Why You Attack Yourself! Listener Question

Stefan Molyneux

In this episode, I examine the complexities of social anxiety linked to internalized critical voices from parents. Using a metaphor of facing a bully, I discuss how self-attack emerges as a defense mechanism against childhood abuse. I emphasize the need for open conversations with parents and the importance of therapy in navigating these issues.  I also propose reframing inner critics as protective forces rather than adversaries, advocating a healthier self-relationship. I conclude by outlining a tripartite approach to healing that involves addressing external criticism, reshaping our inner narratives, and fostering self-kindness, encouraging listeners to pursue their own paths to healing.  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00Good morning. Hope you're doing well. This is Van Mullen from Free Domain. And great question

00:06from a listener this morning. This is at the wonderful community at freedomain.locals.com.

00:11I hope you'll check it out. Has anyone here worked through deeply rooted traumas like those

00:17tied to social anxiety? From what I understand, says the listener, you're supposed to identify

00:23the core issues like the internalized critical voices from your parents. But I'm not sure

00:29what to do once I've recognized them. Am I supposed to challenge them with rational counter-arguments

00:35like debating a critic? Or are there other mental strategies to use, since these voices don't

00:42exactly respond to logic? Some examples. Here are some quotes. You're being a burden. You're taking

00:49up too much time. You're too slow. You're too quiet slash loud. You don't look right. You should be

00:58more perfect. Well, well, well. These are challenging and interesting issues and questions. So I've talked

01:09about this in various scattered podcasts. So I'm going to do a concentrated run through here about the

01:18philosophy of self-criticism, self-attack. So the first thing you need to understand is if you were

01:26cornered by some horrible bully who was huge, like some 300-pound tank of a man, and he said,

01:36well, I can punch you or you can punch yourself. What's it going to be? What would you say?

01:42Well, you would say, of course, like all of us would, you would say, I would rather punch myself.

01:51Because if you punch yourself, then you can control how much damage you do. You can fake it. You can

01:57pretend. So it's much safer to punch yourself than have someone else punch you. Because if you've got

02:05some big old sadist who wants to see you get hurt, then giving you the opportunity to hurt yourself

02:13is deeply satisfying to the sadist. On two levels. One, he gets to see you in pain, even if you're

02:21kind of faking it. But number two, if he can get you to hit yourself, attack yourself, then he's even

02:28more satisfied in sadism because he's causing psychological pain and self-attack, which will

02:36then continue. It's a humiliation ritual to get you to unch yourself. So think of sadism, this kind of

02:45cruelty, as a virus. And a virus wants to get in you and continue to replicate. So the sadist wants to

02:56get the sadism into you and to self-replicate. And the way that sadism self-replicates is it starts

03:04with masochism and then the masochism becomes unbearable and then it switches out to the sadism.

03:10This is like a woman who cuts herself because she's masochistic or has been attacked usually by a

03:16sadist. She cuts herself and then what happens is she cheats on her boyfriend and causes him pain or

03:24something like that, right? So the sadist gets you to self-attack, turning you into a masochist

03:31and then at some point the masochism becomes unbearable and you start to become cruel towards

03:37others and that's how sadism or cruelty replicates. From the practical standpoint, punching yourself

03:46is safer in the short run, of course, than being punched. So if you have a cruel person who has

03:58power of you, let's just say it's a father. I'm going to take the typical example of a cruel and sadistic

04:03father. Then he is going to threaten you with assault as a child. And there really is never a strong

04:13enough word for what violence or how to characterize violence from a parent to a child because there's

04:21really no adult equivalent. As a child, you are trapped, helpless, no economic, political, or legal

04:29independence. Of course, you can't leave. And your parents have absolute power and control over you.

