trenton

I have a pretty clear sense of what has been going on throughout my journey in personal development. At the moment it is not looking good and it seems to be getting worse despite my efforts. My depression and medical problems have continued to worsen, making me unable to work due to severe medical reactions, insomnia, and depressive episodes. These things are happening to me despite the clarity and progress I have recently made. I have been going on a leave of absence more frequently and ending up in the hospital or rehabilitation for severe depression. This has been combined with continued complications concerning my medical insurance. I'm wondering how much longer this new insurance will take to be approved. I have an idea of what my depression is ultimately rooted in. I suspect it is severe childhood trauma which has made me incapable of loving myself. I appear to have been punishing myself by cutting myself off from relationships with other human beings under the belief that I need to find a higher life purpose with which to justify my existence. From this point of view, my attempts to find a life purpose are doomed to fail even if I took the life purpose course. I have cut myself off from love in many ways. To name a few this includes relationships, sexuality, the pursuit of happiness, and others. I developed several compensatory values designed to rebuild a sense of self-worth. This included values like truth, goodness, and spirituality which ultimately brought me to a place like this. I seem to value things like truth and goodness to my own detriment and it often seemed to hurt me due to never feeling like I could be redeemed. Given the significant ways in which trauma has distorted and clouded my authentic values, I don't see a realistic path to improvement without finally getting a trauma therapist somehow, but there are many obstacles to getting one. Even so, I have made some significant progress over the past 6 months. First of all, I moved away from my grandma and my sister. I was in an abusive relationship because my sister is a covert narcissist who likes to weaponize my trauma against me and exploit my vulnerability as she treats me like an emotional and psychological punching bag all while the rest of the family is blind to what she has done to me and therefore blame me for being too sensitive or not letting go of the past. The situation is still extremely problematic. Although I am not being driven to suicide attempts, there are still a ton of problems with navigating family gatherings such as holidays and birthdays. She continues to make underhanded compliments when she sees me while she pretends to be caring even though she knows she intentionally makes me suffer like this. I can no longer bring myself to attend family birthdays and holidays because the rest of the family continues to blame me when I express that I feel hurt while my sister gets to bully me with impunity. They tell me to let it go or be forgiving, but this is not an option in the case of somebody who is intentionally abusive. I have a somewhat difficult time feeling isolated from everybody I love through no fault of my own to the point that it now feels like Christmas is dead and I have been deprived of these gatherings. Sometimes I have nightmares about my sister, but my family does not understand PTSD symptoms and therefore blames me for not letting go of the past. It is also futile to try to explain my point of view to people in this situation, which is common in narcissistic abuse. And before you suggest I not judge her because she had her own trauma, I must point out that when she is not targeting me, she is targeting my younger brother who now also feels more distant from the family. It seems to have nothing to do with her trauma and more like she is just genuinely a spiteful bitch who wants to treat others like crap and get away with it for the sake of feeding her narcissistic complex. I knew her behavior was problematic for a long time, but I recently learned that there is a label for this kind of behavior and it is covert narcissistic abuse. I think this is significant progress because I now see through her dishonest tactics more clearly, and I am not giving her any further opportunities to manipulate me into an argument in which she will inevitably be the victim, forcing me to apologize when I have done nothing wrong. I learned the hard way the dangers of misplaced empathy and compassion while trying to be the bigger person for somebody who genuinely has no regard for the harm they cause you and might even enjoy it based on her smug laughter. I tried to be open-minded and understanding, but I understand that she never actually loved me or cared about my honest perspective because her empathy is two-faced and performative and she has repeatedly told me her bald faced lies without hesitation or remorse. I deserve better than this kind of family, as much as it pains me to be cut off from them even though I know they have objectively done a lot of shitty things in my childhood. I have made progress on other fronts of my life. I remember I used to put a lot of effort into becoming a professional chess player, only to be met with repeated disappointment and frustration. I have started exploring other strategy games and board games, and it turns out that I am pretty good at those games as well. It all ties back into severe trauma. As a child, I had a hard time seeing my own value and worth. When I discovered that I was really good at chess and that I was able to win money and defeat titled players such as national masters, it gave me a sense of direction in my life that I could enjoy. I often became so focused that nothing else in the universe bothered me, and it gave me a sense of freedom and joy even though Mom was stealing my money and blowing it one heroin. When I encountered significant obstacles to realizing this dream, I was hard pressed to find some alternative life purpose. The problem is that fundamentally I feel incapable of loving myself, therefore any purpose which does not make me happy, must justify my existence through being significant enough to help me endure living my life in severe suicidal depression. I explored many different fields and subjects and continued to educate myself, but I always doubted myself and struggled to find anything that would be compelling enough for me to not kill myself due to my deep suffering and the fact that my suffering was not worth going through if it does not somehow help a large number of other people, thereby compensating my misery through the philosophical standpoint that my suffering is ultimately for the greater good. I have developed very deep empathy for other people in deep suffering throughout this process. I have shown my goodness by going out of my way to help those in deep pain simply because I could. I did not need anything in return, which is what separates my genuine empathy from the performative empathy of narcissist who is trying to manipulate you through trauma bonds. To name a few examples, I helped a lost three year old girl who was abandoned by her parents, I helped a victim of predatory loaning get out of 60,000 dollars in debt, I helped my brother through his depression and suicidal thoughts by using everything I studied even though I am often limited in my capacity to help myself, and I overall supported various people in a similar situation to me in what ever way I could, and they were clearly grateful to have met me. Throughout my personal development journey, I have been reading lots of books on emotional mastery, hoping it would help me to overcome some of these deep emotional problems. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be enough. I even studied psychology so deeply, that I now objectively understand psychology better than many therapists with master's degrees due to continuing to educated myself outside of college. Many therapists get tunnel vision because they focus on one narrow domain within psychology, causing them to overlook abusive relational dynamics while pathologizing the trauma responses of the victims. The problem is that my intellectual understanding alone is not enough to undo these deep wounds, and oftentimes it almost seems like more than I can bare. It isn't really fair that I needed to embark on this difficult journey to begin with, and I would have been a very different person if I never needed to study the mind this deeply. If I were my authentic self prior to all of this trauma, then I would likely be much more extroverted, jovial, and I would be much more open to dating rather than punishing myself through seeing my own sexuality as causing me to be permanently tainted and irredeemable. There is actually nothing I could do with my life which would finally make me feel like I am worthy of love, which is what I have been struggling with all of my life. There is no amount of success or external rewards which would be enough to fill the existential void of depression. The problem is that from my point of view, doing what makes me happy doesn't seem to be a realistic option, so I need to find a way to justify my misery through the philosophical framework of Christ like suffering in which I carry the burden humanity refuses to carry like some kind of martyr. For now I wish I could sleep at night, but I can't. I seem to be carrying a burden greater than I can manage on my own. I am unable to use my deep wisdom, education, and logic, to get myself through all of this because sometimes it is as if depression forces me throw away logic. At the very least I understand clearly, that I am unable to simply allow myself to love myself on my own. This is a silent struggle that I am often unable to communicate to my family as they think I need to toughen up enough to handle this level of depression. I really don't see how I am supposed to approach life at all if I am unable to function and I am losing my job and my money to hospital bills. I write this message because although my suffering may border on unbearable, part of me still holds onto hope. I see how I am capable of feeling love when extending compassion to others even when I must give from an empty well. I see that I may not be able to help myself through constant self-education through book reading in personal development, I still hope that somebody else can help me. I understand that such a person likely does not exist on this forum as chances are, I understand psychology better then them as well. Until then, I am probably alone in my suffering. A question I would like to contemplate is "what is strength?" All my life I have been looking to things like life purpose and intellectual ideals as something that would hopefully give me a reason to live. This reason to live would be the strength to withstand whatever life throughs at me because of my confidence and faith in my overarching vision and who I am. Perhaps in my next post, I will share what I come up with. Strength could mean a lot of different things, but what does it mean to me and what gives me strength if not praying to Jesus to not have Satan anally rape me with a flaming pitchfork until the end of eternity? I would love to explore where strength comes from and what it means. (My therapists actually did make me pray to Jesus by the way despite my objections.) I know it bothers you guys when I talk about these things, but I thank you if you were able to read this.

