cause them as little trouble as possible, and if they're in a bad mood, we are programmed to offer ourselves up as sacrifice to their bad mood so that their bad mood gets better so that they're not too depressed or anxious or stressed or tense to go hunt or protect us from.
[8:33] Predators or leave us behind when the camp moves or not bring us close enough to the fire that we don't freeze to death at night to make sure in the squabble of a scarce resource with our siblings that we get our fair share, especially if we're younger. So we provide the service. And it's really, it's really sad. It's really, I mean, it's really sad. But again, I mean, you have to survive. You don't choose, of course, the environment into which you are born. And if the only, quote, value that you can provide your parents is to be their punching bag, be their punching bag you will. Now, you wish to prevent being physically harmed as a child, and you try to minimize the danger that you face. Now, how do you walk that fine line? Because if you offer yourself up as a punching bag too often, you might die. In a fit of rage, the parent might either on purpose or accidentally maim, injure, or kill you. Violence is a very dangerous genie to let out of the bottle.
[9:44] I knew someone who once served on a jury, where a man got into a stupid pushing match in a bar over nothing, pushed the guy, the guy stumbled backwards.
[9:57] Tripped, hit his head against the edge of the bar, and was brain damaged. You never know, especially in the aforementioned dungeon castle with the two to three thousand pound giant, who's 60 to 90 feet tall and I'm aware that 10 times the weight doesn't mean 10 times the height but I'm just talking about how it looks as a child your parents are gods infinitely big so how do you walk that fine line if you offer yourself up to be assaulted to assuage your cruel parents temper, Then you risk maiming, you risk injury, you could lose an eye, you could dislocate a jaw or a shoulder, break a limb, all things, which of course, in our evolution, it wasn't like we had x-rays and bone screws and casts and all to fix up. Kit said you broke a leg as a child, you could be lame, you could be limping, you know, Dr. House style, forever and ever, amen, which meant you would not be of much value in the provision of resources to your family. So, you know, one leg break as a child, and you're much less likely to pair up with a woman and raise children. So, you can't offer yourself up as a physical sacrifice to your parents' cruelty.
[11:20] You can't do that too much because you risk the end of your bloodline, the end of your life or some sort of significant injury. Even if you get punched and you lose an eye, the.
[11:33] Makes you less able to hunt, right? You don't have stereo vision. And of course, all injuries that you get, even if you get beaten with a switch, right, which is a sort of a stick, you get lashed with a stick, and that opens up wounds, of course, on your skin, welts, and infection was a very dangerous beast back in the day, right? So, even just a beating with a stick could get you get you killed. You get some sort of infection. There's no antibiotics. Bingo, bango, bongo. You're tripping the light fantastic and joining the choir invisible.
[12:12] So, you need to not provoke your cruel parents and you need to satisfy their cruelty. That's the best way to survive. It minimizes the damage against you, and it satisfies their need for cruelty. And, I mean, it's really dark, so just be aware that what I'm talking about is really dark. But one of the reasons that children, of course, reliant upon the goodwill, or at least the functioning of their parents, one of the reasons that children offer themselves up to their parents' cruelty is, if you've ever been around really cruel people, when they... Don't have the ability to be cruel, they collapse into inert masochism. The cruelty to others is a way of attempting to disable the masochism that results from cruelty against those people when they were children. So, when I got older, this is a particularly personal example, but when I got older, like into my early teens, I was a fairly small-ish kid, and then I grew, I'm a shade under six foot, and I'm now 180 pounds, and when I grew too big.
[13:35] For my mother to be violent towards me, when I fought back and put a stop to that crap, my mother collapsed.
[13:44] She wouldn't get out of bed. When she couldn't discharge her own self-attack by attacking me, she became inert. And I would go to school, I'd make her a tea in the morning, see if she was alive. I'd literally look for her breathing. She was in bed for weeks. I'd come home from school at lunch and make her a little sandwich and make her some more tea it and so on. And she just, and she never really functionally recovered from that. So.