04:36And they are, let's see, if you start off like as a toddler, you know, they can easily be 10 to 15 times

04:47your weight and therefore size. There really is no equivalent. I mean, as an adult, it would be like

04:56if you're six foot tall, being trapped in a castle in a remote location by a giant who was cruel,

05:06and sadistic, who was 60 to 90 feet tall, or who weighed 2,000 to 3,000 pounds, if you were a 200

05:17pound man, and whose voice could split your ears in two. You're trapped in a castle in a remote

05:26location, can't get out, you're in a dungeon, and the beast that has captured you, the person,

05:31perhaps the giant, is 10 to 15 times your weight. So, that would be completely terrifying and you

05:40would be helpless. And of course, if the giant, who was 10 to 15 times your size, said,

05:49well, I can punch you or you can punch yourself, you would choose to punch yourself. Because your fear

05:56would be that the giant would kill you. We have evolved as children to please our parents no matter

06:05what, because we cannot provide our own safety and sustenance. My toddlers are death magnets. I mean,

06:12the example that I use, which I'm sure you've seen, if you've been online at all, is the little kids

06:18leaning up against the glass of the giant tiger enclosure at a zoo, and the tigers stalk them and

06:25want to eat them. I'm sure they're tasty finger food, kibbles and timbits for the giant felines.

06:32And so, you need to be valuable to your parent. You need to provide a service to your parent. You

06:39need to be important to your parent so that your parent will give you enough food to survive and

06:45protect you from danger and keep you warm. So, you need to provide, in a sense, a service to your

06:52parent. If your parent, who's, you know, healthy and happy and virtuous, takes delight in your presence

06:56and your thoughts, then you are just yourself. You are in a relaxed state of being who you are, and you

07:05don't need to be anything different. So, the service that you provide, so to speak, the pleasure or

07:10happiness that you provide to your parent is in your own identity, existence, thoughts, feelings, and

07:16interactions. If you have a cruel and sadistic parent, then the question is, how can I provide value

07:25to my parent? And if your parent, in their cruelty and sadism, and I'm not saying this is common, but

07:33it happens. If your parent, in his cruelty and sadism, wishes to assault you, to beat you, to slap you,

07:42to, or even just verbally abuse you, then that, tragically, sadly, and immorally, is the service

07:48that you have to provide your parents in order to survive. If your parent wishes to use you as a sort

07:55of punching bag to relieve their own negative feelings, then we are programmed to survive, which

08:03means we are programmed to provide value to our parents, no matter how corrupt and immoral the

08:09required quote service is. So, we don't cause them any trouble, or we cause them as little trouble as

08:16possible, and if they're in a bad mood, we are programmed to offer ourself up as sacrifice to

08:23their bad mood so that their bad mood gets better, so that they're not too depressed or anxious or

08:28stressed or tense to go a hunt or protect us from predators or leave us behind when the camp moves or

08:36not bring us close enough to the fire that we don't freeze to death at night, to make sure in

08:43the squabble of a scarce resource with our siblings that we get our fair share, especially if we're

08:47younger. So, we provide the service, and it's really, it's really sad. It's really, I mean, it's really

08:55sad, but again, I mean, you have to survive. You don't choose, of course, the environment into which

09:01you are born, and if the only quote value that you can provide your parents is to be their punching

09:07bag, be their punching bag, you will. Now, you wish to prevent being physically harmed as a child, and

09:18you try to minimize the danger that you face. Now, how do you walk that fine line? Because if you offer

09:27yourself up as a punching bag too often, you might die. In a fit of rage, the parent might either on

09:37purpose or accidentally maim, injure, or kill you. Violence is a very dangerous genie to let out of

09:43the bottle. I knew someone who once served on a jury, where a man got into a stupid pushing match in a

09:52bar over nothing, pushed the guy. The guy stumbled backwards, tripped, hit his head against the edge

10:00of the bar, and was brain damaged. You never know, especially in the aforementioned dungeon castle with

10:09the two to three thousand pound giant who's sixty to ninety feet tall. And I'm aware that ten times the

10:17weight doesn't mean ten times the height, but I'm just talking about how it looks as a child. Your

10:22parents are gods, infinitely big. So how do you walk that fine line? If you offer yourself up to be

10:30assaulted, to assuage your cruel parent's temper, then you risk maiming, you risk injury, you could lose

10:38an eye, you could dislocate a jaw or a shoulder, break a limb, all things which, of course, in our

10:44evolution, it wasn't like we had x-rays and bone screws and casts and all to fix up. Kit said you

10:51broke a leg as a child, you could be lame, you could be limping, you know, Dr. House style. Forever

10:59and ever are men, which meant you would not be of much value in the provision of resources to your

11:05family. So, you know, one leg break as a child, and you're much less likely to pair up with a woman

11:11and raise children. So, so you can't offer yourself up as a physical sacrifice to your parents' cruelty.