Another term I have been using is "poison wisdom." Poison wisdom refers to Any kind of personal development or spiritual advice which is packaged in a seemingly benign or even virtuous ways, but which ultimately serves to undermine you. There are countless examples of this from not only religious ideologies, but from other sources of personal development as well. An example from Jesus Christ would be from Matthew 5:28. "But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." In this example, Jesus appears to be saying something virtuous, but the problem is that if you apply this moralizing framework to sexuality it contributes to purity culture and the sense that sex can somehow be disciplined away. This backfires in many ways with one example being Catholic women who have rape fantasies because of the idea that they will not be responsible for the loss of their virginity. In spirituality it is a trap to speak of transcending sex in a moralizing way, which is common in religion. It is often a source of religious trauma which causes you to become conflicted with normal human desires. Eckhart Tolle also pointed out the problem with the "you are not your body" belief. This kind of spiritual advice leads to placing intellectual ideals over physical desires. It can cause you to become out of touch with your body which is necessary for deeper consciousness work. Although your feelings may not show you the absolute truth, they can get closer to enlightenment by giving you the relative truth of what you nervous system is trying to tell you. It helps you to live more authentically rather than robotically which is what happens when spiritual advice devolves into dogma. There is plenty of poison wisdom in places like Andrew Tate's man philosophy, or maybe Incel forums. This kind of advice promotes the attitude that women need to be controlled or manipulated which undermines the possibility of forming any kind of deep authentic relationship with the opposite sex. It is also deeply foolish to live your life as a hustler thinking you are somehow badass, but actually you trap yourself in a deeply dishonest and inauthentic life style which although may come with material success if you are lucky, comes at the cost of deeper spiritual development due to the reduced empathy, compassion, and love required to maintain that level of selfishness and devilry. (This is probably how Leo's wisdom would frame selfishness as coming at a spiritual cost even if it succeeds in the short term.) In the field of mental health there is a lot of poison wisdom around healing. Sometimes forgiveness is misapplied such that it enables abusers and silences victims. Therapists make all kinds of mistakes by mistaking trauma responses and protective measures as individual pathologies. This is how the educational system often produces incompetent therapists who are not well trained in detecting abusive dynamics or trauma responses. There is also a generational gap with mental health. The older generation was often taught things like "family above all else," "forgive and forget," "strong boys don't cry," and so forth. The result is that the older generation often lives in denial of how deeply trauma has shaped them and they start passing this "wisdom" down to the newer generations who continue to struggle with depression or trauma as if it were a moral failure. (note that poison wisdom is often very moralizing.) A controversial example might be "stranger danger." This is commonly told to children to avoid pedophiles who offer them candy only to kidnap them and sexually abuse them. The reason this might be poison wisdom is because although there is a kernel of truth to it, the reality is that most kidnappings happen by the parents over custody disputes. "Stranger danger" assumes that your parents are more trustworthy than strangers, but this is not always true. Sometimes your father is a drug dealing sex trafficker who will abandon you and leave you to be gang raped in exchange for 2000 dollars. In cases like these it becomes obvious that "stranger danger" is a logical fallacy through rhyme of reason. The reality is more nuanced, and in some cases your parents might be more dangerous than a random stranger. I am trying to think of how actualized.org could be a source of poison wisdom. After reviewing the subjects Leo covers, I think from a certain point of view most of it technically fine in terms of what is being pointed to. However, the way in which it could become harmful is that Leo knows that the majority of viewers will never actually reach God Consciousness or ego death. From this point of view although in theory what he may be pointing to is true, in practice most of us will fail and we might be set up for unrealistic expectations from this kind of spiritual wisdom. Maybe from a practical standpoint, much of this work will devolve into spiritual bypassing because only a small percentage of us will ever experience what Leo is pointing to. For the rest of us, if we lack direct experience, then all of this spiritual wisdom just turns into more philosophy that has no real positive impact on our lives. This is actualized.org becomes a trap even if what Leo claims is true. The problem with actualized.org is not necessarily that Leo is wrong, but there are real limitations caused by the practical realities that most of his viewers struggle with which in turn makes his wisdom counterproductive, and thus poisonous. There are also various traps in personal development in general which seem good on the surface, but upon closer inspection there are some problems. In my opinion a problem with personal development is an overemphasis on mindset, as if mindset is the answer to literally every problem in existence. An example might be something like using positive thinking, but if deep down you don't believe it, then it will serve to sabotage you if you try those affirmations. What seems to be overlooked is that mindset is not entirely conscious. It is not that simple to just reprogram your entire neurobiology and nervous system to match the mindset that is theoretically optimal for success. However, although many people fail when following this self-help advice, it ultimately gets blamed on them for not having the right mindset rather than seeing the limits of the techniques and philosophies in self-help. This often becomes a form of victim blaming even though there is a reason that most people who try self-help don't become successful. Maybe framing everything as merely a mindset problem is overly simplistic, especially if the 100% responsibility principle isn't actually true but rather is a temporary idea to look for hidden opportunities. There are probably endless examples of poison wisdom.

@Rishabh R in my case I am drawn to personal development due to my deep insecurity about my character and my need to prove myself worthy of existence by being good enough. This is a neurotic way to go about personal development commonly triggered by trauma and there are lots of people like me who respond this way to trauma by trying to prove their worth through various means. If somebody actually is secure about their self worth and they are content with living a normal life with nothing spectacular, then they might feel they don't need personal development.

In my experience it is possible to lie to yourself enough until you believe Jesus is the savior and he rose from the dead. If you are determined to make yourself believe these things somehow no matter what, then you might suddenly feel a deep sense of love and joy. you will feel complete as you praise Jesus for saving you. I tried this out when I was reading about people who recovered from addiction and depression. It worked for about two days. At that point I decided to stop lying to myself. It is possible though if you are willing to believe in delusions that make you happy. I met plenty of people like this in alcoholics anonymous. They straight up told me that they have doubts about God, but choose to live by the delusion rather than be miserable. It's just not my style. I would rather face difficult truths even if they are unpleasant.

I have cut out soft drinks for several years now because of the high concentration of sugar and unhealthy ingredients. I rarely drink things like coke or sprite at all because of all the harm these drinks can cause. However, I now sometimes feel bored of drinking so much water and I crave something less bland. I found some zero sugar Sunkist and drank it. It was a pleasant drink, but I am also aware that just because soft drinks have reduced sugar or are diet does not mean they are healthy because they still contain other terrible ingredients. I would like to know how safe it is to drink zero sugar soft drinks. If it is not safe, then what else could I be drinking? Sometimes I make fruit smoothies with almond or coconut milk and those seem less bland yet healthy. What other drinks are acceptable if I am bored of drinking water all the time?