[14:14] That's tough. And, you know, the way, the reason why people were functional in the past is there was a constant conveyor belt of new children to abuse, grandchildren and so on, right? So, you have to give your parents, if they're cruel, right? Again, we're talking about cruel parents, obviously, not super common, but not, certainly not, not non-existent, right? So, if you have cruel parents, you have a sort of instinctual concern that if you don't allow your parents to witness cruelty, that the parents' sadism is going to collapse into masochism, they're going to be disabled and therefore unable to provide for you. Bleed the venom. Bleed the venom. Otherwise, the venom overwhelms your parents.
[15:02] And if your parents self-attack, because they can't attack you as a child. If your parents self-attack, then they become disabled, depressed. They can't do anything. I think vaguely there's a scene in Analyze this with Bill Kristol and Rob De Niro, where Robert De Niro has a sort of psychological, insight into his own corrupt nature and therefore becomes disabled in a gunfight. And that resonates with people because, I mean, that's sort of how we evolve. So, putting all of this together, why do we self-attack? We self-attack because it's safer than being attacked by our parents. We self-attack because if we self-attack, our parents' sadism is satisfied and they remain relatively functional. It's safer to punch ourselves than have the giant punch us, because we can fake punching ourselves. So let's say that your parent gets angry, and this is actually quite common among people who've had a traumatic childhood. Let's say that your parent gets angry at sudden noises or loud noises.
[16:19] Let's say you had your volume high on your computer for some reason, or your tablet, and you boot up some game, and the music starts playing, it's really loud, and startles your parent. Your parent will get angry, and that's a dangerous situation. So, and your parent will say, you know, shut up, you're being too loud, why are you all so goddamn noisy? You know, give a man some peace, whatever he's going to say, right? So then, of course, you get anxiety around loud noises. Why? Because you don't want to provoke cruelty on the part of your parent. You don't want to provoke their sadism. And so you get anxious around loud noises. So if there's a loud noise around, or if there's a potential for a loud noise, you will feel anxious and you will try to stop it. This, of course, happens with older siblings. If the parents are startled and become aggressive over loud noises, then the older siblings will continually try to get the younger siblings to shut the hell up. And we'll monitor these sort of loud noises.
[17:22] So, if the parent is continually saying, you know, shut up, you're too loud, why else got to be so goddamn noisy? If your parent is saying that, then you internalize that. Because it's safer. It's safer. Now, you internalize the voice in order to prevent the action that results in external attack. A cuff across the face or something like that, right? Or a withholding of food, which is quite dangerous for, particularly for young children. You need food, of course, to grow. You need food to run your immune system in a world full of constant dangerous infections and all that kind of stuff, right? So, when your parent says, you're too goddamn loud, you internalize that as, I am too loud. And this way, you tiptoe around and try not to make much sound, so that you don't provoke your parent into attack. Now, of course, if your parent, I mean, there's two ways that cruel parents say doesn't get activated. One is proactive, and one is reactive. The reactive is they're startled by a loud sound and they get angry and lash out, right? That's reactive. The proactive is, I mean, if you've had an abusive parent, or it could be spouse, we're just talking about parents because this is the source of these.
[18:49] You know what happens if they come home and something's gone wrong with their day, right? They're in a bad mood. You know, my mom would just sort of stomp around, stomp around, and she would be looking for something to get upset about, right? She would look for a plate left in the living room. God help you if it had crumbs on it, because then it would be, god damn kids are always so messy, blah, blah, blah, right? And she'd stomp around just looking for things to be upset about. And you know it was tough to leave I mean your instinct is to leave right but it's tough to leave because if you leave you know where the hell are you going I just got home you treat this place like a hotel blah blah blah right to which my impulse was always to say well actually a hotel would have clean sheets and towels so I would love to treat this place as a hotel if it was more like a hotel I probably wouldn't want to leave so if your parent is in a bad mood sometimes you just have to, sacrifice yourself so that they can discharge their cruelty and thus remain at least nominally functional in the world so that they can provide, protect, and so on.