11:21You can't do that too much because you risk the end of your bloodline, the end of your life, or some

11:26sort of significant injury. Even if you get punched and you lose an eye, well, that makes you less able

11:34to hunt, right, because you don't have stereo vision. And, of course, all injuries that you get, even if

11:41you get beaten with a switch, right, which is sort of a stick, you get lashed with a stick, and that

11:47opens up wounds, of course, on your skin, welts, and infection was a very dangerous beast.

11:57Back in the day, right? So, even, even just a beating with a stick could get you, get you killed,

12:04get some sort of infection, there's no antibiotics. Bingo, bango, bongo, you're tripping the light

12:09fantastic and joining the choir invisible. So, you need to not provoke your cruel parents, and you need

12:20to satisfy their cruelty. That's the best way to survive. It minimizes the damage against you,

12:28and it satisfies their need for cruelty. And, I mean, it's a really, this is, it's really dark,

12:35so just to be aware that what I'm talking about is really dark. But one of the reasons that children,

12:40of course, reliant upon the goodwill, or at least the functioning of their parents, one of the reasons

12:46that children offer themselves up to their parents' cruelty is, if you've ever been around really cruel

12:52people, when they don't have the ability to be cruel, they collapse into inert masochism. The cruelty

13:02to others is a way of attempting to disable the masochism that results from cruelty against

13:10those people when they were children. So, when I got older, this is a particularly personal example,

13:18but when I got older, like into my, into my early teens, I was a fairly small, a small-ish kid,

13:25and then I grew, I'm the shade under six foot, and I'm now 180 pounds. And when I grew too big

13:35for my mother to be violent towards me, when I fought back and put a stop to that crap, my mother

13:43collapsed. She, she wouldn't get out of bed. She, she, when she couldn't discharge her own self-attack

13:50by attacking me, she became inert. And I would, I would go to school, I'd make her a tea in the

13:55morning, see if she was, I mean, alive. I'd literally look for her breathing. She was like

14:00in bed for weeks. I'd come home from school at lunch and make her a little sandwich and make her

14:05some more tea and so on. And she just, and she never really functionally recovered from that. So,

14:13that's, uh, that's tough. And, you know, the way, the reason why people were functional in the past is

14:18there was a constant conveyor belt of new children to abuse, grandchildren and so on, right?

14:24So, you, you have to give your parents, if they're cruel, right? Again, we're talking about cruel

14:30parents, obviously not super common, but not, certainly not, uh, not non-existent, right? So,

14:38if you have cruel parents, you have a sort of instinctual concern that if you don't allow your

14:45parents to witness cruelty, that the parents' sadism is going to collapse into masochism,

14:52they're going to be disabled and therefore unable to provide for you. Bleat the venom,

14:59bleed the venom, otherwise the venom overwhelms your parents. And if your parents self-attack,

15:05because they can't attack you as a child, if your parents self-attack, then they become disabled,

15:10depressed. They can't, uh, do, do anything. I think vaguely there's a scene in Analyze

15:19this with Bill Kristol and Robert De Niro, where Robert De Niro has a sort of psychological

15:26insight into his own corrupt nature and there, therefore becomes disabled in a, in a gunfight.

15:33And that resonates with people because, I mean, that's, that's sort of how we evolve.

15:38So, putting all of this together, why do we self-attack? We self-attack because it's safer than

15:46being attacked by our parents. We self-attack because if we self-attack, our parents' sadism

15:52is satisfied and they remain relatively functional. It's safer to punch ourselves than have the giant

15:59punch us because we can fake punching ourselves. So, let's say that your parent gets angry,

16:08and this is actually quite common among people who've had a traumatic childhood. Let's say that

16:14your parent gets angry at sudden noises or loud noises. All right, let's say you had your volume

16:21high on your computer for some reason, or your tablet and you boot up some game and the music starts

16:26playing is really loud and startles your parent. Your parent will get angry and that's a dangerous

16:33situation. So, and your parent will say, you know, shut up, you're being too loud, why are you all so

16:40goddamn noisy? You know, give a man some peace, whatever, whatever he's going to say, right?