I am becoming increasingly clear about how my vulnerabilities have been used to manipulate me because of the insecurity created by various traumatic situations. The vulnerabilities created by my trauma included deep shame and self-doubt concerning my morality, my need to justify my existence through a higher purpose, and various attachment wounds. This made me susceptible to various traps in my family relationships, but also in my approach to life in general including personal development. Starting with my family, they realized that I could be manipulated through pseudo moral appeals. They would want me to be the bigger person, and be forgiving even if the perpetrator was unrepenting. This was not actually about morality, it was about control and maintaining a dysfunctional family system which I now refuse to participate in. I see how my desire to do the right thing was ultimately capitalized on to place undue blame on me while permanently placing approval out of my reach. No amount of commitment to being good would have ever been enough. No matter how much I walked on eggshells to avoid a temper tantrum, there would always be an inevitable fuck up that leads to a disproportionate response. Now that I refuse to continue participating in this dynamic, my family insists that I simply let go of the past even though this dynamic is still in place. They simply do not understand narcissistic abuse dynamics and although they admit they are "fucked up" they want me to work on myself while simply accepting them for who they are. I will not allow people to guilt trip me and capitalize on my shame and my need to prove that I am good person worthy of existence. I especially refuse to tolerate my sister intentionally weaponizing my trauma around my father against me in an effort to cause maximum psychological harm while I am expected to just take it and move on because a family loves each other. I also had various attachment wounds because of my dysfunctional family and my father abandoning me in childhood. Part of me wanted to avoid relationships altogether which led to isolation. However, I part of me deep down still wanted some kind of connection. This made me vulnerable to manipulation when my father changed his behavior and suddenly took more interest in me after the initial abandonment. His tone changed to the father-son bond being sacred as he wrapped himself up in religion to make himself seem virtuous when in reality he was a drug dealer involved in countless crimes. He then threatened to disown me if I told anybody about his crimes. He added to this that I was special because the family comes from a long history of crime and that I would be the one to break the cycle and change the fate of the family. It created a hero narrative of me being the chosen one who would carry on the Hamann name while protecting my family from the abusive situation with my step father. He therefore wanted me to gather information for him on Mom and my step father claiming that he cared for me wanted to know what I was going through. He then used this information in court to get out of paying child support while I took significant risk confessing to homicidal thoughts to the school because of the abusive situation. The fallout from this was significant with me being blamed for my siblings being sent to the foster care system, but ultimately they were allowed to come home after my step father was evicted and my mom was finally clean from the drugs. In this case my desire to justify my existence through a higher purpose is what made me vulnerable to this hero narrative in which I would do everything in my power to protect my siblings from this abusive situation even though I simultaneously stayed quiet about my father's crimes believing that he would somehow help me in this situation. I remember vividly that my struggle with nihilism and meaning making drove me toward the position of family values even though deep down I knew these values were broken in this kind of family system. The reason I wanted to discuss this is because this applies to why trauma survivors fail in personal development. Personal development often involves virtues like personal responsibility or being the best person you can be. These virtues strike at our deep insecurity about our own inherent goodness because of our internalized shame. He feel the need to prove that we are worthy through becoming better with the help of these self-help books, but we operate from the fundamental sense that we will never be good enough even if we logically understand that this isn't true. In the case of actualized, it also includes themes like life purpose. Once again this strikes at my vulnerability around justifying my existence as a consequence of my shattered identity and resulting struggle with nihilism. I have been avoiding relationships and dating because i feared they would lead to more abuse, but also I devalued love because of how easily it could be betrayed. I therefore elevated meaning making and purpose above intimacy. I thus became deeply philosophical and intellectual because I thought intelligence would help restore my sense of self-worth. My specific trauma explains perfectly why I would be drawn to a place like actualized. I wanted to find answers, and this site seemed to have them. However, despite trying the life purpose course I still feel lost. I of course had some improvements from all the books I read, but it never felt like enough. I would have a lot of intense emotional release from the forgiveness exercise or from the emotional mastery books, but it never felt like enough. I was not dealing with normal emotional problems, so I eventually realized that these books and more education would not be enough to help me. This is my experience with falling into trauma traps. Would anybody like to explain how they fell into trauma traps, or if you can relate to this kind of predicament? I will give one update. I know this forum is annoyed with me when I talk about these wounds. The good news is that I finally have better medical insurance that covers trauma therapy so I can talk to them instead and do EMDR. The bad news is that due to medical complications from seizure causing anti-depressants I am now unable to work and I am on a leave of absence. Hopefully after the trauma therapy I will finally no longer feel the need to talk to the forum or Claude about my problems. Maybe then I will finally uncover my authentic values so that I can actually get serious about personal development and get results. For now the nightmares from PTSD and the insomnia that accompanies it are still a pain in the ass. At least I have come to realize that most of the people on this forum are poorly informed when it comes to trauma responses, and that is why most of the advice I get here fails. If you are a trauma survivor there is no real alternative to trauma therapy. Just be warned that if you get a general therapist instead, then you will likely be disappointed and waste a lot of money like I did on poor treatment. The mental health system is also profoundly broken and targets the very insecurities of trauma survivors by telling them they are brave for seeking help and working on themselves only to drain them financially with poor treatment. The recovery centers and hospitals are for the most part not good enough and the institutions will retraumatize you and gaslight you about your abusive relationships because most therapists are not taught about trauma responses even though 60-90% of the mental illness they treat can be explained by trauma or ACEs as in the body keeps score. In my case multiple therapists tried to make me pray to Jesus.

Thank you, that sounds exactly like my narcissistic sister and the enablers in my family.

A term I made up a while back was "moral devilry." Moral devilry refers to the use of morality to decieve, manipulate, control, or gain some other advantage over other people. It includes but is not limited to playing the victim, reversing victim and offender, using religious and moral appeals to silence victims, and many other methods of deception and manipulation such as rationalization through pseudo moral arguments or by misapplying various moral principles. Here are some examples. A dysfunctional family tells the family scapegoat to be the bigger person. This is often used to silence them by treating them like their objections to the abuse makes them the problem and is a form of guilt tripping and gas lighting. DARVO is a manipulation method common in narcissism. When a narcissist is challenged on their inappropriate behavior they will act outraged and offended. They will deny your accusations and start attacking your moral character to claim you are a hypocrite full of double standards which is a projection. They will then claim that you are the offender by drawing false equivalency between minor offenses or mistakes and their behavior. They will claim they are the victim and they will do so convincingly enough to turn others against you. These flying monkeys will then pressure you to keep the peace for family harmony while the narcissist faces no consequences whatsoever. Moral devilry includes excessive punishment for small mistakes. This is not about doing the right thing, it is about weaponizing morality to place undue shame on the victim while convincing them that the following abuse is deserved as punishment. This is often accompanied by smugness and a false sense of righteousness. The goal in this case is to find an excuse to cause harm or seek revenge. Moral devilry can be found everywhere in life. It might include politicians making excuses for the harm they cause by emphasizing personal responsibility and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps while they actively make your life worse no matter how hard you try. There are many pseudo moral obligations such as forgive and forget, turn the other cheek, a family should love each other, having kids makes you closer to God, and so forth. Many of these apparent obligations are actually personal choices but they are framed in this way to manipulate you. In my experience, I am easy to manipulate through morality because I have a strong moral compass. I therefore behave consistently and predictably and this indicates to my family that they can scapegoat me and make me take own undue responsibility. The more insecure you are about being a good person due to internalized shame, the easier you are to manipulate through pseudo moral appeals. This is tragically common in trauma survivors who might blame themselves for a sexually abusive situation. They develop crippled self worth and try to redeem themselves by being good. Therefore they are the perfect target for moral devilry, guilt tripping, and gaslighting. A famous example of moral devilry might be using religion to justify terrible acts like slavery, genocide, or child abuse. It is easy to cherry pick whatever verses you want out of the Bible and then use it to control the social narrative and target a specific group of people. Those in power have a lot of incentives to manipulate these religious appeals to form a false persona of high integrity when in reality the Bible means nothing to them and they are just virtue signaling. I could go on forever with these examples, but I hope you get what i mean by moral devilry. I actually have been using this term on my own for years.