[19:58] And sometimes, of course, if the parent is in a bad mood and the bad mood is sticking around, then the child will sometimes just provoke the parent just to get it over with. You know, having a parent who's sort of rampaging around or storming around or stalking around, Paul Hollywood style, then I don't know. He's just a judge. I'm not trying to imply anything about him as a mean person. But if you have a parent that is sort of stalking or storming around, you can just provoke something and get it over with, right? If you have to take the needle, just do it now rather than sit in anxiety and wait. Now, the purpose of the parent's cruelty is to transfer the fear from the parent to the child.
[20:50] Parent is frightened of their own nature, frightened of their own history, frightened of their own masochism, frightened of their own suffering. And when that feels like it's overwhelming, the parents tragically find that if they are cruel to others, their own suffering diminishes.
[21:07] And so that is the transfer of fear from parent to child is really the purpose of this kind of cruelty. And again, this is sort of how the fear that drives the cruelty transfers and replicates like a virus. So, if the purpose of cruelty is to transfer the fear from the sadist to his or her victim, then if you as a child are already self-attacking, then the transfer can occur without violence. So, if you are already afraid of yourself, of your inner voices, of your internalized attack, the internalized attack from your parents, then you are already afraid, and therefore, there's no need to use aggression or violence, or verbal abuse or something, in order to transfer the fear. I mean, if you're supposed to get vaccinated, and then the records show that you're already vaccinated, then you're not going to get vaccinated. I mean, if your wife calls you and says, I'm on my way home, do you want any food? And you say, no, no, no, I just ate. She's not going to pick you up any food because you already just ate.
[22:25] So if you sort of roam around the home environment, self-attacking, already nervous, already uncertain, already afraid, then your parents' cruelty will be less likely to manifest as violence or abuse because they can put their they've already put their fear into you which means their own fear is diminished their own fears are diminished and they can look with satisfaction and say well that kid is frightened and self-attacking so they already have the virus so i don't need to transfer the virus anymore So self-attack diminishes external cruelty.
[23:05] Want someone to get hurt, and they're already punching themselves, there's really no need for you to punch them. So it's a form of broadcast subjugation. I'm already broken. I'm already controlled. I'm already subjugated. You don't need to do anything else, right?
[23:21] The virus is transferred. I'm living a life of perpetual fear, so you don't need to escalate. It's a form of kneeling before power so that power feels stronger and therefore feels no need to assert immediate dominance through aggression or violence. And of course, we are not designed for psychological growth and moral improvement. We're not designed for that. Because I mean, just again, think of sort of the vast majority of our evolution, lizard brain on up all the way through monkey land and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, the hundred, hundred and fifty thousand years of homo sapiens and, and so on. I mean, it was grindedly copy paste. Like each generation was pretty much exactly the same as the prior generation. And so if cruelty is in your tribe's DNA, like literally in your DNA, and this would be the case for all of humanity up until, extremely recently, like a couple of generations, it's really been possible to have psychological growth and moral manifestation, right? To be authentic and honest, which still has massive risks, but is survivable.
[24:38] So if your tribe runs on cruelty, and your parents are cruel to you, then you internalize that cruelty in order to transmit that cruelty to your children, because if your father is cruel, then cruelty is necessary for the survival of your genes. Because if your father is cruel, and he married your mother, and had sex with your mother, and is raising children with your mother, then women choose cruelty. So if you raise your children to be not cruel, then they will likely be not sexually successful. I mean, they may not be chosen, they may also be ostracized, cruelty may escalate against them, because when cruelty finds resistance, it escalates until the resistance is broken.
[25:31] So you store up all of this negative or self-hostile self-talk, so that you can discharge it in the future, and your offspring can survive. So, that's the backdrop of how this stuff, in my humble opinion, of course, this is how this originates and how it manifests.
[25:55] Now, the question is, what to do? Well, the first thing that you need to do is assuming that it's safe. My argument has always been the same for like 20 years, right? If you have cruel parents, sit down and talk with your parents and talk about the cruelty and see if you can come to some kind of resolution, some sort of mutual understanding, some apology on their part, some promise to do better. And if you're going through this process, engage with a good therapist. And I've got a whole show called How to Find a Good Therapist. I think it's 1927.