16:45So then, of course, you get anxiety around loud noises. Why? Because you don't want to provoke

16:51cruelty on the part of your parent. You don't want to provoke their sadism. And so, you get anxious

16:57around loud noises. So, if there's a loud noise around, or if there's a potential for a loud noise,

17:04you will feel anxious and you will try to stop it. This, of course, happens with older siblings.

17:08If the parents are startled and become aggressive over loud noises, then the older siblings will

17:13continually try to get the younger siblings to shut the hell up and will monitor these sort of

17:20loud noises. So, if the parent is continually saying, you know, shut up, you're too loud,

17:26why else got to be so goddamn noisy? If your parent is saying that, then you internalize that

17:30because it's safer. It's safer. Now, you internalize the voice in order to prevent

17:38the action that results in external attack. You know, a cuff across the face or something like that,

17:46right? Or a withholding of food, which is quite dangerous for, particularly for young children.

17:51You need food, of course, to grow. You need food to run your immune system in a world full of constant

17:57dangerous infections and all that kind of stuff, right? So, when your parent says, you're too goddamn

18:03loud, you internalize that as, I am too loud. And this way, you tiptoe around and try not to make

18:12much sound so that you don't provoke your parent into attack. Now, of course, if your parent,

18:20I mean, there's two ways that cruel parents say doesn't get activated. One is proactive and one

18:28is reactive. The reactive is they're startled by a loud sound and they get angry and lash out, right?

18:35That's reactive. The proactive is, I mean, if you've had an abusive parent or could be spouse,

18:43we're just talking about parents because this is the source of these voices. If you have an abusive

18:47parent, then you know what happens if they come home and something's gone wrong with their day,

18:54right? They're in a bad mood. You know, my mom would just sort of stomp around, stomp around,

18:58and she would be looking for something to get upset about, right? She would look for a plate left in

19:05the living room. God help you if it had crumbs on it, because then it would be, I mean, goddamn kids

19:11are always so messy, blah, blah, blah, right? And she'd stomp around just looking for things to be

19:16upset about. And, you know, it was tough to leave. I mean, your instinct is to leave, right? But it's tough

19:22to leave because if you leave, you know, where the hell are you going? I just got home. You treat this place

19:27like a hotel, blah, blah, blah, right? To which my impulse was always to say, well, actually, a hotel

19:32would have clean sheets and towels, so I would love to treat this place as a hotel. If it was more

19:36like a hotel, I probably wouldn't want to leave. So, if your parent is in a bad mood, sometimes you

19:45just have to sacrifice yourself so that they can discharge their cruelty and thus remain at least

19:52nominally functional in the world so that they can provide, protect, and so on.

19:57And sometimes, of course, if the parent is in a bad mood and the bad mood is sticking around,

20:05then the child will sometimes just provoke the parent just to get it over with. You know,

20:12having a parent who's sort of rampaging around or storming around or stalking around,

20:16Paul Hollywood style, then I don't know. He's just a judge. I'm not trying to apply anything

20:21about him as a mean person. But if you have a parent that is sort of stalking or storming

20:27around, you can just provoke something and get it over with, right? If you have to take

20:35the needle, just do it now rather than sit in anxiety and wait. Now, the purpose of the

20:45parent's cruelty is to transfer the fear from the parent to the child, right? The parent is

20:51frightened of their own nature, frightened of their own history, frightened of their own

20:54masochism, frightened of their own suffering. And when that feels like it's overwhelming,

21:00the parents tragically find that if they are cruel to others, their own suffering diminishes.

21:06And so that is that the transfer of fear from parent to child is really the purpose of this kind of

21:15cruelty. And again, this is sort of how the fear that drives the cruelty transfers and replicates

21:23like a virus. So, if the purpose of cruelty is to transfer the fear from the sadist to his or her

21:35victim, then if you as a child are already self-attacking, then the transfer can occur without

21:43violence. So, if you are already afraid of yourself, of your inner voices, of your internalized

21:51attack, the internalized attack from your parents, then you are already afraid and therefore there's

21:58no need to use aggression or violence or verbal abuse or something in order to transfer the fear.