@Leo Gura Can you show me any sources where you might order Kangaroo milk for human consumption? I did a quick search on this topic and there seems to be conflicting accounts with some sources saying Kangaroo milk is niche, others saying it is widely known in Australia, and others saying that Kangaroo milk is not typically designed for human consumption. It is possible to order Kangaroo milk, but these sites say that the formula is designed specifically for kangaroos and not humans. https://henryspets.com/products/fox-valley-day-one-formula-29-35-for-bennetts-tree-kangaroo-and-red-necked-wallaby?srsltid=AfmBOoovKxBUP3ZGJQC3qYqkgrEAnfA1zbH7sAAM1pnLAWDYeLuSwB1d&variant=50523692466481 https://www.aussievetproducts.com.au/products/wombaroo-kangaroo-milk?srsltid=AfmBOor05cd63VNf9tthceH7q9BSo6TcKHowkx97n6OqrPxZnN8MlaIK this makes it sound like you might be trolling. Have you ever dove into a Kangaroo's pouch to drink its milk? I am having doubts that you are serious about the Kangaroo milk. If you are serious, then what sites should look to for this product and do you drink this yourself?

I'm here to comment on Leo's post about the German soldier ranting about Jews. The two German soldiers told him they were Jewish, but they were not believed. This is the no true Scotsman fallacy. If you understand logic it seems simple, but the consequences of this self-deception were actually severe. What starts off as a minor intellectual error spiraled into something unimaginably terrible.

I have had a bad relationship with my sister for a very long time. It goes back to our dysfunctional childhood in which my father showed favoritism toward me for being a boy. He started telling these stories about how I was the one who would break the cycle of criminal life and how I gave my grandpa hope when he saw the good in me. During this time my mother wanted me to have empathy for my sisters for their position, but there was not the same emphasis on empathy when speaking to my sisters. This is a common bias in how boys are raised in that they are talked to about compassion and empathy more than girls because it is assumed that boys are less compassionate. The girls needed to understand my position because I myself was conflicted about my father because my love for him led me to enabling his criminal behaviors. This is the trauma that my sister has begun to weaponize against me as a means of getting revenge for me telling our cousin that my sisters didn't like his behavior at the renaissance festival and that they were mad at him. Unfortunately, my sister appears to have a chronic deficit of empathy. She would lash out at me over very minor issues to the point that I would cry. She would make excuses about her performative outrage claiming either that I was overly sensitive or that she was on her period. Whenever I tried to express that she had hurt me, she would refuse to self-reflect and immediately find any way to frame me as a hypocrite. She would mention the past favors she did for me, implying that I was ungrateful despite all the harm she was causing me. She would tell me that I was inconsiderate for many things including risking myself to save my mother's life from my abusive step-father while protecting my younger siblings in an environment that was far too dangerous. She would place logically impossible expectations on me such as being more open while not being too honest. She simply could not handle criticism because her ego was far too fragile. She would ask me how I felt, yet I constantly felt unsafe because I was walking at eggshells, and I would inevitably fuck up again anyway. Every interaction with her led me to getting paralyzed because I would understand that anything I say would be weaponized against me and lead to a worse outcome. Nevertheless, if I stayed silent, she would call me childish for not being able to handle conflict. She would intentionally place out of reach standards on me while looking for reasons to get offended so that she would keep me in a position of perpetually out of reach approval. She would not only weaponize my trauma against me, but also demand I take 100% responsibility rather than being so one-sided only to capitalize on the situation should I apologize in an effort to humiliate me. I felt trapped in this awful relationship for about 8 years. I am still terrified to see her. When she is present I start having anxiety attacks, I lose my balance, my heart races, I get trouble breathing, I start having muscle spasms, and I feel deeply angry and powerless as she makes seemingly benign comments which were implicitly targeting my trauma. I noticed how my vulnerability was now being used against me and she had no remorse. She would then manipulate the rest of the family into gaslighting me as they treated me like I was the problem. They would insist that I be the one to apologize even when I clearly did nothing wrong. They would make all kinds of incorrect assumptions about how I think and they would project their behavioral problems onto me. My sister would consistently reverse victim and offender, causing me to be blamed unfairly constantly. I would have nightmares about my sister, including sleep paralysis episodes in which I could hear her and she sounded angry. I felt terrified in those nightmares. I tried to explain that she had a pattern of behavior that I did not like. When I would bring up examples of her behaviors, she and my family would tell me that that was in the past and I need to let it go. They would insist that I be more forgiving even though it was impossible for me to feel emotionally safe in her presence. They would tell me that I need to spend more time downstairs and socialize more. On top of that my therapists would tell me that I was the problem because I kept ruminating on bad situations with my sister and would not let them go even though these were symptoms of severe trauma. Therapists are often terrible because they are hyperspecialized, leading them to pathologizing trauma responses. The result is that I was given ineffective anti-psychotic medicine which damaged my liver, and I am still trying to get help recovering from this. My medical insurance has complicated this though. My family repeatedly insisted that all of this was normal family conflict and it was okay to have little tiffs, even if they involved mom threatening suicide. They insisted that I needed to go to therapy for depression, but my sister decided she didn't want to go as she insisted I needed to. I wrote a message to some of my family members explaining the situation. So far it seems that my cousin is the only one that understands me. I have sent the message to my grandma, mother, and younger siblings as well. My younger brother might understand the situation because he is aware of my older sister's behaviors and how she reacts when you say something negative about her. I haven't told my other grandma yet. She also thinks I need to just let go of the past even though the presence of my sister was making me feel suicidal because of the intense emotional reactions it caused. My family is ignorant of my trauma responses, so they treat them as if they were moral failings, proving that I was the problem and my sister was doing everything just right. Sometimes I wanted to cut myself in response to these intense feelings. I was trapped in a toxic family dynamic which the others were blind to, and I was the only one trying to work on myself and improve myself. I tried the book list on this website, the life purpose course, and so many different things, but it just was not enough. I was hoping that emotional mastery would help me to overcome the constant torture in my mind which kept me locked into a traumatic thought pattern. Once again others would tell me that my thinking was the problem and I needed to focus on something else. My experience with mental health has demonstrated to me how stupid the average human being is. Not even the therapists could be trusted because I had done enough research and self-education to objectively know better than them. So many people make all the wrong assumptions about me and it makes it hard to communicate with people. Too often do people overestimate their intelligence and their capacity to help as well as their moral character. There is a bit of a paradox because I tend to think of myself as objectively more intelligent than the average person, but I am aware of the potential problem that could come with this. There is some trauma around this as well because my family treated me like I was stupid. I understand that my profound suffering has strengthened my empathy for the suffering of others. I recognize the mental torture that seems beyond our control no matter how hard we try to make it stop. I used to think it was my fault, but actually it was PTSD. I have been struggling to love myself all my life, but I have found that I love myself even more when I extend the love to others. It was kind of like the dream I had back in high school. I jumped into a black abyss of deep suffering with unwavering faith that I would return to the light stronger. Through this journey I have come to realize that I am the light and it is love which makes me stronger while giving others the strength they need. Originally, I saw Jesus in the dream, but I still have no interest in being a Christian. In fact I am even more repulsed by it because my therapists made me pray when I objected to the practice. I do not want to make people miss love by trying to make them be Christians who clearly have no idea what love even is. From my point of view it looks like moral posturing in which they pretend to be selfless and loving when they are not. I tried forgiving my sister, but I simply could not do it. I tried Leo's forgiveness exercise, but it did not work because Leo said that they did not hurt me intentionally. In my case, it was far too obvious that my sister wanted to hurt me because she was emotionally abusive without any remorse or respect for my boundaries. I simply could not forgive her no matter how hard I tried and even as the family told me that I was in the wrong for not being more forgiving and letting things go. I have found a method of forgiveness that works now that I am away from my sister. Rather than framing forgiveness within a psychological or interpersonal viewpoint, I framed it as more of an existential viewpoint. I struggled with a deeply dysfunctional situation for my entire life and I used whatever I could leverage best to help me be able to love myself. In my case I chose truth, intelligence, and goodness. I did however devalue relationships in favor of a "higher purpose." Meanwhile, my sister chose power, control, and manipulation. She chose a survival strategy which shaped her into a covertly abusive narcissist who enjoys having power over others, and therefore cannot find genuine love for them. She will act like she loves me until the second she gets angry and decides to weaponize my trauma against me. I don't want to forgive her in the sense of wanting to be within 50 miles of her because of how good she is as a human being, but I do forgive her in the sense that she is existentially limited by whatever she can best leverage as a survival strategy even if it leads to intentionally harming others. I don't expect her to recover from her condition, not only because of my experience with her, but also because her chances of recovery from narcissism are not good statistically. She is too psychologically resistant to self-reflection because it would be too painful for her to realize how terribly she has been treating others and getting away with it all her life. I now feel a deep sense of love for myself because I chose love, truth, and goodness. Of course I was limited in my understanding of these things and I had to make a lot of mistakes in the process. It kind of makes me want to cry because of how fucking awesome I am. I initially used these values to compensate my self-worth problems, but I now see the incredible being I have become because I chose love over hate, truth over lies, and good over evil. From my point of view it would not have been intelligent to not be committed to truth because if I intentionally lie to myself all my life then everything I believe is probably wrong. Therefore truth and intelligence were closely related to each other, although my understanding of intelligence was as something that would make me feel good about myself. I now realize that it would be incredibly fucking intelligent if this entire process throughout my entire life was designed to lead me to realize that the universe is very fucking intelligent. I still need to stay the fuck away from my sister as I continue to look for ways to navigate this situation. I find it very hard to be in her presence. I will also need a fuck ton of trauma therapy, no matter how much my family tells me I don't need it. It is actually not a good idea to trust my family at all because they don't understand me in the slightest. I also see how deeply ignorant people were on this forum including myself as I struggled to figure all of this stuff out. I hope you guys find this helpful.