[26:28] And these are sort of my opinions on it. So engage with a good therapist, hopefully have a good circle of friends who understand what you're doing, talk to your parents and try to resolve things. And one of the reasons you do that is because if your relationship with your parents can be rescued and improved, so much the better. It is better to go through life with parents if you can. And certainly, it's better for your kids if there are relatively healthy grandparents around, and so on, right? So, I sit down and talk with your parents, engage with a good therapist, and see if you can get your parents to give up their cruelty, or at least acknowledge it and start to work on it or something. Maybe they can go to therapy or family therapy or something like that, right? So, that is the thing. Now, that breaks the cycle.
[27:15] It has you do something courageous, which is scary, I understand. I think I did it three times with my mother and did my very best. So, you break the cycle by taking a role of moral leadership and asserting the truth against the thorny endless spears of gaslighters and falsifiers. who said the truth. Now, if your parents are thaw and melt, and you get close and connected, and I've certainly, I did an entire show with a woman who was confronted by her adult child, and do this as an adult, of course, not as a child, in my humble opinion. So, done entire shows with parents whose children confronted them, and they ended up with a much healthier family thereby. It would bring the truth, right? So, talk to your parents. Now, if your parents melt and thought and things improve, that's good, right? Assuming it's not a move or a strategy on their part, because you hold the power now, in which case there'll be blowback. But you can trust your instincts, I think, on that, especially if you are talking to a good therapist. If your parents falsify, escalate, gaslight, avoid, and then, you know, even if there's some particular confrontation, they then do that. That weird thing that people do where they just pretend nothing happened, and move on, or try to move on as if nothing happened. And then if you bring it up, say, well, we already talked about this, right?
[28:44] So, if you get continued avoidance and abuse, I mean, the avoidance is if you don't bring up the topic, and the abuse is if you do, then you have a choice to make, right? You cannot calm or reason with inner self attacking voices if the external source of them remains in your life.
[29:11] If you are around a dangerously loud noise, you cannot avoid damage to your ears without reducing or eliminating the noise. You can't recover from alcoholism as long as you keep drinking. You can't recover from drug addiction as long as you keep taking the drug. You cannot cure the effects of a stimulus if that stimulus maintains itself in your life. So the purpose of talking to your parents honestly about any misdeeds they performed in the past and all parents do right I mean that's that's just part of parenting you know nobody's perfect right so the purpose of talking to your parents is to eliminate their critical voices from the outside if you can eliminate their critical voices from the outside then your critical voices self-critical voices in a sense on the inside will start to lay down their arms.
[30:09] It's sort of like if you continue to get thwacked around on the body and then saying, well, how do I deal with the bruises? Well, the first thing you need to do is stop getting thwacked around on the body, right? Stop being a boxer or a security guard at Best Buy on sale day or something like that, right? Hockey player, right? If you are continually getting thwacked around on the body, you're going to get bruises and contusions and so on, right? They say, well, how do I stop the bruises? Well, first of all, stop getting thwacked around on the body, and then things will start to heal if they're on accord.
[30:44] So, if the external attack voices are eliminated, right, either through your parents' reform or maybe not seeing them for a while, then your inner voices are like, okay, well, we don't have anything to protect ourselves from, so we can begin to relax our vigilance, right? I mean, if you think someone's following you down a dark alley and then you run to your car, you get into your car and you drive away, then your anxiety is going to begin to diminish, right? Because the stimulus is hopefully not in the car with you, right? So the next thing to do is instead of viewing your inner critics, your inner attackers. As enemies, view them as friends. Thank you for keeping me safe. Thank you for suggesting that I punch myself rather than be punched by the giants. Thank you for protecting me. I appreciate your service. I thank you, thank you, thank you. And if you have now kept them safe from external attack, they will thank you in return. You see, your inner critics cannot protect you from external attack. Sorry, let me...
[32:00] Let me sort of be more clear because I said earlier that they're there to diminish. They can diminish the external attack by transferring it to you. You punch yourself instead of the giant punching you. They can diminish your internal attack, but they cannot remove or eliminate the source of your external attack. Sorry, that sounds a little sinister, like eliminate it, but they cannot remove you from the situation of external attack. They can only manage. And that's because when we evolved, of course, as children, I mean, the giant brain that lets us talk of these things requires 20 to 25 years to mature, so we spend a lot of time in fairly utter dependence upon our parents. We are the slowest growing, biggest brain species around, right? So, your inner critics can manage external attack, but they cannot prevent external attack. Of course, if they could prevent it, they wouldn't need to manage it, right? So, thank them and appreciate what they've done to keep you safe.