22:06I mean, if you're supposed to get vaccinated and then the records show that you're already

22:09vaccinated, then you're not going to get vaccinated. I mean, if your wife calls you and

22:17says, I'm on my way home, do you want any food? And you say, no, no, no, I just ate. She's not

22:21going to pick you up any food because you already just ate. So, if you sort of roam around the home

22:29environment, self-attacking, already nervous, already uncertain, already afraid, then your

22:37parents' cruelty will be less likely to manifest as violence or abuse because they can put their,

22:44they've already put their fear into you, which means their own fear is diminished, their own fears

22:49are diminished. And they can look with satisfaction and say, well, that kid is frightened and self-attacking,

22:54so they already have the virus, so I don't need to transfer the virus anymore. So, self-attack

23:00diminishes external cruelty. I mean, if you want someone to get hurt and they're already punching

23:07themselves, there's really no need for you to punch them. So, it's a form of broadcast subjugation.

23:14I'm already, I'm already broken. I'm already controlled. I'm already subjugated. You don't need to do

23:19anything else, right? The virus is transferred. I'm living a life of perpetual fear. So, you don't

23:26need to escalate. It's a form of kneeling before power so that power feels stronger and therefore

23:33feels no need to assert immediate dominance through aggression or violence. And, of course, we are not

23:42designed for psychological growth and moral improvement. We're not designed for that. Because, I mean, just

23:49again, think of sort of the vast majority of our evolution, you know, lizard brain on up all the way

23:55through monkey land and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, the hundred, hundred and fifty thousand

24:01years of homo sapiens and so on. I mean, it was grindingly copy-paste. Like, each generation was pretty much

24:07exactly the same as the prior generation. And so, if cruelty is in your tribe's DNA, like literally in

24:15your DNA, and this would be the case for all of humanity up until extremely recently, like a couple

24:23generations, it's really been possible to have psychological growth and moral manifestation,

24:29right? To be authentic and honest, which still has massive risks but is survivable. So, if your tribe

24:41runs on cruelty and your parents are cruel to you, then you internalize that cruelty in order to transmit

24:49that cruelty to your children. Because, if your father is cruel, then cruelty is necessary for

24:59the survival of your genes. Because, if your father is cruel and he married your mother and had sex with

25:06your mother and is raising children with your mother, then women choose cruelty. So, if you raise your

25:14children to be not cruel, then they will likely be not sexually successful. I mean, they may not be

25:22chosen. They may also be ostracized. Cruelty may escalate against them because when cruelty

25:27finds resistance, it escalates until the resistance is broken. So, you store up all of this negative or

25:36self-hostile self-talk so that you can discharge it in the future and your offspring can survive.

25:44So, that's the backdrop of how this stuff, in my humble opinion of course, this is how this

25:52originates and how it manifests. Now, the question is, what to do? Well, the first thing that you need

26:02to do is, assuming that it's safe, my argument has always been the same for like 20 years, right? If you

26:08have cruel parents, sit down and talk with your parents and talk about the cruelty and see if you

26:13can come to some kind of resolution, some sort of mutual understanding, some apology on their part,

26:18some promise to do better. And if you're going through this process, engage with a good therapist,

26:23and I've got a whole show called How to Find a Good Therapist, I think it's 1927, and these are sort of my

26:29opinions on it. So, engage with a good therapist, hopefully have a good circle of friends who understand

26:34what you're doing, talk to your parents, and try to resolve things. And one of the reasons you do

26:38that is because if your relationship with your parents can be rescued and improved, so much the

26:43better. It is better to go through life with parents if you can, and certainly it's better for your kids

26:50if there are relatively healthy grandparents around and so on, right? So, sit down and talk with your

26:56parents, engage with a good therapist, and see if you can get your parents to give up

27:01their cruelty. Or at least acknowledge it and start to work on it or something. Maybe they can

27:07go to therapy or family therapy or something like that, right? So, that is the thing. Now,

27:13that breaks the cycle. And it has you do something courageous, which is scary, I understand. I think I

27:20did it three times with my mother and did my very best. So, you break the cycle by taking a role of moral

27:31leadership and asserting the truth against the thorny endless spears of gaslighters and falsifiers.