So basically, Tim Pool is using a manipulation tactic like gish galloping. He is rambling on about many different sources so he can sound intelligent, but in reality he is hoping that you just get lost in the word maze and just believe him because he sounds like he knows what he is talking about. If you listen to him he sounds like Ben Shapiro in this clip.

Cindy was a kind person to me. She was always happy to see me. It seemed that she had a genuine smile and laugh whenever I was with her. I was told that she loved me to death. I cannot recall her ever saying or doing anything cruel to me. Cindy was my father's girlfriend. When I would visit them, they would act as if everything was fine. They were happy to see me as we played videogames, board games, and watched movies. I was aware of my father's criminal activity, but I was in a complex situation with my mother and her boyfriend as well. Sometimes the facade would slip. My father and Cindy would get into fights. I then discovered that dad was grabbing and hitting Cindy and calling her a "stupid f****** b****." I realized that dad and Cindy were like mom and Mike. I saw similar behavior like pawning to pay the bills and the use of some kind of opioid pain med along with domestic violence. Dad was also a drug dealer who would steal cash from partners and family despite his belief that he could keep his criminal behavior separate from his family. As I struggled with being caught between my mother and Mike and my father and his gang, I later discovered that Cindy was taking medication for depression and anxiety. I never discussed this with Cindy because I was worried about getting away from mom and Mike while ensuring the safety of my younger siblings. I underestimated how deeply she was suffering because she always seemed happy when I was with her, but she was likely faking it. Cindy eventually died by mixing alcohol with medication, causing her to go to sleep and not wake up. My family framed the incident as if it were an accident or a mistake. I am now realizing that this situation was likely a suicide. My family never talked much about this, so I didn't know it was something like this. Apparently family silence is common in this issue. Upon realizing this, I felt a grim sense of emptiness. I wondered if she ever knew what I was going through. I myself was struggling with suicidal thoughts and behaviors and I would continue with that for years. Because of my struggle, I would now be in a better position to understand her and support her in whatever way I could. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to help her because neither of us told the other about our depression and suicidal thoughts. By this point I already understood that when those close to us die by suicide, it increases the risk factor of suicide for others close to them. For me it seems to be having the opposite effect. This situation makes me want to not kill myself. As far as I could see there was nothing wrong with Cindy and she seemed like a decent human being to me. I wouldn't want her to die like this while suffering so deeply. I would have at least wanted a chance to understand how she felt and what she was going through. However, she wore a convincing mask and it didn't occur to me that she was in this position. If she had known how deeply I was suffering, I wonder how she would have responded. Unfortunately, it is far too late for such wishes and if only thoughts. It seems to be a common psychological phenomenon where it is easy to offer compassion to a friend but not to yourself. Cindy was probably like that as she showed happiness and love on the outside but she probably hated life on the inside. It is easy and natural for me to give such people compassion, yet I tend to treat myself like I'm awful. The reason this realization makes me not want to kill myself is because I see myself as someone similar to Cindy. Like her, I am worthy of love and receiving help. I don't want to end up repeating her actions without giving others the chance to offer compassion. I tend to connect very well with people who are in this kind of deep suffering like me. It feels like Cindy's love for me and her death would be for nothing if I did the same to myself. Perhaps those suffering deeply from depression and suicidal thoughts may respond to it by acting as good of a person as they can. This is a survival strategy that is intended to restore a sense of self worth through morality and being good, therefore justifying a person's existence despite deep suffering. I do this as well and this behavior may be more common than I think. It is close to the root of how I try to find some grand life purpose for myself that helps the maximum number of people in the hopes of being good and therefore justifying my existence. Therefore, attachment to morality is a trauma response, and those suffering deeply may act very kind because of their empathy and compassion for those in deep suffering. This seems to be part of why I am confused about things like life purpose as those with depression are prone to nihilism. I hope my experience has helped you guys somehow. May Cindy rest in peace and may I avoid the same mistake she made.

Autism may be a factor. I often describe things in great detail because I process things differently.

I've seen several psychologists in the past. I've had problems with several of them. I hope to see a trauma therapist once I get my new medical insurance. My current insurance does not cover mental health. It does not cover my hospitalization for severe depression from last month. To be honest I find ai more helpful than human therapists. Oftentimes mental health professionals can't be trusted. They don't seem to know what they are doing.

@Yimpa i can definitely relate to that video. Part of me wants certainty yet spirituality taught me not knowing. The of OCD as the doubting disorder should be helpful.