[33:00] Promise them that you are going to do everything in your power to avoid situations of external unjust attack. I mean, criticism, of course, is fair and valid, and I invited in just about every live stream I ever do, comments, thoughts, criticisms, right? Happy to be critiqued to improve my thinking.
[33:19] So, you say, thank you for your service. I appreciate everything you've done, and then recognize that it's going to take them a while to know that the war is over, right? Typical example, of course, these Japanese soldiers after World War II hiding out on these islands for sometimes decades, thinking that the war was continuing, which I assume is a combination of mental illness and or really not wanting to go back home to their wives. So appreciation right because you need sort of the opposite to counteract things right if somebody's pulling hard you need to pull back just to achieve equilibrium and since your inner critics were formed in a situation of extreme external cruelty appreciation thanks and affection for their service is the opposite and gives them the signal that kindness has entered the environment, and self-protection, genuine self-protection, not managing blows but preventing blows from landing, genuine self-protection and kindness has entered the environment and therefore, they can calm the hell down, right? Because, I mean, basically they're specific internal components of the fight-or-flight mechanism.
[34:31] Or when you can't fight and you can't flee, which is the situation as a child with abusive parents, if you can't fight and you can't flee, the only thing you can do is try to minimize the damage through appeasing cruelty and managing negative effects by attacking yourself. So once the angry gods control and command is diminished or removed.
[34:59] Your inner voices can relinquish their insistence. If you are still around and subjugated to people who are cruel to you, well, you are going to continue to have to self-attack because you're still in a situation of fight or flight. Now, there is something I wanted to mention here just at the end, which is we've talked about the active sadism of sort of cruelty and violence and so on, right? Verbal or physical abuse.
[35:29] Of course, there is another really tragic, right?
[35:33] You know my rankings of like the order of danger of child abuse. Number one is sexual abuse. Number two is neglect. Number three is verbal abuse. Number four is physical abuse. So we've talked about really the last two, the top one we'll talk about another time. The second one, which is neglect, the inner voice is you don't exist, you don't matter, you're unimportant, we're indifferent. Which means a neglect is when you can't provide even the masochism service to your parents. In other words, you can't provide any service to your parents. I mean, you can self-attack or at least be a punching bag for your parents if they're cruel. That's providing some horrible service to them and therefore you're of value. Well, I got to keep this kid around because when I'm angry, he's a good punching bag, right? So then he's going to feed you, protect you, or whatever, right? But neglect is when you can't figure out how to provide any value to your parents.
[36:28] Then you just stay small and hidden, right? If your parents won't protect you, you need to stay small and hidden, which is why neglected kids spend most of their time holed up in their room, trying to make as little impact on the planet as possible, because your instinct is to hide if you're not going to be protected. And so then the inner voice is, I don't matter, I don't exist, I don't mean anything, nobody cares about me, and that breeds a significant isolation, because if you don't matter and nobody cares about you and you have no value, then you don't feel confident enough to reach out for any kind of friendships and you end up with this really dangerous isolation.
[37:09] So, our general impulse is to universalize our parents' behavior to almost existence itself and that way we don't get angry at our parents. So, instead of saying, I don't matter, say, I don't matter to cruel, depressed, and indifferent people, right? If both of your parents are blind and you say, well, nobody sees me. It's like, no, your parents are blind. They don't see you. Other people can see you. And the reason why we take our parents' behavior and universalize it and turn it into, quote, human nature, or a virtue is because if we create in our own mind exceptions and specifically criticize our own parents, then that will make us angry at our parents. Like, you're mistreating me, and it's not necessarily that other parents are good. And if we get angry at our parents, we're more likely to provoke attack or indifference. And indifference is often experienced by children. It's worse than attack, which is why sometimes children provoke their parents. At least they can provide the value then of being a sort of poison container. So...