27:43You said the truth. Now, if your parents are thaw and melt, and you get close and connected,

27:50and I've certainly, I did an entire show with a woman who was confronted by her adult child,

27:56and do this as an adult, of course, not as a child, in my humble opinion. So, done entire shows with

28:02parents whose children confronted them, and they ended up with a much healthier family thereby. It

28:06would bring the truth, right? So, talk to your parents. Now, if your parents melt and thaw,

28:10and things improve, that's good, right? Assuming it's not a move or a strategy on their part,

28:15because you hold the power now, in which case there'll be blowback. But you can trust your

28:19instincts, I think, on that, especially if you are talking to a good therapist. If your parents

28:24falsify, escalate, gaslight, avoid, and then, you know, even if there's some particular

28:30confrontation, they then do that. Now, a weird thing that people do where they just pretend nothing

28:35happened, and move on, or try to move on, as if nothing happened. And then, if you bring it up,

28:41say, well, we already talked about this, right? So, if you get continued avoidance and abuse,

28:50I mean, the avoidance is if you don't bring up the topic, and the abuse is if you do,

28:55then you have a choice to make, right? You cannot calm or reason with inner self-attacking voices

29:06if the external source of them remains in your life, right? If you are around a dangerously loud

29:14noise, you cannot avoid damage to your ears without reducing or eliminating the noise. You can't recover

29:24from alcoholism as long as you keep drinking. You can't recover from drug addiction as long as you

29:29keep taking the drug. You cannot cure the effects of a stimulus if that stimulus maintains itself

29:36in your life. So, the purpose of talking to your parents honestly about any misdeeds they

29:42performed in the past, and all parents do, right? I mean, it's just part of parenting,

29:47you know, nobody's perfect, right? So, the purpose of talking to your parents is to eliminate their

29:55critical voices from the outside. If you can eliminate their critical voices from the outside,

30:02then your critical voices, self-critical voices, in a sense, on the inside will start to lay down

30:08their arms. It's sort of like if you continue to get swacked around on the body and then saying,

30:16well, how do I deal with the bruises? Well, the first thing you need to do is stop getting

30:21swacked around on the body, right? Stop being a boxer or a security guard at Best Buy on sale day or

30:29something like that, right? A hockey player, right? If you are continually getting

30:34swacked around on the body, you're going to get bruises and contusions and so on, right?

30:38And you say, well, how do I stop the bruises? Well, first of all, stop getting swacked around on the

30:41body and then things will start to heal if they're on a court. So, if the external

30:46attack voices are eliminated, right, either through your parents' reform or maybe not seeing them for

30:51a while, then your inner voices are like, okay, well, we don't have anything to protect ourselves

30:56from. So, we can begin to relax our vigilance, right? I mean, if you think someone's following

31:05you down a dark alley and then you run to your car, you get into your car and you drive away,

31:09then your anxiety is going to begin to diminish, right? Because the stimulus is

31:15hopefully not in the car with you, right? So, the next thing to do is instead of viewing your

31:23inner critics, your inner attackers, as enemies, view them as friends. Thank you for keeping me safe.

31:29Thank you for suggesting that I punch myself rather than be punched by the giants.

31:35Thank you for protecting me. I appreciate your service. I thank you, thank you, thank you.

31:43And if you have now kept them safe from external attack, they will thank you in return. You see,

31:50your inner critics cannot protect you from external attack. Sorry, let me sort of be more clear because

32:01I said earlier that they're there to diminish. They can diminish the external attack by transferring

32:08it to you. You punch yourself instead of the giant punching you. They can diminish your internal attack,

32:12but they cannot remove or eliminate the source of your external attack. Sorry,

32:18that sounds a little sinister, like eliminate it, but they cannot remove you from the situation of

32:23external attack. They can only manage. And that's because when we evolved, of course, as children,

32:28I mean, the giant brain that lets us talk of these things requires 20 to 25 years to mature,

32:33so we spend a lot of time in fairly utter dependence upon our parents. We are the slowest growing,

32:40biggest brain species around, right? So, your inner critics can manage external attack

32:49but they cannot prevent external attack. Of course, if they could prevent it,

32:54they wouldn't need to manage it, right? So, thank them and appreciate what they've done to keep you

32:59safe. Promise them that you are going to do everything in your power to avoid situations of

33:06external unjust attack. I mean, criticism, of course, is fair and valid, and I invited in just about

33:13every live stream I ever do. Common thoughts, criticisms, right? Happy to be critiqued to improve

33:18my thinking. So, you say, thank you for your service, I appreciate everything you've done,

33:24and then recognize that it's going to take them a while to know that the war is over, right?