In my experience, it seems to be repeatedly confirmed to me that I am an unusual man. The way in which men generally behave and think when seeking a sexual does partner does not compute with me. This is likely due to a combination of autism, trauma, OCD, and PTSD which seems to have shaped how attraction works for me starting from a young age. I would like to share how attraction works in my experience. Originally, I was like every other boy. If nothing had changed, then I likely would have grown up to be a normal man who would try to get laid at every opportunity, hitting on girls because he likes their breasts or butt. Due to my experience, I became appalled by what appears to be natural and normal masculine sexuality. I wanted to distance myself from this behavior, reasoning that it could be the case that a girl was sexually abused. In my experience after a traumatic event, it made me far more uncomfortable with this kind of behavior, and I thought that there were others who might actually feel the same way. A girl who was sexually abused probably wouldn't like it if I walked up to her and told her that I wanted to do some x rated sexual fantasy to her after meeting her five seconds ago. I also didn't like it when I was sexually harassed and assaulted, which appears to be ridiculously common. As I went through school, I saw this behavior constantly from both boys and girls. My experiences caused me to develop a strong negative judgment toward sexuality. First of all, I developed OCD behaviors around intrusive sexual fantasies which made me afraid. Secondly, there seems to have been a fundamental change in how I perceive beauty. Rather than primarily being attracted to a woman's physical appearance, mainly her face, eyes, and smile, I would instead prioritize evaluating humans by their character. I instantly lost interest in nearly everybody because I saw a lot of people as low quality human beings. I distanced myself from the normal boys who would sneak up behind girls and start dry humping them, and instead became very isolated. My family was crap, the schools were crap, and I had little interest in meeting new people. It would be a very long time before I experienced sexual attraction toward any other human in my life. One of the challenges with OCD which changes how attraction works is that I am afraid of women with big breasts rather than being attracted to them. The reason I am afraid of them is because when I am speaking to them, I experience this really strong urge to briefly stop making eye contact with them and glance at their breasts. I try to resist because I don't want to make them uncomfortable, but I sometimes I just can't help but glance at their breasts. This creates a situation of intense anxiety and it makes it very difficult to connect with her as a human being because I want to get away from her as quickly as possible. Deep down, maybe I feel that large breasts are nice like a normal man would, but this makes me hate myself because it seems wrong. It makes me feel like I am connecting to a woman as a physical object like a normal man rather than as a complex human being who has a unique personality, history, and values. The fact that I am triggered by large breasts therefore prevents me from accurately evaluating her character which is necessary for me to develop genuine love for her rather than being like a man who would hit on any girl with large breasts. This is part of how I am conflicted about my sexuality because normal masculinity seems wrong and disgusting, but it still exists within me despite past trauma, thus creating an aspect of myself which I hate, causing me to avoid people and self isolate. To be clear, the reason I think this behavior is wrong is because if I don't account for this woman's unique situation by reducing her to an object, then I might make her feel uncomfortable sexually due to her past trauma, but also this rationalization did not occur to me until after my own trauma which made me uncomfortable with people flirting with me. This is a sign of projection in which I may be overestimating the discomfort of others. Even so, I need to know them more deeply before making a proper evaluation in terms of how they would react to such things. Therefore, in my experience, I seem to have an easier time connecting with women with small breasts as I don't get extreme anxiety. It then becomes easier to look them in the eye and have a normal conversation. When this happens, I then discover ways in which we can relate to each other and we might even have similar interests. This leads to deeper and deeper discussions as we enjoy each other's presence. As I learn more about them, I might start to see them as a nice person in terms of how they behave and how they treat others. They might even do an act of kindness for me like offering me a ride when I am stuck in the rain. When their behavior appears to be consistent and they appear to be a decent human being, I start to like them more and more. I then continue talking with her, and this is when I start to notice details more and more. I begin to see her as physically beautiful, mostly her eyes, face, and smile. The opposite would occur if I encountered a woman who sexually assaulted me. When that happens, it causes me to feel like her face looks like dog shit. Therefore, if I evaluate a person as a good person, then I am more likely to be attracted to them, whereas if I think you are a horrible person, then I will quickly lose all attraction for you. Assuming this person was consistently kind and I now see them as beautiful, I now suddenly start getting thoughts about having sex with this woman I like, mainly as a human being. This then triggers anxiety, so I sit alone and try to carefully plan describing these feelings to her without making her uncomfortable. In this particular case, when I was talking to this woman I discovered that she was raped by her cousin when she was young. I eventually came up with a method for expressing these kinds of feelings to a woman safely and properly. First of all, I should avoid any explicit references to sex, or sexual feelings. Originally, I was thinking that I could frame it simply as a report of my feelings without any intent to actually hit on her provided she was uncomfortable and would rather go slowly, but I see some problems with that. Here is what I believe to be the proper way to handle this situation. I think I should explain to her why I like her. It would go something along the following lines. "Rylee, there is something I want to tell you. As I have spent time with you, I have found that I enjoy your presence. I see you as a kind and beautiful person. I like who you are and I would like to have a closer relationship with you. Is that okay with you?" I understand that this might seem a little romantic, but this kind of approach computes with me more than the normal male approach. If you compare this to things like Pick Up and how men typically think of women, I am left with the impression that I am supposed to evaluate a woman based on her appearance on a scale of 1 to 10 and then decide right then and there if I want to have sex with her. This kind of masculine mindset does not compute with me at all. That entire mindset seems like a red flag to me that indicates a problem with character. It reduces sexual attraction to appearance without prioritizing who the person is on a deeper level. Attempting to adopt that kind of approach would make me feel horrible about myself. I know this is normal for most men, but I can't see myself walking up to a woman because I glanced at her for half a second and now I immediately want to fuck her up the ass. This is why judgments like "hot" never really computed with me. It is as if the appearance of a woman is such that it causes me to want to have sex with her even though I could end up impregnating a psychopath who will cut off my penis and murder me which actually happens in some cases. I would prefer to know who somebody is prior to determining whether or not I want to have sex with her. The only time appearance triggers sexual feelings, given the proper context, is when I see a naked woman. Perhaps that is what is considered "hot" by my standards because the appearance is such that it causes me to want to have sex, but context is still important beyond mere appearance. For example, it could be my sister getting undressed in the living room or a naked woman running terrified or screaming "rape." This would be bad context in which appearance alone is not enough to make it sexy because it could be something horrible. Hotness is therefore more than appearance in my opinion. Therefore in my opinion something hot would be me being with a woman in a relationship of mutual attraction in which we enjoy each other enough to now have sex. This would involve being completely naked and saying things like "I love you." Similarly, I have doubts when I see overly flirtatious women. It makes me question