[38:16] Let's go back to this guy's questions. See how I've done. Has anyone here worked through deeply rooted traumas like those tied to social anxiety? From what I understand, you're supposed to identify the core issues like the internal life's critical voices from your parents, but I'm not sure what to do once I've recognized them. Are I supposed to challenge them with rational counter-arguments like debating a critic? Well, if you are still in a situation of danger, your instincts will not let up trying to protect you. I mean, if you are alone in a house in the middle of nowhere and you wake up in the middle of the night because you hear the sound of breaking glass, are you supposed to just rationally debate, with your fight-or-flight mechanism and say, calm down, I'm sure it's nothing, right? Maybe I just left my phone playing a video and a sound of broken, like, no. You can't debate away negative stimuli without investigating and diminishing its source.
[39:09] If you are suddenly exposed to some dangerously loud sound, you can't just say to yourself, well, I'm just going to reason with myself and say to myself, it's fine and it's not a problem and it's not an issue because, you know, you're risking hearing damage, right? And everyone forgets hearing damage is not even the primary issue for a lot of people, but the resulting tinnitus as your brain attempts to amplify the nerve impulses that are missing. So, you can't just reason yourself out of internal self-criticisms if the source of those criticisms, such as abusive parents are still around and still abusive, either through explicit attacks or gaslighting and it never happened and how dare you even bring it up, right? So, rational counter arguments don't work if you have sort of anxiety or fear or self-attack. The rational arguments don't work if the stimulus is still present. If you've ever done this thing where you watch some Vim Vendor's movie, in the afternoon, you go out into bright sunshine, your eyes are like, oh, the sun, there's too bright, right? You can't reason yourself out of that, because that's just a response to external stimuli. If the external stimuli are still occurring, reasoning with your internal response is sort of pointless.
[40:25] So now, of course, you can reason with after a while, right? So if you find some way to remove attack and gaslighting and all of that sort of stuff from your environment, then, you know, you can say, of course, well, thank you, I promise we're not going to go back into that situation, into that environment. You can do all of that. Now, if your fight or flight mechanism is still activated, it means that you still sense some danger somewhere. So if you're still self-attacking, there's some danger somewhere. If you've really removed attacks on you as a whole, then if your self-attack is still continuing, then you can start to say, okay, well, what's the evidence, right? Like I've, I've, I've, I've made us safe, right?
[41:12] If you almost get into a fight at a bar, then you get out and you drive home and you go to bed. And if like three days later, your heart's still pounding and you're still having dreams about this bar fight, then it's an indication that there's some other danger that you probably need to be aware of. Now, if you've eliminated all reasonable dangers and the anxiety is still continuing, then you can start to bring the reason to arguments and say, give me a proof. What is it that you need to tell me? What is the danger that I can't see? Because, you know, this is not empirical anymore. right? And again, it takes a while to calm down. Or are there other mental strategies to use since those voices don't exactly respond to logic? Well, see, don't insult your inner voices that are there to protect you, right? My inner mother is there to protect me from my outer mother.
[41:57] So saying that they don't respond to logic is premature, right? So if you still have abusive people in your life and the abuse casts a shadow called self-attack, which is in fact self-protection from abuse. If you still have abusive people in your life, then the fact that you are still self-attacking is not illogical. It's not irrational. It is there to keep you safe from the external abusers, or at least safer. You can't really be safe, but you can safer.
[42:26] So, I hope that helps, and I'd love to know what you think, or if this accords with your thoughts and experience. But I generally think, my general belief is that nothing that is within your mind is there to harm you. It is there to protect you. You know, like if you have a bad cold and you're really tired, the tiredness is there to protect you, to rest for two reasons. One, that you don't spread it as easily to those around you, and two, that you then release more energy for your immune system to fight the virus. So, your tiredness is not there to hurt you. So, I'd love to hear what you think. Freedomain.com slash donate if you find these kinds of topics and conversations helpful. I really do appreciate the person who posted this question. And of course, if you want to talk more about this, you are welcome to set up a public or private call in at freedomain.com slash call. Lots of love. Everyone take care. Be kind and nice to yourself. Bye.
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