33:31Typical example, of course, these Japanese soldiers after World War II hiding out on these islands for

33:37sometimes decades thinking that the war was continuing, which I assume is a combination of

33:42mental illness and or really not wanting to go back home to their wives. So, appreciation,

33:50right? Because you need sort of the opposite to counteract things, right? If somebody's pulling

33:55hard, you need to pull back just to achieve equilibrium. And since your inner critics were

34:01formed in a situation of extreme external cruelty, appreciation, thanks, and affection for their

34:06service is the opposite and gives them the signal that kindness has entered the environment and

34:13self-protection, genuine self-protection, not managing blows but preventing blows from landing.

34:19Genuine self-protection and kindness has entered the environment and therefore

34:23they can calm the hell down, right? Because, I mean, basically they're

34:27specific internal components of the fight-or-flight mechanism. Or, when you can't fight and you can't

34:35flee, which is the situation as a child with abusive parents, if you can't fight and you can't flee,

34:40the only thing you can do is try to minimize the damage through appeasing cruelty and managing

34:47negative effects by attacking yourself. So, once the Angry Gods'

34:53control and command is diminished or removed, then your inner voices can relinquish their insistence.

35:04If you are still around and subjugated to people who are cruel to you, well, you are going to continue

35:10to have to self-attack because you're still in a situation of fight-or-flight. Now, there is something

35:17I wanted to mention here just at the end, which is we've talked about the active sadism of sort of

35:24cruelty and violence and so on, right? A verbal or physical abuse. Of course, there is another

35:32really tragic, right? You know my rankings of like the order of

35:36danger of child abuse. Number one is sexual abuse. Number two is neglect.

35:39Number three is verbal abuse. Number four is physical abuse. So, we've talked about really

35:46the last two, the top one we'll talk about another time. The second one, which is neglect. The inner

35:51voice is you don't exist, you don't matter, you're unimportant, we're indifferent. Which means a

35:57neglect is when you can't provide even the masochism service to your parents. In other words,

36:05you can't provide any service to your parents. I mean, you can self-attack or at least be a

36:11punching bag for your parents if they're cruel. That's providing some horrible service to them

36:15and therefore you're a value. Well, I got to keep this kid around because when I'm angry,

36:17he's a good punching bag, right? So, then he's going to feed you, protect you, whatever, right?

36:21But neglect is when you can't figure out how to provide any value to your parents and then you just

36:30stay small and hidden, right? If your parents won't protect you, you need to stay

36:35small and hidden, which is why neglected kids spend most of their time holed up in their room,

36:41trying to make as little impact on the planet as possible. Because your instinct is to hide if

36:46you're not going to be protected. And so, then the inner voice is, I don't matter, I don't exist,

36:52I don't mean anything, nobody cares about me. And that breeds a significant isolation,

36:58because if you don't matter and nobody cares about you and you have no value, then you don't feel

37:02confident enough to reach out for any kind of friendships and you end up with this really

37:07dangerous isolation. So, our general impulse is to universalize our parents' behavior to almost

37:17existence itself and that way we don't get angry at our parents. So, instead of saying,

37:21I don't matter, say, I don't matter to cruel, depressed and indifferent people, right? If you're,

37:28if both of your parents are blind and you say, well, nobody sees me, it's like, no, your parents are

37:33blind, they don't see you, other people can see you. And the reason why we take our parents'

37:38behavior and universalize it and turn it into, quote, human nature or a virtue is because if we

37:45create in our own mind exceptions and specifically criticize our own parents, then that's,

37:53that will make us angry at our parents. Like, you're mistreating me and it's not necessary and

37:58other parents are good. And if we get angry at our parents, we're more likely to provoke

38:02attack or indifference. And indifference is often experienced by children as worse than attack,

38:08which is why sometimes children provoke their parents. At least they can provide the value

38:12then of being a sort of poison container. So, so let's go back to this guy's questions,

38:18see how I've done. Has anyone here worked through deeply rooted traumas like those tied to social

38:22anxiety? From what I understand, you're supposed to identify the core issues like the internal

38:25life's critical voices from your parents, but I'm not sure what to do once I've recognized them.

38:30Are I supposed to challenge them with rational counter-arguments like debating a critic?