their character, likely due to trauma just like with Pick Up. When a woman walks up to me and tells me she wants to have sex with me, it makes me very uncomfortable. I had previous women do that to me and they ended up sexually assaulting me. They are likely making assumptions about my character purely based on the fact that I am a man and it would be normal for me to immediately want to rip off her clothes and have sex with her. I am actually turned off by this behavior because I don't want to be made to feel slutty. I also have doubts about women who posts pictures of their naked bodies online. Although such images do illicit sexual feelings in me, the situation causes me to doubt the person's character and what a potential relationship would be like. Such a woman is probably expecting me to be a normal man, and she probably would not be a good match for somebody like me. Therefore, I avoid such women as they are probably expecting me to be a slut, resulting in an incompatible relationship. So far I have never made to the point of actually being on a date with a woman I like. If ever it does come to that point, I have a strategy in mind, granted this mindset will likely need to be refined. It shows signs of a deep seated fear caused by past trauma from other horrible relationships. My primary concern in such a situation would be to ensure that we can avoid a toxic, dysfunctional relationship. This would involve a lot of intellectual discussions about things like abuse patterns to avoid or dysfunctional relationship patterns. In this case if a woman were sexually abused, then she likely has significant trauma, leaving her prone to emotional codependence. One thing that would need to be made clear is that attempting to heal together creates a trauma bond, which in turn is an early sign of a dysfunctional relationship as healing would require professional help. My instinct is to approach this situation somewhat seriously as we can create a situation in which we love each other, but it would be dysfunctional to use each other as a psychological crutch. This kind of situation or dynamic would demand my full attention as we seek a way to navigate this potential pitfall in such a relationship. Of course, these are just my initial thoughts of what would be important to me, but there is probably something wrong with this mindset. Maybe I am showing signs of trust issues, which is also a sign of potentially dysfunctional relationships. I am genuinely curious as to how somebody should go about striking such a balance in this case. This could be a complex and fascinating discussion. Maybe my seriousness itself could be problematic if it creates excessive pressure. Unfortunately, I never got to the point of making it to a date with somebody I like. There is kind of a catch 22 with finding potential partners. Attraction seems to happen most naturally for me, when it isn't the goal. If I set the conscious goal to find a woman to fall in love with, then something immediately feels off about it. I feel like this kind of mindset positions me to look at a potential partner with rose colored glasses because I am actively looking for the outcome I would want. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to go to some kind of club of my interest with conscious intent to be sexually attracted to somebody. In fact a club of my interest might be a spiritual retreat where dating might seem incompatible, or at a chess club in which I am so focused on the chess board position that I am not having deep conversations about a woman's history and character. Meanwhile, sexual attraction in the workplace is problematic. I actually did find myself attracted to somebody at work, but I never told her because she was the manager and I thought it was inappropriate. Her name was Hunter. It is interesting to note that Hunter and Rylee had a lot of similarities in terms of their appearance. They both had a tan skin tone, were shorter than me, had brown eyes, dark hair, a white smile, seemed thin and lightweight, and had small enough breast and butt sizes that it did not trigger extreme anxiety and OCD, allowing me to comfortably hold a conversation with them without the instinct to overly sexualize them causing me to feel slutty, dirty, improper, and ashamed of myself. They both had a similar tone of voice which I would describe as caring and compassionate. They both were kind to me, causing me to evaluate their character positively and in turn causing me to see them as more physically beautiful. One of my doubts is that such women seem kind of young. They were both about 20. I am 26, and I see the young age a likely sign of lower development and maturity. The human brain does not fully develop until the ages of 25-27. There are also a lot of women at the age of 21 who become incredibly immature due to their newfound opportunities to drink. In order to evaluate a woman's character, I would need to understand her relationship to alcohol. If a woman I like becomes old enough to drink and she decides she likes getting drunk, then I don't like her. The situation becomes too unpredictable with a lot of possible danger. I don't want my girlfriend to be an alcoholic. Aside from these two women, there were other women who I saw as physically attractive, but I never got to know them. These were athletic women, and I never managed to successfully approach them because they were jogging with their headphones in and I would have to chase after them yelling at them to get their attention. That doesn't seem right to me. This is why I have a hard time approaching athletic women. I recall that this particular woman was white, blonde, had a somewhat muscular build but nothing extreme, had blue eyes, a white shirt, and blue shorts. I noticed slightly larger breasts than with Hunter and Rylee and that triggered anxiety. I guess that would be one of the exceptions in which I saw a woman as beautiful prior to knowing her character, kind of like with Alice. Alice was another complicated character, but I felt like I wanted to be with her. I thought that she was beautiful the moment I saw her, so I started talking to her. This however, was prior to some of the traumatic experiences which caused me strongly focus on character when looking for humans that I should have a relationship with. Anyway, Alice was white, had short black hair, brown eyes, was taller than me, had a white smile, and also small breasts that would not have triggered OCD. I don't know what happened to Alice, but I wanted to be with her and I enjoyed her presence. I recall that her voice was significantly different from those of Rylee or Hunter. Rylee had a consistently cute sounding voice, Hunter alternated between the compassionate and intentional tone of voice obviously because we are at work and she is the manager, and Alice had a somewhat deeper tone with a slight crack. I was young at the time and maybe she was going through puberty. I remember a higher celebratory voice from Alice when she said "I'm a pro!" after beating a computer game called Midnight and a higher happier voice when she told me "goodbye" only to never return. It made me think that actually she didn't like me. Now that I think about it, if she was going through puberty and I was about five, then it makes sense that she wouldn't want to be with me. I used to hate myself because I thought it was my fault, but this would explain it too. The traumatic event happened when I was six which changed my entire approach to attraction. What are your thoughts on this abnormal attraction? What kind of advice would you give to somebody like me? Part of me wants to have a deep loving connection with somebody, but I am afraid that my depression, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health problems might harm any relationship with a potential partner. I was recommended dating by multiple therapists, but my situation is complicated and I hesitate to go out intentionally looking for somebody to love. I was planning on trying dating, but instead I ended up hospitalized with severe depression which made me doubt the idea again. At the same time I have not had a deep connection with many human beings and the therapists think that I am lonely. Following the trauma I started prioritizing intellectual ideals over love and relationships, resulting in a situation in which I have a lot of barriers to intimacy. This kind of mindset and disposition is what ultimately attracted me to Actualized.org. I wanted to seek higher intelligence because I believed my ignorance was the cause of my trauma and that knowledge and wisdom could protect me from doing something stupid. I now understand that actually a lot of people develop this kind of personality in response to trauma. It is a system of compensatory values which cloud my authentic values. That is another complex subject that I could discuss some other time. I hope somebody finds this helpful or is able to offer good perspective. Thank you.

Thank you for this. It feels nice.

@Emerald thank you for sharing that story. I can relate to your friend a ton. I actually did start training myself to not recognize attractiveness. I started doing that after the traumatic events because I wanted to distance myself from that behavior, but in fact attractiveness had nothing to do with those events. The reason I have a hard time relating to other men is because I forced myself to be different due to seeing myself as inherently broken otherwise. I remember that in this process I also got worse at remembering names and faces which I used to be really good at. I didn't see much value in others and I didn't see value in myself either. I also started thinking of how my insecurities could he used against me and lead to bad relationships. I see a lot of parallels between myself and your friend. If it is okay to value a woman physically in addition to everything else, then how do I make sure I don't over do it? Maybe it would help to examine a hypothetical scenario in which I find a woman's breasts attractive. I would then examine how in theory the situation should be handled should I speak to such a woman. It would help to know the woman's complete appearance in case there is anything else I find physically attractive. It might be the case that I trained myself to be repulsed by large breasts due to seeing the instinct to glance at breasts during conversation as improper. The thought of explicitly mentioning attraction to breasts or butt occurred to me, but I need to remember that she might be traumatized.

You are right about a lot of these things. The OCD behaviors are what I believe to be resulting from trauma. This is why I am trying to get a trauma therapist rather than an OCD therapist. Actually now that I think about it again, I see that many of my trauma responses are wrong. I will explain. I was exposed to a lot of terrible versions of masculine sexuality as a child. Firstly, my father had sex with my mother when she was underage and fled the state to avoid paying child support. He went on to have children by other women as well as my mom struggled to raise her kids. For the most part I grew up as the only boy with two sisters, my mom, and my grandma. No positive male role model existed. In fact I became isolated and fearful after my mother yelled that she went to easy on me for being the only boy which made me feel like I deserved harsher treatment. Mom doesn't remember this but this was the reason I started staying in my room so much and not talking to the family. The situation was even worse than that. My father was also a gangster who sex trafficker minors with his gang who were child predators. One night he took me to his gang leader. He was called "fat ass" and he offered my father 600 dollars to have me spend the night with the gang in exchange for sexual favors. In this particular instance my father declined the deal. I haven't told the rest of the family about this. As a six year old I had a disturbing dream in which my uncle molested me. I don't have any memory of actually being sexually abused, and that's why I was recommended to get emdr for repressed memories. I am in a weird position in which I don't know if I was sexually abused or not because I don't have much memory from when I was 2 or 3. I didn't tell my family about this either. Because of everything I was exposed when I was six, I went on to repeat the behavior on my four year old sister. When I realized I didn't like it I started experiencing intense anxiety, fear, and a sense of violation. We thought we were just playing, but then discovered that something was horribly wrong. My sister then told my mom about it so my mom accused me of sexually abusing her daughter. She attributed adult motivations to a six year old and it led to a lot of trauma responses. I became hypervigilant, I had a harder time sleeping, I was extremely self conscious, I started distancing myself from masculine sexuality, I started acting very serious rather than playful, I had intrusive memories and nightmares, I had intrusive thoughts of sexual violence, I was afraid of becoming a sexual predator, I started avoiding closer relationships in favor of being isolated, I felt incapable of loving myself, I had a crippled sense of reality, I judged myself harshly, and I started adopting compensatory values which clouded my authentic values in an effort to rebuild a sense of self worth. This ultimately ties into a sense of nihilism and a lack of purpose and meaning which in turn leads to depression and suicidal thoughts. This behavior of taking issues like purpose very seriously to justify my existence started with the childhood incident. Some of what I described are OCD like behaviors. The fear of being sexually abusive is part of my fear of losing control and doing something stupid. The thing is that this has never happened before. None of my trauma was caused by a lack of self control. It was caused by ignorance and a lack of guidance. However my experiences has indeed created intense friction between what I believe a good person to be and my sexual desires. Sometimes it leads to muscle spasms. This kind of experience led me to thinking that I needed to prioritize intellectual ideals over things like love and sex. I looked for a higher purpose and started behaving as if lust were an objective sin even though I don't believe in the Bible. I felt tainted and ashamed and unable to restore a sense of peace in my own body. The outcome is that i end up with a lot of barriers to intimacy and i hope a trauma therapist can help. I genuinely have a hard time seeing how typical masculine sexuality is healthy. This leads to me hating myself when I see these desires in myself. I want to make sure I am not merely using a woman for her body even though I am also curious about sex which I see as inherently problematic. Can you explain how on earth is typical masculine sexuality healthy? Why is it good to rate women on a scale of 1 to 10 and objectify them even though the women may carry sexual trauma and often don't like being overly sexualized? From my point of view healthy sexuality should account for the imbalance in the masculine and feminine perspective and create a dynamic balance. Otherwise the relationship seems incongruous in terms values. I feel like I am doing something wrong when I start thinking of women in a way that sexually objectifies them because it is my understanding that they dont want to be treated this way by men who think like pigs. It might help to see a steel man or accurate version of what masculine sexuality is to make sure my trauma is not distorting the picture. However, it is my understanding that it seems to involve interest in breasts, butts, and vagina. My theory is that this is a psychological pattern rooted in biology and evolution. Back then men used the size of breasts and butts as a sign of fertility. Back then normal masculine sexuality made sense because life expectancy was short and women often died from complications due to pregnancy. Men also needed to be more aggressive and violent, explaining the discrepancy between male and female violence in terms of statistics. Therefore in my opinion, society has transformed such that the primal instincts of men are no longer compatible with what is needed for a healthy society. It made sense in ancient cultures, but now there are many more complications concerning sexual propriety and morality. Religion has been baked into various cultures which fundamentally condemn these base instincts. Trauma leads to similar condemnation. In order to have a healthy society we can't have men acting on these instincts. This seems to be the fundamental tension in terms of my sense of morality and trauma and my sexual desires and instincts. In my opinion normal masculine sexuality is not healthy, but it exists because it was necessary. It is impossible to simply discipline sex away. This is the bind that I believe men are in as a consequence of how we evolved. Maybe this explains why hate myself. What do you think? I know there are exceptions like porn stars who love being viewed as objects, so in some contexts normal masculinty is okay if certain women are in to that. This just seems like a bad assumption to make when approaching women in general if not all women want to be porn stars.

I'm feeling kind of mad about recent news concerning my cousin and her boyfriend. My cousin's boyfriend won the Kentucky Power ball lottery for 167 million dollars. I tried to warn them about what usually happens to lottery winners. They often ruin their lives by doing a lot of really stupid things. I sent my cousin a message expressing my concerns, warning them of the serious danger they were in. They had posted their winnings on Facebook and now everybody was going to go after them. I didn't want their money. I wanted them to live the best life possible, but instead they did something really stupid. I wanted them to hire a financial advisor immediately, and to avoid drugs or alcohol. The top priority should be to secure the winnings rather than blow through it foolishly. They needed to ensure their judgment was sound before making any major risks, but they could not be stopped. My cousin and her boyfriend went to Florida. They went to a bar and started getting drunk. They ended up getting in a fight and attacked a police officer. Furthermore it was found that there was a parole violation and now my cousin's boyfriend is likely going to prison. It is all over the news now. My hope is that the boyfriend split the money with his mom. Maybe there is hope that going to prison will straighten him out so he cant do anything else stupid. He will probably lose a lot of money in the process, but if he gets his act together and manages to save about 10 million dollars, I hope he can recover and make it out of this. https://apnews.com/article/kentucky-lottery-florida-arrest-winner-powerball-police-b6925a595a351c3455a769b3ba19c7a1 It looks like there really was nothing I could have done to prevent this. The red flags were all over the place and I knew it was going to get bad. This is going to complicate the wedding plans, which is another way in which the lottery ruins relationships in addition to all the other relationship problems. Do you have any idea on how the lottery should be handled in order to prevent these kinds of disaster? Those who win the lottery are usually not very conscious individuals.

I'm not very familiar with how people will react to this picture. If I showed this picture to a girl, would she laugh or would she react negatively? I would like to discuss the thought process in dating and attraction. I thought this picture would be funny, but would it actually? I thought it would be funny to put this on a dating profile image. Maybe it would be better to keep my main picture as something normal and this picture in an album for later after a connection.

@Sincerity I actually ran this by an ai and the ai thought that this picture after my surgery was good and humorous. It said that it shows me finding positivity and humor even in challenging and painful times. It said self depreciating humor is funny in this case,, but recommended not making it the main profile image. It said it should be saved in a collection instead. I wanted to run this by humans to see if the ai could be trusted on this. I'm not sure I trust the ai with this.

This looks hilarious. I'm trying to think of something similar. I have an idea of sending something like a wedding picture and saying "here is a picture of me." In this case there is a wedding couple up front, but there is a crowd of people in the back and I am a random guy in the background. She would have to sort through all the faces to find me. If that doesn't work, then maybe I could take a picture and say "this was taken back when I was being potty trained" but in the picture I'm about 10 years old. I still think your idea is better than both of these. I'm trying to think of what would be funnier than what you sent but I'm not sure. Maybe I could say "this is a picture of me preparing for a chess tournament" but then show a picture of a sumo wrestler. I haven't quite developed my sense of humor in a way that it resonates with others. I'll need more practice.

@shree that sounds epic. Are you able to show me better pictures than this one?