38:33Well, if you are still in a situation of danger, your instincts will not let up trying to protect

38:39you. I mean, if you, if you are alone in a house in the middle of nowhere and you wake up in the

38:45middle of the night because you hear the sound of breaking glass, are you supposed to just rationally

38:50debate with your fight or flight mechanism and say, calm down, I'm sure it's nothing, right? Maybe,

38:57maybe I just left my phone playing a video and a sound of broken, like, no, you can't debate away

39:04negative stimuli without investigating and diminishing its source. If you are suddenly

39:11exposed to some dangerously loud sound, you can't just say to yourself, well, I'm just going to reason

39:16with myself and say to myself, it's fine and it's not a problem and it's not an issue because, you know,

39:21you're risking hearing damage, right? And everyone forgets hearing damage is not even the primary issue

39:28for a lot of people but the resulting tinnitus as your brain attempts to amplify the nerve impulses

39:35that are missing. So, you can't just reason yourself out of internal self-criticisms if the source of

39:42those criticisms, such as abusive parents, are still around and still abusive, either through explicit

39:48attacks or gaslighting and it never happened and how dare you even bring it up, right? So, rational

39:55counter-arguments don't work if you have, if you have sort of anxiety or fear or self-attack,

40:03the rational arguments don't work if the stimulus is still present. If you've ever done this thing

40:07where you, you watch some Wim Wenders movie in the afternoon, you go out in the bright sunshine,

40:13your eyes are like, ah, the sun, there's too bright, right? You can't reason yourself out of that

40:18because that's just a response to external stimuli. If the external stimuli are still occurring,

40:23reasoning with your internal response is sort of pointless. So, now, of course, you can reason with

40:29after a while, right? So, if you get, if you find some way to remove attack and gaslighting and all

40:36of that sort of stuff from your environment, then, you know, you can say, of course, well, thank you,

40:41I promise we're not going to go back into that situation, into that environment. You can do all of

40:46that. Now, if your fight-or-flight mechanism is still activated, it means that you still sense

40:52some danger somewhere. So, if you're still self-attacking, there's some danger somewhere.

40:56If you've really removed attacks on you as a whole, then if your self-attack is still continuing,

41:05then you can start to say, okay, well, what's the evidence, right? Like, I've, I've, I've, I've made

41:10us safe, right? Right? So, if, if you are, if you almost get into a fight at a bar, then you, you

41:16get out, and you drive home, and you go to bed, and, right? And if, like, three days later, your heart's

41:22still pounding, and you're still having dreams about this bar fight, then it's an indication that

41:26there's some other danger that you probably need to be aware of. Now, if you've eliminated all

41:31reasonable dangers, and the anxiety is still continuing, then you can start to bring the

41:34reason to arguments, and say, give me a proof. What, what is it that you need to tell me? What

41:37is the danger that I can't see? Because, you know, this is, this is not empirical anymore, right? And

41:42again, it takes a while to, to calm down. Or are there other mental strategies to use, since those

41:47voices don't exactly respond to logic? Well, see, don't, don't insult your inner voices that are there to

41:53protect you, right? My inner mother is there to protect me from my outer mother. So, saying that they

41:59don't respond to logic is premature, right? So, if you still have abusive people in your life,

42:06and the abuse casts a shadow called self-attack, which is, in fact, self-protection from abuse,

42:12if you still have abusive people in your life, then the fact that you are still self-attacking

42:18is not illogical, it's not irrational. It is there to keep you safe from the external abusers,

42:23or at least safer. You can't really be safe, but you can be safer. So, I hope that helps,

42:27and I'd love to know what you think, or if this accords with your thoughts and experience, but

42:33I generally think, my general belief is that nothing that is within your mind is there to harm

42:39you. It is there to protect you. You know, like if, if you have a bad cold and you're really tired,

42:46the tiredness is there to protect you, to rest for two reasons. One, that you don't spread it as easily

42:51to those around you, and two, that you then release more energy for your immune system to

42:57fight the virus. So, your tiredness is not there to hurt you. So, I'd love to hear what you think,

43:03freedomain.com slash donate. If you find these kinds of topics and conversations helpful,

43:07I really do appreciate the person who posted this question. And of course, if you want to talk more

43:15about this, you are welcome to set up a public or private call in at freedomain.com slash call.

43:19Lots of love. Everyone take care. Be kind and nice to yourself. Bye.

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended